The Effects of Globalization on Family Life (2024)

Hi there) I’m content writer at https://plagiarismsearch.com.

For the last 15 years the term “globalization” has been in extensive use . This term is defined in different ways. However, its basic definition is a higher degree of interconnectedness of the world than it was before. The major economic sense of globalization is the adoption of the open and unlimited markets by the countries at the global level and by people at the individual level. Reducing trade barriers and free border crossing for people are inherent for globalised world. An integral part of the globalized world is a significant amount of money movements, increase of the trade scale, and ever expanding use of information and communication technology. As the world becomes more interdependent, globalization affects everyone. Some people shy away because they are troubled by economic and political consequences of this phenomenon.
Significant importance is attached to the movement of people from one country to another, which, in its turn, leads to the mass migration. People cross borders to find decent work, high wages and, ultimately, a better life. Today, these processes enhance the movement of goods, services and jobs considerably weakening the national barriers and constraints. In recent years, economic globalization has become the driving force of globalization.
Globalization is considered in several dimensions: political, technological, environmental, cultural and others. But the human dimension is general. Globalization can promote exclusion from society of people who are poor materially and morally, and are not educated, partially in developing countries, and leading to environmental degradation, while other countries are growing in prosperity. For example, the great development of computer area has facilitated people of the middle class with better pay, flexible terms and the ability to assert their role and status in the family and society.
Nowadays, globalization has greatly affected people and their personal life. These rapid changes in the individuals and their environment are caused by globalization. The movement of the people from rural areas to cities becomes an increasing phenomenon. The development of cities in developing countries is especially related to poor living conditions for many. As a result, probability of violation of family life is increasing. The concept of family identity, work and traditions is rapidly changing in the globalized world. The arguments that competition introduced by globalization leads to a more individualistic society become widely accepted.
Scientists argue that globalization has a strong impact on family life and family as a structural unit, which is one and indivisible body and the lowest part of society and the state. Many people reject globalization. However, others believe that globalization brings the joy of family life, the benefits of the world and so on. To tell the truth, globalization differs by advantages and disadvantages.
Globalized world is characterized by consumer lifestyle. Advertising and television offer many kinds of food, clothing, luxury cars, homes etc. Family members are forced to buy these things but not because they need them, but because they want to get them. Globalization somehow divides family structure. For example, in the past, all the family members gathered together to dine at the common table. Now, a large number of restaurants, clubs, and cafes make this process impossible.
The process of globalization has considerably changed the fundamental concepts of family roles and relationships. Restructuring of the economy, strengthening of the international organizations role, mass migration from developing countries to developed ones, and the use of female labor in the formal and informal types cause changes in family life.
Globalization is associated with the spread of a particular ideology, which is implemented and discussed in the intimate sphere of the family. Family is adapted to the global economy through formal and informal work, production and consumption, as well as relations with nation-states. In addition, communication and information technologies are constantly developing and allowing families and individuals to get quick access to each other. These relations carry a new concept of the lifestyle and identity even for those who can not access them.
There has been an increasing emphasis on individualism and the liberalization of family life, the strengthening of alternative lifestyles, divorce and same-sex couples and others in the West. These characteristics also apply to family in developing countries. However, developing countries have their own problems regarding family institutions, including economic challenges, such as the labor market, increasing inequality within the country. Globalization has a close relationship with these social phenomena. When there is a crisis in one area, it affects all others and may have even more negative impact. Family is not immune to such processes and phenomena. Globalization accelerates dependency of family transformation on the social order.
People can use globalization to their benefit and in order to build a brighter future for their children in relationships where there is concern for the welfare of each and every family member, achievement of a better, more secure future. A lot of people are assured by their own knowledge that globalization is not a prayer, but the power of collapse, caving their financial welfare or their lifestyle. This is particularly evident in developing countries which live by their traditions and mentalities. Globalization allows developed countries to interfere with the less developed ones, where the level of development of both has a huge difference. Perhaps undeveloped countries do not want to host these economic dragons. But globalization is forcing them to follow the path of change and face the new challenges. Developed countries bring their traditions and values to the culture of a different nation. Some say that the level of material life, average wages, and integration of society increases through this significant process. Indeed, it is. However, no one thinks by what price is such a result achieved and whether it always pays off.
Many advantages of this intervention in life process of a family institution can be observed. The man with his needs and desires is a part of a family. Today, the possibility of greater income given by the globalization improves financial status of the family. In particular, the emergence of new technology leads to the emergence of new industries, and therefore jobs. The state requires highly skilled specialists in these areas, and if they are, they receive a decent salary and able to provide for their families. Thus, globalization is of interest to obtain new knowledge, which will result in more money.
On the other hand, all comes down to materiality. The man begins to think materially to provide family with everything best. A sense of moral satisfaction disappears, family members are set apart from each other. Globalization demands that the family members who live in developing countries aim for developed countries in search of higher earnings and hopes for a better life. Not always their expectations are met. No matter where they go, they are always in the position of ethnic discrimination or migrant status. Often people become powerless or fall in economic trap. There is hostility on the citizens’ part of host countries. The policy of multiculturalism and tolerance does not always lead to the desired results. As a result, immigrants form the mental state of dissatisfaction with life, which later becomes the cause of strained relations in the family. Globalization is a significant force in the psychological development of a person of the 21st century.
Nowadays, the work is time-consuming and parents practically don’t leave it on vacation with family and children. Aging people face significant challenges. Often they suffer from discrimination on themselves, because they become physically weak and therefore dependent on caregivers, that increases the risk of abuse.
At a distance the care about elderly members of family becomes more difficult. Of course, today it would be pleasant to see older people living longer, be healthier, workable and useful to society, holding their own jobs, promoting happy family life to their adult children, and being supported economically and socially by a state. These goals are achievable through solid, well-crafted policy of elderly care with using of their wisdom and experience acquired over a lifetime.
However, globalization has left its imprint on the lives of these people. Worldwide, nearly half of all people aged 60 years are with disabilities. Who should care for older people with these problems? The migration of the younger generation from one urban center to another, as well as transnational migration led to a passive attitude to elderly people who remain adrift at a time when family support is becoming more critical. With the increasing process of women accession to the workforce that cares for old in families decreased. Those who live in families with elderly people should live in harmony with the younger generation. But this is an opposing part in the world of globalization.
Wealthy elderly sometimes are able to hire housewives who usually immigrate to the countries in search for work. Ways to support older people appear more often under stress situations when there is a decrease in fertility, significant emigration flows of young population. This kind of care for the elderly is carried out in various institutions, such as nursing homes. Currently, many of these institutions do not have ideas and methods in the place for the older people, because of cultural standards that are normally allocated for women’s care in the family. However, women are increasingly considered to be manpower to assist seniors in an unknown family area.
Not always the distance is a warning for elderly care. Sometimes serious and important business, which acquired the relevant features by globalization process, occupies all the time in adults, as they are committed to work, nervous and violent and just do not want to deal with it and help elderly parents. Later this attitude develops into an emotional and mental alienation of the elderly.
Ageing and older people are the area where globalization can be expanded in a right direction, for example, raising awareness of issues related to the aging population, inequality within society towards the elderly, increasing multicultural nature of the older population, and the safety standards for care work. Factors of globalization can be used to conscript and distribute acts to these issues.
Globalization often becomes the reason the mothers leave their families as they go to work abroad. Their cheap labor is used there as a maid to care of other people’s children and the elderly, while they had to devote more time to their children and loved ones. It is believed that global care chains break emotional bonds of mothers and their children in the West, where the mother communicate a little with a child, and in countries from which the nurses come.
When parents go to work in other countries, children are either with nannies or with grandparents, or even are left to themselves alone. It is very difficult morally. Even knowing that parents are trying to achieve better lives for children, they still want to see my mom and dad beside them. This effect of globalization is very detrimental to families and society in general. The number of street children, including those with alive parents is increasing in the world. Growing up millions of children can not read, and newspapers write about massive child prostitution because parents do not see how their children are educated and can not control the process of education by themselves. Number of annual suicide cases among children is measured in tens of thousands. All this is a consequence of children and parents separation. In addition, globalization has many ways in which, for example, drugs are released worldwide and addiction can threaten families.
Globalization influence creates a bleak perspective of a significant distance from the national installations of young growing population that is not educated by parents. Factors that make a decisive impact on the views of children are different. Today, recent achievements of information technology play a significant role in the forming of new priorities in the younger generation. They have a major impact on their understanding of society and culture and changes in their attitude towards reality. Thus, using the Internet actively youth receive information about the culture and way of life. Internet also serves as an information bridge to explore the culture and traditions of their parents and ancestors, including the global cultural, social and political space. On the one hand, formation of “virtual communities of young people” allows to exchange views on various issues, but on the other hand, this form of communication is no substitute for real communication that needs to be expanded. Children often replace the attention of the parents, which they miss during their absence by these types of employment. Again, using Internet kids can communicate with their parents at a distance and even see them. However, it could never replace them parental hugs and real words. It should be noted that as far apart and devoting time to work, families usually choose not to have children, in order not to complicate a situation. Thus, fertility reduces its rates in the country.
Stability problems of the modern family consist of family status and dynamics of divorces, their social and typological aspects, causes of divorce, the value of marriage and satisfaction with marriage as a factor of stability of family union. Also, when a person goes to work for a long time and far from family, it is not excluded that there he or she will create a new family. In this case, long-term marriage is replaced by a series of short-term unions. Sin destroys the identity of the person and the family is a personal relationship. And there is one sin that has a dual relationship to family breakdown. This is betrayal, lack of loyalty. In these conditions, relationships and understanding in the family are weakening.
Today some facts are known such as the process of reducing the number of marriages, the increasing number of divorces and spouses who live apart, increasing the number of people living in the “civil” marriage, growing number of single parent families (usually headed by a woman, because, men betray more), as well as change of the distribution of family responsibilities (due to the increasing involvement of women in employment) etc.
Accelerating the pace of economic development has led to the Economic Freedom of the population. And as it is known, the more freedom you have, the less sense of responsibility you feel. Reducing sense of responsibility is just leading to a decrease in marriages and children born out of wedlock. Women are increasingly concerned with the prospect to educate a child. In order to raise her child, she is has to work literally for two. Now provision is formed, that a person is transformed from potential family man to man uninterested in creating a family. Typically, these people are living alone, or with the opposite sex without the intention to marry.
Globalization changes the lives of all without exception through technology. In this sense, globalization of socio-cultural processes in which people from different cultures interact with one another exists in all spheres of life more intensely than ever. This integration promotes more different ways of thinking people, cultural values and new forms of family life. Technology, which is a product of globalization, has a major impact on family life.
With advances in technology, the emergence and development of social networks and services expanded an understanding of human communication, previously restricted by residence and work. Social networks allow you to be in contact with many people around the world, instantly get any information, and make people more interactive.
Information and communication technologies erase barriers and reduce space and time more deeply, intensely and directly than ever before. One of these phenomena of globalization is shaping online communities that enable to ignore the fact where family members live. Now, new methods of work and the good life spread all over the world, even in the most secluded areas of the globe. All these advantages of modern life exercise effective influence on the family, which settled the division of labor, social roles, collective solutions to family members about their future and further development. Today technology affects family issues even more than the general public. Clearly, the impact of globalization on the family is differential and is dependent on many factors, but specifically on where the family lives and what its social status is.
The other side of using technology is that there is virtually unlimited source of information. While the parents once can not answer a question to their children, as they are far, computers, television will do it for them. Possibility of distance learning is also a big advantage. For many people this is the only way to get the necessary skills without leaving household chores.
Technology can be used for working from home. For example, the family can not leave, because parents will stay home and will work through the Internet. Thus, the barrier between all family members is completely erased: parents can safely raise their children and care for the elderly. This method of using the globalization products is the best way to preserve the modern institution of the family.
As noted earlier, globalization erases national borders. This, in turn, encourages people to increase the workload and, of course, to get more profits. Unfortunately, its effect on the family relationships is very bad. Because of increased workflow family members dive headlong into the job, forgetting about everything, including the most important — family. Without a doubt, family members will be provided with all necessary, but not with parents. Family, through procreation and socialization functions, ensures the continuity of life, and also acts as custodian and transmitter of social values to children. In situations where people are increasingly integrated into the global world, values are lost. Then the family can still maintain a character of its members.
Within the globalization human thinking has made the transition from communal to individualistic. With the advent of globalization, which celebrates high mobility, the family stability and survival are under serious threat. Globalization transforms personal data, such as people’s thinking about their role in the family and the society, and it has the enormous psychological consequences.
Thus, the relationship between the institution of the family and the formation of the character of its members is a reflection of the globalized world. The family institution should not be damaged by means and methods of globalization, because it plays a central role in society. Surviving of the family depends largely on the strength of ties between its members. The source of this attitude, as a rule, appears to be children, whose friendship is translated into friendship of mothers, and then, in turn, into family friendships.