Social Institution Changes and Non-Profits

This text compares the evolution of two key social institutions: family and education. The family is the most basic social institution of the society. Industrialization significantly changed the structure of the family. The family in the preindustrial, agrarian society was mainly extended (Buehler & OBrien, 2017). There was a functional fit between the family and the rural economy such that all family members were involved in working the land, which then meant that the larger the family, the better. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and numerous children were regarded as assets. Anyone who was fit needed to be economically-active (Buehler & OBrien, 2017). Maintaining larger extended families meant availability of essential services in education, childcare,...

The pre-industrial period was, however, characterized by a large number of rural-urban migrations as more and more people moved to the cities to gets jobs in mills and factories (Buehler & OBrien, 2017). The migration forced families to be geographically mobile, which implied that they could not take the large extended families with them to the city. The family structure thus changed from extended to nuclear, and more women began to take up jobs outside the home (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2007).

Education in the agrarian society was primarily informal, with children learning customs and the broader way of life from parents and other members of the extended family (Fraser, 2020). In the post-industrial period, however, education was primarily formal, with children attending schools that were designed to promote universalistic values, standardized aspirations, and uniformity (Fraser, 2020). The fundamental characteristic in regard to education thus was the shift from informal education offered by family members to formal education offered in schools. The primary similarity between the evolution of the two institutions, however, is the separation of home from both school and work (Fraser,…