The Sociological Significance of Family and Friends in Everyday Life

This essay examines the sociology of everyday life, focusing on the roles and interactions of family and friends. It uses Suzzie Scott's family as an example of a nuclear family and explores how individuals interact within these social groups. The analysis incorporates sociological theories such as Symbolic Interactionism and Functionalism to understand the meanings and functions of these relationships. The essay also compares family and friends, highlighting differences in their bonds and societal roles, and discusses the significance of shopping as a social activity. It further differentiates shopping habits among men and women. Desklib provides similar solved assignments for students.

Running head: Sociology everyday life 1
Sociology everyday life
Institution
Student

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Sociology everyday life
Family, Friend, How It Links To Sociology Everyday Life Different Theories
In sociology, family is a close domestic group that composes of people related to each other by
bonds of blood, legal ties or sexual mating (Hill, 2017). It is a group of individuals brought
together by the ties of blood, marriage, or adoption, encompassing a distinct household and
associating with one another in their individual social ranks, typically those of parents, spouses
siblings and, children. A family comprises of an adult person and his or her children. In most
cases, it encompasses of two married individuals, normally a male and a female (almost usually
from dissimilar ancestries and unrelated by blood) together with their children, typically staying
in a private and separate residence (Mitchell, 2017). This form of unit, more particularly referred
to as a nuclear family, is perceived to be the oldest of the different categories of families in
existence. Occasionally the family consists of not only the parents plus their single offspring
living at home but also offspring which have gotten engaged, their marriage partners, and their
children, and perhaps aged dependents as well; such a configuration is referred to as an extended
family. On the other hand, a friend is person with whom an individual has an attachment of joint
fondness, characteristically one exclusive of family, blood or sexual relations. Typically, people
from diverse social groups are friends with one another- an indication of a society’s social unity
and frankness. Since friendship ties are not as strong as those of a marriage, they are considered
as better indicators of social openness.
Suzzie Scott is an actress born on 2nd November 1963 in California, San Diego. Suzzie Scott is
famous for The Jeffersons (1975), Student Confidential (1987) and The New Mike Hammer
(1984) (IMDb.com, Inc., 2018). Since 1988, she has been married to Joe Krabacher, one among

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the most successful business people today. Suzzie is a daughter to John Scott who was an
English film composer and a music conductor. Her mother’s name is Dikareva Scott. Scott’s
family is an example of a nuclear family or an elementary family. In sociology, an elementary
family like this one comprises of people united by ties of parenthood and partnership. Normally
but not always, adult people in a family are married. Elementary families characteristically rest
on a married couple; and might have any unrestricted number of children. However, it is worth
noting that there are dissimilarities in definition amongst observers; some descriptions consent to
only biological offspring that are full-blood brothers and sisters, while others consent to a
stepparent and any muddle up of dependent offspring including stepchildren and the adopted
ones (Tseng, & Hsu, 2018).
One vital and imperative study of sociology is the exploration of people’s everyday social life.
Everyday life and sociology are certainly two discrete terms and situations, but they both hold a
close affiliation (Newman, 2018). Whereas sociology investigates people interaction, everyday
life comprises of everyday human relations. Families and friends interact everyday for different
reasons depending on the prevailing state of affairs (Speier, 2017). Family members, for instance
Suzzie Scott’s associate with another for family unit issues and in such cases, a non-relative is
not involved. Besides, in everyday life, Suzzie Scott associates with her friends and with the
current presence of social media platforms, she can do that online without necessary meeting
them. These set of interactions can be looked into from the perspective of Symbolic
Interactionism and Functionalism theories. In regards to Symbolic Interactionism theory,
families and friends act in regard to their interpretation of the meaning of their world and
attaches symbolic meanings to the main reasons why they associate such as wedding ceremonies,
church ceremonies among others (Rock, 2016). According to the functionalist perspective, every

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portion of society is mutually dependent and contributes to society's functioning as a whole. This
theory looks in general the main pertinent reasons why people must associate with one another
especially in a family level (Shields, 2016).
Family, friends compare each other; compare the different types of age, gender?
The legal and biological definition of family is the people who are bonded by marriage and blood
(Parke, & Ladd, (Eds.). (2016). These include brothers, parents, sisters, great-aunts, uncles,
aunts, grandparents and so forth. Friends on the other hand, are not bonded by marriage or blood.
They are people who others develop special connections with due to some specific state of
affairs. What is more, family members hail from a shared ancestral lineage while friends are not
related by any form ancestry. In Suzzie Scott’s family, for example, she is not related to Joe
Krabacher, her husband by blood rather by marriage engagements. On the other hand, she is
bonded to her parents by blood and so they belong to a common ancestral line. She has some
friends who she chose to associate with and she feels comfortable whenever she is around them.
A society comprises of people of different ages such as the children, youth, adults, and seniors.
Children consist of society members who are aged 0 years to 14 years and in most cases, children
are typically under the care of their parents in a family. Youths are those people aged 15-24 years
though this consideration differs from one society to another. In some cases a youth can be
anybody who is above the age of 18 years. Adults in a society setting are those members who are
between 25-64 years and mostly, they are the majority. Seniors are individuals whose age range
between 65-90 years and over. In a typical society, one will find existence of people who are
either of male or female gender. However, a male and female come together to establish the
smallest social unit, the family. Traditionally, males and females played different roles in a

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family. For example, men were considered as the main breadwinners and were expected to toil to
provide for the females and their children. Females, on the other hand were expected to remain
home and take care of the house and do all other house chores. However, currently, these notions
are changing and both genders are observed taking on similar roles. Traditionally, women could
not take any leadership position in the society and only males were allowed to lead. In the
present, this is not the case since women are taking leadership roles in their respective societies.
What Is Shopping? , Why It Is Important.
Shopping can be defined as an activity whereby a person looks through the available goods or
services availed to him/her by one or more sellers with the possible intention to buy an
appropriate selection of them. In everyday life, families, friends and other parties are observed
enjoying shopping and others doing it as a leisure activity. The importance of shopping is differs
from one individual to another but mainly shopping makes people happy since it gives them a
chance to buy what they want. It enables them to brake from the stressful normal life they carry
with them since as stated above, it is an enjoyable activity. As people shop, they get a chance to
satisfy their basic requirement and in some cases provide solutions to their family day to day
problems. Zhang, Brackbill, Yang, & Centola, D. (2015) say that it is a social activity which
gives people an opportunity to associate with one another both face-to-face and online.
Women as opposed to men go for shopping more frequently (Flynn, & Goldsmith, 2016). The
main reason as to why women go for shopping more often than men is sobering. In practically
every society in the world, females have prime care-giving duties for both elderly and children
(and habitually, just about everybody else in-between). In this prime care-giving role, females
find themselves buying in support of everyone else in their families and in lives in general. Other

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than buying for themselves, females shop on behalf of partners, adult children, kids, husbands,
colleagues, friends, elderly parents, in-laws relatives, their businesses and even their children’s
friends, to name just a few. In addition, women purchase items on behalf of so many other
people apart from the above and their purchasing decisions often carry more emotional weight.
There are two main types of shopping, namely one-on-one shopping and online shopping. In
one-on-one shopping, the buyer and the retailer meet physically and enter into a business
transaction. This is the commonest mode of shopping. Online shopping on the other hand allows
buyers to directly purchase goods or services from a retailer over the Internet by use of a web
browser. Shoppers, in online shopping find a good or service of interest by paying a visit to the
website of the seller directly or by searching amongst alternative retailers by use of a shopping
search engine that displays the same item’s availability and pricing at different e-retailers (Singh,
2017).

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References
Flynn, L. R., & Goldsmith, R. E. (2016). Introducing the super consumer. Journal of Consumer
Behaviour, 15(3), 201-207.
Hill, R. (2017). Family Development in Three Generations: A Longitudinal Study of Changing
Patterns of Planning and Achievement. Routledge.
IMDb.com, Inc., (2018). Suzzie Scott Biography. Retrieved on 1/1/2019.
Mitchell, B. A. (2017). Family matters: An introduction to family sociology in Canada. Canadian
Scholars’ Press.
Newman, D. M. (2018). Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday life. Sage
Publications.
Parke, R. D., & Ladd, G. W. (Eds.). (2016). Family-peer relationships: Modes of linkage.
Routledge.
Rock, P. (2016). Making of symbolic interactionism. Springer.
Shields, S. A. (2016). Functionalism, Darwinism, and advances in the psychology of women and
gender: From the 19th century to the 21st. Feminism & Psychology, 26(4), 397-404.
Singh, S. (2017). Examining Factors Influencing Customer Loyalty and Repurchase Intentions in
Online Shopping: An Indian Perspective. Indira Management Review, 11(2), 76-87.
Speier, M. (2017). The everyday world of the child. In Everyday Life (pp. 188-218). Routledge.
Tseng, W. S., & Hsu, J. (2018). Culture and family: Problems and therapy. Routledge.

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Zhang, J., Brackbill, D., Yang, S., & Centola, D. (2015). Efficacy and causal mechanism of an
online social media intervention to increase physical activity: results of a randomized
controlled trial. Preventive medicine reports, 2, 651-657.