Incapacity to Provide for Its Own Members

The family was not only affected in its moral, psychological, and social aspects by urbanisation and industrialisation. Its economic activities were also changed. No longer capable of providing services and exercising functions as before, the family stopped being a production unit. In his essay “Sociological Study of the Spanish Family”, José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado explains:

The enormous growth of cities, mechanisation, massification and the means of communication created environments that are profoundly transforming the old family structure. Men no longer work at home but in offices and factories. Salaries are no longer given in kind but in paper money. The family unit is no longer one that produces but rather consumes.… Husband and wife are no longer able to take care of their elderly, of their sick and of their children.

It is now society that provides care homes, hospitals and day-care centres. Socialisation of children (that is the progressive and adequate integration of the individual into society without the family) is done less in the home and more in the nurseries, primary schools and the street. Entertainment is less personal and is increasingly centred on television or outside the home at amusement parks or public events.²⁵

^{25. José Manuel Rodriguez Delgado, Fundamentos biológicos de la família, “Estudio Sociologico de la Familia Espanola”, Instituto de Sociologia Aplicada de Madrid, Confederación Espanola de Cajas de Ahorros, Madrid, 1976, p. 471.}