SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

Sociological Theories

Sociological Theories

Introduction

This paper revolves around Ms. K, the main character of the case study. There are two situations presented in the case study - one is Ms. K's experience of loneliness and the other one is the case of adoption of Ms. K's child, an event that was triggered when her first husband discovered about Ms. K's nine-month old relationship with another white individual (such as Ms. K in this case). According to the case study, Ms. K is a recipient of social benefits for being living alone and that she is pregnant for the last six months. In this paper, two sociological theories will be applied to address the situation at hand.

Loneliness

Loneliness is usually defined as a subjective state of low social attachment. It is a feeling state, in contrast to the objective condition of being solitary or isolated. Unlike such related concepts as aloneness (which often includes an element of choice) and solitude (connoting creativity, rest, or transcendental communion), loneliness, by definition, is aversive (Young, 1982, 37).

Existing research, though sparse, implicated loneliness as a cause or correlate in a wide range of health problems and deviance, from suicide and sex offenses to hypertension and heart disease to anxieties and addictions. In sheer scale, the problem was unprecedented. “More people probably live alone in New York and other large cities than ever before in history,” wrote the director of psychiatric services at a New York City hospital. “More people deal with day-to-day aloneness if not loneliness…. Living alone is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. One wonders whether a thousand years ago anyone lived alone” (Satran 1978, p. 294).

It is “a painful warning signals that a person's social relationships are deficient in some important way” (Perlman, 2008, 12).

According to the existentialists, loneliness is not pathology but realistic awareness of humanity's essential condition. In this view, the lonely may be the only ones who see reality clearly. Managing loneliness involves distraction in one form or another: finding meaning in creativity, altruism, or friendship, or focusing attention on other people, organizations, and causes. The sociological approach explains loneliness in terms of the social and cultural processes that isolate or marginalize people. Loneliness may be experienced as a personal problem, but its origin lies not within individuals but in the defective nature of society.

In interactionist perspective, loneliness is a function of both personality and social factors. One looks for its causes neither exclusively within the self nor exclusively in society, but in their interplay. Socialization and developmental histories are relevant, but so are current ties to intimates, friends, social networks, and community. Social-cognitive theorists evaluate relationships against a perceived ideal or an expected, perhaps previously achieved, norm, interpreting loneliness as response to the discrepancy between expectations and present actuality. In the “privacy” approach, people need confidants with whom they can honestly share their innermost selves; loneliness reflects a deficit in intimate communication with a trusted other.

Finally, the general systems theorist interprets loneliness as a system-supporting feedback mechanism ...