Chapter 11- Textbook Flashcards
What is a nuclear family?
An adult male, an adult female, and their offspring.
What is extended family?
Multiple generations of adults living with their spouses and children.
What are the two dominant family forms?
nuclear and extended
What is family of orientation?
the family into which one is born
What is the family of procreation?
The family one creates by having children or adoptingg children.
What is the definition of a census family?
A married couple (with our without children of either or both spouses), a couple living common-law (with or without children of either or both partners), or a lone parent of any marital status, with at least one child living in the same dwelling. A couple may be of opposite or same sex. Children in a census family include grandchildren living with their grandparent(s) but with no parents present.
What is an economic family?
A group of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling and are related to each other by blood, marriage, common-law or adoption. A couple may be of opposite or same-sex. For 2006, foster children are included.
What were the two significant changes with the 2006 census?
1) same-sex married couples were counted
2) previously married children may live with their parents and should be included as members of that family
What does Margrit Eichler argue about family? What are her 6 important aspects? What does she suggest instead?
That we operate with a monolithic bias when we think in terms of “the family.” She suggests that we expand our understanding of what a family is. She argues that important aspects of families are socialization, emotional relationships, residence, economics, sexuality, and reproduction.
What is notable about the 2005 passing of Bill C-38?
Legalized same-sex marriage.
Over the past quarter-century, has marriage increased or decreased?
decreased
In 2011, ___% of Canadian families were married couples, down from___% in 1981.
67, 83
In 2011, common-law relationships represented___% of Canadian families, up from only___% in 1981.
16.7, 5.6
What two facts are associated with the rise in cohabitation?
Women’s increased labour force participation nd education levels
The line between___and___is no longer clear.
legal marriage and cohabitation
When did “no-fault” divorce laws take effect? What happened as a result?
- 1985
- Rates of divorce rose significantly
What is included with no-fault divorce?
The waiting time prior to being able to file for divorce reduced to one year, and uncontested divorces were granted after a separation of three years.
What did changes to the 1997 Divorce Act result in?
Child support is now calculated based on the income of the noncustodial parent and takes into account the cost of living in each province.
What did changes in the federal income Tax Act result in?
Halted the practice of noncustodial parents being allowed to deduct monies paid for child support and custody parents having to pay income tax on child support payments received.
How does functionalism view families?
- Family is understood to be a major societal institution
- Social functions are accomplished within families
- Children in families are socialized to learn the values an norms of the larger society
- Families are also responsible for discipling children.
- Social status is established and reproduced by families through the parents’ wealth as well as through inheritance from other family members
What did Talcott Parsons argue about industrialization?
Families no longer functioned as economic units of production. the functions associated with families became more specialized, with specific roles developed former, women, and children.
What are Parsons’ two roles?
instrumental, expressive
What is the instrumental role?
Responsible for engaging in paid labour outside the home. Men.
What is the expressive role?
Responsible for the emotional well-being of family members and the socialization of children.
What are the critiques for the functionalist approach?
- For their conservative approach to gender and for expecting roles in families to be played out on the basis of biology
- Not adequately dealing with social conflict and social change
How does conflict theory approach families?
- They consider its relationship to the state
- Perceive that the inequalities inherent in the larger society are perpetuated inside families
- Assert that the family organized to meet the needs of capitalism and, more specifically, to serve ruling class interests
What does Engels argue about the Industrial revolution and family?
Along with other changes, family forms were radically altered as workplaces shifted from homes to factories. Families shifted from being sites of production to sites of consumption.
What does Engels believe determine family lie? How?
- material conditions
- Those who were able to provide the necessities of life (men) amassed social power
- With the development of class-based societies, women’s social position, relative to men’s, declined
What do Marxist Feminist theorists call attention to?
the essential work of social reproduction that families performed
What is social reproduction?
the necessary activities the guarantee the day-to-day reproduction and survival of the population
What is domestic labour?
The activities required to maintain a home and care for th people who live in it.
Why has Marxist work in the area of families been criticized?
-Taking for granted the division of domestic labour
How do both functionalist and conflict approaches examine families?
Examine the complex relationships that connect families to larger society rather than explore intra-familial relations
How does symbolic interactionism approach families?
They investigate how family members’ behaviours are shaped by their definitions an interpretations of particular situations. They perceive that symbolic meanings vary from one family to the next, and may even vary among members of the same family unit. Overall, symbolic interactionists tend to explore families as cooperative groups with shared interests.
What is role strain?
Stress the results when someone does not have sufficient resources to play a role or roles.
What do competing roles in families often result in according to symbolic interactionism?
role strain
Why has the symbolic interactionist approach been criticized?
For largely accepting the idea of families as sites of harmonious relationships
How does feminist theory approach the idea of families?
Holds that families remain primary sites for the continued subordination of women. They argue that no one family form is inherently natural or functional, not even the oft-heralded heterosexual nuclear family. They argue that family forms are specific to both time and place and the at even processes of conception and childbirth are socially mediated.
What is one of the most significant contributions of feminist theorizing to the sociology of families?
its analysis of familial ideology
What is familial ideology?
They argue that imposing one family model that privileges men and subordinates women through its very structure is indeed a political and ideological exercise.
What does feminist work that uses a structural approach focus on?
How inequality for women is enabled and sustained through laws, social policies, and labour market practices. Marxist feminists, in particular, have argued that the exploitation of women in families fundamentally serves capitalist interests.
What assumption do feminists challenge?
The assumption that family life is private an separate from public spheres of life.
What can we understand through a feminist lens with regards to Aboriginal peoples and imperialism ?
We are able to understand the history of imperialism in Canada and its devastating effects on Aboriginal peoples and their established family relationships. As the Europeans settled, their marriage practices were instituted to women’s disadvantage.
What type of work focuses on interpersonal relations, examining everyday interactions as gendered and as perpetuating gender hierarchies.
feminist work
What does Barrie Thorne argue about feminist work and what it challenges?
Challenges conventional sociological approaches to studying families, since it accepts as a basic premise that family members experience family life differently.
What does most contemporary feminist work reject?
Any assertion that men’s and women’s roles within families are a natural outcome of biological differences. All of these activities are social practices.
How does post-structuralist theory approach family?
Are likely to seek to dismantle prevailing discourses about families–for example, the adage that the family serves as a “haven in a heartless world/” They may also question the concept of the “good mother” or the notion that “good fathers are good breadwinners”.
What do post-structuralist argue about families and categories?
That such categories are saturated in power relations. That is, notions of good mothers and good fathers operate as normalizing discourses.
What do post-structuralists believe that family is targeted as?
A site for state intervention
What do Baez and Talbot point about about families(post-structuralism)?
Family is meant to be the “moral training” ground for children.
How do queer theorists approach family?
They are often influences by post-structuralist theory. Interested in questioning normative categories.
What do queer theorists question about families?
The assumption that all families are formed through heterosexual unions, and further question expectations of “heterosexuality–of co-residence, romantic love, monogamy, and the primacy of the conjugal couple.”
What subverts the heterosexual norm of houses as the site of private family relationships?
The frequent use of houses for social gatherings by lesbian and gay couples.
What are the two types of labour that families depend on?
1) income-generating work
2) unpaid domestic labour
They conflict with one another.
Typically, family units cooperate___.
economically
Who negotiates the conflicts between income generating work and unpaid domestic labour?
the state, partially through schools and health care
What are the two big changes in recent decades that have affected how families negotiate the competing demands of income generation and managing households?
1) A change in the number of hours of income-generating work required to support a household.
2) The major cutbacks in government support to schools health care, and social service agencies over the past 20 years.
Today, the standard of living for an average family of two adults and two children requires more paid hours than it did___years ago.
30
What has the need for more paid labour hours to maintain the average standard of living translated into?
A higher proportion of women working in the paid labour force, and families with two income earners are now the statistical norm among Canadian families.
What have spending cuts of government support resulted in?
Caregiving responsibilities failing increasingly to families, and most often to women. These cutbacks means that more unpaid work is required in order for households to survive.
What is one achievement made by feminists in the area of families?
The recognition of the importance and value of domestic labour.
What does Marilyn Waring argue?
That unpaid domestic labour should be calculated and valued such that women could be compensated and have their work socially recognized.
What is the second shift, acc. to Arlie Hochschild?
The domestic labour performed by employed women at home after finishing their paid workdays.
Are women at a greater or lesser risk of violence in and near their homes than in the public arena?
Greater
Women are more than___as likely to be assaulted by someone known to them than by a stranger
Twice
In Canada, women are about___times more likely than men to be the victims of serious forms of spousal violence.
Three
Women aged___to___continue to be victimized by their spouses more often than older women.
25 to 34
What can family violence be understood as?
Family violence is not an issue that affects merely a few, unfortunate people. It is a social issue, not a private trouble. Sociologists investigate family violence from this premise.
The___of violence does not tell us as much as the___of violence experienced by both women and men.
- quantity
- quality
What is intimate femicide?
The killing of women by they intimate male partners
What majority of women killed in Ontario during the period between 1976 and 1994 can be accounted for by intimate femicide?
Between 63 and 76 percent
What is the most prevalent motive for intimate feticide?
A separation or an estrangement, or its imminent possibility.
In Canada, victims of spousal homicide are more likely to be men or women?
women
What are women who kill their intimate partners more likely to do so out of?
Fear for their safety.
What are men who kill their partners more likely to be motivated by?
Sexual jealousy and male proprietariness
What are both linked to a greater possibility of spousal killings of women?
Estrangement from the intimate partner and common-law status
In Canada, which groups of women are at an increased risk of intimate femicide?
Aboriginal women
At least___%of all victims of intimate feticide in Ontario were Aboriginal women.
6
What can we understand family violence towards women as, according to feminists?
We can understand this violence as an extension of men’s proprietary attitudes toward the intimate women in their lives.
