Extent of Family Diversity (Week20) Flashcards
New Right and Postmodern views
Analysis of family diversity
- Family life is more diverse than ever before.
- There is now a wider range of family types
- Although some say family diversity has been exaggerated because many people live in nuclear families or aim to do so.
- Media representations still assume the nuclear family is the main kind.
- Co-habitation and same-sex couples are very rare in some parts of the world, as they are still strongly dissaproved (religious reasons).
Lone Person Households
- **Beaumont **(2011), notes that 29% of British households contain only one person and is the second most common household structure after 2 person households.
- Over the past 50 years, one-person households have increased around 2.5 times, up from 12% in 1961.
**Reasons for this: ** - More older people living alone after death of partner.
- More middle aged people living alone after a divorce. (usually men)
- More people choose to live alone if they can afford to.
- It has become more acceptable for women to stay single rather than marry.
- More people have a uni education > often means moving out of family home and not returning.
The New Right Perspective
- Based on traditional nuclear family being the best equipped institution to provide the base on which all other social relationships are built.
- For the New Right, diversity represents family breakdown that has consequences.
- Stable nuclear family relationships provide emotional/psychological benefits to family members > this benefits society.
- From this perspective, the idea that all types of family structure are equal is wrong because it challenges the moral commitment to others and social responsibility.
- The New Right endorses social policies that encourage ‘beneficial’ family structures and discourage forms. eg. single parenthood that are regarded as damaging to individuals and communities.
The New Right
Morgan’s (2000) Crtitism of co-habitation
- Morgan’s argument against cohabitation, interprets family diversity as a source of social problems by suggesting that it suffers from important flaws when compared to marriage.
1. Cohabiting relationships are more unstable & less likely to last than marriages.
2. The sexual behaviour of cohabiting people is more like that of single people.
3. Cohabitants with children who marry are more likely to divorce. Many cohabiting women will become single parents.
4. The relationship is more likely to be cruel or abusive; both women and children are at greater risk of physical/sexual abuse than they would be in married relationships.
The New Right - Traditional Family
- The Traditional nuclear family is seen as more desirable than other family structures because it provides social economic and psychological socialisation.
- In such an environment, ‘traditional’ family values can be emphasised/reinforced, creating a sense of individual/social responsibility. The New Right deem this as selfishness.
The New right
Horwitz (2005) Traditional Family
- Argues that within the traditional family, children and adults learn moral values that they take into wider social relationships.
- Traditional nuclear families are seen as a source of individual happiness and social stability because they involve:
- Caring for family members
- Taking responsibility for their own behaviour and their children
- Unconditional economic co-operation
- Development of stable, successful, interpersonal relationships.
Criticisms of the New Right
- Based on an idealised view of white, middle-class families as the desirable norm.
- Advocates a ‘one size fits all’ family that is no longer appropriate today.
- Ignores the darker side of traditional family life.
- Traps people in a loveless relationship where they feel they can’t get divorced.
Giddens (1991) Late Modernity
- Late Modernity is characterised by choice and change.
- Opportunities to choose identity/select a lifestyle are increasingly available.
- In the pre-modern era, tradition defined who people were and what they should do.
- Today people have far more freedom to try on different identities and to try out different lifestyles (Giddens, 1991).
Giddens & Family Diversity
- Giddens says that family diversity is a reflection of the opportunities/priorities of late modernity.
- People have greater freedom to construct their own domestic arrangements.
- There are more choices available and more opportunities to experiment, create and change.
- People can tailor their partnerships and their families to meet their individual needs.
- There is emphasis on building/constructing family units, on creating/defining relationships.
Giddens - Confluent Love
- Giddens says that relationships are based on confluent love [deep emotional intimacy in which partners reveal their needs and concerns to each other].
- Commitment to the relationship lasts as long as the individual receives sufficient satisfaction/pleasure from it.
- Failure of this is justification for ending the relationship.
Evaluation of Giddens
- His view helps to explain the trend towards family diversity.
- He may have exaggerated people’s freedom to choose. eg. Lone-parent families are often not first choice. Most single mothers didn’t choose to have the baby alone. (Allen & Dowling, 1999).
- There is evidence to support Giddens claim of increased choice. eg. People can choose between marriage or cohabitation. Marriage or divorce.
Postmodernity/Postmodernism
- Postmodernism is a perspective that sees the current era as a complete break away from modernism of the past.
- Grand narratives (Functionalism, Marxism) are no longer relevant.
- The postmodern world is fluid and fragmented where anything is possible.
Postmodern optimism on the family
- They believe that a family is whatever people want it to be.
- This rejects the idea of ‘the family’ and argues that people construct relationships in ways that they believe are acceptable and appropriate.
- Family groups are seen as structures in which individuals play out their personal life stories or narratives.
- Emphasis is on choice
- People make behavioural decisions that suit their particular needs, desires and circumstances, reguadless of what others may think.
- In Postmodern societies every family works out their personal choices & lifestyles as best as they can.
Stacey (1996) - “Every family is an alternative family.”
Postmodernity
Stacey (1996)
- She sees family diversity as a relfection of postmodern society.
- There is no family form to which everyone aspires and there are no generally agreed norms or values directing family life anymore.
- “Like postmodern culture, contemporary family arrangements are diverse, fluid and unresolved.”
- Stacey sees diversity as an opportunity for people to develop family forms which suit their particular needs/situations.
- She looks forward to the possibilty of more equal and democratic relationships which sees in many same sex relationships.
Postmodernity
Stacey (1996) - Divorce
- Stacey talks about the divorce extended family = women form bonds their ex partners family to form a supportive extended family unit.
- She says that greater choice for women gives them the opportunity to break out of the oppression of patriarchy nuclear family and to shape their families needs.
- Women are the main agents of change in the family.
- Many rejected traditional housewife roles to further their career, return to education, divorce and remarry.
**Divorce-extended: **families are connected via divorce rather than marriage. - Key members are female e.g former in laws, man’s ex-wife and new partner.
Postmodernity
Critque of Stacey’s research
- Supports Morgan’s ideas that it’s silly to make generalisations about the family, like Functionalists do.
- She advises sociologists to give more attention to HOW people create their diverse family lives
- Her research was conducted in Silicon Valley California which is not typical of American life.
- She also studies gay & lesbian families which aren’t typical
Postmodernity
Elkins (1992)
For Elkins the postmodern family was characterised by a family that ‘encompasses many different family forms:
* Traditional or nuclear
* Two parents working
* Single parent
* Blended (reconstituted)
* Adopted child
* Surrogate mother
* Co-parent
*From this view there is no single correct way to ‘be a family’.
* It doesn’t make sense to talk about their ‘functions’ or ‘oppressive and exploitative structures’
* We should ‘celebrate difference’.
* Family diversity should be accepted because it points towards an optimistic change in family roles/relationships or because we are powerless to prevent it.
Postmodernity
Acceptance of Diversity
- Different groups of people accept or reject the changes in society and family.
- These can be seen in some ethnic groups in the UK.
- Those who keep to ‘old-fashioned’ values eg. Pakistani & Bangladeshi ethnicities.
- Those who embrace ‘modern individualism’ where single parenthood or divorce are openly accepted. eg. Black Caribbean & White ethnicities
Postmodernity
Weeks (2000)
He identifies long term shifts in attitudes. states the following:
* Sexual morality has become mostly a matter of personal choice.
* Church & state have lost their power to influence individual morality.
* Growing acceptance of sexual & family diversity in under 35s.
* Attitude is favourable to cohabitation and homosexuality.
* Weeks says, they are NOT changing despite the shift in attitudes.
* He says family patterns continue to be fairly traditional.
* Most children are brought up by couples
* most people still lives as families
* most couples still marry
* Most divorces couples remarry
* Weeks argues that sexual and family diversity are now widely accepted in society.
So The New Right’s persistence in resisting family diversity is futile.
Analysis of Postmodernism
Strength: postmodernism is open to recognising that people live their lives and it breaks away from a narrow focus on the family to the wider subjects of relationships and personal lives.
Weakness: some argue that postmodernists have exaggerated the extent of changes and point out that most people, for part of their lives, live in conventional family types.
