Families Flashcards
Murdock
Function of the Family
Functionalist
- Four functions
- Reproductive, Sexual, Socialisation, Financial
- This creates social cohesion
- Society runs smoothly
Evaluation:
Is too optimistic “rose-tinted” – Ignores the negative aspects of family life like violence
Parsons
Function of the Family
Functionalist
- Structural differentiation – now only 2 functions
- Socialisation and Stabilisation (warm bath)
- “Functional fit” - Family has changed structure to meet needs of post-industrial society -> social & geographical mobility
Evaluation:
1. Out-of date gender roles.
Engels
Function of the Family
Marxist
- Monogamy is needed to guarantee paternity to keep property in the hands of the RC
- Women exchange sex and heirs for economic security in a patriarchal, capitalist world.
Evaluation:
Out-of-date. Women earn own money, marriage and families no longer necessary for security.
Althusser
Function of the Family
Marxist
- Family is part of the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)
- Passes on ideology of the RC
- Maintains false class consciousness
Evaluation:
Assumes people are passive in accepting the RC ideology
Zaretsky
Function of the Family
Marxist
- Family maintains social class inequality
- Families are units of consumption, buying goods from capitalists
- Families provide “safe haven” in private sphere
Evaluation:
Safe haven is similar to Parsons’ “warm bath”, but believes this stops revolution, not positive.
Ansley
Function of the Family
Feminist
(Marxist)
- Women are “takers of shit”
- Absorb anger of working men who are exploited
-Explains domestic violence patterns
Eval: Too Deterministic
Greer
Function of the Family
Feminist
(Radical)
- Relationships in all spheres of life are patriarchal
- Argued for the creation of matri-local (all-female) households
Evaluation:
Ignores progress of Feminist movement
Nordqvist & Smart
Function of the Family
Personal Life Perspective
(post-modernist)
- Donor-conceived children
- Argued social bonds were more important than genetic ones in this case
Evaluation:
View encompasses too many broad ideas of family.
Fox-Harding
Social Policies
- Social housing policies favour married couples
- Single-parents worst social housing
- Houses designed for nuclear families, with distinctive areas, discouraging other household forms
Evaluation:
Supported by Barrett and McIntosh who say cereal packet family stereotype devalues other families.
Parson
Couples
Functionalist
•Men = Instrumental, Women = expressive role
Evaluation: Feminist reject that division of labour is natural
Bott
Couples
March of progress
- Seperated conjugal roles
- Joint conjugal roles
Young and willmott
Couples
March of Progress
- The symmetrical family
- Increase in joint conjugal roles
Oakley
Couples
Feminist
- Critsies ‘symmetrical family’ > exaggerated
- only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation
- ‘ironed their shirts once a week’
Boulton
Couples
Feminist
- The wife is seen as responsible for children’s welfare
- Even when men ‘help’, less than one in five husbands took a major part in childcare
Duncombe and Marsden
Couples
Feminist
- Dual Burden (paid and unpaid work)
- Triple shift (paid, unpaid and emotional work)
Gershuny
Couples
- Couples are adapting to women working full-time
- Establishing a new norm of men doing more domestic work
Analysis: reflect on the gender role socialisation of younger generation in favour of more equal relationships
Dunne
Couples
- Same-sex couples didn’t link household tasks to gender scripts
- More open to negotiation > more equal division of labour
Evaluation: partner doing more paid work, they did less domestic work
Kan
Couples
Material explanation for domestic division
•Found that for every £10’00 a year more a women earns, she does 2 hours less housework per week
Supported by> Arber and Ginn: M/c women can buy more household equipments to cut down on work. i.e Laundry
Ramos
Couples
Women is full-time breadwinner and the man is unemployed > they do equal amounts of domestic labour
Pahl and Vogler
Couples
Resources and decision making
- The allowance system > men work and give their non-working wives an allowance > she budget to meet the family needs
- Pooling > partners work and have joint responsibility for spending e.g joint bank account
Analysis: pooling money doesn’t mean there is equality. Who controls the pool? Contributing equally?
Kempson
Couples
Feminist
- Women in low-income families denied their own needs to make ends meet
- Even equated income households, resources are often shared unequally, leaving women in poverty
Edgell
Couple
- Professional couples (both full time) > found inequalities
- Very important decisions > take by the husband alone or having the final say
- Material > Men earn more > more power
- Cultural > gender role socialisation > men decision-makers
Smart
Couples
- Same-sex couples give money different meanings
- Don’t not enter the relationship seeing money as source of power
Evaluate: Cultural and material explanations of decision making
Coleman et al
Couples
Domestic violence
•Women more likely to have experienced ‘intimate violence’ across all four types of abuse – Partner abuse, family abuse, sexual assault and stalking
Ansara and Hindin
Couples
Domestic violence
- Women suffered more severe violence and control, with more psychological effects
- Found women much more likely to be fearful of their partners
Dar
Couples
Domestic violence
- Difficult to count separate domestic violence incidents
- Abuse may be continuous (living under constant threat) or may occur so often that the victim cannot reliably count the instances
Benedict
Childhood
- Argues that children in simpler, non-industrial societies are treated differently
- They have more responsibility at home and work
- less value is placed on obedience to adult authority
- Children’s sexual behaviour is often viewed differently
Cunningham
Childhood
- Children are seen as the opposite of adults, with the right to happiness
- Childhood is seen as a special, innocent time of life
Ariès
Childhood
- In medieval Europe, the idea of childhood did not exist
- Work began from an early age
- Children were ’mini-adults’ with the same rights, duties and skills as adults
Shorter: parental attitudes toward children were very different > e.g. high child death > encouraged neglect
Why has the position of children changed?
- Lower infant mortality rates and smaller families
- Laws banning child labour
- Compulsory schooling
- Children’s
rights
Postman
Childhood
•Argues that childhood is disappearing > children becoming more like adults > e.g. clothing, leisure and even crime
- In print culture > children lacked literacy skills > adult hiding knowledge of sex, drugs, violence
- Television culture > information available to adult and children alike > the boundary is broke down > adult authority weakened
Evaluation: over-emphasis on single factor > ignoring others, i.e. rising living standards
Opie
Childhood
- Believed that childhood is not disappearing
* E.g. separate children’s culture continues to exist in the form of games, songs, jokes etc
Jenks
Childhood
Postmodernist
- Modern society created childhood to prepare the individual to become a productive adult
- To achieve this > the vulnerable, undeveloped child needed to be nurtured and protected.
Has the position of children improved?
1 - Children are better cared in for in terms of their educational, psychological and medical needs
2- Most babies now survive > infant mortality rate in 1900 was 154 > now it is 4
3 - Higher living standards and smaller family sizes > provide for children’s needs
4 - Children are protected from harm and exploitation by laws > child abuse, child labour
Palmer
Childhood
- Family child-centric
•‘toxic childhood’
•Technological and cultural changes are damaging children’s development
•E.g. junk food, computer games, intensive marketing
Evaluation: not all children are equally affected by these trends – those in higher social classes are less affected
Inequalities among children
Gender differences (feminists): girls are expected to do more housework
Ethnic differences: Asian parents are more likely to be stricter towards daughters than sons
Class inequalities (Marxists): poor children more likely to die in infancy or do badly at school
Gittins
Childhood
Marxist Feminist
- Age patriarchy
- Adult domination that keeps children subordinate
Murdock
Theories of the family
Functionalist
- Stable satisfaction of the sex drive
- Reproduction of the next generation
- Socialisation of the young
- Satisfaction of members’ economic needs
Eval: assume the family is harmonious and ignore conflict
Nuclear family features (Parsons)
Geographical mobility: easier to move where jobs are
Social mobility: Adult sons can achieve higher status that their fathers > setting up their own nuclear family unit prevents status conflict
New Right
Theories of the family
- A biologically based division of labour
- Families should be self-reliant
Eval: gender roles are not ‘biological’ > but socially constructed > learned through socialisation
Engels
Theories of the family
Marxist
- Passing on wealth > Private property
- Maintain the ruling class status
Feminists: argued that this meant that women became the private property of her husband > ensure he was the father of her children
Zaretsky
Theories of the family
Marxist
- Ideological functions
- ‘cult of private life’
- Belief that fulfilment can only be gained from family life > distracts attention from exploitation
Eval; ignores family diversity and assume the nuclear family is the universal norm
Ansley
Theories of the family
Marxist Feminist
- Wives are the ‘takers of shit’
- Soak up husband’s frustration from alienation and exploitation they suffer at work
Smart
Theories of the family
Personal life perspective
•Family is more than just blood ties – includes pets, fictive kin, friends, dead relatives, donor families.
Eval: ignores what might be special about ‘traditional’ family ties based on blood and marriage
Greer
Theories of the family
Radical feminist
- Argues for a matrilocal household (separatism)
- Having heterosexual relationships is ‘sleeping with the enemy’
McKeown
Demography
•Improved nutrition played a significant part in reduction of the death rate
Eval > Tranter: Fall of deaths is mainly due the fall in number of infectious diseases
Weeks
Changing family patterns
- Chosen families
- in same sex relationships roles are created around kinship and friendship
- they are as stable as traditional families
Beck and Giddens
Changing family patterns
- The pure relationship
- Relationships exists solely to satisfy each partner’s needs and not out of sense of duty, tradition or kids
- Individualisation increased self-interest
Fletcher
Changing family patterns
- Higher expectation of marriage led to higher divorce rate
- Marriage is now based purely on love, not duty or economic factors. If love dies, there’s no reason to stay together
- High levels of re-marriage > not rejecting marriage as an institution
Mitchell and Goody
Changing family patterns
- Important change since 1960s has been the rapid decline in stigma attached to divorce
- Becoming more socially acceptable > couples more willing to resort to divorce as a means of solving their marital problems
Allan and Crow
Changing family patterns
- They argue “marriage is less embedded within economic system’ now
- Spouses are not so dependent on each other economically
Hochschild
Changing family patterns
- Argues that for many women, the home compares unfavourably with work
- In work, women feel valued
- Men’s continuing resistance to doing housework makes marriage less stable
Bernard
Changing family patterns
- Women feel growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage
- Argues that rising divorce rate > evidence that women are more conscious of patriarchal oppression and more confident about rejecting it
Morgan
Changing family patterns
interactionist
- Argues we cannot generalise the meaning of divorce
- Every individuals interpretation is different
Smart
Changing family patterns
Personal life perspective
- Divorce has become ‘normalised’
- Family life can now adapt to it without disintegrating
- We should see divorce as ‘one transition amongst others in the life course’
Chester
Changing family patterns
- For most people, cohabitation is part of the process of getting married
- According to Ernestina Coast, 75% of cohabiting couples say they expect to marry each other
Duncan and Philips
Changing family patterns
- ‘living apart together’ > LAT
- 1 in 10 adults are LAT
- Couples dating while not living together
Renvoize
Changing family patterns
- Single by choice > lone-parent families > female-headed > not wish to cohabit or marry or wish to limit the father’s involvement with the child >
- Found that professional women were able to support their child without the father’s involvement
Murray
Social Policy and the Family
New Right
- Benefits are ‘perverse incentives’ > rewarding irresponsible behaviour
- ‘Structural differentiation’ ruins the family
Delphy and Leonard
Function of the Family
Marxist Feminist
- the family acts as a safety valve
- women provide a sanctuary for male workers through their emotional expressive work, helping to prevent frustration at work spilling over into unrest.
Eval; Women’s roles are not the same in all families, and today most women are in employment.
Fletcher
Social Policy and the Family
Functionalist
•Introduction of health, education and housing policies > development of the welfare state > supports the family in preforming its functions more effectively
Eval: New right criticism
Almond
Social Policy and the Family
New right
•Laws making divorce easier undermines the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment
Leonard
Social Policy and the Family
Feminist
- Where policies appear to support women, they still reinforce the patriarchal family
- E.g. Maternity leave policies > the care of infant is the responsibility of mothers
Eval: not all policies > equal pay and sex discrimination
Drew
Social Policy and the Family
Feminist
- Familistic > policies based on traditional gender stereotypes > breadwinner and housewife
- Individualistic > policies based on the belief that both can be treated equally
