Families and Households

Question 1

What is the division of labour ?

Answer 1

Is the roles men and women play eg. Housework, childcare, paid work.

Question 2

What are the two conjugal role ?

Answer 2

1. The instrumental role of the male breadwinner.

2. The expressive role of the female nurturer/ carer

Question 3

Bott: two types of conjugal roles

Answer 3

1. Segregated conjugal role: are separate, there is a sharp division of labour between male breadwinner and female homemaker. Husband and wife spend their leisure separately.
2. Joint conjugal roles: involve couples sharing domestic tasks and leisure.

Question 4

Dual burden

Answer 4

Women carry out paid work and domestic work

Question 5

The triple shift

Answer 5

Duncombe and Marsden found that women required not only to carry a dual burden, but a triple shift: emotion work, domestic labour and paid work.

Question 6

Pahl and Vogler identify types of control over family income

Answer 6

1. The allowance system: where men work and give their non working wife an allowance.
2. Pooling: where partners work and have joint responsibility for spending.

Question 7

Benedict: childhood

Answer 7

Argues that children in simpler, non industrial societies are tested differently from their modern western counterparts: they have more responsibility at home and work. Less value is placed on obedience to adult authority and their sexual behaviour is often viewed differently.

Question 8

Reasons for the increase in divorce

Answer 8

1. Legal changes
2. Less stigma
3. Secularisation
4. Higher expectations of marriage
5. Women’s financial independence
6. Feminists explanation

Question 9

Reasons for fewer first marriages

Answer 9

1. Changing attitudes means less pressure to marry.
2. Alternative such as cohabitation are less stigmatise.
3. Women’s economic independence gives them freedom not to marry.
4. The impact of feminism means some women see marriage as a patriarchal institution.

Question 10

The beanpole family

Answer 10

Is an extended vertically family through three generations. It is partly the result of increased life expectancy and smaller family size.

Question 11

Why has the position of childhood changed?

Answer 11

Due to major social change during the 19th and 20th centuries such as lower infant mortality rate and smaller families, specialist knowledge about children’s health, laws banning child labour, compulsory schooling and laws about social behaviour.

Question 12

Postman: childhood

Answer 12

Argues that childhood as we know it is disappearing, children are becoming more like adult gaining similar right and acting in similar ways eg. Clothing, leisure even crime. This is a result of television culture replacing print culture.

Question 13

Resistance

Answer 13

Children may resist the restricted status of ‘child’ by acting older, eg. Smoking drinkifnb alcohol etc. For Hockey and James, this shows modern childhood is a status most Children wants to escape.