Families and Households- Changes in Family Structure

Question 1

What is pre-industrial society?

Answer 1

Society before industrialisation, largely agricultural

Question 2

What is industrial society?

Answer 2

Society during and after industrialisation, work centres on factories and production of goods in cities

Question 3

What family is most common in pre-industrial society?

Answer 3

Extended- families live and work together

Question 4

What family is dominant in industrial society?

Answer 4

Nuclear- industrialisation separates home and work

Question 5

What did Parsons think about why family structure changed?

Answer 5

Dominant family structure changed from extended to nuclear because it was more useful for industrial society

Question 6

What is the nuclear family focused on?

Answer 6

Socialisation- family socialises children into the roles, values and norms of industrialised society

Question 7

Why did Parsons say that the nuclear family is ‘isolated’?

Answer 7

Has few ties with local kinship and economic systems

Question 8

How was status determined in pre-industrial society?

Answer 8

Ascribed

Question 9

How was status determined in industrial society?

Answer 9

Achieved by success outside the home

Question 10

What is geographical mobility?

Answer 10

Family can easily move to where there is work

Question 11

What is social mobility?

Answer 11

Individuals can achieve higher or lower status than previous generations

Question 12

What is the instrumental role?

Answer 12

Male breadwinner role, provides for family’s economic needs

Question 13

What is the expressive role?

Answer 13

Female housewife role, provides for family’s emotional needs

Question 14

What does Parsons say about the instrumental and expressive roles?

Answer 14

They are based on biological differences and are best for society

Question 15

What is the symmetrical family?

Answer 15

The family is becoming more equal

Question 16

Who proposed the symmetrical family?

Answer 16

Young and Willmott

Question 17

What is part of social policy?

Answer 17

Laws that influence family life or family strucure

Question 18

What did Donzelot say?

Answer 18

Social policy can be used by the state to control families and professionals such as healthcare visitors can use their knowledge to control families

Question 19

What is the Welfare State?

Answer 19

Set up by a Labour government in 1948, supported families through benefits, public housing, family allowances and free health care

Question 20

Who were the Conservatives influenced by?

Answer 20

New Right ideology

Question 21

What did the Conservatives believe?

Answer 21

Nuclear families were the cornerstone of society, but also thought that society should be freed from interference by the state as much as possible

Question 22

What did the Conservatives set out to do?

Answer 22

Make individuals more responsible for their own lives and decisions so the state would intervene much less in private matters- benefits were cut and taxes lowered, means testing was introduced

Question 23

What is means testing?

Answer 23

You only get a benefit if your household income is below a set level

Question 24

What did the Conservatives encourage mothers to do?

Answer 24

To stay home through preferential tax allowances- families were pushed to take on more responsibility for older people through benefit cuts

Question 25

How did Thatcher describe the family?

Answer 25

‘The building block of society. It’s a nursery, a school, a hospital, a leisure place, a place of refuge and a place of rest’

Question 26

What was the Child Support Agency?

Answer 26

Established in 1993 to force absent fathers and mothers to pay a fair amount towards the upkeep of their children

Question 27

What was the Children Act 1989?

Answer 27

Outlined for the first time the rights of a child

Question 28

How did the Conservatives consider making divorce more difficult?

Answer 28

A compulsory cooling off period of one year was proposed before a couple could divorce

Question 29

What was the New Labour ideology based on?

Answer 29

‘The Third Way’- a middle ground between left-wing and right-wing politics that were designed to be more pragmatic and less ideological than the 1979 Conservative government or previous Labour governments

Question 30

What did the 1998 consultation paper ‘Supporting Families’ say?

Answer 30

Made it clear that marriage was their preferred basis for life but they showed an awareness for and concern of diversity of family life

Question 31

What was introduced in 2005?

Answer 31

Civil partnerships which is a union like marriage that is available to gay couples

Question 32

What rights were cohabiting couples given?

Answer 32

Adoption rights

Question 33

What New Right ideas did the New Labour adopt?

Answer 33

They cut lone-parent family benefits, supported means-testing benefits and were opposed to universal benefits

Question 34

What did the Coalition promote?

Answer 34

Marriage as a stabilising force in family life

Question 35

What did the Coalition legalise in 2014?

Answer 35

Same-sex marriage

Question 36

What policy did the Coalition government introduce after the financial crisis of 2008?

Answer 36

Economic austerity which aimed to reduce the amount of money the government was spending

Question 37

How did the Coalition government attempt to reduce the welfare bill?

Answer 37

They capped housing benefit in 2013 at £500 a week for couples and single parents with children

Question 38

What did the Conservative government announce in 2015?

Answer 38

A cap on child benefit