Families And Households - Family Diversity (topic 6) Flashcards
What is Bensons (new right) view on cohabitation versus marriage?
The new right oppose most of the changes in family patterns, such as cohabitation, same-sex marriage and lone parenthood. They argue that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and the growth of family diversity are the cause to many social problems. Harry Benson analysed data on the parents of over 15000 babies. He found that, over the first three years of the baby’s life, the rate of family breakdown was much higher among cohabiting couples: 20% compared with only 6% among married couples. In the new right view, only marriage can provide a stable environment in which to bring up children.
In Bensons view, marriage is more stable because it requires a deliberate commitment to each other, whereas cohabitation allows partners to avoid commitment and responsibility.
New right thinkers have used evidence and arguments to support their view that both the family and society at large is broken. They argue that only a return to traditional values including the value of marriage, can prevent social disintegration and damage to children. They regard laws and policies such as easy access to divorce, same-sex marriage and widespread availability of welfare benefits as undermining the conventional family. Benson therefore argues that government needs to encourage couples to marry by means of policy that support marriage.
What are criticisms of the new right view?
- The feminist Ann Oakley argues that the new right wrongly assume that husbands and wives’ roles are fixed by biology. She believes that the new right view of the family is a negative reaction against the feminist campaign for gender equality. The conventional nuclear family is favoured by the new right which is based on oppressing women and making them more financially dependant on men causing men to have more authority and power over the women.
- There hasn’t been enough evidence to prove that lone parents are more likely to be unable to bring up children properly as well the new rights view that marriage equals commitment, which cohabitation does not, has been challenged. It depends on the meaning of the relationship to those involved. Some people see cohabitation as a temporary phase, while others see it as a permanent alternative to marriage.
What is Chester’s argument on the neo-conventional family?
Chester argues that the only important change is a move from the dominance of the traditional or conventional nuclear family, to what he describes as the neo-conventional family. Chester defines the neo-conventional family as a dual-earner family in which both spouses go out to work and not just the husband. Chester does not see any other evidence of major change. He argues that most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family (such as lone parents) on a long term basis, and the nuclear family remains the ideal to which most people aspire. Although many people are not part of a nuclear family at any one time, Chester argues that this is largely due to the life cycle. Many of the people who are currently living in a one person household, such as elderly widows, divorced men or young people who have not yet married, were either part of a nuclear family in the past or will be in the future.
- Most people live in a household headed by a married couple.
- Most adults marry and have children. Most children are reared by their two natural parents.
- Most marriages continue until death. Divorce has increased, but most divorcees remarry.
- Cohabitation has increased, but for most couples it is a temporary phase before marrying or re-marrying. Most couples get married if they have children.
Chester therefore believes the nuclear family is still dominant and that new right snd functionalists exaggerated the diversity of families in society.
What is Rapports view on the five types of family?
Rapports argues that family diversity reflects greater freedom of choice and the widespread acceptance of difference cultures and ways of life.
- Organisational diversity = This refers to differences in the ways family role are organised. For example, some couples have joint conjugal roles and two wage earners, while others have segregated conjugal roles and one wage earner.
- Cultural diversity = Different cultural, religious and ethnic groups have different family structures. For example, there is a higher proportion of female headed lone parent families among African Caribbean households and higher proportion of extended families among Asian households.
- Social class diversity = Differences in family structure are partly the result of income differences between households of different social classes. Likewise, there are class differences in child-rearing practices.
- Life-stage diversity = Family structures differ according to the stage reached in the life cycle - for example Young newlywed couples with dependent children retired couples whose children have grown up and left home and widows who are living alone.
- Generational diversity = Older and younger generations have different attitudes and experiences that reflect the historical periods in which they have lived. For example, they may have different views about the morality of divorce or cohabitation.
What is Stacy’s view on the postmodern family?
Stacy argues that greater freedom and choice has benefitted women. It has enabled them to free themselves from patriarchal oppression and to shape their family arrangements to meet their needs. Stacy used life history interviews to construct a series of case studies of postmodern families in Silicon Valley, California. She found that women rather than men have been the main agents of changes in the family. Many of the women she interviewed had rejected the traditional housewife mother role. They had worked, returned to education as adults, improved their job prospects, divorced and remarried. These women had often created new types of family that better suited their needs. For example, Stacy describes in one of her case studies how Pam created a divorce extended family. Pam married young, the divorced and cohabited for about several years before remarrying. Her second husband had also been married before. By the time the children of Pam’s first marriage were in their twenties she had formed a divorce-extended family with Shirley the women cohabiting with her first husband. They helped each other financially and domestically. Such cases illustrate the idea that postmodern families are diverse and that their shape depends on the active choices people make about how to live their lives.
What is the individualisation thesis?
The individualisation thesis argues that traditional social structures such as class, gender and Damien have lost much of their influence over us. According to the thesis, in the past people’s lives were defined by fixed roles that largely prevented them from choosing their own life course. For example, everyone was expected to marry and to take up their appropriate gender role. By contrast, individuals in today’s society have fewer such certainties or fixed roles to follow.
What is Giddens view on choice and equality (individualisation thesis)?
Giddens argues that in recent decades the family and marriage have been transformed by greater choice and more equal relationships between men and women. This transformation has occurred because:
- Contraception has allowed sex and intimacy rather than reproduction to become the main reason for relationships existence.
- Women have gained independence as a result of feminism and because of greater opportunities in education and work.
As a result, the basis of marriage and family has changed. Giddens argues that in the past, traditional family relationships were held together by external forces such as the laws governing the marriage contract and by powerful norms against divorce and sex outside of marriage.
The Pure Relationship - According to Giddens, what holds relationships together today is no longer law, religion, social norms or traditional institutions. Instead, intimate relationships nowadays are based on individual choice and equality. The key feature of the pure relationship is that it exists solely to satisfy each partners needs. As a result, the relationship is likely to survive only so long as both partners think it is in their own interest to do so. Couples stay together because of love, happiness or sexual attraction, rather than because of tradition, a sense of duty or for the sake of the children. However, Giddens notes that with more choice, personal relationships inevitably become less stable. The pure relationship is a kind of rolling contract that can be ended more or less at will by either partner, rather than a permanent commitment.
Same-sex couples as pioneers - In Giddens view, this is because same-sex relationships are not influenced by tradition to the extent that heterosexual relationships are (indeed they have generally been stigmatised and criminalised). As a result, same-sex couples have been able to develop relationships based on choice rather than on traditional roles, since these were largely absent. This has enabled those in same-sex relationships to negotiate personal relationships and to actively cheat family structures that serve their own needs, rather than having to conform to pre-existing norms in the way that heterosexual couples have traditionally had to do.
What is Becks view on the negotiated family (individualisation thesis)?
Beck argues that we now live in a risk society where tradition has less influence and people have more choice. As a result, we are more aware of risks. This is because making choices involves calculating the risks and rewards of the different options open to us. This contrasts with an earlier time when people’s roles were more fixed by tradition and rigid social norms dictated how they should behave. Although this traditional patriarchal family was unequal and oppressive, it did proved a stable and predictable basis for family life by defining each members role and responsibilities. However, the patriarchal family has been undermined by two trends:
- Greater gender equality = Has challenged male dominance is all spheres of life. Women now expect equality both at work and in marriage.
- Greater individualism = Where people’s actions are influenced more by calculations of their own self-interest than by a sense of obligation to others.
Negotiated families do not conform to the traditional family norm, but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members, who decide what is best for themselves by negotiation. Even though it’s more equal it is more unstable.
The Zombie Family - Although in today’s uncertain risk society people turn to the family in the hope of finding security, in reality family relationships are themselves now subject to greater risk and uncertainty than ever before. Beck describes the family as a zombie family as it appears to be alive but in reality it is dead. People want it to be a haven of security in an insecure world, but today’s family cannot provide this because of its own instability.
What are criticisms of the individualisation thesis?
- Shelley Budgeon notes, this reflects the neoliberal ideology that individuals today have complete freedom of choice. In reality, however, traditional norms that limit people’s relationship choices have not weakened as much as the thesis claims.
- The thesis wrongly sees people as dis-embedded, free floating, independent individuals. It ignores the fact that our decisions and choices about personal relationships are made within a social context.
- The individualisation thesis ignores the importance of structural factors such as social class inequalities and patriarchal gender norms in limiting and shaping our relationships choices.
What is Smarts view on the connectedness thesis?
Instead of seeing us as dis-embedded, isolated individuals with limitless choice about personal relationships, Smart argues that we are fundamentally social beings whose choices are always made within a web of connectedness. According to the connectedness thesis, we live within networks of existing relationships and interwoven personal histories, and these strongly influence our range of options and choice in relationships.
Finch and Masons study of extended families found that, although individuals can to some extent negotiate the relationships they want, they are also embedded within family connections and obligations that restrict their freedom of choice.
For example, parents who separate remain linked by their children, often against their wishes. As Smart says where lives have become interwoven and embedded it becomes impossible for relationships to simply end. Smart therefore emphasises the importance of always putting individuals in the context of their past and the web of relationships that shape their choices and family patterns.
