Families and Households: Family Diversity Flashcards
Statistics about Families and Households
1) In 2016, there were 18.9 million families in the UK, increasing from 16.6 million in 1996.
2) 12.7 million married or civil partner couple families, this was the most common family type.
3) Cohabiting couples fastest growing family type doubling from 1.5 million to 3.3 million.
4) In 2016, around 7.7 million people lived alone in the UK, majority were women.
Is cohabitation replacing marriage? Why might this be the case?
Weddings can be expensive.
Secularisation.
Less social stigma.
Cheal : fragmentation of family life
No longer live a modern world that is predictable with orderly structures like the nuclear family.
Family structures are more fragmented and diverse and individuals have greater choice in their lifestyles, personal relationships and family arrangements.
Hareven : Life course analysis
Family structures aren’t completely fixed. They change over time depending on the situations in peoples lives.
Morgan : blurring of family identities
Argues that there is no point in making large scale generalisations about the family as if it were a single thing as functionalist do.
Members participate by constructing a life course and relationships within the family due to their own decisions.
Stacey : postmodern families
Greater choice for women gives them the ability to break out of patriarchal oppressions and shape their families to their needs.
Giddens : the individuation thesis
Family and marriage has been transformed by greater choice and equality betweeen men and women. With greater choice, personal relationships inevitably become less stable and can be ended by either party at any time.
Beck : Risk society and the negotiated family
Tradition has less influence and people have more choice. This means we are more aware of risks and we calculate the risks and rewards of different actions and decisions. The patriarchal family has been undermined by greater gender equality and greater individualism. This has given rise to the negotiated family who do not conform to any one standard or traditional family norm.
Explain what is meant by the term Zombie Family
In todays risk society, people turn to their families in hope of finding security. As family relationships are now unstable they are unable to provide security for their members. Concept of family appears to be alive but is in fact dead as family can no longer provide security haven for its members.
Define cereal packet family
Ideological nuclear family portrayed in the media (advertisements of household products and the types of families promoted in the process)
Functionalist perspective on family diversity
Family has moved away from being extended and is now nuclear. Kinship networks once relied on in families are no longer necessary as there are many other institutions that fulfil these roles. The family has become privatised.
McGlone
Challenges idea nuclear family has taken over extended family. The extended family still remains an important source of help and support
Modified extended family
Extended kin are less likely to live with each other now but maintain the strong support networks despite geographical distance.
Define Local extended family
Traditional horizontal or vertical extended family where members will live with each other
Define dispersed extended family
Wider kin might live far away but links are maintained through technology. Parsons would reject this as an extended family and argue that it demonstrates isolated nuclear families.
Define attenuated extended family
Single people might move away from their kin
New right perspective on family diversity
Agrees with functionalist ideas that the nuclear family is ideal. Believes there has been a shift from the nuclear family to the neo-conventional family.
Define neo-conventional family
Nuclear in structure but is a dual-earner family where conjugal roles are joint - a symmetrical family.
Identify two reasons for the increase in homosexual families
Less social stigma
Change in social policy e.g. civil partnership act (2004)
Identify two reasons for the increase in lone person households
More socially acceptable
Increase in divorce
Identify two reasons for the increase in lone parent families
Domestic violence
Changes in position of women as more financially independent.
Suggest two reasons why lone parent families tend to be poorer than couple families
Only one income so not much money to afford necessities or commodities.
No income as parent may not be able to work because of childcare commitments.
Outline three reasons why lone parent families are generally headed by women
Courts tend to favour women in custody battles.
Women seem more suited to raising children.
Women more likely to give up work to care for children.
Define perverse incentives
Incentives that result in unintended negative consequences due to actions people take to receive the incentive. Murray says welfare state discourages people from work.
Criticism of new right (Oakley)
Wrongly assumes husband and wife roles are biologically fixed. Negative reaction against the feminist campaign for women’s inequality. Other critics argue that there is no evidence of dependency for lone parent families.
How can we criticise the new right view of family diversity using Weeks views?
Sexual and family diversity are now widely accepted because sexual morality is a matter of choice, secularisation, growing acceptance of sexual and family diversity especially amongst younger people.
Rapoport and Rapoport (1982)
Only a minority of families resemble the ideal nuclear family put forward by functionalists and the new right. Instead they identify five types of family diversity in Britain.
Define organisation diversity
Different patterns of domestic and paid work that exists within different families.
Some families are symmetrical.
Some families have dual earners.
Define cultural diversity
Different patterns based on religion or ethnicity
Define social class diversity
Different patterns of conjugal roles and child rearing practices between working class and middle class families
Define life stage diversity
Throughout our lives we will live in different types of family structures.
Define generation diversity
People from different generations have attitudes and experiences of family.
Attitudes towards divorce, cohabitation or homosexual relationships to be controversial to one generation but not to another.
Identify two reasons to explain why some ethnic minority groups maintain these traditional family structures
Religion or cultural ideas.
Extended family support new family members coming over from immigration. Economic reasons because it is expensive to move from country to country.
Geriatric wards
Attract the elderly and retired couples
Rural areas
Families who work in agriculture and tend to be extended and traditional. Many of these areas have been taken over by commuters
Older declining industrial areas
Areas with declining industry, often have traditional family structures and relationships
The south of sunbelt
Attracts mobile two parent families more likely to be middle class and owner occupiers.
Inner cities
Experience high levels of deprivation. More likely to find single parents who are isolated from kin.
Recently declining industrial areas
Found mainly in the midlands and are dominated by diverse structures.
Outline the reasons for the different patterns of step families
Factors causing an increase in the number of lone parents such as divorce and separation mean it is more likely that step families are created.
Children more likely to remain with mother when relationships break down.
Step parents at greater risk of poverty because there are more children and step father may have to support children from previous relationships.
Define individualisation thesis
People are free floating independent individuals.
Individual choice over relationships.
Pure relationships exists to meet the needs of each partner.
People can walk away when the relationship no longer meet their needs.
Negotiated roles mean that wishes and expectations of individual family members are met.
Define connectedness thesis
People are fundamentally social beings.
Individual choices are influenced by social networks, existing relationships and personal histories.
Family involves more than just a couple so challenging idea of pure relationships.
People may not always be able to walk away even from couple relationships as this depends on their wider social network and past experiences.
Negotiated roles are also embedded within family connections and obligations which may restrict their choices.
