Families and Households - Family Types

Question 1

What did Robert and Rhona Rapoport find?

Answer 1

They identified 5 different types of family:

• Organisational diversity
• Cultural diversity
• Class diversity
• Generational diversity
• Life Course diversity

Question 2

What is organisational diversity?

Answer 2

• This refers to different types of family structures, differing kinship patterns and the domestic division of labour
• Diversity of lifestyles also reflects people at different points in their life course, such as people living alone for different reasons and can be a permanent state, but does not have to be

Question 3

What is cultural diversity?

Answer 3

• As Britain is a multi-ethnic society, there are differences in family based on factors of religion and culture, such as the tendency of South Asian cultures, and Hindu and Muslim families, to have extended, traditional and patriarchal families
• Afro-Caribbean families also tend to reflect the societies which they migrated from, and the stereotypical image of the AC family in Britain is a matrifocal, single-parent household

Question 4

What is class diversity?

Answer 4

• Inequalities in lifestyle possibilities have increased since the 1980s, with wealth and income having an impact on type of housing, room size, room number, financial problems and holidays etc

Question 5

What is life course diversity?

Answer 5

• The life course of individuals within families vary greatly based on choice or circumstance, including factors such as children, divorce, remarriage etc

Question 6

What is generational diversity?

Answer 6

• A cohort of individuals refers to those born in the same year (or band of years) with such people having a shared experience of historical events, such as the introduction of comprehensive schools, or the introduction of contraceptives

Question 7

An analysis of the life course

Answer 7

• Hareven (1978) – looked at the meanings that individuals give to relationships and choices they make at various turning points in life.

Strengths

• Focuses on what family members think is important not what the sociologist thinks.
• Suitable for studying postmodern families where there is more choice about personal relationships.

Choices include, when to have children (or not), when and who to marry (or not), when to move into sheltered accommodation as an older person (or not).

Question 8

What are the causes of diversity?

Answer 8

• Migration
• Legislation
• Technology
• Globalisation
• Secularisation
• Social Attitudes Change
• Media

Question 9

Robert Chester - Neo-conventional families

Answer 9

• Family diversity isn’t as significant or as widespread as perceived
• He argued family structure has changed, disagreeing with the New Right view that family diversity is a social problem that needs to be cared for
• He believes that the traditional nuclear family has declined, and that there has been an increase in neo-conventional families (new type of nuclear)
• He believed that families were more egalitarian, with dual earning, equal division of labour, nuclear looking on the outside but may be cohabiting instead, decisions made on best fit rather than tradition and due to our life cycle, most people will start a nuclear family in their lifetime

Question 10

The family trends according to Robert Chester

Answer 10

1. Most people live in a household headed by a married couple.
   - This may become lesson common as the older generation ‘die out’ and diversity has been around longer.
2. Most adults still marry and have children. Most children are reared by their two natural parents.
   - Marriage takes place, it just happens later. Remarriage shows people do care about marriage.
3. Most marriages continue until death. Divorce has increased, but for most divorcees remarry.
   - Divorce rates increase but people still marry and death does part people.
4. Cohabitation has increased, but for most couples it is a temporary phase before marrying.
   - People might struggle to fund a wedding; it’s not that people don’t want to marry
5. Although births outside marriage have increased, most are jointly registered, indicating that the parents are committed to bringing up children as a couple.
   - Access arrangements still important to a court and dual parenting popular.

Question 11

Globalisation of family

Answer 11

1) LAT family growth -> technology and travel have allowed time and space families to no longer restrict families

2) Personal life -> postmodern families with fictive kin