families and households sociologists

Question 1

Murdock (1949)

Answer 1

• nuclear family is an important social institution, playing vital functions in maintaining society
• there are four main functions:
  1. sexual = expressing sexuality in a socially approved context
  2. reproduction = family provides some stability for the reproduction and rearing of children
  3. educational = family is an important part of primary socialisation
  4. economic = family provides food and shelter for family members

Question 2

Parsons (1951)

Answer 2

• there are two basic functions of the family:
  1. primary socialisation of children = families are factories producing human personalities, only the family could provide the emotional warmth and security to achieve this
  2. stabilisation of adult personalities = family stabilises personalities by the sexual division of labour, women in the expressive role and men in the instrumental role

Question 3

Young and Willmott (1973)

Answer 3

• the classic extended family has largely disappeared in modern society
• the structurally isolated, privatised nuclear family has emerged as the main family form
• The Symmetrical Family(1973) = growing equality between partners in the family

Question 4

Murray (1989,1990)

Answer 4

• scathing about welfare support for lone parents, this encourages single women to have children they could not otherwise afford, knowing they can get help from state benefits

Question 5

Engels (1820-95)

Answer 5

• the monogamous nuclear family developed as a means of passing on private property to heirs
• monogamy was an ideal mechanism as it provided proof of paternity, so property could be passed on to the right people

Question 6

Althusser (1971)

Answer 6

• the family is an ideological state apparatus and is concerned with passing on the ideology of the ruling class

Question 7

Zaretsky (1976)

Answer 7

• the family plays an ideological role in propping up capitalism
• family is an escape from oppression and exploitation at work

Question 8

Hochschild (2011)

Answer 8

• every aspect of social life is commodified
• emotional life has become a commodity e.g. dating apps

Question 9

Greer (2007)

Answer 9

• many relationships between men and women in all spheres of life in contemporary society remain highly patriarchal

Question 10

Delphy and Leonard (1992)

Answer 10

• the safety valve of the family is provided by women, whose emotional work is an important aspect of women’s domestic labour
• this safety valve, helps to prevent frustration at work from spilling over into action against the system

Question 11

Ann Oakley (1974)

Answer 11

• housework is hard, routine and unrewarding, and housework remains the primary responsibility of women, though men might sometimes help
• gender inequality is due to gender role socialisation

Question 12

Ansley (1972)

Answer 12

• male frustration is taken out on the female
• women are the ‘takers of shit’

Question 13

Benston (1972)

Answer 13

• domestic work is unpaid but has great value
• women’s unpaid labour ensure that the make workforce is fit for work
• capitalist system pays for one but gets the work of two

Question 14

Beck Gernsheim (2002)

Answer 14

• traditional family structures are disintegrated and being replaced by a wide diversity of relationships

Question 15

Smart

Answer 15

• people have replaced family with fictive kin and relationships that suit them
• sociology of the personal life, family isn’t dead it just means different things for different people

Question 16

Giddens (1993)

Answer 16

• changing landscape of love is a move away from ‘romantic love’ towards ‘confluent love’ which is active and conditional
• links confluent love to the ‘pure relationship’

Question 17

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995)

Answer 17

• love is the only place where people can truly find themselves, and connect with others through sharing bodies and sharing intimate thoughts and emotions, and people become engaged in a constant search for love and pure relationships

Question 18

Fletcher

Answer 18

• the divorce rate has increased because couples demand more in their relationships today than their parents might have settled for

Question 19

Goode (1971)

Answer 19

• secularisation has led to marriage becoming less sacred and more of a personal and practical commitment which can be abandoned if it fails

Question 20

Berthoud (2001)

Answer 20

• South Asian families tend to be larger than other families - the extended family usually centres on the male side of the family
• Family life in the Caribbean community is based on ‘modern individualism’

Question 21

2008 British attitudes survey

Answer 21

• 80% of women ‘always or usually’ do the laundry

Question 22

Duncombe and Marsden (1995)

Answer 22

• many long term relationships were held together by women, rather than men
• women seem to be more involved in the emotional aspects of childcare
• triple shift

Question 23

Edgell (1980)

Answer 23

• women had sole responsibility for decisions only in relatively unimportant areas like home decoration
• women were less likely to have the final say on the most important decisions

Question 24

Pahl (2005,2008)

Answer 24

• there is growing individualisation in couple’s finances
• financial sharing was moving from ‘allowances’ for women to a ‘pooling’ system where funds are pooled

Question 25

Dobash and Dobash (1992)

Answer 25

• male violence against women in the family is the means by which women’s subordinate role and unequal power are enforced and maintained

Question 26

Aries (1973)

Answer 26

• in medieval times, childhood didn’t exist as a separate status
• children were seen as ‘mini-adults’
• childhood is socially constructed

Question 27

Wagg

Answer 27

• childhood is socially constructed

Question 28

Bhatti

Answer 28

• Asian girls are more strictly controlled by their parents

Question 29

Palmer

Answer 29

• toxic childhood
• characterised by screen saturation, less outdoor play, etc

Question 30

Postman (1994)

Answer 30

• the disappearance of childhood as a result of the rise of digital technology
• the distinction between children and adults is disappearing

Question 31

Chambers (2012)

Answer 31

• suggests that globalisation has meant that there are more global family networks
• also leads to a growing trade in surrogate motherhood, the purchase of intimacy

Question 32

McKeown (1976)

Answer 32

• improvements in environmental conditions, coupled with a steady rise in living standards and better diet and nutrition have contributed to the increasing life expectancy

Question 33

Sharpe (1976)

Answer 33

• the changing position of women explains the fall in births per woman
• the priorities of girls had changed from ‘love,marriage, husbands, children, jobs and careers, more or less in that order’ to ‘job, career, and being able to support themselves’