Families, Domestic Labour, C.A.G.E.s

Question 1

What is extended family?

Answer 1

Nuclear family plus other kin; usually at least three generations.

Question 2

Where did the traditional nuclear family model come from?

Answer 2

It appeared with industrialization.

Question 3

What is a pre-industrial family?

Answer 3

Way back in the past to 1800. Community of work. Household is the basic unit of production. Patriarchal. Large families (many children). Multigenerational households. Processes of reproduction and production.

Question 4

What is a traditional industrial age modern family?

Answer 4

1800-1950s. Murdock’s definition of family. Patriarchal. Family type is nuclear family. Husband is breadwinner, wife is homemaker. Separation of work and home due to industrialization and capitalism.

Question 5

What is a postmodern family?

Answer 5

1960’s to now. Family is what people define it to be. No specific model. Renegotiation of gender roles, but traditional gender division of labour remains. Same-sex, single parents, common-law, polygamous.

Question 6

What some components of a pre-industrial family?

Answer 6

Family based economy, extended family and non-kin shared household, non-wage work, labour organized by age and gender, money was not central in this setting. Marriage was both a duty and an economic necessity.

Question 7

Explain the industrial-age gender division of labour.

Answer 7

Women are expected to do most of the housework, husband is the breadwinner (paid work) and wife homemaker (unpaid work). Women should take care of children. Women should focus on motherhood rather than paid work.

Question 8

What is the breadwinner ideology?

Answer 8

The assumption that a women’s role in the household is to provide unpaid work while her husbands provide money. Women as the homemakers (private sphere) and men as the breadwinner (public sphere).

Question 9

What is paid work?

Answer 9

Usually occurs outside the home. it can be an employee’s salary or an owner’s profit. It is basically any work that leads to monetary gain.

Question 10

What is unpaid work?

Answer 10

Usually occurs within the household or in the home of a kin. It is not done in exchange for money.

Question 11

What is a nuclear family?

Answer 11

Two parents (heterosexuality or not) and children.

Question 12

When women entered the paid force, what can happen in relation to the gender gap and unpaid work?

Answer 12

They do less domestic work and their male partners a little more - but the gender gap persists due to the women’s second shift (unpaid work at home).

Question 13

How does agency and social structure relate to the gender division of labour?

Answer 13

According to their gender roles, men and women are expected to accomplish certain tasks.

Question 14

How does social class connect to housework and employment?

Answer 14

Working class couples have the most traditional and inequitable gender division of household work. Middle class professionals and higher class couples are the most gender equal couples esspecially in dual-career couples.

Question 15

What is the most egalitarian heterosexual gender division of labour?

Answer 15

Occurs in dual-career couples where both partners work full time; still, the second shift tends to be heavier for women.

Question 16

Why would a poor sub-Saharan African family have so many children, and an affluent Canadian family have so few?

Answer 16

The poorer family would want more children to work and make more money for the family whereas in the industrial world, raising children costs more, and people have a better chance of making more money and can support themselves without the help of their children.

Question 17

Describe the flow of resources when it comes to families.

Answer 17

Pre-modern family before the 1800’s, or in low income countries would depend more on their children for resources. Post-modern family since the 1960’s in high-income countries provided for the children in terms of resources.

Question 18

What is the sandwich generation?

Answer 18

Combining childcare and eldercare where adults from between 35 and 54 years old, especially women (daughters) have to provide a significant amount of care to their own children, their spouse or their elderly parents.

Question 19

How does morphogenesis connect to parenting?

Answer 19

Stay-at-home dads replace housewives. Some fathers change the structure of traditional family and gender division of labour, men have a different parenting style.

Question 20

What is the “crisis of family”?

Answer 20

Declining birthrates, less marriages, more common-law unions. More divorces and single parent families. Career is first for many mothers or women refuse to have children. Decline of parental authority, rising individualism.

Question 21

Describe individualization and individualism in context of agency.

Answer 21

Individuals have greater autonomy, notably from their family. Importance of personal fulfillment. Increase in one person households. Individuals are now free to make their choice of marriage partners.

Question 22

What are the views/critiques on gendered ideologies about family of the radical feminists?

Answer 22

Men with patriarchal attitudes towards women are more likely to justify spousal violence; especially for sexual matters. Marriage gives husbands the right to have sex with their wives on demand.

Question 23

What are the critiques of socialist feminist in connection to gendered ideologies about family?

Answer 23

Breadwinner ideology, traditional gender division of labour, women should take care of children, elders and that women should focus on mother rather than their career.

Question 24

What is the criticism of the so-called crisis of family?

Answer 24

Very socially conservative vision of the family. There is not one model of the postmodern family anymore. Family types are much more diverse. Family remains central for socialization. There is a morphogenesis of the family structure or institution.