Families & Households

Question 1

Gender roles

Answer 1

• Parsons instrumental and expressive roles
• Instrumental role: providing for family through achieving success at work (breadwinner) performed by male.
• Expressive role: homemaker, socialises children, meets families emotional needs, performed by female.

Question 2

Childhood - Aries

Answer 2

• Aries states ‘in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist’.
• Children are mini adults.

Question 3

Childhood - Palmer

Answer 3

-Palmer suggests that technology is taking over from parenting and education

Question 4

Childhood - Industrial society

Answer 4

• Childhood becomes separated from adulthood.

- Aries: due to decline in infant mortality rates, parents invest more time and emotion into their children.

Question 5

Childhood - Modern society

Answer 5

• Pilcher: childhood is now defined by ‘seperatedness’ from adulthood.
• products and activites specially designed for children.

Question 6

Marriage act 2013 (same sex couples)

Answer 6

-The act legalising same sex marriage in the uk.

Question 7

Adoption and children act 2002

Answer 7

-Allowed umarried and same sex couples to adopt.

Question 8

Divorce reform act 1969

Answer 8

-Made divorce cheaper and more accessible.

Question 9

Symmetrical family

Answer 9

• Willmott and young: similar to traditional nuclear family, however the roles assigned to the mother and father are equal or ‘symmetrical’.
• Brought about by more women in the workplace.

Question 10

Same-sex family

Answer 10

• Family headed by two partners who are of the same sex.

- Evidence of increased secularisation.

Question 11

Lone-parent families

Answer 11

• Household headed by one parent.
• Single mother families have been of particular concern to the New Right, who believe that such families lead children to delinquency due to lack of male role model.

Question 12

Serial monogamy

Answer 12

• The practice of having multiple relationships or marriages throughout ones lifetime.
• Chester: argues that this demonstrates the continued importance of traditional values to many people.

Question 13

Beanpole family

Answer 13

• Brannen: refers to the increasingly vertical nature of family trees.
• More grandparents, fewer children.

Question 14

Changing roles - Functionalism

Answer 14

• Rejects the sex/gender distinction.
• Gendered roles within the family are grounded in biological difference.
• The nuclear family, and the sexual division of labour is therefore natural.
• Parsons: sexual division of labour is necessary for the family to perform its socialising functionalism.

Question 15

Changing roles - Feminism

Answer 15

• Believes that gender constructions are a product of the patriarchy.
• Feminine characteristics are assumed to be lesser than masculine, thereby creating a social system where women are devalued and oppressed.

Question 16

Changing roles - Marxist feminist

Answer 16

• Hybrid theory: focusing on the dual oppression of women under capitalism.
• Duncombe and Marsden: the movement of women into the workplace may lead to greater oppression.
• Women now work a ‘triple shift’: paid, domestic and emotional labour.

Question 17

FEMINISM

Answer 17

• The family as a patriarchal institution which reproduces male dominance.
• Children internalise gender codes through socialisation in the family.
• Increased diversity as a sign of female empowerment.

Question 18

MARXISM

Answer 18

• The family is shaped by capitalism.

- WC children are socialised into accepting capitalism through the family, i.e ideas of obedience and hierarchy.

Question 19

FUNCTIONALISM

Answer 19

• The nuclear family as the cornerstone of social stability; socialisation teaches children the norms and values of society, creating integrated adults.
• Murdock: saw the family as 4 functions, reproductive, sexual, economic and educational.

Question 20

THE NEW RIGHT

Answer 20

• Politicised functionalism, embodied in the policies of Margaret Thatcher.
• Believes that the welfare state has influenced decline of the nuclear family.
• Critical of increased diversity and the emergence of an ‘underclass’.

Question 21

POSTMODERNISM

Answer 21

• Rejection of grand theories surrounding the family.
• Believes that households are now defined by diversity, freedom and choice.
• Evidenced by policy changes in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Question 22

Changing role of women

Answer 22

• More women in the workplace has meant the decline of the nuclear family.
• Many couples are delaying/choosing not to marry or have children.

Question 23

Changing attitudes

Answer 23

-Secularisation and the corresponding decline in stigma have lead to the emergence of alternative family types.

Question 24

Increase in costs

Answer 24

• Marriage and childcare both more expensive.

- Decline in housewife role had increased use of external childcare.