Family

Question 1

How do some sociologists refer to the family?

Answer 1

As a specific arrangement of a group of people who are linked by legal or blood relationships

Question 2

Nuclear family?

Answer 2

consist of heterosexual parents and their children who are linked by blood, adoption, or law.

Question 3

Why is this view of the family changing ?

Answer 3

Sociologists now view the family in terms of emotional relationships that people choose to have with each other.

Question 4

What do families tend to be composed of?

Answer 4

groups of people who share close interactions

Question 5

What do modern definitions of the family consider?

Answer 5

emotional links between family members

Question 6

What do functionalist sociologists suggest in the 1930s?

Answer 6

that families are essential for survival of society

Question 7

What do they think about families?

Answer 7

outline the functions of the family, seeing them as being good for individuals and society as a whole

Question 8

What do functionalists say about the idea family?

Answer 8

that the ideal family consisted of a heterosexual couple and their children; this idea of family has influenced family policy in the UK
many politicians have stated that families that follow this structure are superior to any other family form.

Question 9

In the 1900s what were the strong arguments suggesting?

Answer 9

that traditional families oppressed people, especially women

Question 10

When did this idea begin to take hold?

Answer 10

in the 1970s due to the rapid growth of feminism and the social changes that took place in the lives of women

Question 11

What did western 1991 suggest?

Answer 11

suggested that many people now live in families of choice to emphasize the way that many people no longer choose traditional forms.
Therefore, any definition of family should now focus on emotional connection.

Question 11

What was one of the most influential studies of family life in Britain?

Answer 11

took place in the 1950s
carried out in the London district of Bethnel Green

Question 12

Who wrote about family and kinship in East London ( 1957)

Answer 12

Michael Young
Peter Wilmot

Question 13

What did they use?

Answer 13

ethnographic approaches to describe social attitudes and relationships in families

Question 14

What is ethnography?

Answer 14

This involves the direct observation of a group and often involves participation to investigate the way the group experiences and interprets the social world.

Question 15

From their research?

Answer 15

there was very little statistical data that was gathered; however, most of the writing that they recorded described people’s lives. , this work challenged many of the assumptions of functional sociology.

Question 16

What did the research discover?

Answer 16

that working class people in london actually lived in extended families

Question 17

What were family members doing?

Answer 17

they were close to their parents and women in particular offered each other support in terms of caring, washing and shopping

Question 18

Who was similar work also carried out in Swansea in the early 2000s?

Answer 18

Charles, Davies and Harries

Question 19

What did they find?

Answer 19

that families were focused on female relationships
that nuclear families were only a short part of people’s lives
It also suggested that while many people do not have partners or children, there are those for whom marriage and remarriage mean that large numbers of people have highly complex family arrangements.

Question 20

Family definition?

Answer 20

usually defined in terms of the nuclear family, i.e., heterosexual parents and their children.
These may be linked by blood, adoption, or the law.
However, this definition has changed, as families are composed of groups of people sharing close interactions.

Question 21

Kinship definition ?

Answer 21

this refers to the patterns of relationships and the sense of duty, that people feel towards those they see as family

Question 22

Household definition ?

Answer 22

Refers to the people who share a house and facilities ; these people may or may not be related
For example - a servant may be part of a household, not the family

Question 23

Extended family definition?

Answer 23

It refers to the people who surround parents and children, example grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins

Question 24

(Functionalist) ( 1950S) What did Talcott Parsons take the view?

Answer 24

that families develop patterns and structures that are appropriate to the culture to which they belong.
This was the prominent sociological position until the 1970s.

Question 25

What did he claim?

Answer 25

that in modern society the best form of family is the nuclear family

Question 26

Who was he further supported by in this view?

Answer 26

George Murdoch ( 1949)
undertook a review of families in around 250 cultures.
This led him to the view that families in all societies have the same key functions

Question 27

What are the key functions?

Answer 27

SEXUAL
REPRODUCTIVE
ECONOMIC
EDUCATIONAL

Question 28

What is Parsons theory of nuclear families?

Answer 28

They do not require the support of wider family as they have in the past.
Women choose an expressive, i.e., emotional role in the family; men are instrumental, i.e., they earn the family money.
Family provides comfort for men, who work outside the home but they can relax in it;

Question 29

What is this theory known as?

Answer 29

the warm bath theory

Question 30

Why do they fit the biological roles of men and women?

Answer 30

biologically natural and they provide the best environment to bring up healthy and more socalised children

Question 31

Criticism of the functionalist view of the family?

Answer 31

1) It is ideological, it promotes the view of the family that is popular at that time
2) argues that because it exists, it is the best family form; however, however marxists and feminists criticise this view.
3) Many nuclear families are not safe places for women and children.
The evidence to support this is the high rate of domestic abuse in many western countries.

Question 32

What did Mirrless Black ( 1999) describe the prevalence of such abuse?

Answer 32

as part of a larger society

Question 33

Criticism of the functionalist view of the family part 2?

Answer 33

It overlooks alternative societies, LGBTQ
It may force those who are heterosexual into family roles that do not allow them to express themselves.
Women are expected to take on a lesser role and have limited power.
Money is often seen as belonging to the male who earned it and therefore does not have an equal partnership

Question 34

Who is seen as having an overoptimistic view of the family the family life?

Answer 34

Parsons

Question 35

What does he focus on?

Answer 35

family structure and does not recognise that family is more complex, i.e., in terms of relationships and emotions.
He overlooks the fact that, at the time he was writing, other forms of families does exist.

Question 36

What is Functionalism often described as?

Answer 36

forming a circular argument, i.e., because something exists, therefore it must be useful to society, so therefore it exists.

Question 37

Family structure debates?

Answer 37

There is an increasing variety of family and household types.
There is greater tolerance of people who do not fit into traditional patterns of nuclear family
There are more diverse family types, for example, same sex families and shared parenting families, where people may have a child together but they do not live with each other.
Population change and social change mean that defining a family by structure is no longer useful.