Family

Question 1

What is family?

Answer 1

A social institution of individuals who are bonded by kinship, marriage or adoption

Question 2

What are nuclear families

Answer 2

(Traditional families)
Comprised of 2 married, heterosexual parents and their biological children

Question 3

What is the view of many politicians on family

Answer 3

The nuclear family is superior to any other type of family

Question 4

What did Young and Wllmotts study comprise of

Answer 4

• 1950s in Bethnal Green, London
• used ethnographic approaches to describe social attitudes and relationships in families
• discovered that working class people in London lived in extended families, close to their families

Question 5

What is kinship?

Answer 5

People related by blood, marriage or divorce

Question 6

What did parsons say about the family?

Answer 6

• it is a ‘functionalist fit’
• the nuclear family is the best type for meeting the needs of society and the individual
• the family is responsible for teaching the values and norms necessary for being a part of society

Question 7

What are some criticisms of the functionalist view of the family

Answer 7

1. Many nuclear families are not safe places for women and children; this is evident in the high rates of domestic abuse in many western societies
2. Women are expected to take on a ‘lesser’ role and seen to have limited power because the family money is seen as belonging to the male who earned it- thus not an equal partnership
   3.forces those who aren’t heterosexual into family roles that do not allow them to express themselves

Question 8

What is the Marxist view on family?

Answer 8

• a tool of an unequal social system
• the inequalities between genders and adults and children socialises people into accepting that some people have more access to power and wealth than others

Question 9

What is the feminist view on family?

Answer 9

• the family oppresses women who effectively work to support the family without pay or recognition

Question 10

What did feminist sociologist Wallace say about women’s role in the family?

Answer 10

• women work triple shifts
• women are expected to bring in money, do housework and tend to everyone’s emotional needs

Question 11

What is demography?

Answer 11

The study of the characteristics of human populations, such as their size and structure and how they change over time

Question 12

What is cohabitation?

Answer 12

When two people live together and share an intimate relationship based on choice

Question 13

What is elective singlehood?

Answer 13

Individuals choosing not to enter a relationship based on choice

Question 14

What are boomerang children?

Answer 14

An adult child/ren returning home to live with their parents for economic reasons after a period of living away from home

Question 15

What is a beanpole family?

Answer 15

A multi-generational family that is long and thin with few uncles, aunts or cousins

Question 16

What is a sandwich generation?

Answer 16

Middle-aged adults who are caring for both elderly parents and their children

Question 17

What is a re-constituted family?

Answer 17

A family in which at least one of the partners is acting as a step-parent

Question 18

What is co-parenting?

Answer 18

When parents are not in a relationship but both chose to parent their children

Question 19

What economic changes are causing family changes?

Answer 19

• families now typically require two incomes to be able to own homes, cars and other goods
• changes to the economy mean there is less traditional male work
• dual income families have become the norm for many people and the extra income allows people to have more money to increase living standards

Question 20

What are some of the demographic changes within the family?

Answer 20

• people are remaining healthier and therefore living for longer; this causes an ageing population
• women are choosing to have less children, later on in life
• there are higher divorce rates and more people choosing to co habituate
• the current economic climate has caused an influx of boomerang children
• migration is changing family patterns

Question 21

What impact has an increase in service sector jobs had on the types of people being employed?

Answer 21

• rely on people skills, not physical strength so can be done by men or women
• more women are being employed

Question 22

What did sociologist Buchanan say about family?

Answer 22

• because marriage is no longer economically necessary for women, fewer people are choosing to marry
• there has been a loss of shame surrounding divorce because you can restart in marriage expectations aren’t met

Question 23

What did functionalist sociologist Robert Chester say about the family?

Answer 23

• family diversity is exaggerated and the nuclear family is still the most common family type

Question 24

What did functionalist sociologist Silva say about the family?

Answer 24

• technology has changed but not damaged family life
• technological change is simply just a response to social needs

Question 25

What are the 5 main reasons for causes of family and household change?

Answer 25

1. Legal changes
2. Secularisation/ changes in social norms and values
3. Medical and technological changes
4. Changes in the role of women in society
5. Economic changes

Question 26

When was the divorce reform act and what did it do?

Answer 26

• 1969
• made divorces easier to get by letting either participant initiate

Question 27

When was the matrimonial and family proceedings act and what did it do?

Answer 27

• 1985
• helped protect children who were getting adopted

Question 28

What was Sharpe’s experiment and what did he discover?

Answer 28

• interviewing girls in the 1970s and the 1990s
• found that women had changed their ambitions from marriage to careers

Question 29

What did 2012 ONS employment figures find?

Answer 29

Approximately half of the workforce was female