Family 3: Talcott Parsons: The Social Structure of the Family

Question 1

D: What are the two functions of the family?

E: The function for adults is also known as ____ ________ theory.

C: Why are the two functions ‘irreducable’?

Answer 1

D: Primary socialisation (teaching children norms and values)
Stabilisation of adult personalities (providing relaxation after a hard day, playing with children allows ‘silly side’ to come out, emotional support.

E: Warm Bath Theory

C: The extended family used to do a lot more according to TP- but the government took over education, health, policing etc… TP thought ONLY the family could do the two functions above.

Question 2

D: what type of sociologist is TP? (Also known as his ‘perspective’)

E: Name 2 other sociologists who also write from this perspective.

C: This perspective is ‘consensus’ and ‘macro’ what do these terms mean?

Answer 2

D: He is a functionalist (note- no capital!)

E: Durkheim, Willmott and Young, Davis & Moore, A Cohen, Merton.

C: Consensus: functionalists try to understand why society generally works in agreement with each other.
Macro- big picture. So, will use research methods that aim for representative data.

Question 3

D: What are the roles for adult men and women in the family?

E: What did TP call these roles?

C: How do these roles lead to gender differences in offending?

Answer 3

C: Men= breadwinner/ earning money
Women= caring for the people in the household.

E: Men= instrumental role
Women= expressive role

C: Because women do the majority of primary socialisation, girls have a role model of being caring and nurturing (not criminal), whereas boys want to be different from their mothers, so can become deviant to express this.

Question 4

D: Which social/ economic change led to the family reducing in size?

E: Why did this happen?

C: Do all sociologists agree that this happened?

Answer 4

D: The industrial revolution.

E: The industrial revolution required families to move to towns and cities. Smaller, contained nuclear families were more able to move to where the work existed.

C: No, some sociologists think that the nuclear family was common before the industrial revolution.

Question 5

D: What decade was TP writing in?

E: What analogy did TP use to explain how society works?

C: How is ‘homeostasis’ used in his analogy?

Answer 5

D: 1950s

E: The organic analogy (society is like the human body)

C: When one institution declines in influence/ changes- other institutions work harder to restore balance. Eg when religion declined in importance, the media and education became more important in providing socialisation.