Family Changes - Key Sociologists

Question 1

What did sociologist Aries say about childhood?

Answer 1

• is a relatively new phenomenon
• children used to be seen as miniature adults but now it’s seen as a different, separate part of their lives

Question 2

What did sociologist Mayall say about childhood?

Answer 2

• children also have expressive and instrumental roles in families
• children may also support their parents, make relationships, take care of older people/ siblings

Question 3

What did sociologist Plicher say about changes to childhood in Britain

Answer 3

• British society has become child centred
• parents have fewer children and therefore invest more time into them

Question 4

What negative thing did sociologist palmer say about modern childhood?

Answer 4

• it is toxic
• children are more vulnerable to damage through the increase in technology
• this leads to obesity, drug abuse, self harm and early exposure to sex

Question 5

What did Marxist sociologist Bocock say about childhood?

Answer 5

• facilitates capitalism by creating new consumers

Question 6

What did Marxist sociologist Engles say about changes in family?

Answer 6

• monogamous nuclear family only emerged with capitalism
• societies used to be classless and practice primitive communism

Question 7

What did Marxist-feminist Fran Ansley say about family change?

Answer 7

• men absorb the anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism and cause women to be the victims of the capitalistic exploitation they experience at work
• in some cases this can even be in the forms of physical, sexual or emotional abuse

Question 8

What did postmodernist Judith Stacey say about family changes?

Answer 8

• women have more freedom than ever to shape their family arrangement to meet their needs

Question 9

What did feminist sociologist Ann Oakley’s 1994 research show?

Answer 9

• when men claim they participate in domestic duties, they often refer to activities such as ironing their own clothes
• working class men refused to participate in household duties, even when they were unemployed as it was unmasculine
• DUAL BURDEN

Question 10

What did functionalist Parsons say about conjugal roles?

Answer 10

• women: expressive
• men: instrumental

Question 11

What did Giddens say about relationships?

Answer 11

• people now have pure relationships
• people tend to stay together on the grounds that they are both satisfied

Question 12

What did new right sociologist Catherine Hakim say about relationships?

Answer 12

• women have less commitment to work than men
• women have erotic capital and can control men through their desire for sex

Question 13

What did Duncombe and Marsden say?

Answer 13

Triple shift

Question 14

What did the 2012 ONS figures show?

Answer 14

• 50% of the workforce was female

Question 15

What did Sharpe’s interviews show?

Answer 15

Interviewed girls in the 1970s and again in the 1990s and noticed that aspirations has shifted from marriage top careers