Family Concepts Flashcards
Family
A definitionally challenged concept. A number of definitions of family exist. Common characteristics include blood relations, descendants of an ancestor, parents and children etc. Usually definitions of the family are centred around the traditional nuclear family. Increasingly, this view of family is changing to take account of the diverse arrangements in society today.
Household
Refers to people who share a house and its facilities, who may or may not be related. E.g. university students who live together. Also includes single people living alone; single person households.
Kinship network
People related to each other by blood, marriage, cohabitation and adoption, who may be in frequent or infrequent contact with each other and who may feel a sense of obligation to each other, expressed in various forms of emotional, economic and social support.
Nuclear family
A family consisting of 2 generations (i.e. parents and children) living in the same household.
Cereal packet image
Coined by Edmund Leach – an idealised view of the n.f. which is held as the most desirable form in our society, often appearing in advertisements. (2 parents, son and daughter image) Based on the traditional family ideology.
Extended family
A family that contains relatives beyond the core of the nuclear family unit living in the same house, street or area.
Vertically extended family
A family which contains at least 3 generations (e.g. grandparents, parents and children) under the same roof or in the immediate neighbourhood.
Horizontally extended family
A family which contains aunts, uncles and cousins living under the same roof or in the immediate neighbourhood.
Modified extended family
A term coined by Litwark, who argues that despite geographical distance and social mobility, nuclear families still retain strong affective relationships (i.e. relationships that are primarily defined by emotion) with extended kinship networks, especially grandparents, via telephone, e-mail, letters and visits.
Local extended family
Kin who live separately from each other but choose to be in regular physical contact with each other.
Dispersed extended family
A network of nuclear families who are geographically distant from each other but retain frequent contact through the use of the telephone, e-mail, letters and visits.
Attenuated extended family
A network of nuclear families who tend to be geographically dispersed but who feel attached by a sense of obligation to each other. Physical contact is probably infrequent because of distance, but they have symbolic contact on birthdays, at Christmas etc. and come together in times of family crisis such as funerals or family celebrations such as weddings.
Beanpole family
Families that are very small, perhaps consisting of one or two adults and a single child, with the pattern repeated through the generations.
Marriage
A legally ratified union between a man and a woman, although in some countries, e.g. the Netherlands, it is now legally possible for people of the same sex to be married. Known as a civil partnership in the UK.
Remarriage
The act of entering another legally ratified union (marriage) after divorce.
Marital breakdown
An umbrella term that encompasses divorce, separation and empty-shell marriages.
Empty shell marriage
A form of marital breakdown in which the couple retain the legal ties but lack the characteristics such as love and intimacy that are normally associated with a happy marriage. The couple may be staying together for the sake of the children or because their religion forbids or disapproves of divorce.
Reconstituted family
A family that comprises divorced or widowed parents who have remarried and children from the previous marriage or cohabitation.
One parent family
A single- or lone-parent family as a result of the parents’ divorce or separation, the death of one parent, or because there has only ever been one parent.
Co habitation
The arrangement in which couples, who are not legally married, live together as husband and wife, often with their natural children. Cohabitation is most common among widowed, divorced or separated couples, although it is popular too amongst young couples and single-sex couples.
