FAMILY DIVERISTY

Question 1

Robert Rapoport (Postmodern, different types of family diversity)

Answer 1

• Family diversity is of central importance in understanding family life today.
• They believe that we have moved away from the traditional nuclear family as the dominant family type, to a range of different family types.
• Families in Britain have adapted to a pluralistic society, that is, one in which cultures and lifestyles are more diverse.
• Family diversity reflects greater freedom of choice and the widespread acceptance of different cultures and ways of life in today’s society.
• Diversity is a positive response to people’s different needs and wishes, and not as abnormal or a deviation from the assumed norm of a ‘proper’ nuclear family.
• The five types of family diversity in Britain today includes: organisational diversity (differences in the ways family roles are organised), cultural diversity (different religious and ethnic groups often have different family structures), social class diversity (differences in family structure’s as a result of income differences between households), life-stage diversity (family structure differs according to the stage reached in the ‘life-cycle’) generational diversity (older and younger generations have different experiences).

Question 2

Eval (Robert Chester, Functionalist)

Answer 2

• people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family on a long-term basis, and that the nuclear family is still considered the ideal.
• He also identifies that most people live in a nuclear family at some point (e.g. most people live in a household headed by a married couple, and marry and have children etc.).
• The extent to which family diversity has actually occurred has been exaggerated.

Question 3

Robert Chester (Functionalist, neo-conventional family)-

Answer 3

• There has been an increase in family diversity in recent years, but this, however, unlike the New Right, is not that significant, nor is it negative.
• The only important change is a move from the dominance of the traditional/ conventional nuclear family to what he describes as the ‘neo-conventional family’;
• meaning the type of nuclear family described by the New Right and Parsons, with, instead of the ‘traditional’ male breadwinner and female homemaker roles, a ‘dual-earning’ family whereby both spouses go out to work and not just the husband.

Question 4

Eval (Charles Murray, New Right)-

Answer 4

• Argues that increased dramatically, due to expansion of state benefits and the decline of tradition.
• This is significant as it has major negative implications on society; increase in welfare dependence and the rise of the nanny state undermines self-reliance and encourages divorce in the underclass.
• The rise of lone-parent families is causing a lack of role models for young boys and girls, causing them to grow up to be unemployed and criminal.

Question 5

Carol Smart (PLP, connectedness thesis)-

Answer 5

• Says that the individualisation thesis exaggerates how much choice people have, and that it wrongly sees people as disembedded, ‘free-floating’, independent individuals, ignoring the fact that our decisions and choices about personal relationships are made within a social context (e.g. the importance of structural factors like class inequality, and patriarchal gender norms).
• Smart proposes the ‘connectedness thesis’, claiming that instead of seeing us as these ‘disconnected individuals’, we are fundamentally social beings whose choices are always made ‘within a web of connectedness’.
• We live within networks of existing relationships and interwoven personal histories, and these strongly influence our range of options and choices in relationships, with Smart stating ‘where lives have become interwoven and embedded, it becomes impossible for relationships for relationships to simply end’.

Question 6

Eval (Ulrich Beck, Postmodern)-

Answer 6

• Smart ignores the fact that negotiated families exist; both greater gender equality and individualism have led to the negotiated families, whereby they do not conform to the traditional family norm,
• but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members, who decide what is best for themselves by negotiation, entering relationships on an equal.

Question 7

Anthony Giddens (Postmodern, pure relationship)

Answer 7

• What holds relationships together nowadays is no longer law, religion, social norms or traditional institutions.
• Instead, intimate relationships are based on individual choice and equality; the pure relationship.
• The key feature of this pure relationship is that it exists solely to satisfy each partner’s needs.
• As a result, the relationship is only likely to survive only so long as both partners think it is in their own interest to do so. Couples stay together because of love, happiness, or sexual attraction, rather than because of tradition, a sense of duty, or for the sake of the children.
• Individuals are thus free to choose to enter and leave relationships are they see fit. Relationships become part of the process of the individual’s self-discovery or self-identity; trying different relationships becomes a way of establishing ‘who we are’.
• However, this has also caused relationships to become much less stable- the ‘pure-relationship’ works as a ‘rolling contract’, that can be ended more or less by either partner.

Question 8

Eval (May)

Answer 8

• This reflects the neoliberal ideology that individuals today have complete freedom of choice; in reality.
• however, traditional norms that limit people’s relationship choices have not weakened as much as the thesis claims.
• Their view is simply ‘an idealised version of a white, middle-class man’, ignoring that not everyone has the same privilege.