Family diversity Flashcards
What did Benson find when studying cohabitation vs marriage?
After analysing 15,000 babies he found after the first 3 years of the baby’s life the rate of family breakdown was 20% in cohabiting couples compared to 6% in married couples
In what 3 ways does the New Right see lone-parent families as harmful to children?
- Lone mothers cannot discipline their children properly
- Lone-parent families leave boys without an adult role model resulting in educational failure and delinquency
- Such families are likely to be poorer and thus a burden on the welfare state and tax payers
What did Benson conclude?
Marriage is more stable because it requires deliberate commitment and responsibility
What 2 pieces of evidence does New right thinkers and Conservative politicians use to support the view that both the family and society at large are ‘broken’?
- Only a return to ‘traditional values’ including the value of marriage can prevent social disintegration
- They regard laws and policies such as easy access to divorce and widespread availability to welfare benefits as undermining the conventional family
What are some criticisms of the New Right?
- Oakley argues that the New Right wrongly assumes that husbands and wives’ roles are fixed by biology
- They argue the conventional nuclear family is based on patriarchal oppression
- There is no evidence lone-parent families are more likely to be delinquent
What is the important change Chester recognises?
The move from the dominance of the traditional nuclear family to the neo-conventional family
How does Chester define the neo-conventional family?
A dual earner family
What did Chester say was a reason for many people not being part of the nuclear family?
Largely due to the life cycle, they either were in a nuclear family or soon will be in one
Chester believes little has changed in the diversity of family, what 5 facts support his statement?
- Most people live in a household headed by a married couple
- Most adults marry and have children
- Most marriages continue until death
- Cohabitation has increased but for most couples its a temporary phase
- Although births outside marriage has increased, most are jointly registered
What 5 types of family diversity does the Rapoports distinguish between?
- Organisational diversity, different ways in the ways family roles are organised
- Cultural diversity, different ethnic groups have different family structure
- Social class diversity, income differences causes differences in family structure
- Life-stage diversity, family structure differs according to the stage reached in the life cycle
- Generational diversity, older and younger generations have different attitudes
What 2 characteristics does postmodern society have?
- Diversity and fragmentation, more a collection of subcultures than a single culture
- Rapid social change, this makes life less predictable
What does Cheal say?
There is no longer one single dominant, stable family structure such as the nuclear family instead family structures have become fragmented
What is one advantage and one disadvantage of greater diversity in families?
Adv = greater freedom to plot their own life course
Disadv = greater freedom of choice means greater risk of instability
What did Stacey argue in postmodern families?
- Greater freedom and choice has benefited women, women rather than men have been the main agents on changes in the family
- In one of her case studies someone created a divorce-extended family
Who came up with the individualisation thesis?
Giddens and Beck
