Family Diversity (Week 19) Flashcards
Definition of Households
*One or more people living in a particular dwelling. *
* This includes families but not all households are families.
3 Types of Household Structure
- Single-person households - adult lives alone either because of death of partner, breakup of relationship or choice.
- Couple households - two people without children. May include; couples who haven’t started a family yet, children may have left home ‘empty nest syndrome’. Some choose to remain childless or can’t have children.
- Shared Households - group of unrelated people living together. May be temporary eg. when students live together or permanent such as people who live in communes.
Households - Roseneil (2006)
Roseneil suggests that an additional category of household is ‘couples who live apart.’
* This arrangement is referred to as **Living Apart Together (LAT) **
* These people are in a stable relationship, spend lots of time together but don’t share a home.
* Some couples do this due to work demands and different routines would make it difficult to live together.
* Other couples choose this lifestyle because they want to maintain independence.
Reconstituted Families or Step families
- Result from the breakup of one family due to death or divorce
- It’s reassembly as a new family through marriage or co-habitation.
- Step families may include children from both old and new families.
- Some form by first marriage, some remarriage, some co-habitation.
- There is lots of diversity between these families.
- e.g some children may have a close/regular relationship with their absent biological parent, other children may hardly see them.
- Children are likely to stay with the mother after break-up. *Nearly 9/10 step-families contain at least one child from famale partner’s previous relationship. *
Tensions in reconstituted families
- The lines for reconstituted families are not clearly drawn.
- Can be tensions
- If children maintain a close relationship with the non-resident parent, this can be difficult for the new partner in the house.
Allan & Crow, 2001: The boundaries are weaker and the unity of the reconstituted family can be threatened. - Being a step-parent can be a difficult/delicate relationship. There are no clear norms for this role.
- This becomes more diffucult if the children resents sharing the biological parent with a new partner or other children.
Bendell, 2002: The role of the step-father is shifting and uncertain - a short of uncle, brother, friend, companion, depending on the time/place.
Strains on reconstituted families
- Strains on reconstituted families can help explain their high level of breakup.
- 1/4 of all stepfamilies break up in their first year.
- 1/2 remarriages which form from a stepfamily end in divorce.
- As reconstituted families become increasingly common, norms will probably develop to clarify roles, so reducing the tension that the lack of clarity brings.
Same Sex families
- A new variation on the traditional nuclear family
- In UK, Same-sex couples have been able to marry since 2014
- Some same-sex couples are in civil partnerships which give them some of the same legal rights as married herteosexual couples.
- Many same-sex couples use artificial insemination with sperm donated by friends or anonymous donors to start their family.
- Gay men have more limited options than gay women. Either they find a surrogate mother to bear the children or adopt.
- In 2002, it was made legal for some same-sex couples to adopt.
Lone parent families
- Involve a mother or father bringing up children without partner.
- In the past this kind of family was seen negatively.
- Many single parent families arise from death, separation or divorce.
- Sometimes a women may decide to have a child on her own using artifical insemination.
Trends in Lone Parent families
- Since the 1970s the number of lone parent families has grown
- There is greater tolerance of births outside marriage.
- The stigma attached to children of unmarried mothers has reduced.
Lone parent families - Economic independence
- Lone parenthood is only possible if indivduals are able to support themselves and their children.
- Most lone-mother families live in poverty. Often the low pay levels of womens jobs + cost of childcare means that lone mothers are better off on state benefit than in paid employment.
Views of 1 parent families - Parents view
- Becoming a lone parent is rarely a choice
- The vast majority would rather raise their children with a partner.
- Many decide it’s better for the children to separate. (abusive/violent relationship)
- If a man becomes a lone parent, it’s often due to being widowed.
- Not many men are granted custody of their children by a court.
Views of 1 Parent families - New Right views
- New Right always critical of any alternative to the nuclear family.
- They think that lone parent familes fail to provide adequate socialisation.
- In lone-mother families, there is no father present to discipline and provide a male role model, which can lead to underachievement at school and anti-social behaviour (rudeness or crime).
- Boys they would say grow up without the traditional responsibilities/duties of a father.
- Lone mothers become reliant on state employment and their children lack examples of responsibilities of paid employment.
View of 1 parent families - Feminist view
- Lone parenthood generally means lone mothers.
- From feminist viewpoint, this indicates that women have the freedom to choose.
- Some see lone parent families as an alternative family form which women are free from male domination.
Graham, 1987: There is evidence that many single mothers welcome this independence and the opportunity it provides to take control of their lives.
Extended Families
2 Types:
1.** Vertically extended:** where there are 3 or more generations living in or close to the same household.
2. Horizontally extended families: these are families with branches within generations, eg. aunts, uncles, cousins living with each other.
Extended familes - Modified version
Gordon(1972) suggests that the most common type of extended family is now the modified extended family.
* When the wider family keep in touch both physically, through visits, exchanges of help and emotionally - via telephone/internet without having frequent personal contact.
Matrifocal Families
- Are a female focused variation on the vertically extended family.
- eg. a female grandparent, female parent and children with little support from a male partner.
- Patrifocal families are focused on men.
Families of choice
- Refer to close relationships that are chosen rather than being blood relatives or through marriage.
- Used for situations where people freely choose to create a family-like relationship with others.
- First used by Weston (1991) to describe how gay, lesbian and bisexual people were using the term ‘family’ for their social networks.
The ideology of the nuclear family
- The nuclear family is fostered by advertisers and was labelled the ‘cereal packet image of the family’ by Leach (1967)
- It portrays a happy, smiling nuclear family consuming products from Corn Flakes to Oxo.
**Rapoport & Rapoport (1982)
Robert & Rhona Rapoport (1982): Argued that the cereal packet family was a myth.
* 20% of families in Britain consisted of married couples with children in which there was a single breadwinner.
* In 1989 they argued that family diversity was a global trend.
* Increasing divorce, decreasing marriage and an increases in household diversity was a Europe-wide phenomenon.
Rapoports (1982)
5 elements of family diversity (UK)
- Organisational: how the family is structured
- Cultural/Ethnic: trends in different ethnic groups
- Class: socialisation of children, different support by kin
- Life course: changes over generations and lifecycles
- Cohort: relations with wider kinship groups
Organisational diversity
- Refers to the different ways in which roles/ responsibilities are distributed within families.
- Diversity comes from different patterns of work, inside and outside the home.
- Diversity also comes from changing patterns of marriage and divorce.
Social class & Diversity
**O’Neill (2002) **makes several observations:
* Single parents are more likely to have working class origins.
* Single parents are more likely to have lower average incomes and to live in poverty than 2 parent families of same class.
* The lower the class position the more likely a marriage will end in divorce.
Life Chances
- Refer to a persons chance of obtaining things defined as desirable in life (good health) and avoiding things that are undesirable (unemployment).
- Often there is a close link between social class and life chances.
eg. The higher the class position of a child’s parents, the more likely the child is to attain high educational qualifications and a high status job.
Family structure
In the past class had an important influence on family structure;
* Working class families tended to be extended, particularly in low-income urban areas.
* Today there is little difference to the structure of working class & middle class families.
* Beanpole family structures are less common in middle class families, mothers are having their first child younger, which means that 4 or 5 generation families develop.
* Adult relationships in middle class families are more likely to be symmetrical than working class families.
Symmetrical families = relationships characterised by joint conjugal roles (more equality in the roles of men and women within the family).
* Working class families are often characterised by segregated conjugal roles (women at home, man at work)
Parenting & Class differences
Lareau (2003): suggests parents of different classes interact with their children in different ways.
* Middle class parents - adopt a deliberate parenting style.
* Working class parents - likely to adopt a parenting style based around natural growth.
* This results in middle class children are more equipped to meet the demands of higher education and the workplace because the middle/upper classes can invest in resources for their childs development.
Reay et al (2004: middle class women are more actively involved in their children’s education.(monitoring school progress, questioning teachers).
Cultural & Ethnic diversity
- Ethnic groups have their own subcultures which can influence family life.
- Attitudes and lifestyles can differ
- Secularisation amoung some ethnic groups has brought changes in family structure; higher divorce rates, decline in significance of marriage, increase in co-habitation, availability of remarriage after divorce.
- For other ethnic groups, religion may not allow divorce.
Cultural & Ethnic Differences
Family structure can differ regarding:
* Number of children in household
* Contact with extended family
* Whether marriages were arranged or not
* Division of labour
* Patriarchal or matriarchal
Cultural & Ethnic diversity - African carribbean/black british women
- In the UK, Dale (2004) found clear differences between ethnic groups in relation to female paid employment and families roles and responsibilities. African carribbean/black british women were more likely to work full time throughout raising a family than any other ethnic group.
- Berthoud (2000): features of Afro-Caribbean families in the UK were; Low rates of marriage, high rates of single parenthood.
- They are linked to the idea of ‘modern individualism’ (emphasises individual choice and the quality of relationships).
- Higher proportions of Afro-Caribbean children than of other ethnic groups, did not have a father living with them.
- The fathers often have ‘visiting partner’ arrangements where they have financial and other paternal responsibilities.
- Children are raised by the mother and the maternal grandmother.
Cultural & Ethnic diversity - Asian minorities
- Within Britain’s Asian minorities, Indian women choose part-time paid employment once they have a partner.
- Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are more likely to stop paid work once they marry and have children.
- Berthoud found that South Asian families had higher proportions of adults married, lower divorce rates, lower cohabitation rates, more than 3 generations living together.
Multicultural families
- Recent stats suggest an increase in the number of partnerships between different ethnic groups.
- Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (2002) recognises that such couples may face predjudice from their ethnic group orgin and conflict because they bring differing expectations of family life to the relationship.
- They may help break down barriers between ethnic groups
- They reflect opportunity for individual choice.
- People are now choosing partners who fulfill their personal needs rather than being directed by the concerns of their parents or the norms or their ethnic group.
Family lifecycles
Sociologists attempted to map out the ‘typical’ life cyle of the ‘average’ family. They tried to identify a set of stages most familes pass through;
1. Marriage
2. Birth of children
3. Children grow up within the family
4. Children leave home
5. Old age and death of parents
* This model may have fit families in the 1950s but not today. (Cheal, 1999)
* Modern family life is much less standardised and predictable.
* Increased diversity has led sociologists to abandon the idea of a standard family life cycle.
Cohort diversity
- A cohort of individuals are those born in the same year or band of years.
- These individuals may have shared experiences of historical events which could have influenced their family life.
eg. Couples entering marriage in the 1950s would have an expectation that marriage was for life and that traditional gender roles were the norm.
