Family Key concepts Flashcards
Expressive leader
Parsons’ term for the female role of mother/housewife. The nurturing, caring and emotional role, often linked by functionalists to women’s biology and seen as a women’s ‘natural’ role in the family.
Extended kinship networks
Relationships between family members beyond the nuclear family, e.g grandparents, cousins.
Household
A social group sharing a common residence.
Instrumental role
Parsons’ term for the male breadwinner. The provider/breadwinner role on the family.
Nuclear family
Family groups consisting of two generations, i.e parents and children living in the same household.
Sexual division of labour
The division of both paid work and domestic work into men’s jobs and women’s jobs.
Symmetrical family
A nuclear family in which partners perform equally important roles
Ascribed status
inherited status passed on from parents.
Patriarchal ideology
Male dominated ideas.
Familial ideology
The view that a particular type of family (e.g the nuclear family) and particular living arrangements (e.g men as breadwinner) are the ideal that people should aspire to.
Extended family
A family in which sons and daughters live in the same neighbourhood as their parents, see each other on a regular basis and offer each other various kinds of support.
Empty-shell marriages
A marriage in which the partners no longer love each other but stay together, usually for the sake of the children.
Monogamy
The practice of only having one partner.
Serial monogamy
a series of long term relationships
Privatised nuclear family
A home-centered family that has little contact with extended kin or neighbours.
Reconstituted family
A family where one or both partners have been previously married and bring with them children from the previous marriages. Also known as step-families.
Conjugal relationship
The relationship between married or cohabiting partners
Dual burden
Refers to wives taking responsibility for the bulk of domestic work as well as holding down full-time jobs.
symmetrical family
A family where the roles of husband and wife or cohabiting partners have become more alike and equal.
Child-centered
Treating the needs of children as priority
Bean-pole family
A multi-generational extended family in a pet tern that is long and thin, with few aunts and uncles, reflecting fewer children being born in each generation, but people living longer.
Modified extended family
A family type where related nuclear families, although living apart geographically, nevertheless maintain regular contact and mutual support through visiting, phone calls, internet etc.
Socialisation
The process of learning the culture of any society
Cereal packet family
A stereotype of the nuclear family, often portrayed in advertisements. Typical nuclear with mother and father occupying traditional roles of breadwinner and housewife.
Emotion work
Refers to the burden on women to smooth the ruffled feathers of family life and take care of everyone’s emotional well-being.
Triple-shift
Refers to wives taking responsibility for the bulk of domestic tasks, paid work and emotion work.
