Family types Flashcards
1
Q
what is family diversity?
A
- fifty years ago many people would have seen a family as comprising a father and a mother who were married and their biological children
- fathers were usually seen as the main wage earners and many women gave up paid work when they married to become full-time housewives and most people stayed married for life
- however, not all families fit this image in the 1960’s and in recent decades sociologists have observed a variety of changes in society that have meant that we are witnessing a growth in family diversity
2
Q
what is families of choice?
A
-individuals choose to include people as family members who are not traditionally related e.g cohabiting couples may see each other as family and same sex couples may adopt friends as aunties and uncles to ensure their children have role models of all genders.
3
Q
what is a household?
A
- a group of people who live at the same address
- he majority of UK households in the UK are still made up of different kinds of families but an interesting proportion of the population now live alone or with unrelated people
4
Q
what are nuclear families?
A
- a nuclear family consists of a father, a mother and one or more children who could their biological or adopted children
- up to the 1970’s the nuclear family was seen as the typical family of western societies
- ONS data reveals that the most common type of family with children in 2013 was a married or civil partner couple family with dependent children, of which there were 4.7 million
- however, this was the only family type to decrease in number since 1996 with an increase in other types such as cohabiting-couple families and lone-parent families over the last decade
5
Q
what are vertically extended families?
A
- extended families are families that include kin or relatives beyond the nuclear family
- a family can be extended vertically, meaning that it comprises not just two generations but three or more
6
Q
what are horizontally extended families?
A
- families are also extended horizontally, meaning that relatives from the same generation live together; for example, two brothers and their wives and children may form a family unit
- there is a lot of evidence that extended families were important, especially in working-class communities in Britain up until the 19
7
Q
when are extended families important?
A
-there is a lot of evidence to suggest that extended families were important in working class communities in Britain up until the 1950s
8
Q
what did Young and Willmott (1973) say about symmetrical families?
A
- Many sociologists believe that by the 1970s the extended family was in decline
- Young and Willmott (1973) argued that a new type of family was spreading to all social classes.
- this was based on a nuclear family and centered on the relationship between husband and wife
9
Q
what did Beck and beck-Gernsheim (1995) argue?
A
- they have argued hat we are undergoing a process of individualisation, whereby individuals choose their own lifestyles and identities rather than following norms laid down by tradition
- part of this entails individuals choosing whether to maintain ties with extended families to lead more independent lies.
10
Q
What are the trends of extended families in recent years?
A
-according to the ONS 2013, less than 1% of households in the UK, are multi-family households but they are the fastest growing type of household
11
Q
what are dispersed extended families?
A
- this is what Willmott calls most extended families today
- it means that kin do not live together in the same household
- nuclear families are the main living unit but they can rely on extended family members who offer support and come together for special connections
- better transport and methods of communication means that even the most widespread families can continue to support each other
12
Q
what are lone parent families?
A
- at least one child live lives with just one parent
- in 91% of lone parent families, the parent is the mother, this shows that women are more likely to take the main caring responsibilities for children when relationships break down
13
Q
what are the trends of lone parent families?
A
- in 2013 there were nearly 1.9 million lone parents with dependent children in the UK, this has grown from 1.8 million in 2003
- lone parents with dependent children represented 25% of all families with dependent children in 2013 ONS
14
Q
what does he Millennium Cohort study show?
A
- it was a longitudinal study which follows families of children born in 2000
- 7% of the families remained lone parents throughout the five years of the study but a further 3.9% went from being lone parents to cohabiting and 1.9% went from being lone parents to cohabiting and 1.9% went from lone parenthood to marriage
- on the other hand 7.9% of those who had started the study as married or cohabitation had become lone parents after 5 years
15
Q
what is a reconstituted family?
A
- a reconstituted family is created when a couple come together and form a family including at least one child from a previous relationship of one of the couple
- these families are also sometimes called step-families or blended families
- in 2011 there were 544,000 reconstituted families with dependent children in England and Wales, in which 340,000 couples were marries ad 203,000 were cohabitating
- 11% of couple families with dependent children were reconstituted families
- due to the fact that the majority of children stay with their mother following a divorce or separation, most reconstituted families have a stepfather as opposed to a step mother
- it has been suggested that men are increasingly likely to be living with other men’s children while their own grown up elsewhere (Grant 2006)
