Rapoport and Rapoport - Key Facts Flashcards
Who were the Rapoports?
Rhona and Robert Rapoport (1982) were pioneering family researchers who argued that society had moved away from the traditional nuclear family to more pluralistic cultures and lifestyles.
What did they describe about society and the family?
They described five different aspects of family diversity: organisational (eg internal divisions of domestic labour), cultural (beliefs and values), class (eg how the family’s position in the social class system affects the availability of resources), life course (stage in the family life cycle) and cohort (historical period).
Their work predates the emergence of gay and lesbian households as a more open and accepted feature of society.
What sources did they use to investigate these five stages?
Secondary sources.
Organisational Diversity
Refers to the organisation of family structure and its supports.
Some families may divide labour equally while others take on a segregated conjugal role approach.
For example, there are differences between conventional families, one parent families and dual-worker families, in which both partners work.
Cultural Diversity
Families differ in terms of their beliefs and values. One example of this is between different ethnic groups, with some ethnicities placing a greater emphasis on family than others, some preferring different gender roles, etc.
Class Diversity
Much writing about the family assumes that family life as experienced in a middle-class family is the same for other social classes, but this is not the case. Availability of resources, quality of housing, leisure opportunities, etc. all impact the nature of families and family life.
Life Course Diversity
Rapoport and Rapoport pointed out that we do not live in the same family structure, family set-up or type of household for the whole of our lives.
We might be born into a traditional nuclear family. This might change later in our childhood (for example it might become a lone parent family and then a reconstituted family).
When we leave home it might be to live on our own, or with flatmates. It might be to live with a partner as a couple without children. A couple with or without children might live with their parents in an extended family, or move away and form their own nuclear family.
Cohort Diversity
Differing experiences throughout generations.
Great grandparents and grandparents may have had several siblings, and later generations have far fewer; more recent generations are more likely than their parents and grandparents to divorce or to be single parents.
Why was their study on family diversity important?
The Rapoports carried out groundbreaking research into family life which turned out to be accurate due to the increase in cohabitation and the decline in divorce.
They identified a number of ways in which family life was diverse, in contrast to the idea that the nuclear family was the clear norm. They identified 5 clear types of family diversity.
