Rapoport and Rapoport: Types of Diversity in Families in Britain - Families

Question 1

What were the five type of diversity in families did the Rapoport’s find?

Answer 1

1) Organisational diversity
2) Cultural diversity
3) Social class diversity
4) Life-course diversity
5) Cohort diversity

Question 2

What was organisation diversity? (Rapoports)

Answer 2

• Families vary in their structures, the ways they organise their domestic division of labour and their social networks such as their links to their extended family. Family structures that illustrate this sort of diversity include conventional nuclear families, one-parents, reconstituted an dual-worker families.

Question 3

What is cultural diversity? (Rapoports)

Answer 3

• Families differ in their cultural values and beliefs. Different minority ethnic groups such as those of South Asian and Caribbean heritage illustrate diversity in beliefs and values can affect people’s lifestyles and ideas about gender roles, child-rearing, education and paid work.

Question 4

What is social class diversity (Rapoports)

Answer 4

• A family’s social class position affects the resources available to it’s members, role relationships between partners, and childrearing practices such as how parents discipline their children.

Question 5

What is life-course diversity? (Rapoports)

Answer 5

• The stage in the family life-cycle that a particular family has reached. newlyweds without children, families with young children and retired couples in empty nest families are all at different stages in the life-cycle and have different lifestyles.

Question 6

What is cohort diversity? (Rapoports)

Answer 6

• The particular period of time in which a family passes through different stages of the family life-cycle. For example, over time divorce has lost its social stigma, so younger couples may find it easier to get divorced today.