Sociologists Flashcards
What did Engels (1884) say?
Said the family had an economic function of keeping wealth within the bourgeoisie by passing it on to the next generation as inheritance.
What did Zaretsky (1976) say?
He argues that the family is one place in society where the proletariat can have power and control. This relieves some of the frustration workers feel about their low status, which helps them to accept their oppression and exploitation as workers
What did Murdock (1948) say?
Concluded that the family is so useful within society that it is inevitable and universal- can’t avoid having family units in a society, and societies everywhere have family units
What did Murray (1989) say?
Says that welfare benefits are too high and create a ‘culture of dependency’ where an individual funds it easy and acceptable to take benefits rather than work
What did Stacey (1990) say?
Reckons there’s such a diversity of family types, relationships and lifestyles that they’ll never be one dominant type of family in Western culture again. She says that family structures in Western societies are varied and flexible
What did Parsons (1951) say?
He was a functionalist- he thought that the dominant family structure changed from the extended to nuclear because it was more useful for industrial society. The nuclear family is the best fit for industrial society.
What did Laslett (1972) say?
Reckons that the nuclear family was the most common structure in Britain even before industrialisation
What did Young and Willmott (1960-1973) say?
They did two important studies looking at family structures in British society from the 1950s to the 1970s. They mainly studied families in different parts of London and Essex. Their work tested the theory that the nuclear family is the dominant form in modern industrial society.
What did Bott (1973) say?
Studied how jobs and roles within the family were allocated to men and women in modern industrial Britain.
Segregation- husbands and wives lead separate lives with clear and distinct responsibilities within the family. The man goes out to work and does DIY. The woman stays home, looks after the kids and provides emotional support
Joint roles- husband and wife roles are more flexible and shared, with less defined tasks for each. Usually leisure time is shared, responsibility for making decisions is also shared
What did Oakley (1974) say?
She pointed out that their study only required men to do a few things around the house to qualify as having joint roles. Their methodology overlooked the amount of time spent on housework- making 10 minutes washing-up equivalent to all the rest of the housework. The research found it was pretty rare for the men to do a lot of housework.
What did Dunne (1999) say?
Studied lesbian households. She found that the distribution of responsibility such as childcare and housework tended to be equal between the partners
What did Duncombe and Marsden (1995) say?
Found that women in families are often required to do housework and childcare, paid employment and emotional work - amounting to the ‘triple shift’
What did Elizabeth Stanko (2000) find?
- A woman is killed by her current or former partner every three days in England Wales
- There are 570,000 cases of domestic violence reported in the UK every year
- An incident of domestic violence occurs in the UK every 6-20 seconds
What did Dobash and Dobash (1979) say?
Found the police usually didn’t record violent crime by husbands against their wives
What did Townsend (1979) say?
Studied poverty in the UK- he discovered that there was a higher proportion of older people in poverty compared to younger people. He argued that underclass of pensioners developed because older people could no longer rely on income from employment
What did Murray (1989) say?
Suggests that single-mother families are a principle cause of crime and social decay, because of the lack of a male role model and authority figure in the home
What did Ariès (1962) say?
- Said that the concept of childhood in Westen European society has only existed in the last 300 years.
- Children in medieval paintings look like ‘mini adults’
- Social attitudes towards children have changed and now are caring and nurturing to them instead of using them for income
What did Gittins (1985) say?
Argues that there is an ‘age patriarchy’ - adults maintain authority over children. They achieve this using enforced dependency through ‘protection’ from paid employment, legal controls over what children can and can’t do, and in extreme cases abuse and neglect
What did Palmer (2007) say?
Believes children are now experiencing ‘toxic childhood’- children’s lives are more violent, stressful and sexually active, which leads to teenage pregnancy, obesity, self harm and addition to drugs/alcohol. Argues that children’s development has been damaged by the increasing speed of technological advancement
What did Postman (1994) say?
Believes that childhood is disappearing as they are growing up too quickly due to their parent having work and not being able to spend as much time with them
