The Family Flashcards
Adolescence
distinctive phase of childhood, first theorised by Hall (1904), which starts with the onset of puberty and ends at the beginning of adulthood.
Age set
people of a similar age who share certain rights and responsibilities because of their age.
Age stratification
system of social ranking by age. Children, for example, may be ranked lower than adults because they have fewer rights.
Ageing population
an increase in the average (median) age of a population due to rising life expectancy and/or failing birth and fertility rates.
Ageism
discrimination on the basis of age.
Beanpole family
an inter-generational, vertically extended family structure with very weak intra-generational links. This structure develops in societies with low or declining birth rates and increasing life expectancies.
Childhood
socially variable period of pre-adulthood.
Civil partnership
same-sex relationship giving the participants similar legal rights to married couples.
Cohabitation
a relationship where two people live together as if they were married.
Cohabitation
a relationship where two people who are not married to each other live together as if they were married.
Common-law family
adult couple and children living together as a family without the adults being legally married.
Commune
shared household involving a group of largely unrelated people living together.
Confluent love
refers to the idea of love being contingent; it is given in return for something else.
Conjugal roles
male and female roles played within the home.
Conjugal roles
male and female roles played within the home. Joint conjugal roles involve adults within the family sharing domestic duties. Segregated conjugal roles involve a clear separation between family members.
Dependency ratio
relationship between the economically inactive section of a population and those who are economically active. A high dependency ratio means, for example, that there are more elderly people who depend on fewer younger people to maintain things like state pensions or health services funded through taxation.
Disengagement
process whereby people withdraw from social relationships, as the age.
Divorce
legal dissolution of a marriage.
Divorce
legal termination of a marriage.
Domestic labour
work done within the home, often performed by women.
Domestic violence
any form of physical or verbal abuse towards family members within the home.
Dual burden (double shift)
the idea that women perform ‘two shifts’, one inside the home as domestic labourers and one outside the home as paid employees.
Dysfunctional
the idea that something, such as a family structure, is not performing its function correctly and that it may be actively harmful to the individual and/or society.
Empty-shell marriage
when a couple continues to live together, even though the marriage may be effectively over, for reasons other than love.
Empty-shell marriage
when the couple are married in name only, living in the same home but as separate individuals.
Expressive/Instrumental role
expressive roles involve dealing with people on the basis of love and affection. Instrumental roles are the opposite - they involve dealing with people in an objective, unemotional way, based on what they can do for us and what we can do for them.
Extended family
family structure containing more than the parents and children of nuclear structures. A vertically extended family, for example, involves three or more generations, such as grandparents, parents and children.
Family diversity
expression of the range of family types in a society, from nuclear through extended and reconstituted to single-parent families.
Family functions
the various purposes the family group exists to perform in society, such as primary socialisation.
Fertility rate
a measure of the number of children born to women of childbearing age (usually taken as 15-44) in a society each year.
Functional fit
the idea that social institutions, such as the family, education and work are closely related. The functional fit between the family and work is such that while the family produces socialised individuals for the workplace, work provides the physical means for family survival.
Functional prerequisites
the things that any institution, such as family, must perform if it is to continue to function successfully.
Gay and lesbian families
family group involving same-sex parents (gay males or lesbian females) and children, such as those from a previous heterosexual relationship.
Gender inequality
unequal relationship between males and females, usually expressed in favour of men.
Household
residential unit consisting of unrelated individuals.
Household
this is the residential unit of people living together in one home (dwelling); the term is often used more specifically for when the people are not related to each other.
Instrumental/expressive role
instrumental roles involve dealing with people in an objective, unemotional way, based on what they can do for us and what we can do for them. Expressive roles are the opposite - they involve dealing with people on the basis of love and affection.
Irretrievable breakdown of marriage
the ending of a marriage relationship for reasons other than the death of a partner.
Joint/segregated conjugal roles
joint conjugal roles involve adults within the family sharing domestic duties. Segregated conjugal roles involve a clear separation between family roles, this traditionally involves women having responsibility for domestic labour and men for paid work outside the home.
Kibbutzim
communal movement that developed in Israel after the Second World War.
Kinship networks
family relationships, based on biology, affinity or law, that form unique and distinctive patterns (grandparents, parents, grandchildren) and networks; members of kinship groups may feel a special bond with and responsibility for other kin.
Life-course analysis
the examination of differences and changes over the course of an individual’s lifetime. An individual’s family experiences as a child and an adult are, for example, very different.
Living Apart Together (LAT)
couples who are married or in a long-term relationship but do not live together.
Lone-/Single- parent family
both consist of a single adult and dependent children. Lone parenthood is usually distinguished from single parenthood on the basis of factors such as divorce or the death of a partner, rather than choice.
Loss of functions
situation in which functions that were once performed by an institution are now performed by another institution. The educational function of the early-industrial family has been taken over by schools in late-modern societies.
Marital breakdown
the ending of a legal marital relationship for reasons other than the death of a partner.
Marriage
union between two people, recognised by law.
Matriarchal family
where the mother or eldest woman is head of the family and exercises authority.
Matriarchy
female-dominated family unit.
Matrifocal family
family that focused on women, such as a female grandparent, parent and children.
Matrifocal family
a family that is centred on the mother, with the father playing only a minor role.
Matrilineal
tracing ancestral descent through the female line.
Modified extended family
contemporary form of extended family: family members maintain contact but rarely live in close proximity to one another.
Monogamy
having a single sexual or marriage partner at any given time.
New man
someone who combines paid work with their shared domestic labour.
New man
a man who combines the provider (breadwinner) role with a greater share of domestic labour and childcare.
Nuclear family
a family consisting of a mother, a father and their dependent children.
Nuclear family
family unit based on two generations - parents and their dependent children.
Particularistic values
how people such as family members or work colleagues treat others differently based on the value of their particular relationship.
Partnership
being part of a couple, often living as married people but without any legal ties.
Patriarchal family
where the father or eldest man is head of the family and exercises authority.
Patriarchy
male-dominated family unit.
Patrifocal family
family structure focused on men.
Patrilineal
tracing ancestral descent through the male line.
Pivot (or sandwich) generation
the generation of people, usually in middle age, who care for their dependent children and their ageing parents at the same time.
Polyandry
one woman married to a number of men.
Polygamy
having more than one sexual or marriage partner at the same time.
Polygyny
one man married to a number of women.
Post-feminism
post-feminist theory is an approach to understanding gender inequality that seeks to avoid single, over-arching explanations of the position of women.
Postmodern family
idea that in postmodernity the focus of family members is on individual self-development.
Primary socialisation
teaching and learning process normally first carried out within the family.
Privatised family
structure that is home-orientated, child-centred and built on emotional relationships between adults and children.
Privatised nuclear family
structure that is home-focused, child-centred and built on emotional relationships between adults and children.
Reconstituted family
sometimes called a step-family, this involves the break-up of one family and its reassembly as a new family through marriage or cohabitation.
Rite of passage
rituals that denote transitions from one phase in the life course to another.
Serial monogamy
a situation where an individual may be involved in sequential, sexually exclusive relationships. For example, although one person may only be married to one other person at the same time, the failure (breakdown) of this marriage may result in each partner forming a new monogamous relationship with a different partner.
Social capital
how people are connected to social networks (who you know) and what people do for each other.
Social construction
behaviour that is culturally, rather than neutrally, produced. Sociologists believe behaviour is socially constructed because it varies both historically and across different societies.
Status group
social group sharing similar levels of status and often similar lifestyles or occupations.
Symbolic capital
how upper-class children in particular learn self-confidence, a strong sense of entitlement and self-worth within the family that they apply in the workplace.
Symmetrical family
relationship in which family roles are shared equally within the home.
Triple shift
where a female double-shift refers to women’s roles as domestic and paid labourers, a third element of female responsibility is the emotional work they do; investing time and effort in the psychological well-being of family members.
Universalistic values
values that apply to everyone, regardless of their particular situation. The idea that everyone is equal under the law is an example of a universalistic value.
Urbanisation
the development and growth of towns and cities.
Verticalised
form of extended family that reaches up and down the generations. A classical vertically extended family involves grandparents, parents and children living together or in close proximity.
Youth culture
cultural norms, values and identities particular to specific groups of young people.
Black (difference) feminism
challenges the view that the nuclear family is the major form of family and celebrates diversity. Understands the role of slavery, racial prejudice and other forms of social disadvantage played in family life. They reject the notion of sisterhood put forward by white women.
Arranged marriage
a type of marriage organised or arranged by the parents of the couple and/or matchmakers.
Age patriarchy
a system of inequalities caused primarily by age differences and especially the idea that adults, particularly the heads of households, know what is best for children.
Alienation
a concept which Marxists in particular suggest is now becoming a common characteristic of how workers feel about their jobs. Alienation refers to the lack of satisfaction, identification and control that workers experience on a daily basis and the fact that they work merely for a wage.
Ascription/ascribed role
a role assigned at birth over which an individual has little choice or say. For example, members of a royal family inherit a role. In patriarchal societies, females involuntary occupy a subordinate role.
Baby strike
a call by radical feminists for women to refuse to have babies, claiming that motherhood is the biggest obstacle to women’s progress and that it reinforces patriarchy.
Basic and irreducible functions
the two crucial functions performed by the nuclear family in modern capitalist societies: the primary socialisation of children, and the stabilisation of adult personalities.
Beanpole family
a four-generational type of family that has few extended kin such as aunts, uncles and cousins.
Bigamy
the state of being married to two people at the same time. It is a criminal offence in Western societies.
Bi-nuclear family
Children of divorced or separated couples often belong to two nuclear families because their natural parents have remarried or are cohabiting with a new partner.
Blended family
a variation on the reconstituted family that includes, in addition to step-children, the natural children of the remarried couple.
Boomerang family
families in which children leave home, but because of circumstances beyond their control they are forced to return to live with their parents as young adults.
Canalisation
a component of gender role socialisation where parents lead or channel their children’s interest and activities to gender-appropriate areas. For example, toys are often classified as suitable for either boys or girls.
Chaos of love
Beck believes that marriage is potentially a battleground, because the institution of marriage demands compromise and selflessness but people often look out for their own interest first.
Child abuse
physical maltreatment or sexual molestation of a child.
Child-centredness
the notion that the child should be the focus of attention. Child-centred families see rising children as the most important component of family life.
Child-free
the decision usually taken in conjunction with a partner not to have children.
Childlessness
the state of not having children. This may be voluntary or involuntary.
Chore wars
the conflict that results between a couple about who should be responsible for domestic labour.
Civil rights
the rights of citizens to political and social freedom and equality.
Class diversity
refers to how social class, especially wealth and poverty, may shape family living arrangements and the opportunities for a quality childhood.
Cohabitation
the state of living together and having an intimate relationship without being married.
Commune
a type of cooperative household made up of mainly unrelated people who agree to share work, possessions and religious or social objectives.
Concerted cultivation
a type of middle-class socialisation of children which aims to develop or encourage cultured behaviour and knowledge, such as knowledge of art, history, literature and so on, which may be advantageous in educational contexts.
Conflict
a clash of interests that can cause inequality.
Conjugal roles
the roles played by a male and female partner in marriage or in a cohabiting relationship.
Consensual
all involved agree willingly.
Conspicuous consumption
expenditure on, or consumption of, luxuries on lavish scale in an attempt to enhance one’s prestige.
Consumerism
the act of shopping for consumer items or commodities.
Consumption
refers to the spending of money on goods and services. A successful economy needs to competitively market its goods and services in ways that attract consumers to spend their cash on them.
Consumption as compensation
the idea that parents buy their children consumer items to compensate for not spending quality time with them.
Co-parenting
when a separated, divorced or unmarried couple share the duties of parenting, for example, a child may spend part of a week living with one parent and the rest of the week living with the other.
Crisis of masculinity
the idea that men are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression because their traditional roles as breadwinner and head of household are fast disappearing.
Cult of the individual
an idea very similar to Beck’s concept of individualisation. It refers to the increasing trend to put ourselves before others and a desire not to live or mix with others, therefore the trend towards living in single person households.
Cultural diversity
refers to how families might differ in organisation across different societies and across ethnic and religious groups within the same society.
Cultural hegemony
domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means.
Decentring of conjugal relationships
a radical feminist idea that rejects the idea that the most important relationship a woman has is with a man. Radical feminists believe that women can have the same quality family relationships with other women and/or gay men.
Dependency culture
according to New Right sociologists, a way of life characterised by dependency on state benefits.
Digital feminism
feminists, who mainly belong to the millennial generation, who challenge sexism and misogyny using online digital sites such as Twitter and Facebook and by setting up internet websites such as Everydaysexism.com.
DINK families
“Dual Income, No Kids”. A term which refers to a couple who both earn an income and do not (yet) have children.
Dispersed extended family
extended kin (grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins) who normally live in geographically scattered nuclear families but who feel a sense of duty and obligation to provide mutual support and assistance to each other in times of need or to get together on symbolic occasions such as Christmas.
Divorce
the legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body.
Domestic diversity
differences of internal arrangements of families. For example, in some families the mother has a career and goes out to work. In others, the mother stays at home full-time, and in a rare number of families the father stays at home as a full-time carer.
Domestic division of labour
the way that men and women divide up housework and childcare between themselves.
Domestic labour
unpaid labour - housework, childcare and so on - carried out within the home, often by women.
Domestic violence
violence, usually committed by the male spouse on his female partner and/or his children.
Dowry system
refers to the cash and property that the bride’s family gives to the bridegroom, his parents, or his relatives as a condition of the marriage.
Dual burden
also known as ‘Second shift’. Refers to the idea that married woman have two jobs and consequently no leisure time. They spend their day in paid work but still do most of the unpaid labour in the home.
Dual income/Dual career nuclear families
a family in which both adults have a career and in which the wage of each partner makes a significant contribution to the lifestyle of the family.
Dual-career/income families
families in which both adult partners pursue a career and in which each contribute income that is important to the family’s standard of living.
Dual-heritage children
the children of inter-ethnic marriages.
Egalitarian
the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
Emotion work
the idea that women are responsible for the emotional health and well-being of family members.
Emotional participation
sharing one’s feelings, experiences and emotions, particularly within an intimate relationship or family context.
Empirical
based on experience or observation.
Empty nest families
households in which only the parents remain once their grown-up children have left home.
Empty-shell marriage
a loveless marriage in which husband and wife stay together for financial or religious reasons or for the sake of the children, but essentially lead to separate lives in the same house.
Epistemological
relating to how knowledge of a given subject is obtained.
Ethnocentric
judging other cultures according to perceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture.
Ethnocentrism
judging one’s own cultural experience to be ‘better’ than that of other cultures.
Ethnographic
sociological research which studies social groups in their own environment going about their everyday business.
Expressive leader
the role of nurturer of children, primarily responsible for the primary socialisation of children, and emotional caretaker. According to Pearson, females have a ‘natural’ empathy for this role.
Extended family
a unit consisting of the nuclear family plus other kin who may live under the same roof or in close proximity so that contact is regular and frequent.
Failure to launch generation
children who for a variety of reasons have not been able to leave home and therefore still live with their parents despite being adults.
False needs
according to Marxism, the logic of capitalism as expressed through advertising is to sell as many commodities to consumers as possible. This often involves ‘persuading’ consumers to indulge in false wants or needs, that is, to buy commodities that are not essential and not built to last.
Falsely conscious
a way of thinking that prevents a person from perceiving the true nature of their social or economic situation.
Families of choice
an idea which suggests that members of our family are who we choose them to be - for example, we might regard close friends as symbolic family members, as well as cats and dogs.
Feminicide
the murder of females.
Fictive kin
normally, close friends of the family, particularly parents, who have been given the honorary title of ‘uncle’ or ‘aunt’.
Fidelity
faithfulness, usually in a relationship.
Filial piety
a Confucian belief that children should have a great respect for their elders, especially parents and grandparents.
First wave of feminism
ideas that appeared in the 18th and 19th century that challenged male domination of the family and eventually led to women being allowed to vote.
Forced marriage
a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without his or her consent or against his or her will.
Fourth wave of feminism
type of feminism, particularly the digital feminism practised by millennials.
Gender binary
the classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine.
Gender bound
the idea that men and women are culturally obligated to perform certain tasks - for example, that men provide for their families and women are emotional caretakers.
Gender scripts
the idea that male and female behaviour is performed according to cultural expectations about masculinity and feminity.
Genderquake
a radical change in attitudes compared with previous generations, so radical that it symbolises a seismic (earthquake-type) upheaval.
Geographical mobility
refers to people and families physically moving across the country, usually in search of work or education.
Girl power
a media-invented term which claimed that females wielded cultural power in the 1990s because they imitated role models such as Madonna.
Glass ceiling
the unseen, yet unbreachable, barrier that keeps women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.
Hetero-norm
the idea that relationships should be heterosexual.
“Honour”-related murders
the murder of a girl or woman by a family member for an actual or assumed sexual or behavioural transgression, including adultery, sexual intercourse or pregnancy outside marriage, or even for being raped.
Household
this includes all those who live under the same roof or occupy the same dwelling. These people need not be necessarily related.
Ideology
a set of ideas which most people believe to be true but which in fact are myths or misrepresentations. They are usually encouraged by powerful groups because such ideas tend to justify and legitimate the power and wealth of those groups.
Ideology of the family
a set of dominant ideas and beliefs which have the effect of instructing members of society about how families and the roles within them should be organised.
In vitro fertilisation
a medical procedure whereby an egg is fertilised by sperm in a test tube or elsewhere outside the body.
Individualisation
a concept associated with Beck that refers to a dominant ideology that stresses freedom from obligation or community pressure and gives people the freedom to look out for themselves first and foremost.
Infatilisation
to reduce something to a childish state or condition.
Institutional sexism
ideas and practices that may be consciously or unconsciously embedded in the regulations and actions of an organisation such as a school or police force.
Instrumental leader
the role of economic provider or breadwinner for the nuclear family. Parsons claimed that this is usually the role of the male.
Inter-ethnic marriage
marriages that take place between people who are from different racial or ethnic groups.
Intersectional feminism
a critique of liberal and radical feminism which implied that the experience of patriarchy was the same for all women. Black and Asian feminist, and Marxist feminists pointed out that gender often interacts with social class, race and patriarchy to produce unique experiences of patriarchy.
Irretrievable breakdown
when both spouses agree that the marriage is over and that there is no hope that it will be ever revived.
Isolated nuclear family
a family that is self-contained and which has little contact with extended kin.
Kibbutz
a type of commune or household in Israel (plural ‘kibbutzim’).
Kibbutz (wikipedia)
A kibbutz (Hebrew: “gathering, clustering”; regular plural kibbutzim) is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatised and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik. In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel’s industrial output, worth US$8 billion, and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion. Some kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.
Kinship
relationship between people who are related to each other by blood, marriage or adoption.
Ladettes
a term used by the media in the 1990s to describe young women who used their leisure time to act in the same way as men.
Ladettes (wikipedia)
The word “ladette” has been coined to describe young women who take part in laddish behaviour. It is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as: “Young women who behave in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engage in heavy drinking sessions.”
Lad (Spanish: muchacho)
a boy or young man (often as a form of address), e.g. “come in, lad, and shut the door”.
Lad culture (wikipedia)
Lad culture (also laddish culture and laddism) is a British subculture initially associated with the Britpop movement. Arising in the early 1990s, the image of the “lad” or “new lad”, was that of a generally middle class figure espousing attitudes typically attributed to the working classes. The subculture involves young men assuming an anti-intellectual position, shunning sensitivity in favour of drinking, violence, and sexism.
Leftover women
a term used in China to describe women who are still not married by the age of 27. They are seen to be ‘left on the shelf’.
LGBT community
a loose grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organisations, and subcultures, united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality and sexuality.
Liberal feminism
a collection of feminist sociologists who highlighted gender inequality in areas such as education and put pressure on governments to challenge it by introducing equal rights and opportunities legislation and social policies.
Liberate
to free somebody from oppression or exploitation.
Life-course
the stages that all human beings go through during their life, covering birth to death.
Living Apart Together (LAT)
a modern household set-up in which a couple who are romantically involved make the decision to maintain separate households rather than move in together.
Loss of functions
the functionalist idea that he multi-functional extended family of the pre-industrial era lost many of its functions after the industrial revolution.
Malestream
a concept developed by feminist theorist to describe the situation when male sociologists carry out research which either ignores or neglects women’s experience and/or focuses on a masculine perspective and then assumes that the findings can be applied to women as well.
Manipulation
a component of gender role socialisation in which parents encourage behaviour which is culturally acceptable for boys or girls but discourage behaviour that might be interpreted as not fitting cultural norms.
March of progress
the idea that features of contemporary life are an improvement on how they were previously organised.
Marriage rate
the number of marriages per 1000 people per year.
Matriarchal
a society or community dominated by women - the opposite of patriarchal.
Matrifocal
a society or culture based on the mother as the head of the family or household.
Millennial feminists
feminist who were born in the late 1980s and who in the early 21st century were in their 20s and early 30s. This generation, especially if it has experienced higher education, is thought to be highly politicised. Surveys suggest that they see females as equal to males and consequently they are less likely to tolerate inequality, sexism and misogyny and more likely than previous generations to challenge patriarchal processes.
Misogyny
dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.
Monogamy
the state of only being married to one person at any one time.
Motherhood penalty
Craig claims that motherhood often means that women have more responsibility for domestic labour and less time for leisure.
Multi-functional
performing lots of functions, such as the pre-industrial family.
Neo-conventional family
Chester’s term for the modern form of nuclear family. According to Chester, most of us will live as a child or adult in this type of family at some point in our lives.
Nuclear family
a unit that comprises mother, father and children, natural or adopted.
Organisational diversity
differences in the size or organisation of families. Extended families are obviously larger than nuclear families, which in turn are larger than one-parent families.
Partnership penalty
an idea associated with Craig. She claims that the decision of a couple to live together or marry benefits the male but penalises the female, in that she ends up responsible for the bulk of domestic labour.
Personal communities
a network of close friends and kin (even pets) that a person might regard as closest to them.
Personal life
Smart believes that. Rather than study families, sociologists should study how individuals negotiate their way through their personal lives. By doing this, we can see that a vast range of people beyond immediate kin play important roles in our lives.
Perverse incentive
an incentive that results in unintended negative consequences; for example, females may find it advantageous to get pregnant and bring up a child alone rather than get married, because state benefits are generous.
Pester power
the ability of children to persuade their parents into buying them products, especially items advertised in the media.
Polyandry
a type of polygamy in which a woman can marry more than one husband. It is quite rare compared with polygamy.
Polygamy
a cultural norm which allows spouses to have more than one husband or wife.
Polygyny
a type of polygamy in which a man can marry more than one woman, or can be married to a set of co-wives.
Post-feminist
a 1990s trend that suggested that females no longer had any need for second-wave feminism because they now had girl power. Many critics saw it as a media construction and as reflecting a male backlash against radical feminism.
Power-feminism
another term for post-feminism.
Private patriarchy
a type of male domination found exclusively in the home, family and in personal relationships.
Public patriarchy
institutionalised forms of sexual prejudice and discrimination found across a range of social institutions, including government, education and the law.
Radical feminism
a group of feminists who attempted to explain gender inequality by constructing structural theories that saw patriarchy as a complex inter-dependent social system. The theory was often seen as men-hating because it is hyper-critical of what it saw as male exploitation and oppression of women.
Radical psychiatry
a school of psychiatric thought that believes psychiatric problems are caused by alienation brought about by the intensity of family relationships.
Reconstituted family
also called a step-family - a family unit where one or both parents have children from a previous relationship but have combined to form a new family.
Remarriage
the act of marrying again after experiencing a divorce.
Renaissance children
middle-class children possessing lots of cultural capital that is, knowledge valued by schools and universities.
Reproductive rights
the right of females to control their own bodies; for example, the right of women to decide whether they want to have children or be child-free, when to have children and how many children to have.
Same-sex marriage
also known as gay marriage - the marriage of same-sex couples recognised by law as having the same status and rights as marriage of opposite-sex couples.
Sandwich carers
refers to those looking after young children at the same time as caring for older parents. It can also be used much more broadly to describe a variety of multiple caring responsibilities for people in different generations.
Second shift
the idea that married woman have two jobs and consequently no leisure time. They spend their day in paid work but still do most of the unpaid labour in the home.
Second wave of feminism
liberal, radical and Marxist feminist ideas that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s, often collectively known as the ‘women’s liberation movement’.
Secularisation
a general decline in religious belief in God and religious practices such as regularly going to church.
Separation
informal separation occurs when spouses live apart, but do not pursue formal separation or divorce.
Serial monogamy
the practice of engaging in a succession of monogamous cohabiting relationships or marriages.
Sexualisation of children
the idea that children are growing up too quickly because the media are introducing them to adult themes such as sex far too early in their development.
Single-parent families
families with children under age 18 headed by a parent who is widowed or divorced and who has not remarried, or by a parent who has never married.
Single-person household
a person living alone.
Sociability
the quality of liking to meet and spend time with other people.
Social blurring
the idea that distinction between children and adults is beginning to disappear as children aspire to behave like adults treat children as their equals.
Social construction
a term used by social action theories to indicate that social processes are the product or invention of society, dominant social groups or cultural norms.
Socialist/Marxist feminism
a type of feminism that argued that gender inequality was linked to class inequality. Both were seen to be the product of capitalism - for example, capitalist employers profit from women’s unpaid domestic labour.
Stabilisation of adult personality
an irreducible function of the nuclear family according to Parsons, in which the male worker’s immersion in his family supposedly relieves him of pressures of work and contemporary society, just as a ‘warm bath’ soothes and relaxes the body.
Stigma
a negative label or a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality or person.
Structural differentiation
the emergence of specialised agencies which gradually took over many of the functions of the pre-industrial extended family.
Suffrage
the right to vote.
Surrogacy
the process in which a woman agrees to bear a child on behalf of another woman, either from her own egg fertilised by other woman’s partner, or from the implantation in her uterus of a fertilised egg from the other woman.
Symmetrical family
a type of nuclear family identified by Young and Willmott in which husband and wife supposedly share domestic labour, decision-making and leisure time.
Synergistic
the interaction or cooperation of two individuals such as grandparents and grandchildren, which produces a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
Test-tube babies
children who are the product of reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilisation or artificial insemination because their parents cannot conceive naturally for medical reasons.
Theoretical imperialism
the insistence that one particular type of experience should take precedence over all other experiences. Radical feminism was accused of this by intersectional feminists for implying that all women experienced patriarchal control in the same way.
Third wave of feminism
refers to two unrelated forms of feminism that appeared about the same time (1980s-1990s) - intersectional feminism and post-feminism.
Time-budget study
a type of social survey which asks respondents to estimate the amount of time they spend on a particular task.
Toxic masculinity
a type of masculinity which exhibits negative traits such as violence, sexual aggression and an inability or reluctance to expressed emotions because of a belief that it is weak to do so.
Transphobia
refers to a range of negative attitudes, feelings, actions or hate crimes toward transgender or transsexual people.
Triple shift
the idea that women have three pressures on their time - paid work, unpaid domestic labour and emotion work.
Triple system theory
a feminist theory of patriarchy associated with Walby which argues that there are three crucial influences on a woman’s experience of inequality and oppression - gender, social class and ethnicity.
Underclass
the lowest social stratum in a country or community, consisting of the poor and unemployed. The New Right claim that members of the underclass are most likely to be welfare-dependent and criminal.
Unit of consumption
the family is the main unit of consumption in capitalists society because agents of capitalism such as advertisers and the media promote consumer items in such a way that they are specifically aimed at encouraging family members to buy them.
Urbanisation
the process of people who had previously lived in the countryside moving to the towns and cities, usually to find work in factories, mills and so on.
Vertical extended family
families composed of three generations that may live under the same roof or in very close proximity who are in frequent daily contact.
Voluntary childlessness
consciously and voluntarily choosing not to have children. It should be distinguished from the state of not being able to have children for medical or biological reasons.
Welfare state
a system whereby the state undertakes to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, especially those in financial or social need, by means of grants, pensions and other benefits.
Welfare-dependent
the New Right claim that some individuals are no longer capable of taking responsibility for themselves because they have grown too dependent on state benefits. They are no longer motivated to seek work.
Workhouse
a British public or charitable institution in which the poor, especially children, the elderly and the sick and disabled, received somewhere to live in return for work. Most people feared being sent to the workhouse because it was a humiliating and shameful experience.
