THE FAMILY - PERSPECTIVES

Question 1

What did Parson’s argue about the development of families?

Answer 1

In pre-industrial societies, the family carries out a whole variety of functions yet as societies industrialised, they became more complex and structural differentiation occurred
This is whereby specialised institutions develop to perform functions formerly carried out by families (eg businesses produce food and products people need, the welfare state looks after those in need and schools educate children)
Because the family has fewer functions, the big extended family is not needed anymore, and the nuclear family performs all the functions that are needed

Question 2

What two roles does the family achieve, according to Parsons?

Answer 2

Socialisation of children: primary socialisation and internalisation of shared norms and values to maintain a consensus
Stabilisation of adult personality: married couples rely on each other for emotional support and can also act childish with their children to release stress

Question 3

What is Parson’s warm bath theory?

Answer 3

family provides comfort to the breadwinner role while the wife assures he comes home to a calm, clean, comfortable environment where his needs are met

Question 4

What four functions does the nuclear family achieve, according to Murdock?

Answer 4

Sexual function: channel their sex drives into socially acceptable relationships such as marriage (minimalists conflict and provides fulfilling relationships)
Economic function: a unit of production and consumption, individuals benefits by having their needs met and society benefits from economic contribution
Reproduction: children and reproduced to ensure society continues
Education: main agency of primary socialisation, where the children learn the shared norms and values

Question 5

What does Popenoe argue about the nuclear family?

Answer 5

There are biological imperatives that underlie the way families are organised - for example men and women are biologically different which results in their different conjugal roles
We need a ‘cultural script’ which is a set of guidelines for what families should be like asked on ‘bio social reality’ - therefore implies that some family types are less functional than others as they are not based on the biological needs of human beings

Question 6

What is Willmott ad Young’s ‘March of Progress’?

Answer 6

Look at how society develops and modernises over time, with four stages of family development relating to the process of industrialisation
Stage one: pre-industrial family - a unit of production with no separation between work and home
Stage two: the early industrial society - home and work are separated as men go out to work, and women form the domestic role
Stage three: the symmetrical family - less gender segregation and joint conjugal roles , and becomes a unit of consumption, as well as becoming more isolated from kinship networks
Stage four: the asymmetrical family - men increasingly spending their leisure time outside the home and without their partners, yet this stage didn’t really occur

Question 7

What do Dench, Gavron and Young argue about Willmott and Young’s ‘March of Progress’?

Answer 7

It does suggest stratified diffusion, where the working class has become privatised, no longer extended and more geographically mobile
However, large scale immigration had changed the demographic of the population and there was now a high South Asian population

Question 8

What are the functionalist key names for the nuclear family?

Answer 8

Parsons, Murdock, Popenoe, Willmott and Young

Question 9

What are criticisms of the functionalist perspective on the nuclear family?

Answer 9

Ignores the dark side or the negative aspects of families (eg child abuse, domestic violence)
Ignores the fact that the family can be dysfunctional
Oliver James argued that many of the problems we face in adult life can be traced back to early childhood
Ignores the diversity in family life, meaning it is out of date in today’s society
Feminists argue Parson’s view is sexist, as he assumes mean and women will naturally perform different roles with equal status, yet in reality nuclear families are based on male power and dominance
Interactionists believe Parson’s view of socialisation is a top-down process whereby parents instil the norms and values of society onto children, however it is a two way process where children socialise their parents as much as they are socialised by them

Question 10

According to the new right perspective, what has the break down of the nuclear family lead to?

Answer 10

Poorly socialised children who underachieve in education
Increased crime
Increase in lone mothers who are dependent on benefits instead of absent fathers
They want a return to traditional family life which is the nuclear family

Question 11

What does Charles Murray argue?

Answer 11

New right
An underclass has edged made up of the poorest people at the bottom of society who are dependent on welfare benefits rather than work
Lone parent families (headed by women) forms a significant section of this underclass
Children, especially boys, growing up without a father figure are likely to fare worse at school and turn to crime
Lays blame on the successive government who rewarded irresponsible behaviour by giving over generous benefits creating welfare dependency
Created a cycle of deprivation, leading to a culture of poverty

Question 12

What does Dennis and Erdos argue?

Answer 12

New right
Children raised by single mothers on average have lower educational achievement and poorer health
Boys grow up without learning that adulthood involves taking responsibility for a wide and children so develop into immature, irresponsible and antisocial young men

Question 13

What are criticisms of the new right perspective of family?

Answer 13

Victim blaming approach - victims are blamed for their own poverty which is not their fault and actually caused by the unequal society
Putting value judgement on the nuclear family being the ‘best’ encouraged discrimination and prejudice towards other family forms
Chambers described fears about lone parents as a moral panic whipped up by the media and politicians to justify cuts in spending on benefits
Rose-tinted nostalgia speculation view of ‘golden age’ without cohabitation, single parents or sex outside of marriage
Links to crime and underachievement could be explained by poverty, not the family

Question 14

What is the general marxist view of the nuclear family?

Answer 14

Reject the view that the nuclear family is the best form of family, as the society the children are being raised in is a society based on inequality and conflict
The capitalist society has created families as an institutions designed to serve capitalism
Family is a ‘safety valve’ (response to the warm bath theory) where the family ensures that the parents stay submissive to capitalism

Question 15

What are the new right key names for the family?

Answer 15

Charles Murray, Dennis and Erdos

Question 16

What did Zaretsky argue?

Answer 16

Marxist
With the rise of capitalism industrial production in the nineteenth century, work and family life became separated
Under capitalism, work became an alienating experience, meaning that workers had little control over work and were unable to achieve real satisfaction from it
Individuals can only experience really satisfying family relationships when capitalism is abolished so families are organised around the needs of the members not the needs of the economic system
The family supports capitalism in two ways:
Women in the family reproduce and bring up children (new work force)
The family acts as a unit of consumption, buying the products of capitalism

Question 17

What did Cooper argue?

Answer 17

Marxist
Family relationships reflect the property relationships of capitalism in that individuals develop a sense that they own their partners and children, which in his view restricts the ability of people to develop as individuals
Also sees the family as an ‘ideological conditioning device’, which means that we live in a hierarchical and unequal society where those higher up control those below them - which the family is a miniature version of
Children learnt to submit to the capitalist ideology which teaches those at the bottom that they must accept their position and be obedient to those above them

Question 18

What was Rosemary Crompton’s argument?

Answer 18

families ensure a process of class reproduction whereby most children end up in a similar class position to their parents
Links to Cooper

Question 19

What did Hochschild argue?

Answer 19

Marxist
Argues that there has been a ‘commercialisation of intimate life’ which means that many services that were provided by families for their members have been taken over by commercial organisations, meaning that these service are provided by money instead of love
This has happened because women have increasingly moved into the world of paid work, they have been forced to hire other people to do the jobs that they formerly performed unpaid
The ‘time bind’ is where adults are putting in longer hours than any other industrialised nation which means that less time is spent raising children and homemaking.
Capitalism benefits from this as people spend more time supporting the bourgeoisie and being exploited, and spend more money on services for the family acting as a unit of consumption and a unit of production

Question 20

What did Engels argue?

Answer 20

Marxist
In early society there were no restrictions on sexual behaviour and women held the power
However, as people learnt to head animals, men took control of the livestock and became the property owners, and as society became more complex polygyny was introduced
Monogamy developed and ensured that an child born were the legitimate heirs, which eventually became the nuclear family
Nuclear family means property can be passed down from the father to their sons, supporting capitalism as the rich stay rich and leads to class reproduction

Question 21

What is the Kibbutz and what does it show?

Answer 21

Tried to abolish the nuclear family by the child not living with their parents, and instead being separated from their mother at birth and being looked after by a specialised ‘caregiver’
This shows how the nuclear family is not needed for a successful family, however it did lead to individuals having greater difficulty making strong emotional connections

Question 22

What are criticisms of the marxist perspective of the family?

Answer 22

Marxism tends to suggest that individuals’ personal lives are largely shaped or even determined by economic forces such as the needs of capitalism, however social action theories argue that this ignores the fact we can make choices about our own lives (eg more people reject the nuclear family
Marxism can also be seen as outdated as it focuses on the nuclear family rather than it’s alternatives - say little on family diversity
Highlights the extent of class inequalities in family life but fails to consider the importance of other social divisions such as gender, ethnicity, and sexuality and their effects in personal relationships
Mainly focuses on family life in western capitalist societies and has little to say about the nature of families in other parts of the world

Question 23

What are the marxist key names?

Answer 23

Zaretsky, Cooper, Engles, Hochschild

Question 24

What did Betsy Stanko find?

Answer 24

Carried out a survey on domestic violence in the UK, and based her findings on phone calls to the police forces across the country together with referrals to help organisations and found:
Acts of domestic violence are committed every six seconds and 999 calls reporting attacks are made every minute
More than 80% of victims were women were attacked by men
8% of incidents involve men being assaulted by women
⅓ women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime
This disproves the function of the nuclear family as the stabilisation of adult personalities, as domestic violence shows that the home doesn’t provide a comfortable, safe environment

Question 25

What did Delphy and Leonard argue?

Answer 25

radical feminists
The nuclear family is a form of patriarchal control
Men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour, and also from having their sexual needs served and having women bear their children
Women contribute much more to family life in domestic and emotional work, but men receive more benefit as they enjoy more leisure time and control the finances

Question 26

What did Benston argue?

Answer 26

Marxist feminist
Gender inequality is closed linked to capitalism, as unpaid domestic work supports the capitalist system in two ways:
Unpaid labour and the distressing of men to prepare the men to go to work
Bearing, caring for and socialising the next generation of workers at no cost to employers
Therefore women are exploited for the benefit of both men and the capitalist system

Question 27

What did Somerville argue?

Answer 27

liberal feminist
The view of women being exploited by men at home is outdated now, as things have advanced with women’s equality:
More women are working and are financially independent (dual income)
Less women are having children
More LGBTQ+ couples
There is still inequality in the home with the distribution of domestic work and power, yet women have the freedom to escape this
The government should provide more support to working families to enable both countries to contribute equally at home (eg flexible hours and child care)

Question 28

What are criticisms of the feminist perspective on the family?

Answer 28

Ignore positive aspects of family life, for example many women get satisfaction from performing traditional roles in the family
It is outdated since they seem to portray families as they were 50 years ago
Focus exclusively on gender inequalities and patriarchy, ignoring other inequalities
Tend to put women into one category when patriarchy is experienced differently

Question 29

What are the key names for the feminist perspective of the family?

Answer 29

Betsy Stanko, Delphy and Leonard, Benston, Somerville (Hakim)

Question 30

What did Hakim argue?

Answer 30

Criticised feminists for always complaining that men are not doing their fair share of domestic work, however she analysed data from time budget studies and argued that the reality is that most men do their fair share
She argued that men and women do the same total number of productive work, just women split it between paid and unpaid labour
Women can now make free rational choices about their lives

Question 31

What did Susan Harkness argue?

Answer 31

showed that men actually work more hours than women when there’s a child at home, as they try to boost their income

Question 32

What is the general postmodern perspective on the family?

Answer 32

There is such diversity in families and relationships in modern society, we shouldn’t clump families and intimate relationships together
We should look at what the family does for the individuals rather than society
David Morgan looks at what the family does, rather than the shape of it
eg you can create a network of intimate relationships by means of what you share in your lives - this is more meaningful than the structure
Judith Stacey sees the fluidity and choice as a positive thing as you can develop relationships to suit your changing circumstances

Question 33

What did Janet Finch argue?

Answer 33

Coined the concept of ‘the family display’ which is the way that individuals and groups convey to each other that their actions constitute family things
Relationships are ‘family’ relationships (even if not legally/blood)
eg sharing rituals, events, closeness, family identity

Question 34

What did Giddens argue?

Answer 34

‘Late modernity’ is characterised by the breakdown of traditional norms and structures that constrained individuals to fit into certain structures and roles have started to dissolve
For example with women, their traditional norms have become less restricting (more opportunities and and women’s place in the home)
Reflexivity is where individuals constantly question what they are doing in life and find possible alternatives
Romantic love has been replaced by confluent love, which is based on deep emotional intimacy in which partners reveal their needs and concern to each other
This makes a relationship more fulfilling as a relationship is pursued for is own sake, instead of practicality
However, these relationships are less long-lasting as emotional needs are only fulfilled for a certain amount of time, and people look elsewhere
High rates of separation and divorce support this, as well as the increase in family diversity

Question 35

What did Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue?

Answer 35

‘High modernity’ is an extension of modernity, where society is much less confidence and more awareness of the risks posed by science and technology (eg global warming, nuclear waste and pollution)
Social life is now based on the construction of lifestyles and identities, which are based on the avoidance of risk (less marriages, less children, more cohabitation)
Individualisation means people are no longer tied to fixed roles or identities, which helps to explain the increase in family diversity and the fluid nature of contemporary life as individuals move in and out of relationships and family groupings
Concerned that families are becoming more fragmented and atomised as self-absorbed individuals seek their own fulfilment

Question 36

What are the key names for the postmodern view on family?

Answer 36

David Morgan, Judith Stacey, Janet Finch, Giddens, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim

Question 37

What are criticisms of the postmodern perspective of the family?

Answer 37

Although there is more diversity, most people are in normal two parent families, and if they aren’t, they want to be
Chester says that everyone is in a nuclear family at some point in their lives
It ignores some ‘facts’ in the social structure (we don’t all get choice due to class, gender and ethnicity
Yvette Taylor found unwelcoming attitudes in working class communities towards lesbian mothers
Tony Chapman found that white people have more ‘choices’ in their lifestyles