The Life Course

Question 1

What is the life course?

Answer 1

The way in which lives evolve and change as people experience personal events or rites of passage.

Question 2

What are rites of passage?

Answer 2

Significant events such as marriage, childbirth, divorce or deaths.

Question 3

Tamara Hareven (2000) said that there was important stages involved in the life course.
Name the most important.
(7)

Answer 3

• Birth
• Childhood (p. school)
• Adolescence (teenager)
• (Young) adulthood
• Middle aged
• Old age
• Death

Question 4

Who named the stages involved in the life course?

Answer 4

Tamara Hareven (2000)

Question 5

Tamara Hareven (2000) notes that a person may experience different households throughout their life.
Name them.

Answer 5

Start with nuclear family.
Divorce leads to dual-parenting arrangement.
Could lead to reconstituted family.`

Question 6

POSTMODERNISTS argue that _______ and ________ aren’t _______ and people shouldn’t _____ to ______ them - they’re a ________ state of _____ and ______.

There is no such thing as the _______ _______.

__________ should focus on what _______ regard as ________.

Answer 6

a) families
b) households
c) concrete
d) strive
e) attain
f) continual
g) flux and change

h) perfect family

i) sociologists
j) families
k) important

Question 7

Which sociological perspective argues that people shouldn’t strive for the ‘perfect family’ and should instead focus on what’s important for their family?

Answer 7

Postmodernists

Question 8

Who do Postmodernists views differ from?

Why?

Answer 8

Functionalists and New Right

They believe the perfect nuclear household is something people should aim towards, whereas Postmodernists don’t believe in the nuclear family.

Question 9

P____ and S______ (20__) argue the concept of ‘______’ is no longer _____ to describe ________ relationships as they suggest people no longer feel they have to ________ relationships with other ____ out of _____ or _________.

Instead, ‘_____’ should be replaced with ‘________ _______’

Answer 9

a) Pahl and Spencer (2001)
b) ‘family’
c) useful
d) personal
e) maintain
f) kin
g) duty or obligation
h) ‘family’
i) ‘personal communities’

Question 10

What did Pahl and Spencer (2001) argue the ‘family’ should be replaced with?

Answer 10

‘Personal communities’