Theories on Family Diversity Flashcards
What is Rapoport and Rapoport’s view on family diversity?
The nuclear family isn’t the main family type, family diversity should be accepted. There are five different types of family diversity:
- Social class diversity
- Organisational diversity
- Generational diversity
- Cultural diversity
- Life stages diversity
What is Giddens’s view on family diversity?
The family has been transformed by greater choice and equality, caused by individualism and greater access to contraception. Couples now form relationships based on their own personal wants and needs, he refers to this as the ‘pure relationship’. Same-sex couples are also more equal than heterosexual couples since they aren’t based on traditions
What is Beck’s view of family diversity?
The family has been transformed by greater choice and equality which had led to the formation of a new family type called the ‘negotiated family’ where both partners have an equal say in decisions.
Greater choices = greater risks since relationships no longer last forever, therefore, causing instability.
He refers to the family as a ‘zombie’ because it appears to be alive since it provides love and comfort however is actually dead since it lacks security because it is unstable therefore can end easily.
What is the Individualisation Thesis on family diversity?
Society has become disembedded from traditional roles.
Beck argues that there has been a move from the ‘standard biography’ which follows a pre-set life course to the ‘do-it-yourself biography’ where individuals choose their life decisions.
What is Stacey’s view on family diversity?
The family has been transformed by greater equality for women, therefore, women are now choosing their families according to their own needs. For example, choosing careers over family.
This has led to the formation of the divorce-extended family where members are connected through divorce.
What is Weeks’ view of family diversity?
Weeks argues that family diversity is widely accepted due to secularisation and changing attitudes however most people still aspire to marry, raise kids together then remarry.
What is the New Rights view on family diversity?
Segregated division of labour is natural due to biological differences which make women more suited to the expressive role.
Lone parent families are especially harmful to society as they are a burden on the welfare state, single mothers are also unable to socialise their children properly and their children lack a male role model.
Dependency ratio.
What is Smart and May’s view on family diversity?
Come from the personal life thesis. Use the ‘connectedness thesis’ to explain the increase in family diversity. Argue that humans are social being that lives in a web of connectedness through our existing relationships which influences our decisions in life.
What is Chester’s view on family diversity?
The nuclear family is still the most common family type and most people still aspire to be in a nuclear family. Argues that people still end up in a nuclear family at some point due to the family life cycle. Also argues there has been a move from the conventional (segregated conjugal roles with a male breadwinner and a female housewife) to the neo-conventional family (dual worker)
