The Family PDF

The Family written by summerx www.stuvia.com Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides THE FAMILY DEFINITIONS OF A FAMILY MURDOCK – functionalist...

The Family written by summerx www.stuvia.com Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides THE FAMILY DEFINITIONS OF A FAMILY MURDOCK – functionalist, family has a common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction, adults of both sexes and children. Exclusive because it has characteristics that make it different from other social groups. Flexible for different types of family organisation but excludes some family types such as single parent families and same sex families. GIDDENS – inclusive. Focuses on kinship. Family is based on biology, affinity and law. Covers all family types but the definition can too broad. AMBERT – kinship and function. Family provides maintaining for group members, procreation / adoption, socialisation of children, production, consumption and distribution of goods, affective nurturance. HOUSEHOLDS Single person households – where an adult lives alone due to death of choice Couple households – two people without children because they haven’t started a family, their children have left home or because they have chosen to be childless. Shared households – unrelated people living together permanently or temporarily. ROSENEIL – suggested couple who live apart but spend a lot of time together due to lifestyle / choice should be a household. FAMILY TYPES Nuclear family – contact with wider kin is infrequent or impersonal. Sometimes called a selfcontained economic unit who support each other. Same sex families can be nuclear where the children are adopted or from a previous family. Lone parent – single parent and children. Can be formed from death or separation. A single parent does not result from a family breakup. Reconstituted family – a step family. Break up of one family and a merging of another. May include both sets of children. Extended family – three generation in the same household is vertical. Branches of the family staying together is horizontal. GORDON – in industrialised societies the modified extended family is the norm. family members stay in contact and support one another. WILLMOTT – the locally extended family is where the families live in close proximity. The dispersed extended family is when they live further apart and have less contact. Attenuated extended families is when young couples move from the family home in together. DIVERSITY IN THE FAMILY Class O’NEIL – single parents are commonly working class. WILLMOTT AND YOUNG – working class families have parents with more segregated roles. Men have the most power. In middle class, parents are likely to be symmetrical and have joint conjugal roles. LAREAU – working class adults parenting focuses on natural growth meanwhile middle- Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides class parents fosters the kid’s skills and talents. This gives them entitlement and an advantage in the future. PAHL AND VOHGER – in the middle class, men make the more important decisions and women make the domestic choices. Ethnicity REAY ET AL – middle class parents are helicopter parents DALE ET AL – black women are likely to be in full term employment compared to whites and Asians. Indian women are likely to be in part time. Pakistani and Bangladeshi women are most likely to stop work. MODOOD – 40% of black Caribbean adults under 60 were in marriages compared to 60% of white adults MANN – black Caribbean families have the largest cohabitation rates. 45% of their families are headed by a lone parent compared to 25% of white families. Chahal supports this. South Asian families have higher marriage rates as supported by Berthoud. They have lower cohabitation rates as supported by Mann. Religion Age Family Life Cycle SELF AND ZEALEY – 10% of families in south Asia are headed by a lone parent. This explains larger families. Secularisation has led to an increase in cohabitation, decline in marriage, increase in divorce and an increase in remarriage rates. BEAUMONT – 76% of depended live in a two-parent nuclear family. 20% live with a lone mother and 3% with a lone father in the UK. RAPPORT AND RAPPORT – school age children families are likely to have dual income. ROSENFELD – the pre-family is the independent stage where young adults move out and gain independence. A family with old adults will have different experiences than one with young adults. Same with families with lone parents from dual parents. The post-family involved boomerang kids because of lack of employment, personal debt, lack of housing or a breakdown. The family cycle is not linear. Family Size WESTLAND – adults are now both end carers. Women who are 50-70 care for the older and younger generation. HUGHES – family size is decreasing from 1.7 kids in 1999 to 1.7 kids now. Zambia has the largest family sizes in the world with an average of 6 kids. Could be down to society changing or down to children no longer being an economic liability. WOMACK – living costs are high so people are choosing a lifestyle of children. MCALLISTER AND CLARK – people are delaying a family because females are in education for longer FINCH – younger women are delaying childbirth. ALTERNATIVES TO THE NUCLEAR FAMILY MURDOCK – studied 250 societies and concluded the nuclear family is universal and the most common. This is due to convergence and dominance. The fit thesis is not a criticism of this as Murdock also claims that the nuclear family is the building block to all other family types. CONVERGENCE - PARSONS – when institutions changed to meet social needs, the family lost many functions. Instead they focused on socialisation and stabilisation. CONVERGENCE - SKOLNICK – family convergence across societies is based on the idea that the nuclear family is the best to perform certain functions and that there is a functional fit between the family and industrialisation. The nuclear family can fit the demands. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides DOMINANCE - GOODE – the nuclear family serves the needs of the modern industrial system. This is questionable because the inflexibility of the extended family is overstated. Supported by Litwak who argues the nuclear family doesn’t exist and all families are a type of extended family. Some say the dominance of nuclear family was caused by capitalism. It insured that wealth was passed down to legitimate heirs. DOMINANCE – STACEY – the nuclear family is purely political not biological. It maintains hierarchies GOUGH – studied the Mayar tribe. Women lived in the main part of the house and men occupied separate rooms. Women could have different lovers with no judgement. A form of arranged marriage meant the women raised the kids. KEESING – studied the Lakkar tribe. The people do not see the kids having any blood relation to the mothers. This means incest between them is not wrong. Gross. HERNDON – Ashanti tribe. Children belong to the mothers and her clan. Family assets are owned by the women. The father’s role is to supply material support. The tribe studies actually support Murdock because they are pre-industrialised meaning under industrialisation – they could form a linear path to nuclear. HILLEBRAND – the shaker community adopted a feature that every man is married to every women. Male-female cohabitation had to be agreed on by a third member and no two people could have exclusive attachment. Another commune was the kibbutzim. Couples could be monogamous and did not share common residence. It functions as a family but is no under the definition made by Murdock. The New World Black Family is common in the Caribbean and US. Involves a single women and her kids supported by extended family such as a grandparent. This could be down to slavery or poverty. The extended kin allowed the mothers to work. here, there is no common residence between the parents. CONSENSUS AND CONFLICT PERSPECTIVES OF THE FAMILY consensus All social systems are based of the four sub-systems developed by parsons. Each needs something to depend on. For example, for the economic system to work, it needs the family to produce individuals oriented towards work. MURDOCK – suggested four functional prerequisites. Sexual control – stability through exclusivity. The adults work for the survival of their group. Reproduction – replacing dead members. Socialisation – values and norms. Economic – organising yourself to survive. Such as paid work and domestic work. PARSONS AND BALES – in the past the family was multifunctional but has become specialised. Families suffered a loss of functions. Neo-functionalism Conflict PARSONS – the loss of functions led to the focus on two things. Primary socialisation – learning values and norms to play adult roles. Stabilisation of adult personalities – families providing support. Fletcher supports this. HORWITZ – the family functions as a bridge connecting the individual to the world. The family is therefore teaching us norms and values. The rules transmitted by family are more likely to be taught because of the emotional connection. The family enforces cooperative behaviour. Kids can learn behaviour by watching the adults. The family’s general role is to support capitalism in three ways: Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides Ideologically: ALTHUSSER – the family is an ISA through children learn values and norms that support the capitalist status quo. ZARTESKY – socialisation involves teaching the ruling class ideology. Economically: ALTHUSSER – the family has a consumption role. The family buys what it needs. This means they need paid employment. ZARTESKY – families are important targets for advertisement. The family is a source of profit. Politically: Family relationships lock themselves in a capitalist loop as they need to work to survive and provide. ZARTESKY – growth of privatised family means the family focuses on smaller problems and now larger problems. BOURDIEU – non-economic resources that are spent to give some families an advantage. Supported by Silvia and Edwards who say that middle and upper class parents equip children with skills for the workplace. Neo-Marxism WILLIS – a lack of this leads to educational failure. This is why working class families have working class jobs. Women are exploited through traditional roles that are for the benefit of men. The family is an oppressive structure. Women are narrowed to service roles. feminism DUNCOMBE AND MARSDEN – women perform a triple shift. Domestic work, paid work and emotional work. BRUEGAL – women are a reserve army of labour. Women are called in when there is a shortage of men and pushed back when there is a surplus. Women are forced into low paying and low status jobs. FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS parents Parental roles are unfixed and changing. In the past they were fixed. Straying away from the norms resulted in penalties. Gender roles are still from the past however are not connected to social identities. MANN – social identities are up for interpretation. People have freedom to interpret parental roles. JAMES AND FORTIER – home is where identities are worked on and they are continuously redefined. GERSCHUNNY ET AL – women do more domestic labour than men. Men do more DIY things. KAN – women doing housework was reduced when in paid labour. Vice versa. RAMOS – work is equal when the man is unemployed, and the female is employed. PLECK – traditional families have a women that does more housework. WILLMOTT – there is less reliance on traditional roles dividing the tasks at home. It is different for every couple. Children parents and PILCHER – older couples focused on gender roles in response to their socialisation. ARCHARD – children relate to their parents differently now. FIONDA – adults view children as objects of concern who need caring for. This is Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides supported by the state stepping into some dysfunctional families. Adults view children as right holders. They should not be denied freedom. This makes children accountable for their actions. Adults view children as lacking moral consciousness. Should not be accountable. ARIES – pre-industrial society children had a clearer relationship with parents. Children were little adults and were an economic asset. ROBERTSON – children were economically worthless and emotionally priceless. Children are consumers. HOWARD – children take on more caring responsibilities now. POSTMAN – children are more like adults in the way they dress, and act and adults are more like children in their health and vitality. MANN – children are having an input in decision making. grandparents Because of children getting more rights they are more rebellious and active. They have greater control but must take responsibility. They are more permissions but still have denials – smoking, drinking etc. BENGSTON – grandparents are an important resource. They help with childcare. ANDERSON – in the past most mothers had help from a grandparent. WELLARD – 30% of families depend on a grandparent. 50% of lone parent families depend. RAKE – grandparents helping will be a norm due to more women working, parents working more hours, high cost of childcare, lover life expectancy. BROAD ET AL – grandparents are important for emotional support. BRANNEN – children return to the family home to care for others. MANN – all roles in the family are down to interpretation. A study showed that more households are headed by a grandparent down to divorce, parental illness, parental abuse. ROLES AND EQUALITY WITHIN THE FAMILY Functionalism WILLMOTT AND YOUNG – stratified diffusion. As upper class moved towards equality it trickled down the classes. SULLIVAN ET AL – quiet revolution in gender equality. Evidence – increased male housework, decreased female housework, more men in childcare and family group being home centred. Neofunctionalism Marxism The new man is where a man takes on more housework and is a good father. McMahon calls this a fantasy. Men have little care for this. Men are instrumental, and women are expressive. SWENSON – it does matter who is expressive and instrumental. They can swap and share. Same sex families can perform them. Lone parents can combine both. Optimal socialisation is when both parents play both roles. MORGAN -three family economies that involves the family to have power struggles. Political: PAHL – looked at how money is dealt with before spending. Those who deal with resources have the greatest power. PAHL AND VOGLER – men make the most financial decisions. HARDILL – women more likely to be trailing spouse. Male occupations had the most priority. Moral Economy: Females can exercise high levels of power even if the male is the breadwinner. Feminism Emotional economy: DALLOS ET AL – affective power. If someone loves you, you have the power. Liberal: Equality of opportunity. Men and women should be free to choose their roles. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides Marxist: Women perform a service role in the home. This is either willingly or because the other spouse refuses to. Think Dunscomb and Marsden triple shift. Women suffer from patriarchal and capitalistic oppression. Post-feminism Radical: FIRESTONE – biology is the essential gender difference. The fact that women get pregnant and are forced to depend on men created inequality. When children are born via IVF, this discrimination can be stopped. STANWORTH – pregnancy and feminine identities is the foundation of women’s identity. We should not take that away as it is the most powerful difference. FRIEDEN AND MILLET – see the family as an oppressive state. A housewife is a parasite as it depends on men. To stop this oppression, we must abandon patriarchal systems – same sex families etc BUTLER – men and women don’t have essential natures. Both men and women can move out of a domain. Believe Marxist and radical feminists ignore the change of relationships in the last 50 years. Conjugal roles can be negotiated. MARRIAGE, COHABITATION, SEPARATION, DIVORCE AND CHILDBEARING Marriage Cohabitati on Divorce Childbeari ng There has been a decline in marriage and first marriages. Remarriages peaked in the 1980s and have declines since. Remarriage has doubled in the past 50 years but has declines. GILLIS – cohabitation was practiced in the past, but it wasn’t recorded. HUGHES AND CHURCH – cohabitation has increased, especially in females. There used to be a small amount of divorce. Divorce is more common, peaking in 1990s. since 1981 there’s been a doubling of re-divorces. CHAMBERLAIN AND GILL – decline in births, family size, increase in age of first child, births outside of marriage increased. India has an increasing birth rate but declining fertility rates. Marriage was popular after WW2. Some age groups are more likely that others to marry. Hughes noted that the average age for marriage has increased. This could be down to there being more people in that age range. There is less stigma to having children outside of marriage. Women have more independence. Oswald argues that marriage is a lifestyle choice. Secularisation. Beck argues people aren’t married because they can assess the risk more. Reduced social pressures to marry, less stigma and a wider availability of contraception. SMART AND STEVENS - changing attitudes to marriage, cohabitation is a trial for the partner, easier to cohabitate. Divorce is now easier due to law. Irretrievable breakdown is a choice on papers. There is legal aid now. Secularisation means marriage is no longer sacred. Less stigma attached. Romantic and confluent love. BERRINGTON – young couples, populations with high marriage rates and short courtships lead to divorce. Women are working so less time for family or delayed family. It is expensive af to raise children. UK has the largest childlessness rate. TIFFEN AND GRIFFINS – women are less likely to accept social identities build around motherhood. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides DARK SIDE OF FAMILY Domestic violence: JANSSON ET AL – 3% of women and 2% of men experience domestic violence. DODD ET AL – 16% of all violence is domestic. 40% of all female murders are done by a partner. In the UK women are more likely to be sexually assaulted than men. Child Abuse: HUMPHREYS AND THIARA – domestic abuse and child abuse is connected. Around 80 children are killed by their parents. Children normally have a connection to their abuser. 46000 children were under risk of abuse. 25% of rape victims are children. ROONEY AND DAVIS – the highest homicide rates of children. AGE DIVISIONS Can apply DURKHEIMS solidarity theory to age divisions. People can form groups too based on their permissions and denials. CHILDREN YOUTH ADULTS GRANDPAREN TS Primary socialisation through parents and media. JENKS – childhood is a social construct. They have permissions and denials. Teenagers basically. HINE – teenagers did not appear till the 1950s. appeared because of the media and consumer goods. PARSONS AND EISENSTADT – period of transition. Has subcultures. Have the most rights and responsibilities. Have little discrimination. In some societies they have increased status – tribes. In western society they lose status. MUTRAN AND BURKE – old people have identities where they are less useful and powerful. Longer life expectancies have rewritten their identities. They can be old but still act young kinda. BARRETT ET AL – different societies give us different old age identities down to experiences. SETTERSTON – age divisions shape our interaction as age divisions come with norm expectations. A right of passage time or a significant birthday (18 th example) signifies a different age division. Aborigines – 13-year olds are sent into the wild, if they survive they are now an adult. Think ageism. JOHNSON AND TUMANKA – age setting is common in some societies such as the Massai tribe. Cultural changes mean we create different groups. Schooling = youth. Retirement = old age. 1. Children are physically and psychologically immature compared to adults 2. Children are dependent on adults for a range of biological and emotional needs – Children need a lengthy process of socialisation which takes several years. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides 3. In contrast to adults, children are not competent to run their own lives and cannot be held responsible for their actions In contrast to the period of childhood, one of the defining characteristics of adulthood is that adults are biologically mature, are competent to run their own lives and are fully responsible for their actions. However, despite broad agreement on the above, what people mean by childhood and the position children occupy is not fixed but differs across times, places and cultures. There is considerable variation in what people in different societies think about the place of children in society, about what children should and shouldn’t be doing at certain ages, about how children should be socialised, and about the age at which they should be regarded as adults. For this reason, Sociologists say that childhood is socially constructed. This means that childhood is something created and defined by society. THE NEW RIGHT In the 1980s New Right thinkers argued that government policy was undermining the family so policy changes were needed. Their thinking dominated policy development from 1979 to 1997. Like Functionalists, the New Right hold the view that there is only one correct or normal family type. This is the traditional or conventional nuclear family. Again, like Functionalists, The New Right sees this family as ‘natural’ and based on fundamental biological differences between men and women. In their view this family is the cornerstone of society; a place of contentment, refuge and harmony. Finally, the New Right argue that the decline of the traditional family and the growth of family diversity are the cause of many social problems such as higher crime rates and declining moral standards generally The New Right believe that it is important for children to have a stable home, with married mother and father, and that ideally the wife should be able to stay at home to look after the children. They believe that the introduction of the welfare state led to a culture where people depend on hand-outs from the state and that these encourage single parenting, which in turn, they argue leads to deviancy and a decline in morality. New Right thinking encouraged the conservative government to launch the Back to Basics campaign 1993 to encourage a return to traditional family values. This was criticised for being unsuccessful, and hypocritical due some Conservative MPs being found to be having affairs or being divorced Evidence for ‘non-nuclear families’ being a problem The rate of family breakdown is much lower amongst married couples (6% compared to 20%) Children from broken homes are almost five times more likely to develop emotional problems Young people whose mother and father split up are also three times as likely to become aggressive or badly behaved Lone-parent families are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as two-parent families. Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders.” Criticisms of the New Right They exaggerate the decline of the Nuclear family. Most adults still marry and have children. Most children are reared by their two natural parents. Most marriages continue until death. Divorce has increased, but most divorcees remarry. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Want to earn £756 extra per year? Stuvia.co.uk - The Marketplace for Revision Notes & Study Guides Feminism – gender roles are socially determined rather than being fixed by biology. Traditional gender roles are oppressive to women. Feminism – divorce being easier is good because without it many women end up being trapped in unhappy or abusive relationships. Most single parents are not welfare scroungers – most want to work but find it difficult to find jobs that are flexible enough, so they can balance work and child care. Chester (see later!) argues that the New Right exaggerate the extent of cohabiting and single parent families – most children still spend most of their lives in a nuclear family arrangement. Downloaded by: richardson1984 | [email protected] Distribution of this document is illegal Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) Want to earn £756 extra per year?