Families and Household Theorists

Murdock

Functions

Parsons

Stabilisation of adult personalities

Engels

Patriarchal monogamous family maintains capitalism

Zaretsky

• Unit of consumption

• Safety valve

Benson

Cohabiting couples are more likely to break down than married ones

Murray

Underclass has been created through an over generous welfare state

Somerville

Social policies have freed women and the family is no longer a patriarchal institution

Firestone

Separation of the sexes

Ansley

Emotional sponges

Smart

Individualism

Murphy

Children born outside of marriage are more likely to underachieve and develop serious illness

Chester

Cohabitation is testing the water before marriage

Fletcher

High expectations are the reason for divorce

Mooney (et al)

Parental conflict has more of an affect than separation

De’Ath and Slater

Conflict in reconstituted families

Allan and Crow

Divided loyalties and difficulties disciplining

Melanie Phillips

Riots caused by absent fathers

Chester

Neo-conventional family - nuclear is the ideal

Rapoports

• Cultural diversity

• Life course diversity

• Organisational diversity

• Generational diversity

• Social class diversity

Judith Stacey

• Divorce extended family

• Women have been the main agents of change

Giddens and Beck

Family is unstable due to greater freedom e.g: serial monogamy (risk society)

Elizabeth Bott

Conjugal roles

Young and Willmott

March of progress

Ann Oakley

Dual burden - men do housework but not enough

Dunscombe and Marsden

Triple shift

Gillian Dunne

Gender scripts - same sex couples are equal

Gershuny

The longer the wife had been in paid work, the more housework the husband did

Pahl and Vogler

Pooling and allowance system

Edgell

Husband makes all the important decisions in middle class families

Smart

Same sex couples are happy to leave finances to one as they don’t associate it with power

Dobash and Dobash

Domestic violence

Faith Robertson Elliot

Not all men are aggressive

Aries

Portraits of children presented them as adults showing that childhood is a construct

Pollock

Artwork of children doesn’t display their role

Shorter

Childhood has a functional fit with modern society

Gittens

Adults force children to be dependent on them in order to maintain authority (age patriarchy)

Hockey and James

Childhood is an oppressive phase of life and often wish to escape it by acting up/down

Sue Palmer

Toxic childhood

Furedi

Paranoid parenting

Postman

Childhood is disappearing

Opie

Children are still partaking in childlike activities but in different forms due to technology

Jenks

Childhood is changing and adults are dependent on their children as all their other relationships are now unstable

Womack

Childhood is only disappearing for children who are poor

McRobbie

Bedroom culture

Bonke

More expectation for girls to do housework than boys

Mayall

Children are viewed as socialisation projects which parents can mould into what they want

Brannen

Asian families strict on daughters