Families and households

Delphy and Leonard on gender roles

• suggested exploitation of women in the family was down to the patriarchy, in benefitted men for women to be exploited in family

• males having control over finances in home, not having same control in workplace

• women’s work in the home as an expectation without financial reward, outwardly in society contributed to economic stability and prosperity

• home unique economic microsystem

• domestic labour an expectation of wife/mother

• men seen as helping out when caring for children, not their responsibility, more likely to be praised for performing in help of housework- seen as not part of their gender domain

• childcare feminine gender domain

• in the home the mans time was seen as leisure time

• women not afforded leisure time

  evaluation

• Links to Oakley and Duncombe and Marsden’s dual burden and triple shift

• recent changes in division of labour still see women doing more than male counterparts- Gershunny refers to this as a form of ‘lagged adaptation’ of males in becoming involved in domestic labour

• their research ignored the impact of capitalism in shaping economics of ‘gendered labour’ as being lower status

• The role of dual burden and triple shift taken on in one parent families without the presence of males

• Dunne found there to be greater equality in domestic labour in lesbian households

Theories of the family Functionalism and Marxism: Murdock

Functionalism (consensus perspective)-

• Murdock 1949: four functions of the family: stable satisfaction of the sex drive, meeting family’s economic needs, reproductive, socialisation of young

Criticisms of Murdock:

Marxists: Argue that the family exists to serve the needs of capitalism

Feminism: Argue that the family exists to serve the needs of patriarchy

Parsons

• believed that the functions the family performs depends on the society it is fund: family will mirror society of which it is based

• Two type of family structure: nuclear family- heterosexual monogamous relationship, with dependent children

• The extended family- 3 generations under one roof

The family will fit society:

• pre-industrial: extended- families needed to be large to work large pieces of land

• Modern-industrial: nuclear- moveable families to follow where jobs were- economic imperative changes the structure of the family, geographically mobile- best suited for social mobility also, children moving out prevents conflict

  ^schools and socialising institutions took roles away from nuclear families (functions)

Parsons: nuclear family

role of nuclear family:

primary socialisation of children

Stabilisation of adult personalities: adults can relax, support each other and release tensions in home- returning to workplace refreshed- economically positive- too sexually monogamous relationship satisfying eachother’’s sexdrives

evidence against Parsons:

• ignore diversity of family forms- eg reconstituted

• Zaretsky: family as a safe haven

Criticisms of functionalist view

• Functionalists tend to ignore the ‘dark side’ of the family- male dominance, child abuse, conflict between partners, etc

• Functionalists ignore the diversity of family types

• Parsons views seen as sexist as he sees the wife/mother as having the main responsibility for providing warmth and emotional support for de-stressing her hardworking husband

Marxism- conflict perspective:

• 3 main functions of the family:

  • inheritance of property: Marx believed prior to slavery, humans lived in a ‘primitive communism’- sharing resources amongst groups

    Friedrich Engels- humans lived in a ‘promiscuous horde’- non-monogamy, sexual needs expressed to everyone

  • As the forces of production developed so did private property- and the need for patriarchal monogamous family- fathers passing property onto sons

Ideological functions

• children socialised into hierarchy leading them to believe subordination and power is legitimate- children mimicking proletariat and parents as bourgeoise

• Practice for living under capitalism, power is normal and natural

• The home also acts as a ‘haven’ from the exploitation of capitalism-a place where the suffering of the worker is soothed '(Zaretsky)

The Family as a unit of consumption

• Capitalism exploits the labour of workers, selling what they produce for more than they pay the workers to produce these goods

• The family is a target as a unit which consumed good (Zaretsky)- keeping up with the Jones idea

• - Advertisers urge families to compete via consumption

• Media target children who pester their parents

• children who lack the the latest gadgets are stigmatised by their peers

Criticism of the Marxist view

• Marxists tend to assume the nuclear family is dominant in capitalist society, which ignores family diveristy

• Feminists: the focus on social class and capitalism ignores gender inequalities

  • argues the family primarily serves men/patriarchy

• Functionalists: Marxists ignore the benefits that family provides for its members

Liberal Feminism

• concerned with campaigning against sex discrimination and for equal rights/opportunities for women

  • Moving towards greater equality, but depends on further reforms, changes to attitudes and socialisation patterns

• Generally March of Progress view, but do not feel true equality has yet been achieved

  • children are being socialised in a more equal manner

• Criticized by feminists for not challenging underlying causes of women’s oppression

Marxist Feminism

Capitalism is the main source of women’s oppression

• Women reproduce the labour force though their unpaid domestic labour (maintaining husbands and socialising the next gen of workers)

Ansley 1972: argued that the emotional support provided by wives acts as a safety valve for the husbands’ frustration

Feeley 1972: argues the family is an authoritarian unit dominated by the husband. It Teaches children to give in to parental authority and accept their place within a capitalist society

• in order to end women’s oppression the family must be abolished, a socialist revolution must occur, and a classless society created

Radical Feminism

• All societies are found on patriarchy

  • Men are the enemy(who oppress and exploit women)

  • Family and marriage are key intuitions in patriarchy (men benefit from women’s domestic labour; use threat of violence to gain control)

• The family must therefore be abolished, advocate separatism and political lesbianism

  • heterosexual sex is ‘sleeping with the enemy’

  • Greer 2000: creation of matrifocal households needed

  • Purdy ‘baby-strike’ to have women’s demands taken seriously

• Criticism: Sommerville 2000

  • There has been improvements

  • heterosexuality makes political lesbianism unworkable

Difference Feminism

• women have different experiences of gender based on factors such as gender and class

criticisms: disadvantages shared such as gender pay gap

The Personal Life Perspective

• to understand families the POV of looking at the individuals concerned and the meanings they give to their relationships, and they assume that individuals; families and their members are passive puppets that are manipulated by the structure of society to perform certain functions

Criticize structural theories for assumption that the traditional nuclear family is the dominant type of family

The personal Life Perspective

Smart: family is not necessarily biological, she draws our attention to a range of other personal or intimate relationships that are important to people, even though they may not be conventionally defined as family - eg pets- she prioritises emotional bonds and cultural heritage in her definition of what constitutes family

• the family is not in decline just more diverse and complex than before

Criticisms of Personal life perspective

• rejects the top-down view

• accused of taking too broad a view, critics state that through this perspective we ignore what is special about relationships that are based on blood or marriage- the concept of family becomes almost meaningless

• unlike functionalist, we recognise that through this perspective, relations biologically are not always important in definitions of family

Couples and the domestic division of labour

19th century- the Victorian family very patriarchal; women handed over by father as property

divorce only granted under men

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Instrumental role vs the expressive role:

• traditionally men taken instrumental role- working and economically taking care of family, women not working cooking cleaning and childrearing

• Parsons argues that men and women fundamentally different in biology leading to this difference in roles- maternal instincts, leading to this division of labour

• Neoliberal/new right agree with this

Conjugal Roles

Bott:

• distinguished two types of conjugal roles

Segregated conjugal roles

• traditional nuclear family

Joint conjugal roles

• couples share tasks such as housework and childcare, whilst often spending leisure time together- previously men would spend leisure time with male friends away from the home or separate from wife

The symmetrical family

Young and Willmott 1973:

• researched families in the East End (Bethnal Green) in late 1950s

• very traditional but things were changing

• Take a march of progress view of history and the family’s place within it

• found that women were working more; men were doing more around the house; couples had become more ‘privatised’

• this was a result of: changes in women’s position, geographical mobility; new technology; higher standards of living

The Feminist view of housework

Ann Oakley 1974

• criticized the March of Progress view held by Young and Wilmott

• Argued that husbands interviewed helped once a week- hardly symmetrical

• Argued that there was some evidence of increased involvement of husbands in housework

• many of those interviewed felt they were good fathers because they played with children in evenings or at weekends, but this tends simply to ‘free up’ time for wives to do more housework

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  • argued domestic labour is heavily sex-typed: men doing DIY or handling machinery and gadgets such as new hoovers or lawn mowers, women tend to do cooking and cleaning

  • Men tend to only be involved in the more rewarding aspect of childcare such as taking kids to football matches on a Saturday morning

  • Men tend to get half an hour more ‘free time’ per day than women’

Class/Impact of paid work and domestic division of labour

Man Yee-Kan 2001:

• found that better-paid, younger, more educated women do less housework per week

Jonathan Gershuny

• similarly found that women in full-time jobs did less housework

  • the longer they had a full-time job the more domestic labour their husbands did

    ^agreed with Oakley in labour being sex typed

• Couples whose parents had a more equal relationship were more likely to have a more equal relationship themselves

British Social attitudes 2013 survey

• Fall in the umber of people who think it’s a man’s job to be a breadwinner and a women’s job to be a homemaker

The Dual Burden

• many feminists argue there is little evidence for the ‘new man’

• Ferri and Smith: today women carry a dual burden of paid work and housework

• Morris: even unemployed men avoid housework

Emotion Work and the triple shift

Duncombe and Marsden found that women undertake the majority of this work- of paid work, house work, and emotional labour

Lesbian couples and gender scripts

Dunne: argued that the division of labour continues in straight couples because of deeply ingrained gender scripts

• doesn’t seem to exist in homosexual couples

• more opportunities to negotiate roles in same-sex relationships, not conforming to gender-scripts also, fluid set ups

Couples resources and decision making and domestic violence

Barret and McIntosh: men get more from women’s labour than they get back in financial support, financial support comes with strings attached

Kempson. in w/c families women deny their own needs

Pooling and the Allowance system

• Pahl and Vogler looked at how each partner’s contribution to family income affects decision making

• Two types of family income:

  • Pooling: joint responsibility for expenditure

  • Allowance (husband earns, pays wife allowance for all expenditures, keeps surplus for self

• Vogler found a sharp increase in pooling, 19 percent to 50

• Pooling more common in dual earner households, but men make largest financial decisions it seems

• Men’s careers take priority

• Finch: women’s lives are shaped around husbands career

Edgell: ranked decisions

• very important financial decisions taken by husbands such as mortgage house buying, cars etc

• important: taken jointly (holidays, children)

• Less important taken by wives (decor/clothes/food)

Feminists dispute this is because men are earning more they should make these decisions, and argue that socialisation, culture and gender scripts play a role

Personal life perspective:

• money is decided individually amongst couples, there is no natural or fixed wy money should be distributed or controlled by parties in relationship

• same sex couples attached no importance to who controls the money often in relationships- no fixed gender scripts

• Weeks 2011 found that in some couples their was co-independence where there is some sharing but both partners retains control over some money and retains a sense of independence

Domestic violence

The Home Office 2013 founds: 1.2 million women have suffered domestic abuse

British Crime Survey 2007: Domestic violence accounts for almost a 6th of all violent crime

Dobash and Dobash- men reacted violently to something they viewed challenged their authority

• One in three victims of domestic abuse in Britain in male, refuge beds scarse though

Radical feminists argue that domestic violence is a way men keep women under control, usual for patriarchy

Marxist feminism: Domestic violence is due to male workers being exploited at work, they then take this out on their wives at home

The Materialist Explanation: high levels of stress more likely due to over crowding, low income

hard to maintain stable, caring relationships

• generally find its amongst w/c

Issues with studying domestic violence

• difficulty in obtaining valid info, official police stats rely on reports- not all victims report, misrepresented info put into different categories

• questionnaires could lead to inconsistencies, definitions of defining domestic violence, participants may be reluctant to giving info

Childhood

Modern Western notion of childhood:

• children physically and psychologically more immature than adults

• lacks skills and experience

• Pilcher: childhood is distinctly separate from adulthood a alternate ‘life stage’

• seen in different laws and different entertainment/clothes

• childhood is seen as golden age of innocence, they are innocent, we preserve innocence

  Wagg says childhood is socially constructed, means different things in different parts of the world

Differences in Childhood

Punch:

• Children in Bolivia, 5 years old, take work responsibilities in the home and local community without hesitation

• From 10 children can legally work

Malinowki:

The Tobriand Islanders do not view the sexual activities of young people and children with distain, tolerate their experimentation

Historical differences in childhood

Aries:

argued that in the middle ages, the idea of childhood did not exist

• children were not seen as having a different nature or different needs from adults

• children were mini adults, with the same rights, duties, and skills as adults

• children would face the same punishments regardless of age for breaking the laws in their society or community

Aries came to this conclusion from looking at the portrayal of children in paintings- such as wearing the same clothes as adults

Parental attitudes were also different, after 13th century and onwards this changes:

• schools started to specialise in educating the young

• clothing became separate for adults and children

• child centeredness started to occur- handbooks on childrearing were available for parents

Aries: these developments cumulate in the modern ‘cult of childhood’- a world obsessed with childhood

Criticism: in middle ages they simply had a different view of childhood

Reasons for changes in position of children

Declining Family sizes- parents have more money to spend on children and having them later- child centredness

Children’s rights

Compulsory schooling- length of time children spend in school longer

Children’s health- paediatricians

Child Protection laws- police and other institutions have requirement to care for children

Lower infant mortality rates- families having less children as they do not need to compensate for children dying early in life, previously children would die in infancy

Child Labour laws- children don’t work until 16 by law in UK

Has the position of children improved?/yes

March of Progress View:

• children are more valued, protected and better cared for now:

  • legislation, the role of specialists, increased government spending on children

  • cost of raising a child

  • child centred family

  • child- centred society

Has the position of children improved?/no

Conflict sociologists

• March of progress view is idealised, false ignores inequalities

  • lack power

  • not all children have the same life experiences or opportunities: nationality, gender socialisation, ethnicity- academic stress from Asian parents, class and leisure time/opportunities

Continued childhood experiences

Firestone: child labour laws keep children dependent on adults- reliance means no power, form of oppression

Limitations:

Children’s movements: curfews by police in public areas, road safety and stranger danger, removal of children out of spaces- corner shops restricting how many school children can come in, CCTV in spaced where children congregate

Children’s bodies: controlling body autonomy: don’t run walk sensibly- hallways in schools have this rule, tattoo and piercing age limits, restricting them from behaviours society deems taboo such as public nose picking

Children’s time: daily routines- school timings, speed of growing up- access to certain resources and info such as internet access, parental controls

dark side of family: child abuse

The disappearance of childhood

Postman: childhood disappearing at a dazzling speed: children have the same rights as adults, similarities in clothing, and children committing adult crimes: James Bulger murder

• television culture contributing to this, books and newspaper used to hide adult world previously, access to this info earlier through media and TV

The ‘new sociology of childhood’

Smart: argued that sociologists need to consider child experiences and views

• children not passive in divorce situations: comforting parents

• as well how children define family different

• open-ended questions should be used in informal unstructured interviews- allows children to express themselves

Demography (Births, Deaths, Fertility and the ageing population)

Birth and Fertility Rate:

• long-term decline in birth rate since 1900- 1900: 28.7, 2014: 12.2 per 1000 of the population being born per year

Baby Boom

• Post WW1 and 2- during war men went to fight, excitement when they came back

• 1960s (mass migration and the ‘summer of love’) people coming to settle to rebuild British economy, brought a higher birth rate + cultural effect of attitude towards sex changing, liberation and influence of music

• Post 2001- EU enlargement, free movement from other parts of Europe, bringing higher Birth Rate

Total Fertility Rate:

• 1960s 2.95

• 2014: 1.83

Changes show: more women remaining childless; women postponing having children

Reasons for Decline in the Birth Rate

1) Changes in the position of women- prioritising education

2) Decline in infant mortality rate- babies less likely to die in first year, NHS and maternity care

3) Children are an economic liability- children don’t work, expensive to raise, cant afford to have more children

4) Child centredness- spend more money on less children, focus on smaller number of children to give them best opportunities and living conditions

Future Trends in Birth Rates

• Family size has decreased over last century: extended to nuclear

• However there has been a slight increase in births since 2001- One reason for this is the increase in immigration. On average, mothers from outside the UK have a higher fertility than those born in the UK

  ^Babies born to mothers from outside the UK accounted for 25 percent of all births in 2011

The implications of changes in fertility?

The Family- smaller, families, women working, better off couples may have more children as they can afford childcare

The dependency ratio- the size of the working population compared to the size of the non-working population. The money from the working population must support the dependent population

Public services and Policies- fewer schools, child services, may be needed, different size houses, fewer maternity/paternity leave, etc

Death Rate, IMR, and Life expectancy

• Since 1902 there has been a decline in death rate from 18 per 1000, to 8.9 per 1000 in 2007

• The infant mortality rate has also declined

Due to:

• health education

• Improved working conditions

• Improved hygiene

• Higher living standards

• Public health and welfare

Life expectancy

• Males in England in 1900 LE 50, women 57

• Males in 2013 for men 90. 7, Females 94

Class, gender and regional differences in LE

Class- working class men are nearly 3x likely to die before reaching 65 compared to middle class men

Gender- women generally live longer than men

Regional- those living in the North and Scotland generally have lower LE than those in The south

The Ageing population

The average age of the UK pop is increasing- 1971- 34.1 to 2013-40.3

• caused by LE, declining IMR and declining fertility

Effects of the Aging population

• older people consume a larger amount of public services- eg NHS

• Ageism- negative stereotyping, old age connected to dependency

• The dependency ratio- increase of burden to the working population- people have to work for longer: raising retirement age, and tax rising as public services are needing more funding

• housing taken up by one person occupying sometimes large houses that once had a family, housing shortage in UK for young people/young families

Policy implications

• changes to retirement age

• reverse the trend of early retirement

• Retraining to start different careers

• changing housing policies

• cultural changes in our attitudes towards older people

government policies may need to change

Ageism, modernity and postmodernity

• Old in modern society- identity and status determined by our role in production, those dependent are stigmatised

• Old age in postmodern society- fixed life stages have broken down, we have more choice about lifestyle and consumption becomes key to our identity

Demography: Migration, Immigration and Emigration

Irish- 1900-1945 largest immigrant group followed by Eastern and Central European Jews, and Canadian and Americans

Post WW2: thousands of Carribbeans migrate to UK and 1960s then Pakistani, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etcs to help rebuild Britain’s economy after the war

+ Britain seen significant number of migrants from ex-British colonies in Africa too

1980s onwards immigration

• non-white immigration accounts for little over a quarter of immigration to the UK

  • main source of settlers increasingly come from within the European union

Emigration

Until 1980 from the mid-16th century, the UK was almost always a NET EXPORTER of people (more people left than arrived

• The main reasons for emigration are economic

  • push factors: economic recession/unemployment

  • Pull factors: higher wages/better job opportunities

• Changed in recent times, some migrate for political and religious reasons eg Syria and Palestinians during Israel Gaza conflict

Migration summary

• The dependency ratio: reduction in dependency ratio due to immigration- retirement people moving to warmer climates, higher fertility rate= need more assistance, reduced average age of the population and produces more workers

Globalisation and migration

Globalisation is producing increased migration: 200-2013 saw 33 percent rise in migration globally

Differentiation: permanent settlers to temporary workers, spouses, refugees and asylum seekers- some legal some not

Super-diversity: migrants now come from many more countries around the world

The feminisation of migration:

• almost half of all global migrants are female. Resulted in the globalisation of gender labour- female migrants are given stereotyped roles as carers or providers of sexual services

Migrant Identities

Hybrid identities: migrants may develop a hybrid identity from two or more different sources

Transnational identities: Globalisation creates back and forth movements of people rather than permanent settlement in another country,