AS Sociology Chapter 3 Family Evidences

Murdock’s four family characteristics

Common residence
Economic co-operation and reproduction
Adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship
One or more children

Giddens’s definition of family

Poeple directly linked by kin connections, where adult members take responsibility for childcare.

Murdock’s four functional prerequisites

Sexual control, reproduction, socialisation, and economic provisions.

Parson’s two irreducible functions

The primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities.

Fletcher’s two functions

Core functions that include childbearing and childrearing.

Peripheral functions that include education, healthcare and recreation.

Horwitz neo-functionalism family

The family as a bridge connecting the “micro world” of the individual with the “macro world” of society.

Althusser’s family as ISA

The family acts as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) that teach children norms and values broadly supportive of the economic and political situation.

Zaretsky Marxist family

Socialisation involves the passing on of ruling-class ideaology:
beliefs about competition
importance of working ethic
needing to obey authority

Zaretsky “cushioning effect”

The family provides a cushioning effect or emotional haven from the harsh realities of capitalism.

Zaretsky’s unit of consumption

The family is a unit of consumption, targeted by advertisers.

UK Equal Pay Act

A law that enforces equal pay for equal work regardless of gender or sex in the United Kingdom, aiming to eliminate wage discrimination.

Sex Discrimination Act UK

A law that prohibits discrimination based on sex or marital status in employment and education in the United Kingdom, promoting gender equality.

Dual burden (double shift)

Women perform two shifts, one inside the home as domestic labourers and one outside the home as paid employees.

Duncombe and Marsden’s "Triple Shift”

Women perform three shifts, one inside the home as domestic labourers, one outside as paid employees, and one on emotional work by investing time and effort into the pyschological well-bring of family members.

Ansley’s cushioning male anger

Women are “takers of shit”, absoring men’s workplace frustrations.

Bruegel’s ‘reserve army of labour’

Women are called into the workforce when needed, and forced back into the family when there is a surplus.

UK 1969 Divorce Reform Act

Allowed ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ as the only requirement for divorce.

Wilmott and Young’s symmetrical family

A concept describing a family structure where both partners share responsibilities and roles more equally.

Middle-class conjugal roles

Middle-class families are more likely to have joint conjugal roles, where adults within the family share domestic duties.

Working-class segregated conjugal roles

Working-class families often have distinct roles for each partner, with men typically taking on breadwinning and women focusing on homemaking.

Pahl and Vogler

Men make the most important financial decision in middle-class families, whereas women make decisions about every domestic spending.

Lareau’s middle-class parents

Middle-class parents ‘actively fosters children’s individual talents, opinions, and skills’.

Lareau’s working-class parents

Working class parents are more likely to adopt a parenting style based around natural growth, allowing children independence.

Berthoud’s cultural and ethnic diversity

Afro-Caribbean families in the UK features low rates of marriage and high rates of single parenthood.

South Asian families in the UK have lower divorce and cohabitation rates, and more three-generation families living together.

Dale et al.’s ethnic differences

Ethnic differences in female employment and family roles e.g. Balck women were more likely to work full time while raising a family than other ethnic groups.

Morgan’s criticise cohabitation

Cohabiting relationships are more unstable and less likely to last, may have other partners, more likely to divorce, more likely to be cruel or abusive.

Murray’s criticise single-parent families

Argues that single-parent families contribute to a “dependency culture”
Welfares support can discourage self-reliance, creating an “underclass” prone to crime, unemployment and educational underachievement.

Stacey’s family diversity

Argues modern societies exhibit no single dominant family form, diversity is here to stay.

Firestone’s male domination in family

Biology is the essential gender difference from which all cultural differences flow. Women have to give birth and depend on men.

Friedan and Millett’s patriarchal structure

See the patriarchal structures and practices of the family itself as the source of female oppression.

Gershuny et al’s domestic labour

Women of all ages, ethnicities and classes do more domestic labour than men.

Sullivan et al. ‘quiet revolution’

Industrial societies have experienced a ‘quiet revolution’ in conjugal roles based on a general acceptance of gender equality.

Archard’s social construction of childhood

Every human society has developed a concept of childhood, but societies differ in their definitions of childhood.

Aries’s pre-industrial childhood

There was no idea of childhood in pre-industrial society.

Benedict’s non-western childhood

Children in non-western cultures have more responsibility at home and work.

Pilcher’s childhood in the West

Clearly defined as a separate section of life to adulthood.

Hecht’s ethnography study

‘Unconventional childhood’ of Brazilian street children:

Living and working in the streets at an early age

Still maintain links with parents and wider family

Aries’s March of Progress View

Children are more valued

More protected

Better educated

Healthier

Have far more rights

Aries’s changes in childhood

Industrialisation was the main catalyst, with lower infant mortality rates, laws against child labour, and compulsory schooling

Robertson’s disappearance of childhood

Children are encouraged to be consumers, using goods and services that were formely available to only adults.

Postman’s disappearance of childhood

The development of ‘open admission technologies’ that expose children to images of childhood (sex, violence, news). Shift from print culture to television culture.

Palmer’s Toxic Childhood

Rapid technological and cultural changes have damaged children’s physical, emotional, and intellectual development.

Gittin’s age patriarchy

There is an age patriarchy of adult domination and child dependency.

Mead’s post-figurative society

Post-figurative society: where older generations control cultural knowledge.

Victor’s status of older people

The status of older people depends upon a number of factors e.g. in nomadic societies the elderly are considered a problem when they are no longer able to easily follow the nomadic lifestyle.

Branen’s social policies for eldery

Emphasises the need for policies that recognise seniors as both caregivers and dependents.