Topic 1- Couples

What is a household?

A person living alone or a group of people living together. They may or may not be related to eachother.

What is the definition of family?

Involves monogamous marriage between man and woman, plus children, sharing the same residence

What are the different types of family?

Nuclear

Extended single/lone parent

Reconstituted

Beanpole

Cohabition

Same sex

Households

What is a nuclear family?

Makes up 30% of families in the UK, primary caregivers are mum and dad with children

What is a lone parent?

One parent with kids, makes up 15% of families in the UK

What is a reconstituted family?

Divorced parents re-marry, multiple children combined to form step-children, one of the fastest growing families in the UK

What is a beanpole family?

Extended family, with multiple generations.

What is a cohabitation family?

Unmarried couples that live together, could potentially have kids.

What are same sex families?

Gay/Lesbian couples, children are adopted or born through surrogacy

What are Talcott Parsons key concepts?

In a traditional nuclear family, roles are segregated.

Husband is the breadwinner

Wife has an expressive role, geared towards primary socialisation.

Difference in roles is based on biological differences

What are Elizabeth Bott’s key concepts?

Segregated conjugal roles:

Couples have separate roles, a male breadwinner and female carer. Leisure time is also separated.

Joint conjugal roles:

Couples share tasks such as childcare and housework and spend leisure time together.

What are Young and Willmott’s key concepts?

Take a ‘march of progress’

Family as gradually improving, memberw becoming more equal and democratic

‘Symmetrical families’ are now more common in younger couples.

What are Ann Oakley’s key concepts?

She’s a feminist, believes women remain unequal

Women still do most of the housework

Woman occupy a subordinate and dependent role within the family

What is the domestic division of labour?

The roles women and men perform in relation to housework,childcare,paid work.

What does Johnathan Gurshuny argue?

Argues that women working full time leads to a more equal division of labour at home as these women did less domestic work.

What does Oriel Sullivan argue?

Data collected in 1997,1985,1975 shows a trend of women doing less domestic labour and men doing more. Her analysis showed an increase in equal work.

What does Dale Southerton argue?

Quality family time being set up was the mother’s job. Due to changes of them working, it has led to people’s time being fragmented and ‘de-routinised’. Men and women also have different leisure experiences despite having equal time. men are interrupted whilst women are interrupted by childcare.

What do Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden argue?

Women perform emotional work, housework and paid work (triple shift)

What is the ‘new man’?

A man who does an equal share of housework and childcare.

What does Gurshuny show?

Through his findings, Gurshuny found that people who’s parents has equal relationships will also split housework more equally.

What did Kan find?

For every £10,000 a year more a woman earns, she does 2 hours less of housework.

What does Gillian Dunne’s study show?

Same sex couples reveal they have a more symmetrical relationship due to the absence of traditional heterosexual ‘gender scripts’

What is the dual burden?

Where women do jobs and housework (like childcare)

27/09/2023 - Are couples becoming more equal?

What is financial literacy?

Possession of the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with their financial resources.

What is paid work?

Working for financial gain or reward

What is decision making?

Cognitive process in the selection of a belief or course of action among several possible alternate options.

What are the two types of money management?

Pooling

Allowance

What is the allowance system?

Men giving their wives an allowance, they budget that to meet the families needs. Husband uses remaining surplus of income for himself.

What is pooling?

Both partners have access to income and joint responsibility through a joint bank account, this is more common of partners who work full time.

Who found that most financial decisions were made by the man?

Hardill (1997)

How does paid work impact decision making?

Husbands would make more than their wife, leads to dominance over financial decisions.

Why do women do more unpaid labour?

Women earn less in society, so it is economically rational for them to do housework.

What is the personal life perspective of money?

Focus on the meanings couples give to who controls the money

What are same sex couples’ view on finance?

They do not see any inequality or importance on who controls the money, and were perfectly happy to leave it up to their partners.

27/09/2023- Domestic Violence

What did Dobash and Dobash show through their crime survey for England and Wales in 2013?

7.3% of women and 1.5% of men report experiencing domestic abuse in the previous year.

How are domestic abuse statistics unreliable?

Continuous abuse can’t count each incident

People are not willing to report it to the police.

People have a trivial approach and do not want to get the police involved

What is Jeffries take on how to prevent domestic abuse towards women.

Women need to be completely separated from men to be truly free from domestic abuse

What do Radical feminists believe about domestic abuse?

Believe that domestic violence is caused by the patriarchy

What is the material explanation for domestic abuse?

DA is the result of stress on family members, caused by social inequality

what sociologists look into money management?

pahl and vogler

what sociologists talk about the personal life perspective of money?

smart and weeks et al same sex pooling systems

what does elliot argue in relation to domestic violence

not all men are aggressive and most are opposed to dv