sociology family terms

Nuclear family 

Two generations: parents and children living in the same household e.g a mum, dad, and son.

• Most common type of family today

• Murdock calls it an universal institution

• Parsons say its function is primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities.

Reconstituted family

One or both partners previously married, with children of previous relationships e.g mum, son, step father, step son

ONS 11% of families

• Increase in divorce has allowed for more of this

• Pursuing confluent love could be another reason

• With increased secularisation and less stigma – Postmodernists like Beck say people more free to pick relationships that suit them – Individualism.

Serial monogamy

A series of monogamous marriages

Example – a married person getting divorced and remarried more than once.

• Increased as divorce has increased

• people are living longer

• Changes in the law in last decades

• less stigma,

• pursuing a pure relationship

Divorce

Divorce is the legal termination of a marriage. e.g one or both people no longer want to stay married anymore so one or both can file for divorce.

• last decade divorces have increased - ONS has those married in 1998, a third of marriages have ended now.

• increase divorce change in the law. In 1969 Divorce Law Reform Act widened grounds of divorce to sole reason of ‘irretrievable breakdown’

Beanpole family

A multi-generational extended family which is long and thin, with few aunts, uncles and cousins,

reflecting fewer children being born in each generation, but people living longer.

Brannen coined this term

• Life expectancy increasing ‘ageing population’

• Less children (lower fertility) 1.76 UK Source: Office of National Statistics (ONS)

• Increase in divorce – growth of lone parent families, 1 in 4 dependent children live in lone parent families. (Source: Office of National Statistics ONS)