Family Diversity

What is meant by a modernist perspective on the family?

• Modernists see modern society as having a fairly fixed, clear-cut and predictable structure.

• They see the nuclear family as the ‘best’ family type.

• → The nuclear family fits into and helps maintain the structure of modern society by performing essential functions.

• Functionalism and the New Right are examples of modernist perspectives.

What does Talcott Parsons mean by the ‘functional fit’ between the nuclear family and modern society?

• The nuclear family is uniquely suited to the needs of modern society.

• It provides a geographically and socially mobile workforce.

• → The nuclear family fits the requirements of modern society and helps maintain its stability and effectiveness.

What are Parsons’ two ‘irreducible functions’ of the nuclear family?

1. Primary socialisation of children → teaches children society’s norms and values.

2. Stabilisation of adult personalities → provides emotional support for adults.

→ These functions contribute to the stability and effectiveness of society.

Why do functionalists see the nuclear family as the ‘best’ family type?

• Nuclear family → performs essential functions effectively.

• → Therefore, functionalists believe we can expect the nuclear family to be the typical family structure in modern society.

• It has a division of labour between husband and wife.

• Other family types may be viewed as dysfunctional, abnormal or deviant because they are seen as less able to perform the family’s required functions.

🔥 Critical analysis:

→ Functionalism can therefore be criticised for assuming that one family form is universally best, potentially ignoring the ability of diverse family types to meet family members’ needs.

What is the New Right’s view of family diversity?

• The New Right have a conservative and anti-feminist perspective.

• They are strongly opposed to family diversity.

• Like functionalists, they believe there is one correct/normal family type.

• → The traditional patriarchal nuclear family.

What does the New Right see as the ‘normal’ or ideal family?

• Married couple + dependent children

• Patriarchal division of labour:
  

  • Husband → breadwinner

  • Wife → homemaker

• Similar to the functionalist distinction between:
  

  • Husband → instrumental role

  • Wife → expressive role

• → They see this family as natural, based on biological differences between men and women.

Why do the New Right see the traditional nuclear family as essential to society?

• They see it as the cornerstone of society.

• It provides a place of:
  

  • Refuge

  • Contentment

  • Harmony

• → The stable nuclear family contributes to wider social stability.

Why do the New Right oppose changes such as cohabitation, same-sex marriage and lone parenthood?

• They argue that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and growth of family diversity cause social problems.

• They are particularly concerned about lone-parent families, which they see as resulting from the breakdown of couple relationships.

• → They argue that lone-parent families can be harmful to children and create wider social problems.

Why do the New Right argue that lone-parent families are harmful?

• Lone mothers → allegedly cannot discipline children properly.

• Boys may lack an adult male role model → educational failure, delinquency and social instability.

• Lone-parent families are more likely to be poor → greater burden on the welfare state and taxpayers.

🔥 Analysis:

Lone parenthood

→ absence of traditional male role model + greater poverty

→ problems with discipline, education and socialisation

→ wider social problems

→ greater pressure on welfare spending.

What did Harry Benson (2006) find about family breakdown among cohabiting and married couples?

• Analysed data on parents of over 15,000 babies.

• During the first 3 years of the child’s life:
  

  • 20% of cohabiting couples experienced family breakdown.

  • Only 6% of married couples did.

• → Provides evidence for the New Right claim that marriage is more stable than cohabitation.

Why does Benson (2010; 2011) argue that married couples are more stable than cohabiting couples?

• Marriage requires a deliberate commitment to each other.

• Cohabitation allows partners to avoid commitment and responsibility more easily.

• → Greater commitment in marriage → greater relationship stability → more stable environment for raising children.

How do the New Right use evidence about marriage and cohabitation to explain wider social problems?

• Family breakdown → lone-parent families → potential harm to children.

• Decline of marriage → decline of traditional family values.

• → New Right argue that both the family and wider society are becoming ‘broken’.

• Solution → return to traditional values, particularly the value of marriage.

• → Marriage is seen as a way of preventing social disintegration and harm to children.

What policies do the New Right argue undermine the conventional family, and what do they propose instead?

Policies they oppose:

• Easy access to divorce

• Same-sex marriage

• Widespread welfare benefits

→ They argue these weaken the conventional family.

Their solution:

• Government should introduce policies that encourage couples to marry.

• → Strengthening marriage → greater family stability → fewer lone-parent families.

How does Ann Oakley (1997) criticise the New Right’s view of gender roles in the family?

• New Right assumes husbands’ and wives’ roles are fixed by biology.

• Oakley argues cross-cultural studies show great variation in the roles men and women perform within families.

• → Gender roles are therefore not biologically fixed or universal.

• Oakley sees the New Right view as a negative reaction to the feminist campaign for gender equality.

Why do feminists criticise the New Right’s preferred conventional nuclear family?

• Feminists argue that it is based on patriarchal oppression.

• The male breadwinner/female homemaker structure:
  

  • Restricts women’s ability to work

  • Creates financial dependence on men

  • Can deny women an equal say in decision-making

• → The conventional nuclear family can therefore be a fundamental cause of gender inequality.

How do critics challenge the New Right’s claim that lone-parent families cause delinquency?

• Critics argue there is no evidence that children in lone-parent families are more likely to become delinquent than children from two-parent families of the same social class.

• → This challenges the idea that family structure itself causes delinquency.

• Other factors, such as social class, may be more important.

How is the New Right’s claim that marriage means commitment while cohabitation does not challenged?

• Commitment depends on the meaning of the relationship to those involved, not simply whether they are married.

• Some people see cohabitation as:

  • A temporary phase before marriage

  • A permanent alternative to marriage

• → Cohabitation does not necessarily mean a lack of commitment.

How does Carol Smart (2011) challenge the New Right explanation for relationship breakdown?

• Cohabitation is more common among poorer social groups.

• Smart argues that poverty may cause relationship breakdown, rather than the decision not to marry.

• → The New Right may confuse correlation with causation:
  

  • Cohabitation + higher breakdown

  • does not necessarily mean cohabitation causes breakdown.

• Poverty could be the underlying cause of both.

What are the main criticisms of the New Right’s view of family diversity?

Feminists:

→ Gender roles are socially constructed, not biologically fixed.

→ Nuclear family can reinforce patriarchy.

Critics of lone-parent explanations:

→ Family structure does not necessarily cause delinquency.

→ Social class/poverty may be more important.

Critics of the marriage argument:

→ Cohabitation can involve genuine commitment.

→ Higher relationship breakdown may be linked to poverty, not simply cohabitation.

🔥 Overall:

→ The New Right may overstate the importance of family structure while underestimating wider social and economic factors.

How does Robert Chester (1985) view the growth of family diversity?

• Chester recognises some increase in family diversity.

• However, he does not see this as very significant or negative.

• → The main change is a shift from the conventional nuclear family to the neo-conventional family.

What is the difference between Chester’s conventional and neo-conventional family?

Conventional family:

• Nuclear family

• Male breadwinner

• Female homemaker

Neo-conventional family:

• Dual-earner family

• Both spouses work outside the home.

→ Chester’s neo-conventional family is similar to Young and Willmott’s symmetrical family.

Why does Chester argue that the nuclear family remains dominant despite increased family diversity?

• Most people do not choose alternatives to the nuclear family, such as lone parenthood, on a long-term basis.

• The nuclear family remains the ideal to which most people aspire.

• → Chester argues that the extent and significance of family diversity has been exaggerated.

How does Chester use the life cycle to explain apparent family diversity?

• People may live outside nuclear families at particular points in their lives.

• Examples:
  

  • Elderly widows

  • Divorced men

  • Young people who have not yet married

• Many have previously been part of a nuclear family or will be in the future.

• → Family diversity at any one moment does not necessarily mean people reject the nuclear family permanently.

Why does Chester argue that household composition statistics can be misleading?

• Statistics provide a snapshot of one moment in time.

• They may show many people living outside nuclear families at a particular point.

• However, they don’t show people’s whole life cycle.

• → Most people may still spend a major part of their lives in a nuclear family.

What evidence does Chester use to argue that little has fundamentally changed in family life?

• Most people live in households headed by a married couple.

• Most adults marry and have children.

• Most children are raised by their two natural parents.

• Most marriages continue until death.

• Most divorcees remarry.

• Cohabitation is often a temporary phase before marriage/re-marriage.

• Most couples marry if they have children.

• Most births outside marriage are jointly registered.

→ These patterns suggest the nuclear family remains dominant.

How does Chester’s view of the family differ from the functionalist view?

Both agree:

→ The nuclear family remains dominant.

Functionalists:

→ Traditional nuclear family with male breadwinner + female homemaker.

Chester:

→ Shift from conventional → neo-conventional nuclear family.

→ Both spouses increasingly perform an instrumental/breadwinner role.

🔥 Key distinction:

→ Chester recognises gender-role change without seeing it as evidence of major family breakdown or diversity.

How do Rhona and Robert Rapoport (1982) view family diversity in Britain?

• Family diversity is central to understanding British families today.

• Britain has moved away from the traditional nuclear family as the dominant type towards a range of different family types.

• Families have adapted to a pluralistic society → one where cultures and lifestyles are more diverse.

• → Diversity reflects greater freedom of choice and acceptance of different cultures and lifestyles.

How do the Rapoports’ views on family diversity differ from the New Right?

Rapoports:

→ Diversity is a positive response to people’s different needs and wishes.

→ Different family forms should be accepted.

New Right:

→ Diversity is a threat to the ‘proper’ nuclear family.

→ Alternative family forms are seen as abnormal/deviant.

🔥 Key contrast:

Rapoports see diversity as adaptation and choice, whereas the New Right sees it as family decline.

What is organisational diversity?

• Differences in how family roles are organised.

• Examples:
  

  • Joint conjugal roles + two wage-earners

  • Segregated conjugal roles + one wage-earner

→ Families can organise their paid work and domestic roles in different ways.

What is cultural diversity in family life?

• Different cultural, religious and ethnic groups have different family structures.

• Examples:
  

  • Higher proportion of female-headed lone-parent families among African-Caribbean households.

  • Higher proportion of extended families among Asian households.

→ Family structures can reflect cultural differences.

What is social class diversity in family life?

• Differences in family structures can partly result from income differences between social classes.

• There are also class differences in child-rearing practices.

• → Social class and economic circumstances can shape family structure and family life.

What is life-stage diversity?

• Family structures vary according to people’s stage in the life cycle.

• Examples:
  

  • Young newlyweds

  • Couples with dependent children

  • Retired couples whose children have left home

  • Widows living alone

→ The same person may experience different family structures throughout their lifetime.

What is generational diversity?

• Different generations have different attitudes and experiences.

• These reflect the historical periods in which they lived.

• → Generations may have different views about issues such as:

  • Divorce

  • Cohabitation

• Family attitudes and experiences therefore vary between generations.

How do modernist and postmodernist perspectives differ in their view of family diversity?

Modernists:

• One dominant family structure → nuclear family.

• Family life is orderly, structured and predictable.

• Individuals have relatively limited choice.

Postmodernists:

• No single dominant family structure.

• Family life is fragmented into many different types.

• Individuals have much greater choice over lifestyles, relationships and family arrangements.

What is the modernist ‘top-down’ view of family life?

• Modernists see the family as a structure that shapes individuals’ behaviour.

• → Individuals perform the functions required by society.

• Family patterns are therefore orderly, structured and predictable.

• Example → most people marry and have children.

• → Individuals have limited choice over family patterns.

How does David Cheal (1993) describe family life in postmodern society?

• Society has moved beyond the modern stage with its predictable structures.

• Postmodern society is more chaotic.

• There is no longer one single, dominant and stable family structure such as the nuclear family.

• → Family structures have become fragmented into many different types.

Why do postmodernists argue that family diversity has increased?

Postmodern society

→ traditional structures become less dominant

→ family structures become fragmented

→ individuals have greater freedom of choice

→ people can choose lifestyles, relationships and family arrangements that meet their own needs.

→ Family life becomes less predictable and more diverse.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of greater choice in family life according to postmodernists?

Advantage:

→ Greater freedom to plot your own life course.

→ Individuals can choose relationships and family arrangements that meet their needs.

Disadvantage:

→ Greater freedom can create instability.

→ Relationships may be more likely to break up.

🔥 Key point:

Greater choice creates both freedom AND uncertainty.

How does Judith Stacey (1998) argue that postmodern family diversity has benefited women?

• Greater freedom and choice has allowed women to escape patriarchal oppression.

• Women can shape family arrangements around their own needs.

• Stacey found women were the main agents of family change.

• Many women she interviewed:
  

  • Rejected the traditional housewife-mother role

  • Worked

  • Returned to education

  • Improved job prospects

  • Divorced and remarried

• → Greater choice allows women to create family arrangements that suit their needs.

What research did Judith Stacey (1998) carry out into postmodern families?

• Used life history interviews.

• Constructed case studies of families in Silicon Valley, California.

• Found that women were the main agents of family change.

• → Family diversity can result from individuals actively choosing and creating different ways of living.

What is Stacey’s ‘divorce-extended family’?

• A family network created through divorce rather than marriage.

• Often includes female extended-family members connected through previous relationships.

• May include:
  

  • Former in-laws

  • Mother/daughter-in-law

  • Ex-wife

  • New partner

• → Divorce can create new and diverse family networks, rather than simply destroying families.

How does Stacey’s case study of Pam illustrate the divorce-extended family?

• Pam married young → divorced → cohabited → remarried.

• Her second husband had also been married previously.

• Pam eventually formed a divorce-extended family with Shirley, who was cohabiting with Pam’s first husband.

• They supported each other financially and domestically.

• → Shows that family relationships can continue and reorganise after divorce into new forms.

How does David Morgan (1996; 2011) support the postmodernist view of family diversity?

• It is pointless to make broad generalisations about ‘the family’ as if it were one thing.

• A family is whatever arrangements those involved choose to call their family.

• Sociologists should therefore focus on how people create and practise their own diverse family lives.

• Life course analysis can be used to examine these changing family arrangements.

🔥 Analysis:

→ Challenges functionalists’ assumption that there is one universal family structure with fixed functions.

→ Family life is instead shaped by individual choices and experiences.

What is the individualisation thesis?

• Developed by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, influenced by postmodernist ideas.

• Argues that traditional social structures such as class, gender and family have lost influence over individuals.

• → People have fewer fixed roles and expectations.

• → Individuals have greater freedom and choice over how they live their lives.

How does the individualisation thesis compare people’s lives in the past with those today?

Past:

• Lives were shaped by fixed social roles and structures.

• People were expected to:
  

  • Marry

  • Follow their appropriate gender role

  • Follow a relatively predictable life course.

Today:

• Fewer fixed roles and certainties.

• Individuals have greater choice over their life course.

• → Traditional expectations have become less influential.

What do Giddens and Beck mean by individuals becoming ‘disembedded’?

• Individuals have become increasingly freed from traditional roles and social structures.

• → They are less constrained by traditional expectations surrounding:
  

  • Gender

  • Marriage

  • Family

• → Greater freedom to choose how they lead their lives.

What does Beck (1992) mean by the ‘standard biography’ and ‘do-it-yourself biography’?

Standard biography:

→ Traditional, predictable life course shaped by fixed social roles and expectations.

Do-it-yourself biography:

→ Individuals must construct their own life course through personal choices.

🔥 Analysis:

Traditional structures weaken

→ individuals gain greater choice

→ family and relationship patterns become more diverse and unpredictable.

What does Giddens mean by the ‘pure relationship’?

• A relationship based on individual choice and equality, rather than traditional norms or institutions.

• Typical of late modern society.

• Relationships are no longer held together primarily by:
  

  • Law

  • Religion

  • Social norms

  • Traditional institutions

• → Individuals choose whether to enter or leave relationships.

What holds a pure relationship together according to Giddens?

• The relationship exists to satisfy the needs of both partners.

• Couples stay together because of:
  

  • Love

  • Happiness

  • Sexual attraction

• Rather than:
  

  • Tradition

  • Duty

  • Staying together for the sake of children

• → The relationship continues only while both partners feel it is in their interests.

How does Giddens link pure relationships to self-identity?

• Individuals are free to choose relationships.

• Relationships become part of the process of self-discovery.

• Trying different relationships can help individuals establish ‘who we are’.

• → Relationships become a way of constructing one’s self-identity.

Why does Giddens argue that greater choice makes relationships less stable?

• Partners are free to leave relationships when they no longer meet their needs.

• The pure relationship is therefore like a ‘rolling contract’.

• It can be ended relatively easily by either partner.

• → Greater individual choice → less permanent commitment → greater relationship instability.

How does Giddens link the pure relationship to increasing family diversity?

Greater individual choice

→ relationships continue only while they meet partners’ needs

→ relationships become less stable

→ greater relationship breakdown

→ more diverse family forms, including:

• Lone-parent families

• One-person households

• Stepfamilies

🔥 Key analysis:

→ Family diversity is not simply caused by people rejecting the family; it can be an unintended consequence of greater individual freedom and choice.

Why does Giddens see same-sex couples as ‘pioneers’ of new family types?

• Same-sex relationships can be less influenced by traditional relationship norms than heterosexual relationships.

• Historically, same-sex relationships were often stigmatised and criminalised.

• As traditional roles were less available, couples had to build relationships based more on choice and negotiation.

• → Same-sex couples have pioneered more democratic and equal relationships.

How have same-sex relationships allowed individuals to create new family structures?

• Same-sex couples have been less constrained by pre-existing traditional gender roles.

• They can negotiate how their relationships work.

• → Greater freedom to actively create family arrangements that meet their own needs rather than conforming to traditional norms.

• → Supports Giddens’ idea of increasing individual choice and equality.

What did Weston (1992) find about same-sex couples and family diversity?

• Same-sex couples created supportive ‘families of choice’.

• These could include:
  

  • Friends

  • Former lovers

  • Biological relatives

• → Family does not have to be based solely on biological kinship or marriage.

• → Shows how people can actively construct their own family networks.

What did Weeks (2000) find about friendship networks among gay men and lesbians?

• Friendship networks could function as kinship networks.

• → Friends can perform roles traditionally associated with family/kin.

• → Supports the postmodern/individualisation view that people can actively construct diverse family relationships.

What does Ulrich Beck (1992) mean by a ‘risk society’?

• A society where tradition has less influence and individuals have more choice.

• Greater choice means people become more aware of the risks and rewards of different options.

• → Individuals must calculate risks when making decisions.

• This contrasts with the past, when tradition and rigid social norms largely dictated people’s roles and behaviour.

How did traditional gender roles provide stability in the patriarchal family, according to Beck?

Men:

→ Breadwinner + disciplinarian + important financial decisions.

Women:

→ Housework + childcare + care of sick/elderly.

• Roles were fixed by tradition.

• Although unequal and oppressive, these clearly defined roles created a stable and predictable family structure.

What two trends does Beck identify as undermining the traditional patriarchal family?

1. Greater gender equality

→ Challenges male domination.

→ Women increasingly expect equality at work and in marriage.

2. Greater individualism

→ People are increasingly guided by self-interest rather than obligation to others.

→ Traditional fixed roles become less influential → new family forms emerge.

What is Beck and Beck-Gernsheim’s ‘negotiated family’?

• Family does not conform to a traditional norm.

• Family arrangements vary according to members’ wishes and expectations.

• Partners decide what is best for themselves through negotiation.

• Partners enter the relationship on an equal basis.

• → More equal than the traditional patriarchal family.

Why is the negotiated family more equal but less stable than the traditional patriarchal family?

Greater equality:

• Gender equality + individualism

→ traditional roles challenged

→ partners negotiate arrangements

→ more equal relationships.

Less stability:

• Individuals are free to leave if their needs aren’t met

→ relationships become less permanent

→ greater instability

→ more family diversity.

Examples → lone-parent families, one-person households and remarriages.

🔥 Key contradiction:

→ More freedom/equality = less stability.

What does Beck mean when he describes the family as a ‘zombie category’?

• A ‘zombie category’ = something that appears to be alive but is actually dead.

• People still turn to the family hoping it will provide security in an uncertain risk society.

• However, family relationships themselves have become increasingly unstable and uncertain.

• → The family can no longer reliably provide the security and stability people expect from it.

🔥 Analysis:

Risk society → greater individual choice → unstable relationships → family itself becomes a source of uncertainty, rather than simply a solution to it.

What is Janet Smart’s ‘connectedness thesis’?

• An alternative to the individualisation thesis.

• Smart argues that people are fundamentally social beings, not isolated individuals with limitless choice.

• Our choices are made ‘within a web of connectedness’.

• → We are embedded in existing relationships, obligations and personal histories that shape and limit our choices.

How does the connectedness thesis challenge the individualisation thesis?

Individualisation thesis:

→ Traditional structures weaken

→ individuals become ‘disembedded’

→ greater freedom to choose relationships and family arrangements.

Connectedness thesis:

→ Individuals remain embedded in networks of relationships

→ family obligations and past experiences constrain choices

→ freedom is not limitless.

🔥 Key criticism:

→ Giddens and Beck overestimate individual freedom.

What did Finch and Mason (1993) find about family relationships and individual choice?

• Studied extended families.

• Found that individuals can negotiate relationships to some extent.

• However, they are also embedded in family connections and obligations.

• → These connections restrict freedom of choice.

• → Supports Smart’s connectedness thesis.

How does Smart challenge Giddens’ idea of the ‘pure relationship’?

• Giddens sees relationships as relatively easy to enter and leave.

• Smart argues that families involve more than just couples.

• Relationships can continue through family connections and obligations.

• Example → separated parents remain connected through their children, even if they no longer want the relationship.

• → Relationships cannot always simply end at will.

🔥 Analysis:

→ Family relationships are interdependent, meaning individual choices affect and are affected by others.

How does the connectedness thesis explain the influence of class and gender on family choices?

• Individuals remain embedded in class and gender structures.

• These structures can limit the relationships, identities and families people can create.

Examples:

• After divorce, gender norms often mean women have custody of children → can limit their ability to form new relationships.

• Men generally earn more than women → greater financial freedom and choice.

• Women and children have less power than men → may have less freedom to leave abusive relationships.

→ Individual choices are shaped by structural inequalities.

What is the main criticism the connectedness thesis makes of the individualisation thesis?

• Giddens and Beck overstate the amount of freedom and choice individuals have.

• People remain connected to:
  

  • Family relationships

  • Personal histories

  • Social obligations

  • Class structures

  • Gender structures

• → These connections can constrain individual choice.

• Therefore, family diversity cannot be explained entirely by individual choice and freedom.

How does May criticise Beck and Giddens’ view that traditional structures have weakened?

• Beck and Giddens argue that class, gender and family structures have weakened/disappeared.

• May argues that these structures have not disappeared, but have instead been re-shaped.

• Although women have gained rights in:
  

  • Voting

  • Divorce

  • Education

  • Employment

• → This does not mean women now have complete freedom of choice.

How does Anna Einasdottir (2011) show that gender structures still restrict women’s choices?

• Women can increasingly pursue traditionally ‘masculine’ goals, such as careers.

• However, they are still expected to be heterosexual.

• Heteronormativity = social norms that favour/assume heterosexuality.

• Although lesbianism is more tolerated, heteronormativity can pressure lesbians to remain ‘in the closet’.

• → Gender/sexuality structures continue to limit choices about relationships and lifestyles.

How does the personal life perspective explain increasing family diversity differently from Beck and Giddens?

Beck & Giddens:

Traditional structures weaken

→ individuals become more free and disembedded

→ greater individual choice

→ greater family diversity.

Personal life perspective:

Structures are re-shaped, not disappearing

→ people remain embedded in social relationships and structures

→ choices are still constrained

→ family diversity is shaped by both choice AND social structures.

What is the overall argument of the personal life perspective about social structures and family diversity?

• There is a trend towards greater family diversity and choice.

• However, structural factors continue to shape people’s options.

• Important constraints include:
  

  • Patriarchy

  • Class inequality

  • Gender/sexuality norms such as heteronormativity

• → People have more choice than in the past, but this choice is not limitless.

• → Family lives are shaped by the interaction between individual agency and social structure.