Family and Households - definitions and perspectives

Cohabitation

Living as a partnership without marriage

Primary relationship

Close long lasting and special ties between people

Monogamy

One man and one woman in a relationship

Serial monogamy

The remarriage of divorcees

Polygamy

A system of marriage involving two or more husbands, or two or more wives

Polygyny

One man married to several women

Polyandry

A system of marriage involving two or more husbands

Endogamy

Marriage within the same tribe, ethnic group, or social class e.g. royal family

Exogamy

Marriage outside the tribe, ethnic group, or social class

Nuclear family

• 2 generations

• Geographically mobile

• Isolated

• Independent family unit

Extended family

• 3+ generations

• Geographically static

• Live within one mile of each other

• Dependant, close knit

Modified extended family

• Nuclear family with extended family traits

• Keep in contact via phone, internet, car

• Telephonic / Motorised families

KIPPERS

Kids In Parents Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings

Single parent families

Bringing up children without a partner, usually headed by females

Reconstituted familied

Blended familied, divorced adults forming new families with their children from previous marriages

Empty Shell

Love between a couple has gone but they stay together for the sake of the children

Empty nest

Children have left the family home and only the couple remain

Boomerang family

Children that leave the family home and return at a later stage

Murdock (Functionalist)

Four functions of the family:

• Sexual: rules limiting sexual relationships outside marriage, reduces conflict and stabilises social system

• Economic: unit of production and consumption

• Reproduction

• Educational: responsible for primary socialisation

Parsons (Functionalist)

• Studied 1950/1960s white m/c Americans

• Family has 2 ‘basic and irreducible’ functions

1. Primary socialisation of children

2. The stabilisation of adult personalities

Marxism - conflict theory

Conflict of interest between the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

The family maintains the position of the R/C, the N/F does this best

Engels (Marxist)

• The modern n/f developed in capitalist society

Primitive communism:

• Starr of human development

• ‘Hunter-gather society’

• Collectively owned property

• No private family

• Era of sexual freedom and promiscuity

• No control over sexual activity: incest was common

• The introduction of private property introduced restrictions on sexual activity

• Monogamy became the norm: ensured property would be passed down to his son - ‘early system of inheritance

• The family is designed to protect private property and control women

How does the family benefit capitalism?

1. Reproducing ‘labour power’: next generation of Proletariat workers

2. Consuming products of capitalism: urges families to keep up with the Joneses’, target children who use ‘pester power’ to persuade parents to spend more, kids who lack the latest clothes/gadgets are mocked by peers

3. Zaretsky: providing emotional support for workers to cope with the reality of capitalism - ‘warm bath’

4. Socialising children to learn r/c n+v’s e.g. obedience, respect

Zaretsky (Marxism)

The family provides emotional support for workers, so they can cope with the harsh reality of capitalism

Who provides the haven?

Althusser (Marxism)

The family is an ideological state apparatus

Critique of Marxist view

• Assume n/f is the dominant family type: ignore family diversity

• Is everyone pressurised into buying the latest gadget?

• Feminists: the family doesn’t benefit capitalism, but only exists to benefit men

• Functionalists: Marxists ignore the real benefits that the family provide e.g. intimacy and support

The New Right view of the family

• N/F is the cornerstone of society

• Feel the traditional family is under threat/in decline due to increases in:

1. Cohabitation

2. Divorce

3. Same sex marriages

4. Single parents

5. Greater reliance on welfare benefits

• Need to return to ‘traditional family values’

Marsland (New Right)

• WFS is too generous

• Created a culture of dependency

• Has taken away individual self-reliance/responsibilty

• Encourages laziness and is an incentive not to work

• Less money spent on education, NHS

• Weakens family ties - no longer have to rely on parental support

Murray (New Right)

• WFS encourages young, unmarried teenagers to become pregnant

• Easy way to get free council house and benefits

• Society’s ‘new rabble’

• Solution: stop their benefits and ‘starve them into marriage’, would result in traditional n/fs

Critique of the New Right view of the family

Bill Jordan:

• WFS isn’t too generous, it’s too mean

• People get caught in the ‘poverty trap’, and become the underclass, no hope of escaping poverty

Dean and Taylor-Gooby

• 85 interviews with people claiming benefits

• 4/85 didn’t want to work

• 81/85 did want to work, but couldn’t due to the poverty trap

• Interviews - interviewer bias

Postmodernist view of the family

• Believe traditional sociological views are outdated

• Traditional values which shaped our lives are no longer important

• Social class, gender, ethnicity are irrelevant/deconstructed

• Increase in choice

• Change in identity - religion, gender

• Diversity - different ways to live e.g. family

Postmodernism - the family and women (the past)

1950/60s

• Married by 21

• ‘Life time commitment’

• Motherhood by early 20s

• Unmarried - ‘left on the shelf’

• Childless - ‘unnatural’

• Cohabitation - ‘living in sin’

• Unmarried mother - ‘shot-gun marriages’

• Lesbians - ‘sisters

• The role of the ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ was a key part of her identity

• Little choice over the way she lived, fixed ‘life-course’

Postmodernism - the family and women (today)

• Women have more choice: ‘life-course’ is more flexible

• Creative singlehood: people choose to remain single as a life choice

• ‘Childfree’: don’t want children

• Identity is based on career, leisure, pursuits, family roles

What is the most dominant family type according to postmodernists?

There is no dominant family type in this post-modern society

Giddens (Postmodernism)

• Major changes have taken place in relationships

• Now have greater choice regarding which relationships we maintain - pure relationships

• Increase in ‘confluent love’: love that doesn’t last

• Makes relationships less stable

Beck - risk society (Postmodernism)

• Live in a world of uncertainty: endless possibilities, at risk of losing family stability

• Individualism

• More relationship breakdowns?

• Less commitment between couples?

• Creates the ‘negotiated family’

• Doesn’t conform to one standard of what the family should be

Critique of the postmodernist view of the family

• Half of the population still belong to 2 parent (married/cohabiting) household

• Very ethnocentric: only study white, western societies

• Most of us still want the ideal family

Radical feminist view of the family

• Family = patriarchal institution which allows men to dominate, exploit, and control women e.g. women take male surname, men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour and sexual services - ‘marriage is legalised rape (rape in marriage illegal since 1990s)

• Men are allowed to dominant women - extreme form: violene (Dobash and Dobash)

Ansley (m feminist)

• ‘Wives are the takers of men’s shit’

• Women soak up men’s anger due to problems he faces at work (domestic abuse?)

• Women act as a ‘reserve army of labour’ - used by the r/c in times of need e.g. WW2, XMAS

Purdy (feminist)

• Women’s exploitation is largely the result of their childcare role

• ‘Baby strike’: women should turn to political lesbianism and stop having conventional families

• Will help men realise how hard it is to turn a home, force men to take women’s claims to equality more seriously

Difference feminists view of the family

• Cannot make generalisations about all women

• Not all women live the same way

• Black women experiences are different to white

• W/c is different to m/c

Bernard - the future of marriage (feminist)

• It’s a mistake to use the term ‘marriage’

• ‘Married men are healthier than single men, and single women are healthier than married women’

• 80% of all anti-depression drugs are given to housewives

Marxist feminist view of the family

• Capitalism oppresses women in the family

• Family is patriarchal: housewives perform unpaid labour

• Housework benefit the r/c: allows men to relax and home and be more productive at work

• Women produce the next generation of workers

• Family has an ideological role: teaches children r/c values such as obedience and respect

• Family roles prevent gender equality: women expected to stay at home and look after children, and elderly relatives, disadvantaged in the workplace

Liberal feminist view of the family

• Campaign against sexual discrimination

• Oppression is slowly declining

• Change in social attitudes/law e.g. Sex Discrimination Act 1975

• Family life is improving: receiving more help with housework (househusbands)

Vogal and Bell (dark side)

• Family = dysfunctional

• USA study of m/c families with emotionally disturbed children

• Found parental conflict was pushed onto children e.g. finance

• Children used as ‘emotional scapegoats’ by parents to relieve stress, kids blamed for their personal issues

Leach (dark side)

• N/f is isolated from other kin

• No longer receive support from ex/f

• N/f has to be independent and ‘inward looking’ for help

• Places more emotional stress on members: more conflict, violence, divorce

• Family becomes overloaded with stress

R.D Laing (dark side)

• Study of n/f with a SZ child

• Kids get caught in the middle pf parental arguments

• High expectations from parents pushed onto kids e.g. grades, uni

• This increases of stress/conflict = SZ

Cooper (dark side)

• Family restricts individual freedom e.g. boys are pressured by society to not kiss dad goodnight after a certain age

• Too much pressure on kids leads to rebellion

Dobash and Dobash (fem, dark side)

• Interviews

• Study of female victims of DV

• Remains a ‘hidden crime’

• Crime stats misleading

• 3 women/ 2 kids a week are killed

• Shows men are allowed to dominant women

Smart - personal life (postmodernism)

• People no longer see their lives in a structured and predictable way e.g. marriage, kids

• Technology allows us to have close relationships with far away people e.g. USA prisoners and British wives

• Family isn’t always the centre of everyone’s lives

• ‘Families of choice’: non-relatives

• ‘Personal life’: studying relationships between people who be love, befriend, like, don’t like

• Need to be transgressive when thinking about family

1. Memory - close link with emotion

2. Biography - can help us understand the movement of people through the life course

3. Embeddedness - our experiences in life can shape who we become

4. Relationality - the nature of a relationship is more important than the position of someone in a family structure e.g. best mate > brother

5. Imaginary - the way we imagine our lives to be

What is the conclusion of Smart’s personal life theory?

The traditional barriers that used to shape the way we lived and thought about what ‘family’ means have been removed

Evaluation of Smart

• Shows people can define their own relationships as ‘family’, aren’t restricted by fixed social norms e.g. blood, genes

• Accepts relationships aren’t always positive (violence)

• Too broad, includes a wide range of relationships but ignores uniqueness of relationships based solely on blood/marriage e.g. you only have one birth mother

The Personal Life perspective of families

States marxists, functonalists, and feminists have 2 weaknesses:

• Assume n/f is the dominant type - ignore diversity e.g. lone parents, reconstituted

• Traditional views are all structured theories: assume family members are passive and controlled by society to perform certain tasks e.g. provide a workfordce for the r/c, teach norms and values, such views ignore the choice we have in creating our families and the meanings we give them

Critique of feminist view of family

1. Ignore family diversity: assume everyone lives in a heterosexual n/f

2. Women viewed as passive victims of oppression - men as victims?

3. Ignore the positive aspects of family life e.g. joys of childhood/being a parent

Brugel (m fem)

• ‘Reserve army of labour’

• Cheap labour source

• Used when required, go home when no longer needed

• e.g. WW2

Young and Willmott - Symmetrical family (MoP)

Family has developed through 3 stages

1. Pre-industrial family (pre 1750): unit of production, agriculture/cottage industry, home/work not separate, ex/f common

2. Early industrial family (1750-1900): I/Rev, mass production of consumer goods, men work in factories, division of labour established (segregated conjugal roles)

3. Symmetrical family (1960+): n/f more common, home centred and privatised, spending time together, symmetrical - shared domestic tasks (joint conjugal roles), men and women both breadwinners → breaking down traditional gender roles

‘Symmetrical family’ = joint conjugal roles: roles of husband and wife becoming increasingly similar

Young and Willmott - What’s caused the symmetrical family?

• Change in women’s position: careers

• Geographical mobility: n/f = mobile and isolated

• New tech: domestic inventions making housework easier

• Higher standards of living: working 5/7 days rather than 6/7 / 7/7

• Stratified diffusion: new ideas of family life were started by the higher classes and gradually filtered down to the lower e.g. women having an ‘instrumental role’

For - Symmetrical Family

Bott:

M/c - JCR

W/c - SCR

Gershuny:

Increase of women in paid employment = increase in shared housework

Pahl:

The more hours a woman works outside the house, the more likely the housework is shared

Breen and Cooke:

More men helping with the housework - ‘adjusters’ ‘co-operators’

Against - Symmetrical family

Pahl

4 types of financial management: husband-controlled pooling, wife-controlled pooling, husband controlled, wife controlled

Edgell:

Men make major financial decisions, women make minor financial decisions

Rapoport and Rapoport:

Increase in working women but still performing - dual burden, triple shift, emotional work

Oakley:

Y+W = ‘methodologically sloppy’

‘help’ = bias and subjective

Jones:

Y+W ignore men and childcare questions, impositional bias

Dobash and Dobash:

DV = pwer imbalance in relationships, therefore not symmetrical