WJEC Sociology GCSE Family

Beanpole families

○ A type of extended family

○ Children, parents and grandparents living together

○ Multi-generational families that are long and thin in shape.

Civil Partnership

○ Like marriage for gay people

○ Legally recognized.

○ Not a religious ceremony

Cohabitation

○ Living with a partner outside marriage.

○ Living as if married

○ Could be used as a way to test drive marriage

○ Difficult to record as no official records by the government

Conjugal roles

○ Different roles of men and women when they are married

○ The domestic roles of married or cohabiting partners.

○ Have changed a lot since the 1950s

○ Women make decisions about the home, men make more significant decisions (Edgell)

○ Men control the money (Pahl)

Cultural Diversity

○ Family differences because of their background

○ Differences between people in a society in terms of religion, social class and so on.

○ Different cultures may have different types of families

○ Supported by the Rapoports who said families were moving away from one family type

○ Afro-Caribbean more likely to be single mothers

○ Polish more likely to be single male households

Domestic division of labour

○ How tasks such as housework, childcare and DIY are split between men and women within the home.

○ Men would normally do DIY

○ Women would normally look after children

Extended family

○ A group of relatives outside the nuclear family.

○ Can include cousins, grandparents, aunties and uncles

○ A source or support for the nuclear family

Feminist Perspective on the Family

○ Looks at how women are treated differently in society

○ Trying to bring about equality between men and women

○ Different types of feminism including liberal, Marxist, radical and difference

○ The family oppresses women (Delphy and Leonard, Oakley)

○ Domestic abuse controls women as a form of patriarchy

Fertility Rate

○ The number of children a couple has

○ Normally about 2

Functionalist Perspective on the Family

○ Everything in society has a function

○ Just like the body

○ Families (primary) socialise children and support (stabilise) adults so society keeps going

Same-sex family

○ A family in which a same-sex (gay or lesbian) couple live together with their children.

○ May be married

○ Attitudes have changed a lot since the 1950s

Gender

○ Relates to social (rather than biological) differences between men and women

○ The differences are socially constructed

○ Associated with masculinity and femininity.

Geographical mobility

○ Moving house from one area to live in another area, region or country.

○ Normally for work

○ Increased because of the industrial revolution so people were looking for work

Household

○ People who live and eat together and share common space

○ Could be a one person household

Infant mortality rate

○ Number of children dying out of every 1000 being born

○ High in developing countries

○ Reduced through changes in health care etc

Joint conjugal roles

○ Married (or cohabiting) roles that are shared in an equal way

○ Partners may choose their jobs in the house but do equal amounts of work

○ Different to segregated roles (unequal)

○ Democratic relationship

Lone-parent family

○ A family with one parent

○ Normally the mother

○ A family consisting of one parent and a child or children who live together.

○ eg Gweneth Paltrow since she separated from Chris Martin

Birth, Marriage, Divorce, Death rates

○ Number of people born, married, divorced, dying per 1000 of the population each year

Marxist Perspective on the Family

○ There are two classes: Bourgeoisie (middle) and Proletariat (working)

○ The Bourgeoisie want more profit, the proletariat want higher wages and this causes conflict

○ Families serve the interests of capitalism by providing free labour

○ Workers are persuaded that family life is good, it provides emotional support and are stuck supporting their family (Zaretsky)

Monogamy

○ Married to one other person

○ Means one/joined

○ Normal in the UK

Migration

○ Moving from one place to another place

○ Normally from one country to another for a number of reasons including work

○ Emigration is leaving a place, immigration is going into a place.

New man

○ a caring, sharing man who helps out around the home.

○ modern man

○ feminists don't believe it exists

Nuclear family

○ close family including parents and children

○ live together in the same house

○ traditional nuclear family are married and biologically related#

○ Supported by Parsons, GP Murdock and Chester

Patriarchy

○ Male power and dominance over women.

○ "Men are better than women"

○ Feminists want to get rid of patriarchy

Sandwich generation

○ The generation between children and grandparents

○ People in the sandwich or pivot generation may provide care not only for their parents but also for their children.

Power

○ Who has more power in relationships

○ For example men over women in a married couple (money, decisions)

○ For example adults over children

Role

○ The jobs we do in society and the family

○ Paid (doctor) or unpaid (brother)

○ Shows us how we are expected to behave

Secularisation

○ People don't believe in God any more

○ Declining influence of religion

○ Less likely to get married for example

Segregated conjugal roles

○ Separate and different roles when you're married

○ Man works, woman looks after the house and children

○ Typical in the 1950s

Serial monogamy

○ Serious relationships, one after another

○ May be marriage or cohabitation

Step-, blended or reconstituted family

○ One parent gets remarried

○ Most are stepfather, biological mother and her children

○ More common now than the 1950s

Symmetrical family

○ Married roles are becoming more equal

○ Spouses carry out different tasks but each makes a similar contribution within the home.

Polygamy

○ Having more than one wife

○ Polygyny is having more than one husband

○ Illegal in the UK but practiced around the world

New Right

○ Political group based on traditional functionalist ideas

○ Conservative (Thatcher)

○ 1980s onwards

Stratified Diffusion

○ The spread of beliefs and practices from one social class to another

○ eg Young and Willmott claim that the symmetrical family developed first among the m/c and then spread down the class structure eventually to become the norm for the w/c as well.

Dual Burden and Triple Shift

○ Women do the majority of housework as well as doing paid work (Oakley)

○ In addition to this they do emotional work such as sorting out problems (Duncombe and Marsden)

Crisis of Masculinity

○ Men are losing traditional roles

○ Due to changes in industry

○ Fathers are becoming closer to their children (Dermott)

Social Construction

○ Variations by society

○ Such as childhood or marriage

○ Can be seen historically or cross-culturally

○ Different from universal biological construction such as eye colour

Boomerang Children

○ Children who return home

○ Caused by leaving university, financial reasons or relationship breakdown