families

Althusser

views the family as an ideological state apparatus, passing on the acceptance of the ruling class ideology and damping down social conflict.

Gerhsuny

Families who adopt labour-saving devices (e.g. washing machines, microwaves) are more likely to have a more equal division of domestic labour.

According to the ONS

in February 2020, children raised in Pakistani and Bangladeshi homes were more likely to live in low-income households (2.8 and 2.4 times respectively).

Divorce reform act 1969

no longer had to prove a partner was guilty of a matrimonial offence, irreconcilable differences

Conservatives (1979–1997)

Children Act (1989) – Child welfare is a legal priority
Child Support Agency (1993) – Absent dads must pay maintenance
Married Men’s Tax Allowance – Encouraged traditional marriage
Section 28 (1988) – Banned promotion of homosexuality in schools
Back to Basics (1993) – Campaign for traditional family values

New Labour (1997–2010)

New Deal (1997) – Helped lone parents back to work
Child Tax Credits – Support for low-income families
Paid Paternity Leave – 2 weeks paid leave for dads
Civil Partnership Act (2005) – Legal rights for same-sex couples
Adoption and Children Act (2002) – Let same-sex/unmarried couples adopt

Coalition (2010–2015)

Same-Sex Marriage Act (2014) – Legalised gay marriage
Shared Parental Leave (2014) – Parents split leave how they want
Couple’s Penalty Reform – Stopped benefits punishing couples
Troubled Families Programme – Targeted “problem” families
Tax Benefits for Married Couples – Encouraged marriage via tax break

Child Benefit Cap (2016) – Only first 2 kids get full tax credits

Talcott Parsons (1955)

Parsons argued that in industrial society, the family performs two irreducible functions:

Primary Socialisation of Children

• The family is the first and most important agent of socialization.

• It teaches children the norms, values, and culture of their society, shaping them into functioning members.

Stabilisation of Adult Personalities

• Also known as the "warm bath theory" – the family acts as a relaxing, supportive environment that helps adults cope with the stresses of modern life.

• Emotional support provided by the family helps maintain mental stability and social order

Willmott and Young (1962)

Men are taking a greater share of domestic tasks and wives are becoming wage earners.

Elizabeth Bott (1957)

Segregated and Joint Conjugal Roles

Willmott and Young (1950's)

Identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional working-class extended families in East London.

Willmott and Young (1973)

March of progress view of the history of the family. The symmetrical family.

Ann Oakley (1979)

March of progress view is wrong - only 15% of men have a high level of participation in the family - the symmetrical family is an exaggerated claim - women still do the majority of the housework.

Mary Boulton (1983)

Found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare. Mother is always responsible for the child's security and well-being.

Warde and Hetherington (1993)

Wives were 30 times more likely to be the last person to have done the washing. Husbands were 4 times more likely to wash the car.

Jonathan Gershuny (1994)

Argues that women working full-time is leading to a more equal division of labour in the home.

Oriel Sullivan (2000)

Found a trend towards women doing a smaller share of domestic work based on analysis of nationally representative data.

British Social Attitudes Survey (2018)

Found a fall in the number of people who think it is a man's job to earn money and a woman's to look after the home.

Graham Allan (1985)

Argues that women's tasks, such as washing and cleaning are less intrinsically satisfying.

Ferri and Smith (1996)

Found that fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families.

Dex and Ward (2007)

Found that whilst 78% of fathers played with their three-year-olds, only 1% would be responsible when they were sick.

Braun, Vincent and Ball (2011)

Found that in only 3/70 families studied, was the father the main carer. They had provider ideology.

Arlie Hochschild (2013)

Identified 'emotion work'. Controlling others and their own emotions.

Duncombe and Marsden (1995)

Identified the 'triple shift'.

Dale Southerton (2011)

Mothers coordinate, schedule, and manage family 'quality time'. People are deroutinised because of the 24/7 society and flexible working patterns.

Crompton and Lyonette (2008)

Identify the cultural/ideological explanation of inequality and the material/economic explanation of inequality.

Man Yee Kan (2001)

Found that younger men do more domestic work, suggesting a domestic shift.

The British Social Attitudes Survey (2018)

Found that while only 45% of over-75s disagreed with the traditional division of labour, 75% of under-35s do.

Gillian Dunne (1999)

Found that lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationships because of the absence of gender scripts.

Man Yee Kan (2001)

Found that for every £10,000 a year more a woman earns, she does two hours less housework per week.

Arber and Ginn (1995)

Found that better-paid middle-class women were more able to buy in commercially produced products like labour saving devices.

Xavier Ramos (2003)

Found that where the woman is the full time breadwinner and the man is unemployed, he does as much domestic labour as she does.

Oriel Sullivan (2000)

Shows that working full-time rather than part-time makes the biggest difference in terms of domestic labour.

Jonathan Gershuny (1994)

Found that couples whose parents had a more equal relationship were more likely to share housework themselves.

Rosemary Crompton (1997)

Concludes that there is no immediate prospect of a more equal division on labour if this depends on economic equality between the sexes.

Barrett and McIntosh (1991)

Note that men gain more from women's domestic work than they give back in financial support. Financial support is often unpredictable and comes with strings attached. Men make the decisions about spending on important items.

Elaine Kempson (1994)

Found that among low income families women denied their own needs, eating smaller portions of foood ro skipping meals.

Pahl and Vogler (1993)

Identify two main types of control over family income: the allowance system and pooling.

Pahl and Vogler (2007)

Found that even when there was pooling, the men usually made the major financial decisions.

Irene Hardill (1997)

Study of 30 dual-career professional couples, the financial decisions were usually taken by the man alone or jointly and his job took priority when considering things like moving house.

Janet Finch (1983)

Observed that women's lives tend to be structured around their husbands careers.

Stephen Edgell (1980)

Found that very important decisions like finance were taken by the husband or with the final say of the husband.

Important decisions like education were taken jointly and seldom by the wife alone. Less important decisions were usually made by the wife.

Laurie and Gershuny (2000)

Found that by 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions.

Charlott Nyman (2003)

Notes that money has no automatic, fixed, or natural meaning and different couples define it in different ways.

Carol Smart (2007)

Found that some gay men and lesbians attached no importance to who controlled the money and were perfectly happy to leave this to their partners.

Weeks et al (2001)

Found that the typical pattern was pooling some money for household spending together with separate accounts for personal spending.

Carol Smart (2007)

Found that there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them as a couple. They don't have the same 'historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings about money'.

Women's Aid Federation (2014)

Domestic violence accounts for between a sixth and a quarter of all violent crime.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (2013)

Two million people reported having been victims of domestic abuse during the previous year.

Coleman et al (2007)

Found that women were more likely than men to have experienced intimate violence across all four types of abuse - partner abuse, family abuse, sexual assault and stalking.

Coleman and Osborne (2010)

Two women a week - or one third of all female homicide victims - are killed by a partner or former partner.

Dobash and Dobash (1979-2007)

Did interviews in Scotland confirming the DV pattern. Found that violent incidents are set off by what the husband could see as a challenge to his authority.

Crime Survey for England and Wales (2020)

Estimates that 1.6 million women had experienced domestic abuse in the previous year, compared with 750,000 men

Walby and Allen (2004)

Found that women were much more likely to be victims of multiple incidents of abuse and sexual violence.

Ansara and Hindin (2011)

Found that women suffered more severe violence and control, with more serious psychological effects. Women were much more likely than men to be fearful of their partners.

Aliyah Dar (2013)

Points out it can also be difficult to count separate DV incidents because abuse may be continuous or too frequent to count.

Yearnshire (1997)

Found that on average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report.

David Cheal (1991)

This reluctance is due to the fact that police and other state agencies are not willing to become involved in the family. They think that the family is a private sphere

Millett and Firestone (1970)

Argue that all societies have been founded on patriarchy. The key division in society is between men and women.

Elliot (1996)

Rejects radical feminist view that all men benefit from violence against women. Not all men are aggressive and most are opposed to domestic violence.

Wilkinson and Pickett (2010)

See domestic violence as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequality.

Fran Ansley (1972)

Describes wives as 'takers of shit'. Argues that domestic violence is the product of capitalism because male workers are exploited at home and take out their frustrations on their wives.

Jane Pilcher (1995)

The most important feature of the modern idea of childhood is separateness. Childhood is seen as a clear and distinct life stage, and children in our society occupy a separate status from adults.

Stephen Wagg (1992)

'Childhood is socially constructed. It is, in other words, what members of particular societies, at particular times and in particular places, say it is. There is no single universal childhood, experienced by all'.

Ruth Benedict (1934)

Argues that children in simpler, non-industrial societies are generally treated differently from their modern western counterparts in three ways.

1) They take responsibility at an earlier age.

2) Less value is placed on the child showing obedience to adult authority.

3) Children's sexual behaviour may be viewed differently.

Samantha Punch (2001)

Study of childhood in rural Bolivia found that once children are about five years old, they are expected to take work responsibilities in the home.

Lowell Holmes (1974)

Study of a Samoan village found that 'too young' was never given as a reason for not permitting a child to undertake a particular task.

Raymond Firth (1970)

Found that among the Tikopia of the western Pacific, doing as you are told by grown-up is regarded as a concession to be granted by the child, not a right demanded by the adult.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1957)

Found that adults took an attitude of 'tolerance and amused interest' towards children's sexual explorations.

Philippe Aries (1960)

Argues that in the Middle Ages the idea of childhood did not exist. Studied paintings.

Edward Shorter (1975)

Argues that high death rates encouraged indifference and neglect, especially towards infants.

Philippe Aries (1960)

Developments culminate in a cult of childhood - schools, clothes, handbooks. Child-centeredness.

Linda Pollock (1983)

Argues that it is more correct to say that in the Middle Ages, society simply had a different notion of childhood.

Jacques Donzelot (1977)

Observes how theories of child development that began to appear from the 19th century stressed that children need supervision and protection.

Neil Postman (1994)

Childhood is disappearing at a dazzling speed.

Neil Postman (1994)

Childhood emerged as a separate status because of the information hierarchy.

Iona Opie (1993)

Argues that childhood is not disappearing, because there is evidence of the continued existence of a separate children's culture over many years.

Christopher Jenks (2005)

Childhood is not disappearing but it is changing because of the move from modernity to postmodernity.

Lloyd De Mause (1974)

The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized and sexually abused.

Sue Palmer (2007)

Argues the existence of the toxic childhood. Rapid technological and cultural changes over the past 25 years have damaged children's physical, emotional and intellectual development.

Mayer Hillman (1993)

Boys are more likely to be allowed to cross or cycle on roads, use buses and go out after dark unaccompanied.

Jens Bonke (1999)

Found that girls do more domestic labour - especially in lone-parent families, where they do five times more housework than boys.

Julia Brahnen (1994)

Found that Asian parents were more likely than other parents to be strict towards their daughters.

Ghazala Bhatti (1999)

Found that ideas of family honour could be a restriction particularly in the behaviour of girls.

Firestone and Holt (1974/9)

Argue that many of the things that march of progress see as care and protection are just oppression and control.

Cindi Katz (2004)

Describes how rural Sudanese children roam freely both within the village and for several kilometers outside it.

Diana Gittens (1998)

Uses the term age patriarchy to describe inequalities by children and adults. Age patriarchy of child dependency and adult domination.

Humphreys and Thiara (2002)

A quarter of women in a 200 person study left their abusive partner because they feared for their children's lives.

Hockey and James (1993)

Describe the strategy of acting up to resist the child status.

Berry Mayall (2004)

Describes an adultist viewpoint meaning seeing children as mere socialisation projects for adults to mould without interest in the person the child is.

Carol Smart (2011)

New approach aims to include the views and experiences of children themselves while they are living in childhood.

Mason and Tipper (2008)

Show how children actively create their own definitions of who is family, including people who are not proper family but they regard as close.

Smart et al (2001)

Study of divorce found that far from being passive victims, children were actively involved in trying to make the situation better for everyone.

George Murdock (1949)

Sexual –Provides a stable sexual relationship for adults and regulates sexual behavior

Reproductive –Produces the next generation of society’s members and ensures the continuation of society through childbearing.

Economic –Provides for the economic needs of its members

Socialization–Socializes children into the norms, values, and culture of their society and acts as the primary agent of socialization, especially in early life.

Talcott Parsons (1955) - functional fit theory

• Pre-industrial society: Favored the extended family, useful for agricultural work and supporting kin.

• Industrial society: Favored the nuclear family, which is geographically and socially mobile—ideal for a society based on moving for work and individual achievement.

Friedrich Engels

Primitive communism - the promiscuous horde

Eli Zaretsky (1976)

The family also performs an ideological function by offering a haven from the harsh and exploitative world of capitalism outside.

Fran Ansley (1972)

Describes wives as takers of shit who soak up the frustration of their husbands because of the alienation and exploitation at work.

Germaine Greer (2000)

Argues for the creation of female or matrilocal households as an alternative to the heterosexual family.

Jenny Somerville (2000)

radical feminists fail to recognize that women's position has improved considerably - with better access to divorce, better job opportunities