Families and Households - Sociologists, Main Sociologists - Families and households

Parsons

Instrumental / expressive role

Bott

Segregated / joint conjugal roles

Willmott and Young

Study with east London WC families, which found men played little part in home life and women were full-time housewives i.e segregated conjugal roles

Young and Willmott

Argue that men are now taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners

Young and Willmott

Take a 'march of progress' view, they see family as becoming more equal and democratic`e.g women now go to work, men help with housework and couples spend leisure time together

Ann Oakley

Conducted interviews about housework and found around 15% of husbands had a high level of involvement in housework and 25% in childcare.

Boulton

Claims Young and Willmott exaggerate men's contributions

Warde and Hetherington

Men would only carry out 'female' tasks when their partners weren't around to do them, however they did find evidence of a slight change of attitude among young men, by no longer assuming women should do housework

Gershuny

Women working full time is leading to a more equal division of labour in the home.

Stat - The British Social attitudes survey

In 1984, 45% of men and 41% agreed it's a man's job to earn and a woman's to stay at home and in 2012 only 13% of men and 12% of women agreed

Sullivan

Analysed official statistics every decade and found that by 1997 (from 1975) men did more domestic tasks

Boulton

Fathers may be performing specific childcare tasks, it is usually the mother who takes responsibility for the child's security and wellbeing.

Duncombe and Marsden

Argue women have to perform a triple shift in housework, paid work and emotional work

Gershuny

Found that parental role models influence roles

Man Yee Kan

Younger men do more domestic work

Stat - British Social Attitudes survey ( 2013 )

Found that less than 10% of under-35's agreed with a traditional division of labour

Gillian Dunne

Found lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationships because of the absence of traditional heterosexual 'gender scripts'

Kan

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

Arber and Ginn

Found that middle class women could afford more labour saving devices, ready meals, domestic help and childcare

Xavier Ramos

When the woman is the full-time breadwinner and the male is unemployed, he does as much domestic labour as she does

Crompton and Lyonette

Explaining the gender division of labour - the cultural or material explanation

Dale Southerton

Managing families quality time often falls to mothers and although men and women tend to have equal amounts of leisure time, women's leisure time tends to be dominated by childcare

Barrett and McIntosh

Men gain far more from women's domestic work than they give back in financial support, and the support that husbands give to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with 'strings attached'

Pahl and Vogler

The allowance system / pooling

Vogler et al

Found cohabiting couples are less likely to pool their money but are more likely to share domestic tasks

Nyman

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

Hardill

Conducted a study of 13 symmetrical conjugal role couples and found the man makes the main decisions.

Edgell

Very important decisions ( financial, jobs, etc ) are made by men and less important ( clothes, décor and food ) are made by women

Laurie and Geshuny

Found by 1995 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions, significantly though, high earning women were more likely to have a say.

Smart

Same-sex couples often don't see the control of money as meaning either equality or inequality in the relationship, because the lack of 'historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings around money'

Weeks et al

Found the typical pattern is pooling together money for household spending, together with separate accounts for personal spending

Dobash and Dobash

Research in Scotland - found violent incidents likely to be set off due to a wife challenging her husband's authority.

Stat - women's Aid Federation

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

Ansara and Hindin

Women are more likely to be afraid of their partner

Aliyah Dar

It can be difficult to count separate domestic violence incidents, because abuse may be continuous

Stat - Yearnshire

On average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report

Stat

During 2006-11, conviction rates were at 6.5% of incidents reported to the police.

Millett and Firestone

Argue that all societies have been founded on patriarchy. Men oppress and exploit women and assert their power through violence.

Elliot

Rejects the claim that men benefit from violence against women, not all men are aggressive and most are opposed to domestic violence.

Pilcher

The most important features of childhood is separateness, a distinctive stage where children occupy separate status from adults

Ruth Benedict

Children who aren't Western take responsibility at an earlier age, there is less value on adult authority and their sexual behaviour is viewed differently

Punch

Children in Bolivia are expected to take on work roles in the home and community by the age of 5 without question or hesitation

Aries

The modern notion of childhood gradually began to emerge from the 13th century onwards e.g. a distinction between children/adult clothing and education specialised for the young

Aries

Argues that in the Middle Ages the idea of childhood did not exist, based on examining contemporary art, children were no longer seen as small adults

Postman

"Childhood is disappearing at a dazzling speed"

Palmer

Today's children are experiencing a toxic childhood due to children receiving the same laws as adults, clothing similarities, children committing 'adult' crimes and the media

Postman

Childhood emerged due to mass literacy as adults then had the power to keep knowledge about sex, money, illness, violence, death from children hence why children are seen as ignorant / innocent

Opie

There is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children's culture over many years, as he found children's unsupervised games remained unique.

Jenks

Believes childhood is a creation of modern society ( especially 20th century )

Jenks

As society moves from modernity to postmodernity the adults relationships with children become more unstable and this generates feelings of insecurity

Aries and Shorter

Today's children are more valued, better cared for, protected and educated, enjoy better health and have more rights than those of previous generations

Brannen

Inequalities between children - Asian parents are more likely to be strict

Hillman

Inequalities between children - found boys have more freedom such as being allowed out later

Firestone and Holt

Things in march of progress that are labelled as care and protection are in fact oppression and control

Gittins

Claims that there's an age patriarchy, where the father figure asserts dominance over children and women

Berry Mayall

Seeing childhood as mere 'socialisation policies' for adults to mould, shape and develop is an 'adultist' perspective

Mayall

We need to focus on "the present tense of childhood" and the child's perspective

Smart et al

In divorce situations children aren't passive victims, but they are actively involved in trying to make the situation better for everyone ( this study used informal unstructured interviews which empower children to express their own views )

Parsons

He argues, since the industrialisation era, the nuclear family has increased in prominence as it fits the needs of the aforementioned society.

Murdoch

Family carries out four functions: sexual, reproduction of the next generation, socialisation of the children and economic

Engels

Inheritance of poverty - the means of production are maintained and this is ensured through monogamy, as it brings women's sexuality under male control. and they become an instrument for the production of children.

Zaretsky

Provides an illusion of a "safe haven" from the capitalist world so workers can be themselves and recharge

Greer

Argues the creation of female exclusive "matrilocal households" are the only way to escape the oppression of the family

Somerville

Argues that radical feminists fail to recognise the improvements in women's position.

Ansly

Women are the "takers of shit" of the frustrations (exploitation and alienation at work) males would otherwise direct at capitalism

Mary MacIntosh

Women are the reserve army for cheap labour

Tipper

Families can be more than by blood. Friends, fictive kin and pets (children frequently considered pets as part of the family)

Harper

Education is the most important reason for fall in birth rate.

Hirsch

A number of important social policies will need to change to tackle the new problems posed by an ageing population

McKeown

Improved nutrition accounted for up to half the reduction in death rates from 1900-2012

Stat - Walker

Those living in the poorest areas of England will die on average 7 years earlier than the one's living in richer areas

Vertovec

There is now a 'super-diversity' due to increases in immigration

Cohen

Three types of migrant:

citizens with full rights

denizens - privileged foreign nationals welcomed by the state

helots - 'slaves' : unskilled, poorly paid work, legally tied to employer

Eade

Bangladeshi Muslims were more likely to have hierarchical identities, whereas hybrid identities are more likely to be challenged

Eriksen

Due to large levels of migration people now have 'transnational identities' where they don't believe they belong to one culture or country

Stat

40% of adult care nurses in the UK are foreign

Stat ( 2012 )

Ethnic minority groups account for less than 14% of the population

Eriksen

Shallow diversity - regarding chicken tikka massala as the the nation's dish is acceptable to the state whereas deep diversity, arranged marriages or veiled women isn't acceptable to the state.

Castles and Kosack

Assimilation ( encouraging migrants to adopt the culture ) creates a racially divided working class

Ehrenreich and Hochschild

Care work, domestic work and sex work in the UK is done my female migrants

Fletcher

The introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to a supportive welfare state

Donzelot

Policing the family - the knowledge of doctors, health workers etc is used to control and change the family

Almond

Divorce laws undermine the lifelong commitment and gay marriage suggests the state no longer sees heterosexual relationships as superior

Murray

Welfare benefits offer 'perverse incentives' - that is, they reward irresponsible or antisocial behaviour.

Land

Many social policies assume the ideal family is nuclear and this provides a self- fulfilling prophecy

Drew

Familistic gender regimes - policies are based on gender division

individualistic gender regimes where policies believe husbands and wives are equal

Conservative governments ( 1979-97 )

Thatcher banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and efined divorce as a social problem, but also introduced measures opposed to the New Right such as making divorce easier and giving illegitimate children the same rights as those born to married parents

New Labour governments ( 1997-2010 )

Longer maternity leave, three months unpaid leave for both parents and the right to seek time off work for family reasons, The New Deal - helping lone parents return to work, civil partnerships for same sex couples, giving unmarried couples the same rights to adopt as married couples and outlawing discrimination on the grounds of sexuality

Hayton

Division of conservatives

Modernisers - recognise the family are more diverse and reflect this in their policies

Traditionalists - favour a New Right view and see diversity as morally wrong.

Browne

Disagreed with the view that the Coalition government's financial austerity policies reflected the New Right's desire to cut public spending and found two-parent families with children fared particularly badly as a result of the Coalition's tax and benefits policies.

Benson

Couples are more stable when married, after analysing the data of over 15,000 babies found the rate of breakdown between cohabiting parents with a baby were 16% higher than those married

Oakley

Cross-cultural studies show gender roles aren't biological and that this New Right theory is a negative reaction from the feminist movement.

Smart

Cohabitation is more common in poorer social groups, so poverty may be the cause of a relationship breakdown.

Chester

The Neo-Conventional family -the extent and importance of family diversity has been exaggerated, and maintains that the nuclear family is the dominant family type.

The Rapoports

Five types of diversity: organisational, social class, cultural, life-stage and generational

Cheal

Postmodern perspective: this perspective argues there is no longer a single, dominant family, but many types of families that give individuals much more choice in their lifestyles

Stacey

Greater freedom has benefitted women, using life history interviews to conduct case studies of postmodern families in California she found that women rejected the housewife-mother role and created new types of family that better suited their needs. Eg. the divorce-extended family, whose members are connected via divorce.

Morgan

The family is actually who people choose to call their family rather than blood.

Giddens and Beck

The individualisation thesis - class, gender and the family have lost much influence over us. We have become "disembedded" from traditional roles, leaving us with more freedom to choose how we live our lives.

Giddens

A more equal relationship between men and women has been, now individuals are more free to define relationships themselves. The Pure Relationship - modern relationships are held together by choice and equality: its purpose is to satisfy one another, rather than look after the children, meaning relationships are less stable.