Families and Households Flashcards

Flashcards of key vocabulary from the lecture notes on families and households.

Murdock (1949)

• nuclear family is universal

• provides four key functions for society:

  • sexual

  • economic

  • education

  • reproductive

Reproductive Function

• Childbearing that generally occurs within a marital context

• stabilises the marital relationship

• producing the next generation.

Sexual Function

• The nuclear family allows the expression of sexuality in a socially approved context

• encouraging commitment through fidelity.

Educational Function

• Primary socialisation occurs within the family

• where children learn expected norms and values.

Economic Function

• The family pools resources and ensures all members have what they need

• parents becoming productive workers.

Parsons (1959)

• the nuclear family has evolved

• provides two clear functions for society.

• smaller units now to meet need of the new capitalist industrial society

• urban nuclear families became dependent on outside agencies

• increase of ability for social mobility

Primary Socialisation

• The process where children learn and internalize the share norms and values of society

• known as value consensus.

Stabilisation of Adult Personalities

• Spouses and children act as a 'warm bath,'

• releasing the burdens and stresses of work.

Instrumental Leader

• The male as the breadwinner, providing economic welfare and protection for the family.

• Parsons

Expressive Leader

• Females are biologically better placed for the nurturing, maternal role in the family.

• Parsons

Young & Willmott (1974)

• explored how families developed from pre-industrial times to the late 20th Century.

• disagreed with parsons about the disappearance of the extended family

• identified 3 main stages of the family

• used historical records and social surveys in Bethnal Green and Greater London

Pre-industrial Family

• A unit of economic production where husband, wife, and children work as a team,

• usually in agriculture or textiles.

• no separation between work and home

Early industrial family

• Family members began going out of the home to work for pay

• maintaining extended networks for security due to low wages

• weak conjugal bonds

Symmetrical Family

• Families were self-sufficient and home-centred with leisure time spent together in the home,

• conjugal roles were similar.

• conjugal bonds strong

• still sexist ideas of work within the family

pros of functionalist perspective

• many people still maintain that their goal is to live as a nuclear family unit

• many social policies have originated in functionalist and New Right theories of the family

cons of functionalist perspective

• consumption is now a key feature of the nuclear family

• the dark side of the family is ignored

• theories are ethnocentric

• focus on heterosexual two parent marriage which is politically conservative and implies that it is the only right way to bring up a family

Fletcher (1966)

• Claims Parsons was wrong to suggest the family lost functions to other institutions;

• stable childcare, emotional needs, and a home remain fundamental to the family

Charles Murray (1979-97)

• welfare state has undermined personal responsibility, self help and the importance of support from families

• families should provide stability and economic success for all of society

• nuclear family ideal unit

• single motherhood leads to a culture of welfare dependency and generation of particularly young boys without a working male role model

• any family other than the nuclear family is a threat to the nuclear family

• free market

• state has taken too many roles on for the family

Engels (1884)

• Argued that family had a clear economic function for capitalism

• ensuring wealth remained in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

• family relations facilitate inheritance

• maintains the inequality of wealth and reinforces class divisions.

Zaretsky (1976)

• Suggests the nuclear family benefits capitalism in a few ways:

  • socialising future workers

  • cushioning adults from the effects of capitalism

  • nuclear family decreases the ability to fight capitalism

Cushioning Effect

Family cushions workers from the effects of capitalism.

Hochschild (2003)

• Explores how emotional, personal (family) life has been brought into the capitalist system and commodified.

• emotional life has been turned into something that can be brought/profited

• private and personal things are not bought/ sold for profit

Commodification

Turning something into a product that can be bought or sold for profit.

Alienation

As people become involved in the buying and selling of elements of their personal, emotional lives, they become alienated from their own feelings and from their connections to others.

Liberal Feminists

Recognize that the family has long been a source of inequality.

Helen Wilkinson

these areas have led to improvements for women in the family:

• the economy changing from industrial to service

• genderquake

• increased reproductive rights for women

Genderquake

A major cultural change in women’s attitudes, who are no longer content to see their lives defined by marriage, family and children.

Liberal Feminist Evaluation

• It is an ethnocentric view

• radical feminists argue these are just tinkering with a broken system.

• anne oakly- little evidence for more joint roles

• overstatement of progress made

Marxist Feminists

Argue that families help to preserve both capitalism and patriarchy.

Reproducing the Labour Force

Families force women to reproduce the labour force.

Cheap Labour

Families force women to act as reserve army of cheap labour

Takers of Shit

• Women as takers of shit absorbing their husband's frustrations from work so that he does not rebel against the system

• Ansley

benston

women preform large amounts of unpaid labour in the home which benefits the capitalist system

Radical Feminism

The role and function of the family is to support the power and dominance of heterosexual men over women.

Gender Separatism

Some radical feminists propose gender separatism where women live separately from men.

Anthony Giddens

Outlines the major changes that have taken place in intimate relationships between people.

Romantic Love

With ‘the one’ which lasts forever has been replaces with confluent love which lasts only as long as it benefits the lover.

pure relationships

based on confluent love

Plastic Sexuality

Sex is a leisure pursuit rather than an act of love and commitment within marriage.

Reflexivity

People now have the opportunity for reflexivity rationally reflecting on their lives and taking steps to improve it.

Beck & Beck-Gernsheim

Individualisation involves an extension of the areas of life in which individuals are expected to make their own decisions.

Individualisation

Is linked to an increase in personal mobility, both social and geographical.

Normal Chaos of Love

Individuals try out a number of arrangements to build personal relationships this often leads to conflict with partners and lovers.

Judith Stacey

Does not see the emergence of the postmodern family as another stage in the development of family life; instead it has destroyed the whole idea that the family progresses through a series of logical stages.

Stacey’s Research

• silicon valley

• Pam and Dotty

• examples of how family life had to develop to account for rapid changes leading to move away from trad nuclear families

• gay and lesbian families have played a crucial role in

  changes in family life because the prejudice they face forces reflection leading to creativity and imagination

Carol Smart

Rejects the idea of the postmodern family, and challenges the notion of individualisation.

Personal Life Perspective

Start from the point of view of the individuals concerned and the meanings they give to their relationships with others.

• carol smart

Fictive Kin

Equally significant bonds might be with Fictive kin, Chosen families, or Relationships with pets.

giddens vs the becks

• giddens- broadly postive

• the becks- more negative

Patterns of MARRIAGE & COHABITATION

• Marriage rate is less than half its peak recorded in 1972

• average age increased

• men on average 3 years older when getting married

• 80% of marriages take place in civil ceremonies

• cohabitation has increased

• 85% of couples who marry cohabit first

Sarah Corse

Found in the USA that the decline of full time factory jobs means that working class men and women are now less likely to get and stay married.

secularisation

decline of the importance of religion

New Right perspective on marriage

Rector argues that social policies have led to the decline in marriage as the benefits system has reduced the financial need for marriage.

Serial monogamy

The practice of engaging in a succession (one after the other) of monogamous relationships (committed to one person).

Pure relationship

Post modernists such as Giddens would suggest that individuals are looking for the ‘pure relationship’ and cohabiting allows greater flexibility to ‘test a relationship out’ before lifelong commitment.

Living apart together

Couples who have an intimate relationship but live at separate addresses. This is a growing trend.

Patricia Morgan

• cohabitation is less stable than marriage

• Refers to cohabitation as ‘marriage-lite’

• as the evidence suggests that couples are less happy or fulfilled, and the relationship is more likely to be abusive.

Murphy

Suggested children from cohabiting couples got worse results at school, left education earlier and were more likely to develop a serious illness.

SEPERATION & DIVORCE

• Numbers of divorces rose sharply in the early 1970s, and have remained relatively high

• number of divorces has declined due to falling marriage rates

• Those married in the 2000s and 2010s are less likely have divorced before 10 years than those who married in the 1990s and 1980s, suggesting a recent declining divorce rate

1969 Divorce Reform Act

• before one partner had to prove the ‘fault’ or ‘guilt’ of the other

• ‘irretrievable breakdown’ of the marriage if the couple have been separated for two years or five if one partner objected

2020 Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act

No fault divorces – no need to provide reasons for the breakdown, the process reduced the likelihood of a bitter dispute.

Hart Divorce

Suggested that some of this could be the frustration of working wives as being responsible for the bulk of domestic and childcare.

feminists on divorce

• women expect more from marriage than men

• 2012 65% of divorces were initiated by wives

Gershuny

• when women worked full time they still complete 73% of the domestic chores

Serial Monogamy

This is increasingly being the MARITAL norm (meaning that people are often marrying more than once), due to divorce or the death of a spouse.

Reconstituted family

A growing family form due to divorce and remarriage.

Total fertility rate

(TFR) refers to the total number of children the average women has in her lifetime.

Childbearing

• reduced massively

• rate has dropped from a high of 3 in the 1960s to 1.44 today.

average age of women having children

• 32

• increased

The number of children born to women over the age of 40

• doubled

reliable birth control

• women have greater control over their own fertility

Hakim- Childbearing

• suggests that social disapproval is still quite powerful in relation to voluntary childlessness

Women are prioritising careers and choosing to have children later in life

• less biological time

• may not want to take lots of time out work or mat leave

Park- Childbearing

Found that women in careers tend to reject the notion of a maternal instinct.

increased child- centredness

• the ability to dedicate more time and money to the fact there is fewer children

• the family is more democratic

• children have fewer freedoms

Hareven

• The life course is made up of stages that includes :

  • birth,

  • early childhood,

  • infancy,

  • childhood,

  • adolescence,

  • young adulthood,

  • adulthood,

  • middle age,

  • old age

  • death.

• individuals have to adapt at each stage

Life Course

An individual may live in several different family types as life progresses e.g. from a nuclear to a single-parent parent family etc. The individual has to adapt at each stage of the life course.

Neo-Conventional Family

A dual earning family in which both spouses go out to work.

Pure Relationship

One which lasts only as long as both partners are happy with it, not because of tradition or a sense of commitment.

Rapoports

Fundamental change is taking place in British family life, people experience wide variations in family and household living.

Organisational Diversity

Joint conjugal roles or separate conjugal roles.

Cultural Diversity

There are different family structures based on cultural and religious differences.

Social Class Diversity

Income and class differences that affect childcare practices.

Life-Stage Diversity

Newlyweds or retired couples.

Generational Diversity

Older and younger people have different attitudes based on their own historical context.

Chester

• most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family on a long-term basis

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

• people living alone have been or one day will be part of the NF

• for most couples cohabitation is temporary

Neo-conventional family

This is a ‘dual earning family in which both spouses go out to work.

• chester

stacey- family diversity

• greater choice for women gives them more ability to break free from patriarchal oppression

• people are freed from trad values

Murray and Philips

• more negative view of family diversity.

• state policies, and particularly state welfare policies, and liberal attitudes have led to a collapse of traditional families

• resulting in many social problems

• benefits paid persuade young women to get pregnant when single and for young men to not work and provide

• the rioting in 2011 London, was due to matrifocal lone-parent families and children grow up without a father figure

weeks

• suggests that sexual morality has become a matter of personal choice

• less stigma and the church and state have lost power over the choice

• family patterns have not change massively

Brannen

• the beanpole family is now the dominant family type in Britain

• As people live longer, the bond between generations strengthens.

• the bond persists despite other changes to family life

Symmetrical Family

Study of working class families in the East End of London in the 1950s and again in the 1970s

1950s segregated

the roles in the family were binary and unequal, with the husband being seen as the head of the household and the wife being dependent on her husband

evaluation of symmetrical family

• anne oakly

• highly critical of young and willmott

• claimed they took no account of the time spent on domestic task

• dual burden- woman now face paid work and the bulk of domestic work

Duncombe and Marsden

• The Triple Shift

• economic work, emotional work and housework

Emotion Work

• Occupations which keep people happy, for example sending celebration cards to extended kin

• from a young age girls are trained to become emotionally skilled in empathy

Gurshuny- Domestic Labour

• wives that did not work did 83% of housework

• wives that worked part time did 82% of housework

• wives working full time did 73% of housework

• the longer that they had been in full time work, the more likely their husband was to complete housework

Dunne- Domestic Labour

• Lesbian couples have a much more equal division of labour

• highlights the patriarchal nature of heterosexual relationships

Fisher- Childcare

• estimated that British fathers care of children rose 800% between 1975 and 1997

• from 15 minutes to 2 hours per day on average.

Craig- childcare

• men are more likely to spend quality time with children

• women tend to spend time carrying out practical tasks