Sociology Paper 2

Sociology AS level Notes (Families & Households)

Key Terms:

Sociology : is the study of society and of people and their behaviour.

Family : a social unit made up of people related to each other by blood, birth or marriage.

Socialisation: the process whereby we learn how to behave in society, we learn norms & values

Familialism: the family teaches the idea that the ideal family to live in is a cereal packet family.

The cereal packet family: this is the man as the wage earner & the woman as the housewife.

Social policy: the plans and actions of state agencies, such as health and social services, the welfare benefits system, schools and other public bodies.

Norms: unwritten rules shared by members of a social group about the right way to behave such as being quiet in a cinema.

Culture: The learned, shared norms, values, beliefs and goals of members of society.

Value: A belief that something is important and worthwhile, right or wrong.

Status: A position in society.

Role: A set of norms which defines appropriate behaviour for a particular status.

Social control: The methods designed to ensure that members of society conform to approved ways of behaving.

Social class: is a system of social inequality containing various levels in which people are grouped in terms of income and wealth, power and prestige.

Nuclear family: A family of two generations (parents and children) related by blood or marriage who live together.

Extended family: Any family containing relatives other than parents and children, for example, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Polygyny: When men are permitted to have more than one wife at the same time.

Monogamous nuclear family: A family of parents and children where the adult partners only have sex with each other

Connectedness thesis: The theory that it is important to understand individuals through the networks of personal relationships they are involved in rather than simply as isolated individuals.

THEORIES OF THE FAMILY

Functionalist

Functionalists believe that society is based on a value consensus which is a set of shared norms and values.They argue the family is an important sub-system- a basic building block of society.

George Peter Murdock argues that the family performs four essential functions to meet the needs of the society and its members:

• The reproductive function ensures the continuation of society by producing more human beings.

• The economic function by providing food and shelter

• The sexual function of the family by providing the best

opportunity for ‘socially controlled expression of the sex drive’. For example, the family teaches children only to have sex after they are married, and that sex should only be between a man and a woman.

• The socialisation function allows the family to pass on norms & values of society from one generation to the next.

Criticisms of Murdock

• Feminists see the family as serving the needs of men and oppressing women.

• Marxists argue that the family meets the needs of capitalism not those of the family members or society as a whole.

• Another type of household that may contradict Murdock’s claims about the universality of the nuclear family, as defined by him, is the gay or lesbian household. By definition, such households will not contain ‘adults of both sexes’ who are partners (Murdock, 1949). Furthermore, Judith Stacey (2011) notes that in the USA transgender people can marry people of the same or opposite sex and this is also true in the UK. Stacey also argues that the example of the Mosuo people of southwest China undermines the view that the family, as understood by Murdock, is universal.

Talcott Parsons’ Functional fit Theory’

Talcott Parsons has a historical perspective on the evolution of the nuclear family. His functional fit theory is that as society changes, the type of family that ‘fits’ that society and the functions it performs changes . Over the last 200 years, society has moved from pre-industrial where it was a unit of consumption in which family members worked together e.g. on the family farm , to industrial and the main family type has changed from the extended family to the nuclear family [which] fits the more complex industrial society better, but it performs a reduced number of functions.

He believes the family has two irreducible functions:

• Primary socialisation : this takes place in early childhood where children are equipped with society's norms and values to enable them to cooperate with others and begin to integrate them into society.

• Stabilisation of adult personalities : As adults the family provides ‘a haven in a heartless world’, it gives emotional security against the stresses & strains of industrial society. The family is a place where adults can relax and release tensions enabling them to return to the workplace refreshed and ready to meet its demands. For example, at work people value you for what you do, not who you are - the emphasis is on achievement. The family counterbalances this - they love you for who you are unlike the outside world, thus providing a stable environment from a world that can be pressured, impersonal & chaotic. Parsons believes that the male in the family is the one whom the family protects from the stress of work as he is the main breadwinner ( the instrumental role) sometimes called the warm bath theory, as the family gives the male worker a relaxing place to be. The woman has the ‘natural’ role (the expressive role) as housewife providing this haven by being the one who cares for others.

Criticism for Parson:

• Parsons’s view of the nuclear family is that the husband as the breadwinner & woman as a housewife, i.e. the cereal packet family. This family also tended to be white and middle class so he therefore ignores family diversity such as lone parent families etc.

• Functionalists focus on the functions the family provides such as intimacy and support but put less attention to the dark side of the family such as domestic abuse and child neglect.

• Parsons has also been heavily criticised from a feminist perspective. Lynn Jamieson (2005) accuses Parsons of ignoring the way that families ‘were key mechanisms for sustaining gender inequalities and the subordination of women’ (Jamieson, 2005).

• His picture is based largely on the American middle-class family, which he treats as representative of American families in general, ignoring differences based on social divisions. For example, Parsons fails to explore possible differences between middle-class and working-class families, or different family structures in minority ethnic communities.

Marxists

Marxist argue the family supports capitalist values, exploits the working class as a result they are a conflict theory. They see all societies' institutions such as the education system, the media ,religion and the state along with the family as helping to maintain class inequality . They see capitalist society as based on an unequal conflict between two social class:

• The capitalist class( bourgeoisie)

• The working class( proletariat)

Marxist have identified several functions that they see the family as fulfilling for capitalism:

Inheritance of property

Karl Marx called the earliest , classless society ‘primitive capitalism’ where there was no private property ,instead all members of society owned the means of production communally. At this stage of social development, there was no family as such. Instead there existed what Engles called the "promiscuous horde” or tribe, in which there were no restrictions on sexual relationships. However as the forces of production developed ,society's wealth began to increase. Therefore a class of men emerged who were able to secure control of the means of production and this change brought about the patriarchal monogamous nuclear family.

Private Property

Friedrich Engels (1884) argued that the modern nuclear family developed in capitalist society. Private property is fundamental to capitalism and largely owned by men. Before 1882 in Britain a married woman could not own property. It passed to their husband on marriage. In Engels view, monogamy became essential because of the inheritance of private property as men had to be certain of the paternity of their children in order to ensure that their legitimate heirs inherited from them. In addition, in Engles view,the rise of monogamous nuclear families represented a “world historical defeat of the female sex” because it brought the women's sexuality under the male control and turned her into a “mere instrument for the production of children ''. Therefore the reason the family formed was to pass on private property onto the next generation maintaining capitalism.

Marxist argue that the only way to overthrow capitalism is to form a communist society where the means of production will be owned collectively.

Ideological Functions

Marxist argue that the family today performs key ideological functions for capitalism, meaning a set of ideas or beliefs that justify inequality and maintain the capitalist system by persuading people to accept its fair, natural or unchangeable.

One way in which the family does this is by socialising children into the idea that hierarchy and inequality are inevitable. Parental power over the children accustoms them to the idea that there always has to be someone in charge and this prepares them for a working life in which they will accept orders from their capitalist employers.

Unit of Consumption

Capitalism exploits the labour of the proletariat , making a profit by selling the products of their labour for more than it pays them to produce these commodities. The family therefore plays a major role in generating profits, since it is an important market for the sale of consumer goods:

- Advertisers urge families to ‘keep up with the Joneses’’ by consuming all

the latest products.

- The media target children, who use ‘pester power’ to persuade parents

to spend more.

- Children who lack the latest clothes or ‘must have’ gadgets are mocked &

stigmatised by their peers. Marcuse referred to these as ‘false needs’, products that we feel that we must have as a result of the bourgeoisie using advertising & the media to promote & sell the goods they produce.

Arlie Hochschild – emotional life, commodification and alienation

Arlie Hochschild (2011) uses Marxist theory (along with other theories) in her studies of emotional life in capitalist societies. Commodification Hochschild follows Marx in arguing that in capitalism almost every aspect of social life is commodified – that is, it is turned into something that can be bought and sold. Capitalism seeks profit wherever it can and expands into new areas when profits cannot be raised in existing markets. In recent decades, emotional life has increasingly become a commodity. This means that things that used to be thought of as private and personal and distinct from economic life have become just another commodity to buy and sell. For example, you can buy the chance to find love by joining a dating agency. In this process, people can become alienated from their emotional attachment to others and even from their own feelings.

Alienation

Alienation involves a sense of detachment from something. It occurs when people lack or lose a sense of connection to something or someone, perhaps even feeling a stranger to themselves. Marx believed that capitalism created alienation because workers produced products for capitalists and did not own the products of their own labour. They had to compete with other workers rather than cooperate with them and they couldn’t express themselves through work which was imposed on them by capitalists .To Hochschild, this process has extended further than ever, alienating people from their own feelings and from their connections to others, including family members.

Hochschild also interviewed Indian surrogate mothers who were pregnant with the children of clients from the USA and Canada. One interviewee described how she tried to keep a sense of detachment from the baby, the clients and even her own womb. She had decided to rent out her womb to pay her husband’s medical bills which she would not otherwise be able to afford. She was very aware that others thought surrogacy was shameful, so she moved to a different village away from neighbours and relatives. The clinic which employed women as surrogates treated them very much as commodities. Their aims were to produce more babies, improve quality by controlling the diet and sexual activity of the women, and to make the whole process more efficient and emotion-free. To Hochschild, the women were engaged in a form of emotional labour , alienating themselves from their own bodies and the babies they carried to protect themselves from ‘a sense of loss and grief’ they might experience upon surrendering the babies after birth.

Criticism of Marxist

• Functionalist argue that Marxist ignore the very real benefits that the family provide for its members such as intimacy , emotional support

• Feminists argue that Marxist emphasis on social class & capitalism underestimates the importance of gender inequalities within the family. In the feminist view, the family primarily serves the interests of men rather than capitalism.

• Deborah Chambers (2012) notes that feminist writers have criticised Engels for emphasising economic relations of production over reproduction (childbearing and childrearing). He was not particularly concerned with the restrictions placed on women by the demands of housework and childcare; instead he concentrated on issues related to property ownership. However, Chambers believes that Engel’s work was very important as a pioneering study which linked production and reproduction and explored gender inequality in the family in terms of historical and political factors. As such it laid the groundwork for many later studies, including the next to be considered

• Jennifer Somerville (2000) argues that Zaretsky exaggerates the importance of the family as a refuge from life in capitalist society. She suggests that Zaretsky underestimates ‘the extent of cruelty, violence, incest and neglect’ within families. He also exaggerates the extent to which family life is separated from work. According to Somerville, during the early stages of capitalism, most working-class women had to take paid work in order for the family to survive financially, and relatively few stayed at home as full-time housewives. There is no doubt though that consumption by and in families is important in contemporary capitalist societies.

• Hochschild’s work, like that of Zaretsky, shows how family life has become part of consumer capitalism with emotion work in the form of personal services being bought and consumed by families. It also demonstrates how alienation in capitalist societies extends into intimate personal life. Contrary to Zaretsky’s views, this suggests that family life and intimate relationships are not a refuge from the harshness of capitalist relationships. While Hochschild believes that individuals do not just act as passive victims – they actively struggle with controlling their emotions so they can defend their own sense of self-worth – individuals cannot escape from work and avoid alienation in their personal, intimate and family life. Emotional labour pervades all aspects of social life in capitalist societies.

Feminists

Feminists take a critical view of the family as they argue that it oppresses women. However feminism is a broad term covering several types so each type approaches the family in a different way and offers different solutions to the problem of gender inequality.

Liberal Feminism

Liberal feminists tend to take a positive and optimistic view of women’s position in society and the family. They argue that women’s oppression is being gradually overcome through changing people’s attitudes and through changes in the law such as the Sex Discrimination Act (1975), which outlaws discrimination in employment.

Liberal feminists believe that inequalities between men and women in society and the family are caused by socialisation. They do not see a need for revolution as they believe that gradual changes can be made by laws & resocialisation. They believe that this gradual change is already occurring & point to such evidence as:

• Legal changes - Women now have equal property and inheritance rights to men after a divorce. Rape in marriage became a crime in the early 1990s. Domestic violence has started to be taken seriously by the police & courts.

• Social changes - Men do more in the home. There has been a move to the symmetrical family whereby men are more involved with the children. Labour saving devices make housework easier & quicker. Families are now smaller so women have more time to fulfil themselves in other ways, for example careers. More women now go out to work.

Criticisms:

• Other feminists believe that liberal feminism does not go far enough. It does not call for real change in society to a different system. Marxists and radical feminists believe that there is a need to change the whole structure of the family & society.

• Linda McKie and Samantha Callan (2012) argue that liberal feminism has failed to deliver fully on its promises. According to them, when women become mothers this can be a turning point which leads to women adopting traditional gender roles. Mothers (and in some contexts their daughters) still end up doing a disproportionate share of housework, caring work and emotional work (for example writing and sending birthday and Christmas cards).

Marxist Feminist

Marxist feminist argue that the main cause of women’s oppression in the family is not men,but capitalism. Women are exploited in different ways:

• Magaret Benston talks about the work that housewives do and how it benefits capitalism. Housewives feed, clothe and look after the males in the home who are the ones to go out to work. This work benefits the capitalist system as housewives keep the workers healthy and happy and they do not get paid for it.

• Women absorb anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism. Fran Ansley (1972) describes wives as ‘takers of shit’ who soak up the frustration their husbands feel because of the alienation and exploitation they suffer at work.Wives act as a safety valve for their husbands to express their frustration at work without damaging the capitalist system i.e. if the man has had a bad day at work he can come home and shout at his wife or perhaps even hit her. This is good for capitalism as the man does not get angry with his boss at work so this doesn’t disrupt the workplace. Men can then exploit their wives despite being exploited themselves in the workplace.

Criticisms

• The theory is based on the cereal packet family. However this type of family is in decline in society. It can also be argued that the family no longer teaches familialism as more and more women see it as the norm to go to work.

Radical Feminist

Radical feminists believe that women are exploited by male dominated society (patriarchal society). They believe that the family is a patriarchal institution.

• Men are the enemy:they are the source of women's oppression and exploitation.

For radical feminists, the patriarchal system needs to be overturned and the family which they see as the roots of women's oppression must be abolished. They argue that the only way to achieve this is through separatism-women must organise themselves to live independently of men.

Softer radical feminists believe change may be able to occur within the traditional family structure. They are involved in campaigns like:

• campaigns against domestic violence & marital rape.

• the wages for housework campaigns in the 1980s.

The harder radical feminists are not as optimistic about the potential for changing the existing structure of the family; they believe that the family is essentially patriarchal and a more radical solution is required such as ‘political lesbianism’-the idea that heterosexual relationships are inevitably oppressive because they involve ‘sleeping with the enemy’ .

Delphy & Leonard state that men benefit from and exploit the work of women within the family. Women are expected to be subservient to men. They believe that wives

substantially contribute more work to the family through the double shift in terms of housework and childcare than husbands but they reap less benefit from the family. They have less decision-making power & less leisure time than men. Women are also often victims of physical ,emotional and domestic violence from men in the home.

Dunscombe & Marsden discuss how from an early age girls are trained to become emotionally skilled in empathy so they can actively participate in ’emotion work’ – occupations which keep people happy such as teachers or primary school teachers. They also uncovered an emotional vacuum in such heterosexual relationships

as they found a significant number of women were dissatisfied by the lack of their partner’s emotional support.

Greer 2000 argues there is a strong ideology suggesting that being a wife (or as she puts it, a ‘female consort’) is the most important female role. The wives of presidents and prime ministers get considerable publicity, but they have to be very much subservient to their husbands. Such a role demands that the woman must not only be seen to be at her husband’s side on all formal occasions, she must also be seen to adore him, and never to appear less than dazzled by everything he may say or do. Her eyes should be fixed on him but he should do his best never to be caught looking at her. The relationship must be clearly seen to be unequal.

Women as daughters -According to Greer, then, family life does little to benefit women in their adult roles as mothers and wives. However, it is also unrewarding for them as daughters. Greer suggests recent evidence shows that daughters are quite likely to experience sexual abuse from fathers, stepfathers and other adult male relatives. Greer sees this as a particularly horrendous extension of patriarchal relations within families. Such abuse is ‘very much more common than we like to believe’ and is not confined to ‘a special group of inadequate individuals’. Instead, it is an extension of male heterosexuality. Greer says: ‘It is understood that heterosexual men fancy young things, that youth itself is a turn-on, but no one is sure how young is too young. Why after all are sexy young women called “babes”?’

Criticisms

• They tend to focus only on the negative aspects of family life, giving an anti-family & anti-male view.

• Radical feminists along with most of the feminists ignore the fact that women can be oppressed in the family & society by other women not just by men e.g. M/C women who pay other women low wages to do their housework & childcare.

• Black feminists criticise radical & other feminists for ignoring the fact that for black women, the family can be a positive institution offering support from racism.

• Jennifer Somerville (2000) is very critical of Greer. Somerville argues that Greer underestimates the progress made by women over recent decades. She also argues that Greer offers little in the way of practical policy proposals that might make a real difference to women’s lives and she fails to discuss the effectiveness of policies that have been introduced.

Difference Feminism

Black feminism argues that we cannot generalise all women's experiences. For example, while the concept of patriarchy refers to gender subordination & class exploitation, it does not address race-related oppression.(Kirby et al,

1997) Radical-feminists & Marxist-feminists have forgotten ethnicity in their analyses. Thus black women &white women have different experiences within patriarchy. For example , black feminist view the black family positively as a source of support and resistance against racism.

Criticism of Difference feminist

• Other feminist argue that difference feminism neglects the fact that all women share many of the same experiences such as domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Personal life Perspective

The personal life perspective argues that all the theories suffer from two weaknesses:

• They tend to assume that the traditional nuclear family is the dominant family type. This ignores the increased diversity of families today. Compared with 50 years ago, many more people now live in other families, such as lone-parent families, stepfamilies & so on.

• They are all structural theories i.e. they assume that families & their members are simply passive puppets manipulated by the structure of society to perform certain functions e.g. to provide the economy with a mobile labour force, or to serve the needs of capitalism or of men.

Beyond ties of blood & marriage

PLP takes a wider view of relationships than just traditional ‘family’ relationships based on blood or marriage ties e.g. a woman who may not feel close to her own sister & may be unwilling to help her in a crisis, may at the same time be willing to care for someone to whom she is not related, such as the elderly woman who cohabited with her late father. Without knowing what meaning each of these relationships has for her, we would not be able to understand how she might act.

By focusing on people’s meanings, the PLP draws our attention to a range of other personal or intimate relationships that are important to people even though they may not be conventionally defined as ‘family’. These include all kinds of relationships that individuals see as significant that give them a sense of identity, belonging or relatedness, such as:

• Fictive kin: close friends who are treated as relatives, for example your mum's best friend who you call auntie.

• Relationship with dead relatives who live on in people memories and continue to shape their identities and affect their actions

• Relationships with pets- For example Becky Tipper found in her study of children's views of family relationships, that children frequently saw their pets as ‘part of family’.

In Personal Life , Smart (2007) argues that the early sociology of the family tended to concentrate upon the White, nuclear heterosexual family in Western culture. Gradually the terminology in the sociology of the family has shifted, introducing concepts such as households, discussing families of choice (which can encompass friends as well as kin) and thinking in terms of practices rather than structures and institutions. However, despite this, the sociology of the family, kinship and households still puts most emphasis on those who are connected by marriage or birth and/or those who live together under one roof. Smart, though, believes that people no longer necessarily see their personal life as structured in this way. For example, with technological developments it is easier for people to have significant relationships with people who live far away. Relationships between people who are not related can also be very strong and family life is not necessarily the centre of everyone’s relationships.

The main features of personal life

Smart argues that the ‘personal’ is different from the ‘individual’. She defines the personal as a part of social life which ‘impacts closely on people and means much to them’. It involves those aspects of life which evoke significant feelings. People may try to shape their personal life, but Smart does not assume that people can do whatever they want. People’s agency , their ability to choose how to act, is always constrained by their relationships with other people. Smart draws on the work of the symbolic interactionist George Herbert Mead to emphasise the importance of interaction between people in understanding personal life.

The idea of personal life does not see kin as necessarily more important than friends and allows for the idea of families of choice . It also incorporates relatively neglected areas of social life such as emotions, bodies and sexuality into the study of the family and other personal relationships. Subjective aspects of social life such as emotions and memories are particularly important in the sociology of personal life.

Core concepts in the study of personal life

1. Memory is a selective process. The more meaningful an event, the more likely it is to be remembered, and meaningfulness often involves personal relationships. Emotions such as passion, love, feelings of rejection, fear, jealousy and a sense of security can be closely related to the history of your own family. Families often provide the context which influences what we remember, and shared memory is an important part of connections between family members.

2. Biography , or life history , the story of an individual’s life, is also important in understanding personal life. Biography can provide in-depth descriptions for the researcher and help in understanding movement through the life course. It is particularly useful to study the biography of different family members to appreciate how they might experience the same events in different ways.

3. Embeddedness is important to Smart partly because it helps to counterbalance the excessive emphasis on individuals in theories like those of Giddens and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim. It shows how the experiences of individuals are made meaningful through being embedded in webs of relationships with other people, whether family, kin or friends.

4. Relationality is concerned with how people relate to one another and it plays down the significance of formal structures within and outside families. The idea of relationality emphasises that the nature of the relationship is more important than the position of a person within a family structure and that emotionally significant relationships are not confined to kin.

5. Imaginary is concerned with how people’s relationships and memories exist as much in the imagination as in reality.

Smart goes on to discuss several aspects of personal life. One of these is love . Some theorists are quite disdainful about love. For example, feminists tend to see it as no more than a patriarchal ideology which persuades women to accept the authority of men. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) are sceptical about the possibility of love in an individualised society.

Smart uses data from research she conducted in which 54 in-depth interviews were carried out with same-sex couples about their civil partnerships or commitment ceremonies, to discuss love, commitment and emotions. Twelve of the couples saw the ceremony to form a civil partnership as transforming the meaning of their love and bringing it to a higher level. Thirty-seven of the couples saw it as the culmination of a growing commitment that had developed over time. These couples were less likely to talk directly about love, and relied more on their shared history rather than their future relationship to give meaning to the ceremony. Three of the couples saw the ceremony primarily in terms of how it enlisted recognition and support from their wider networks of friends and family. Smart’s research demonstrated the importance of personal meanings and emotional attachments and the centrality of networks beyond the immediate family and people’s households in their lives.

Donor-conceived children

Nordqvists and Smart(2014) found that the issue of blood and genes raised a range of feelings. Some parents emphasised the importance of social relationships over genetic ones in forming family bonds. For example,Erin , the mother of an egg donor conceived child explained being a mom in terms of the time and effort spent into raising her daughter, “that what makes mother and not the cell that starts it off”.

However , difficult feelings could flare up for a non genetic parent if someone remarked that the child looked like them.

Criticism of the Donor Conceived Child

• If the couple knew the donor they would have to resolve other questions about who counted as family.

• For lesbian couples , equality between the genetic and nongenetic mothers and the donor might be treated as a “real” second parent.

Criticisms of the Personal life Perspective

Many sociologists have welcomed Smart’s approach. Deborah Chambers (2012) sees it as useful because it does not prioritise relationships based on family and marriage over other relationships which may be equally or more significant; it gets away from any idea that nuclear families are the norm or the ideal and it encourages small-scale qualitative research which acknowledges the importance of meanings. However, the relatively narrow focus of the research based on this approach can lose sight of wider patterns of social change. It could be seen as sometimes focusing on relatively marginal aspects of personal life or as being such a generalised approach that it lacks a clear focus.

FAMILIES AND SOCIAL POLICY

Most social policies affect families in some way or other. Some are aimed directly at families, such as laws governing marriage and divorce, abortion and contraception, child protection, adoption and so on.

A comparative view of family policy

The actions and policies of governments can sometimes have profound effects on families and their members . Cross-cultural examples from different societies and historical periods show us some of the more extreme ways in which the state's policies can affect family life. An example of this is China’s one-child policy.

China’s one-child policy- In China, the government's population control policy has aimed to discourage couples from having more than one child. The policy is supervised by workplace family planning committees whereby women must seek their permission to try to become pregnant, and there is often both a waiting list and a quota for each factory.

Couples who comply with the policy get extra benefits, such as free child healthcare and higher tax allowances. An only child will also get priority in education and housing later in life.

Couples who break their agreement to have only one child must repay the allowances and pay a fine. Women face pressure to undergo sterilisation after their first child.

Nazi family policy- In Nazi Germany in the 1930s , the state pursued a twofold policy. On the one hand, it encouraged the healthy and supposedly ‘racially pure’ to breed a ‘master race’ (for example, by restricting access to abortion and contraception)

Official policy sought to keep women out of the workforce and confine them to the 'children, kitchen and church’ , the better to perform their biological role.

On the other hand, the state compulsorily sterilised 375 000 disabled people that it deemed unfit to breed on grounds of ‘physical malformation, mental retardation, epilepsy, imbecility, deafness or blindness’. Many of these people were later murdered in Nazi concentration cramps.

Democratic societies- By contrats with these extreme examples, some people argue that in democratic societies such as Britain, the family is a private sphere of life in which the government does not intervene , except perhaps when things ‘go wrong’, for example in cases of child abuse.

Criticism

Sociologists argue that in fact, even in democratic societies, the state’s social policies play a very important role in shaping family life.

Perspective on families and social policy

Although sociologists agree that social policy can have important effects on family life, they hold different views about what kinds of effects it has and whether these are desirable.

Functionalism

Functionalists see society as built on harmony and consensus (shared values), and free from major conflicts. They see the state as acting in the interest of society as a whole and its social policies as being for the good of all. Functionalists see policies as helping families to perform their functions more effectively and make life better for their members.

For example, Fletcher (1966) argues that the introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively. For instance, the existence of the National Health Service means that with the help of doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines, the family today is better able to take care of its members when they are sick.

Criticism

• It assumes that all members of the family benefit equally from social policies, whereas feminist for example argue that policies often benefit men at the expense of women.

• It assumes that there is a ‘march of progress’, with social policies steadily making family life better and better. However, Marxists for example argue that policies can also turn the clock back and reverse progress previously made, for example by cutting welfare benefits to poor families.

Policing the family

Donzelot (1977) offers a very different perspective on the relationship between the family and state policies from that of the functionalist. Donzelot has a conflicted view of society and he sees policy as a form of state power and control over families.

Donzelot uses Foucault’s (1976) concept of surveillance. Foucault sees power not just as something held by the government or state, but as diffused throughout society and found within all relationships. Foucault uses professionals such as doctors and social workers as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into ‘cases’ to be dealt with.

Donzelot applies these ideas to the family and is interested in how professionals carry out surveillance of families. He argues that social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families. Donzelot calls this ‘the policing of families’.

Surveillance is not targeted equally on all social classes as poor families are more likely to be seen as ‘problem’ families and as the cause of crime and anti-social behaviour. These are the families that professionals target for ‘improvement’.

For example, as Rachel Condry (2007) notes, the state may seek to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders through the courts. Parents of young offenders, truant or badly behaved children may be forced to attend parenting classes to learn the ‘correct’ way to bring up their children.

Donzelot rejects the functionalist march of progress view that social policy and the professionals who carry it out have created a better, freer or more humane society. Instead, he sees social policy as a form of state control of the family.

By focusing on the micro level of how the ‘caring professions’ act as agents of social control through their surveillance of families, Donzelot shows the importance of professional knowledge as a form of power of control.

Criticism

Marxist and Feminist criticise Donzelot for failing to identify clearly who benefits from such policies of surveillance. Marxist argue that social policies generally operate in the interests of the capitalist class, while feminist argue that men are the main beneficiaries.

The New Right

The New Right are strongly in favour of the conventional or ‘traditional’ nuclear family based on a married, heterosexual couple, with a division of labour between a male provider and a female homemaker. They see this family type as naturally self-reliant and capable of caring and providing for its members, especially the successful socialisation of children.

In their view, the changes that have led to greater family diversity, such as increases in divorce, cohabitation, same-sex partnerships and lone parenthood, are threatening the conventional family and producing social problems such as crime and welfare dependency.

For the New Right, state policies have encouraged these changes and helped to undermine the nuclear family. For example, Brenda Almond (2006) argues that :

• Laws making divorce easier undermine the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman

• Tax laws discriminate against conventional families with a sole (usually male ) breadwinner. They cannot transfer the non-working partner’s (usually the wife’s) tax allowances to the working partner, so they tend to pay more tax than dual-earner couples, each of whom has a tax allowance.

Similarly, the New Right points out that increased rights for unmarried cohabitants, such as adoption rights and succession to council house tenancies and pension rights when a partner dies, begin to make cohabitation and marriage more similar. This sends out the signal that the state does not see marriages as special or better.

Lone parents, welfare policy and the dependency culture

New right commentators such as Charles Murray are particularly critical of welfare policy. In their view, providing ‘generous’ welfare benefits such as council housing for unmarried teenage mothers and cash payments to support lone-parent families, undermines the conventional nuclear family and encourages deviant and dysfunctional family types that harm society.

Murray argues that these welfare benefits offer ‘preserves incentives’ - that is, they reward irresponsible or anti-social behaviour. For example:

• If fathers see that the state will maintain their children, some of them will abandon their responsibilities towards their families.

• Providing council housing for unmarried teenage mothers encourages young girls to become pregnant.

• The growth of lone-parent families, encouraged by generous benefits, means more boys grow up without a male role model and authority figure. This lack of paternal authority is responsible for a rising crime rate among young males.

According to Murray, lone parenthood is harmful to society because it encourages irresponsible behaviour amongst children who copy their parents. The daughters of single mothers are quite likely to become lone mothers themselves following in their mother’s footsteps by having children outside of stable relationships. The sons of single mothers lack an adult role model of a hard-working and responsible father taking care of his family. As a result, they don’t learn the importance of these characteristics and tend to become dependent upon benefits themselves. Murray also believes that freed from parental responsibility, young fathers are likely to become involved in crime to supplement their income from benefits. Murray claims that these groups who are reliant upon benefits form a distinct group or an underclass outside and below the rest of the class structure. The underclass is characterised by a set of attitudes, values and lifestyles which does not value traditional family life or respect the law. The underclass is harmful to society because it produces criminal and antisocial behaviour and it is costly because the lifestyle of the underclass is largely sustained through the benefits system at the expense of the taxpayer.

Thus for the New Right, social policy has a major impact on family roles and relationships. Current policies are encouraging a dependency culture, where individuals come to depend on the state to support them and their children rather than being self-reliant. This threatens two essential functions that the family fulfils for society

• The successful socialisation of the young

• The maintenance of the work ethic among men.

The New Right’s solution

They argue that the policy must be changed, with cuts in welfare spending and tighter restrictions on who is eligible for benefits. This would have several advantages. For example, cutting welfare benefits would mean that taxes could also be reduced, and both these changes would give fathers more incentive to work and to provide for their families. Similarly denying council housing to unmarried teenage mothers would remove a major incentive to become pregnant when very young.

They favour tax incentives for marriage. They believe that it is important that fathers contribute to the costs of raising children, even if they do not live with the mother of their child. In general, their ideas are based upon the view that families should be self-reliant. In their view, an over-generous welfare state discourages self-reliance. However, they do generally accept that the state sometimes needs to intervene to deal with ‘problem’ families, especially when children are being harmed or are getting involved in crime or anti-social behaviour. They also believe that the state may sometimes need to intervene to actively discourage family break-up and ‘undesirable’ types of family, which in the 1980s and 1990s some of the New Right saw as including gay and lesbian families.

The New Right also advocate policies to support the traditional nuclear family, such as taxes that favour married rather than cohabiting couples , and making absent fathers financially responsible for their children.

Criticism

• Feminist argue that is an attempt to justify a return to the traditional patriarchal nuclear family that subordinated women to men and confined them to a domestic role.

• Tony Fitzpatrick (2011) argues that Murray puts forward no serious evidence to support his arguments about the effects of lone parenthood, or even to support his claim that a distinctive underclass culture actually exists. Fitzpatrick also argues that Murray ignores the importance of poverty and social exclusion in explaining the position of the so-called underclass. To Fitzpatrick, Murray’s ideas are simply a politically motivated justification for cuts to benefits.

• Research into the effects of lone parenthood has not tended to support Murray’s central claims about the effects of lone parenthood and has suggested that it is low income rather than lack of a cohabiting partner that is largely responsible for problems faced by some lone

The New Right’s Influence on policies

The New Right is a conservative view of the family that first developed in the 1970s.

The New Right were most influential in the UK when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and in the USA under President Reagan (1981– 1989). Their ideas had a significant influence upon policies at that time although they were never totally dominant. Later Conservative governments (and to a lesser extent the Coalition government of 2010 to 2015) have also been influenced by New Right thinking.

Margaret Thatcher and her New Right supporters saw the family as being under threat from permissiveness (such as greater acceptance of extramarital sex), social change and the policies of previous governments. Other problems included mothers who went out to work instead of putting the well-being of their children first, rising divorce rates, homosexuality and lone parent families. These changes were believed to be threatening the stability of society and playing a major role in causing social problems such as crime, delinquency and drug abuse.

Conservative governments 1979-97

Reflecting a New Right view, Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative government the 1988 budget changed taxation so that cohabiting couples could no longer claim more in tax allowances than a married couple. Section 28 of The Local Government Act 1988 prohibited councils from promoting homosexuality and council-controlled schools from promoting ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’

The conservatives also defined divorce as a social problem- a view held by the New Emphasised the continued responsibility of parents for their children after divorce. They set up the Child Support Agency to enforce maintenance payments by absent parents (usually fathers).

On the other hand, the Conservatives introduced measures opposed by the New Right, such as making divorce easier and giving ‘illegitimate’ children (those born outside the same rights as those born to married parents.

Labour government 1997-2010

The Labour governments of 1997– 2010 (in which Tony Blair was Prime Minister from 1997– 2007 and Gordon Brown was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010) shifted the emphasis in family policy. Tony Blair continued to praise traditional families (Silva and Smart, 1999) and a 1998 government Green Paper (consultation document) entitled Supporting Families suggested a number of measures to support marriage and reduce divorce rates.

Family values and social liberalism

There were two main aspects of Labour policy: social liberalism and a belief in supporting and controlling families. Clem Henricson (2012) defines social liberalism as involving a belief in gender equality and acceptance of a wide variety of different types of family. In many ways, this is the polar opposite of the New Right view. Social liberalism was reflected in a range of measures introduced by the Labour governments:

• Gender equality was promoted with the extension of maternity leave – which became some of the most generous in Europe – and through measures allowing the transfer of parental leave between father and mothers.

• Government financial support for childcare was considerably extended and the Childcare Act of 2006 required councils to make sure there were enough childcare places available for mothers in their area.

• In 1998 the Human Rights Act was introduced which made discrimination against different types of families illegal.

• The government also removed the requirement to be married to have NHS fertility treatment or the right to adopt children.

• Discrimination against homosexuality was prohibited in the provision of goods and services by The Equality Act (Sexual Orientation ) regulations of 2007 and Civil Partnerships for same-sex couples became legal from 2005.

Henricson sees these changes as involving a major shift in policy away from family policies favouring the traditional family with a male breadwinner. However, a second aspect of Labour policies involved stronger attempts to intervene in family life involving greater ‘support and control’.

Support and control

This strand of Labour policy was particularly concerned with parenting and it was linked to a wider policy designed to reduce and eventually eliminate child poverty (Henricson, 2012). Child poverty was reduced by more than 25 per cent under these Labour governments. One direct way in which financial support was given was through Child Tax Credits which boosted the income of parents with low or moderate levels of income. However, many of the new measures were also aimed at providing support and incentives for ‘good’ parenting. These measures were targeted mainly at 266 those on low income or those who were defined as being ‘socially excluded’. These measures included:

• Sure Start Centres, which provided child services, parenting courses, opportunities for pre-school education and play for children

• Family Intervention Projects, which were established in some areas to work intensively with ‘families at risk’ of social exclusion.

There were also policies designed more to ‘control’ families rather than ‘supporting’ them when parents did not meet the government’s expectations as parents. The most notable of these was the Parenting Order (introduced in 2003) which could require parents to have guidance and counselling if their children acted in anti-social ways, truanted from school or broke the law. Some benefits (particularly maternity benefits), were made conditional on accepting health and parenting advice.

Evaluation of Labour family policies

• Clem Henricson (2012) argues that the Labour government shifted policy towards a more interventionist approach to families as well as reducing child poverty, producing greater equality between men and women in family relationships, and making it easier for women with children to take paid employment. Labour governments also removed some policies which favoured traditional family forms. Henricson therefore describes these policies as socially liberal but also interventionist.

• However, Alan Barlow, Simon Duncan and Grace James (2002) were more critical, arguing that the Labour governments claimed to support moral tolerance but still preferred children to live with their biological parents because this reduced reliance upon benefits. According to Barlow, Duncan and James, despite a toning down of the rhetoric criticising unconventional families and non-family groups, New Labour continued to idealise stable, long-lasting marriage and nuclear families as the best family structure for raising children.

The Coalition government 2010-15

The Labour Party lost power in 2010 but the Conservatives failed to win an overall majority in the House of Commons. Therefore, a Coalition government was formed with a Conservative Prime Minister (David Cameron) and a Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister (Nick Clegg). In the 2015 election the Conservatives won an overall majority with David Cameron as Prime Minister. He resigned in 2016 in the aftermath of the Brexit vote for the UK to leave the EU and was replaced by Theresa May as Conservative Prime Minister.

The Conservatives have long been divided between what Richard Hayton (2010) calls:

• Modernisers who recognise that families are now more diverse and are willing to reflect this in their policies

• Traditionalist who favour a New right view and reject diversity as morally wrong

Traditionalist: Policies supporting traditional family structures.

One of Cameron’s particular concerns was the couple penalty , a situation in which a couple who are married or who cohabit pay more in taxes or get less in benefits than a couple who live apart. The Coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in 2015 watered down a Conservative manifesto pledge to abolish the couple penalty, but it did promise to reduce it (cited in Hayter, 2010). As in other areas of policy, Cameron was somewhat constrained by having to compromise with Liberal Democrat partners in the Coalition, though the Conservatives were the dominant party. Adam and Brewer (2010) analysed the impact of the detailed policies proposed in the Conservative manifesto of 2010. They found that the proposals would have some impact upon the couple penalty, but only a very marginal one. The number of people facing a couple’s penalty would fall by just 1 percent under the Conservative proposals and the amount the penalty would fall would be just 0.2 per cent. It can therefore be argued that the policy was more symbolic than anything else and would make little real difference to the actual income of couples in comparison to people living on their own or in lone parent families. However, in 2015 the government did introduce a modest tax break for married couples and civil partners making it possible for them to transfer some of their tax-free income (up to £1060) from one partner to another. This favoured couples where one was the main breadwinner and the other was not working or was working part time, but the allowance had a maximum saving of just £212 per year. Initially it benefited some 4 million couples.

Modernisers: Policies which did not support traditional family structures.

Unlike policies concerned with the couple penalty, childcare policies introduced by Coalition/Conservative governments between 2010 and 2017 gave additional support to two-parent families where both parents worked. Another policy which came into effect in 2015 was shared parental leave which allowed the entitlement to parental leave to be shared between mothers and fathers. After the Conservatives took power on their own in 2015, they introduced measures which meant that from September 2017 parents could have 30 hours’ free childcare per week for three and four-year olds during term times. This made it easier for both parents to work rather than supporting traditional female childcare and male breadwinner roles. David Cameron’s most controversial measure which contradicted traditional views that families should be based on heterosexual marriage was the introduction of same-sex marriage in 2014.

Policies affecting choices over family formation and intervention in families.

In some ways, Conservative/Coalition policies actively intervened in family life by restricting the ability of couples to live together and creating a financial penalty for large families. One policy, designed to reduce immigration, stipulated that spouses of British citizens who did not have UK citizenship could only come to Britain if their husband or wife had an income of £18 600 per year or more. This discriminated against those on low incomes by preventing them from living in the UK with their partner. In another measure, in 2017 the government withdrew child benefit from new claimants for third or additional children. The policy was designed to discourage benefit-reliant families from having children they could not afford to support.

Criticisms

A detailed analysis conducted by James Browne and William Elming (2015) of the Institute for Fiscal Studies looked at the effect of policies under the Coalition government of 2010– 2015. It found little evidence that the tax and spending policies of the Conservative-led government would actually benefit more traditional families consisting of a married couple with children and the man as the main breadwinner. Two-earner couples without children were the only household type to benefit from the changes. One-earner couples with children fared worse than two-earner couples with children. However, lone parents generally did worse than two-parent families. Single people and pensioners lost less from the changes than most other groups. Overall, this research does suggest that Coalition policies were matching Conservative rhetoric only to a limited extent. Although lone parents were dealt with more harshly than two-parent families, pensioners and single people were most favoured by the changes.

This evidence, along with policies on the benefits cap and immigration, suggests that in most respects Conservative family policy was largely driven by a desire to save money from the benefits bill (and to a lesser extent to cut immigration) rather than a desire to encourage (or discourage) traditional family forms. The minimal incentives for traditional gender roles created by the married couples tax allowance were more than outweighed by the extra help with childcare making it more affordable for both parents in two-parent households to work. Therefore, tax and benefits policies seem to be based more upon a desire for political popularity than any underlying principles relating to family life.

Feminism

Feminist take a conflict view as they see society as patriarchal, benefiting men at women’s expense. They argue that all social institutions , including the state and its policies, help to maintain women’s subordinate position and unequal gender division of labour in the family.

Policies supporting the patriarchal family

Feminist identify numerous examples of policies that help to maintain the conventional patriarchal nuclear family and reinforce women's economic dependence. Allan (1985) argues that: ‘Much state provision … is based upon an implicit ideology of the “normal” family in which there are two heterosexual parents, wives are economically dependent on husbands and it is wives who are mainly responsible for childcare and looking after elderly relatives’. There are several examples which seem to support Allan:

• School hours and the long summer school holidays make it difficult for children to be cared for by a parent or parents who are working in full-time jobs. Responsibility for caring for children is more likely to fall on women meaning that husbands (or male partners) are still regarded as the main breadwinner. To some extent, increasing state support for childcare has counteracted this problem but most support is given in term-time and it can still be difficult to find affordable and flexible childcare.

• Care of relatives is still predominantly seen as a female responsibility and government policies in recent decades may well have forced women into taking on more such responsibilities. For example, after the 2015 election the Conservative governments under David Cameron and later Theresa May cut government spending sharply leading to major reductions in the budgets for social care of older people in their own homes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (2017) reported that between 2009– 2010 and 2015– 2016 spending per adult on social care fell by 11 per cent in real terms.

• Tax and benefits policies may assume that husbands are the main wage-earners and that wives are their financial dependants.This can make it impossible for wives to claim social security benefits in their own right, since it is expected that their husbands will provide. This then reinforces women’s dependence on their husbands.

• Childcare- while the government pays for some childcare for preschool children, this is not enough to permit parents to work full-time unless they can meet the additional cost themselves. Likewise, policies governing school timetables and holidays make it hard for parents (usually the mothers) to work full-time unless they can afford extra childcare.This means that women are restricted from working and placed in a position of economic dependence on their partners.

Furthermore as Diana Leonard (1978) argues , even where policies appear to support women, they may still reinforce the patriarchal family and act as a form of social control over women. For example child benefit is normally paid to the mother, although this gives her a source of income that does not depend on the father, it also assumes that the child’s welfare is primarily her responsibility.

Criticism

Not all policies are directed at maintaining patriarchy. For example, equal pay and sex discrimination laws, the right of lesbians to marry, benefits for lone parnets, refuges for women escaping domestic violence and equal rights to divorce could all be said to challenge the patriarchal family.

Similalry, rape withtin marriage was made a criminal offence in 1991. These policies can all be said to improve the position of women in the family and wider society.

Gender regimes

Eileen Drew (1995) uses the concept of ‘gender regimes’ to describe how social policies in different countries can either encourage or discourage gender equality in the family and at work

• Familistic gender regimes, where policies are based on a traditional gender division between male breadwinner and female housewife and carer.

In Greece for example, there is little state welfare or publicly funded childcare. Women have to rely heavily on support from their extended kin and there is a traditional division of labour

• Individualistic gender regimes, where policies are based on the belief that husbands and wives should be treated the same. Wives are not assumed to be financially dependent on their husbands, so each partner has a separate entitlement to state benefits

In Sweden , for example, policies treat husbands and wives as equally responsible both for breadwinning and domestic tasks. Equal opportunities policies, state provision of childcare, parental leave and good quality welfare services mean that women are less dependent on their husbands and have more opportunities to work.

CHANGING FAMILY PATTERNS

In the past 40 or 50 years there have been some major changes in family and household patterns. For example:

• Divorce rates have increased

• There are fewer first marriages but more remarriages

• The number of traditional nuclear family households- a married couple with their dependent children- has fallen.

• More couples are cohabiting

• Same sex relationships can be legally recognised through civil partnerships or marriages.

• Women are having fewer children and having them later.

• There are more lone-parent families.

Divorce

Changing patterns of divorce

Since the 1960s , there has been a great increase in the number of divorces in the UK. The number of divorces doubled between 1961 and 1969, and doubled again by 1972. The upward trend continued, peaking in 1993 at 165,000.

About 65% of petitions for divorce now come from women. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in the past. For example, in 1946, only 37% of petitions came from women.

Explanations for the increase in Divorce

1. Changes in the law

Divorce was very difficult to obtain in 19th-century Britain especially for women. Gradually, changes in the law have made divorce easier. There have been three kinds of changes in the law:

• Equalising the grounds (the legal reasons) for divorce between the sexes

• Widening the grounds for divorce

• Making divorce cheaper

When the grounds were equalised for men and women in 1932, this was followed by a sharp rise in the number of divorce petitions from women. Similarly, the widening of the grounds in 1971 to ‘irretrievable breakdown’ made divorce easier to obtain and produced a doubling of the divorce rate almost overnight. The introduction of legal aid for divorce cases in 1949 lowered the cost of divorcing . Divorce rates have risen with each change in the law.

Although divorce is the legal termination of a marriage, couples can and do find other solutions to the problem of an unhappy marriage.These include:

• Desertion- where one partner leaves the other but the couple remain legally married

• Legal separation-where a court separates the financial and legal affairs of the couple but where they remain married and are not free to remarry

• ‘Empty shell’ marriage where the couple continue to live under the same roof but remain married in name only.

However, as divorce has become easier to obtain, these solutions have become less popular

1. Secularisation

This refers to the decline in the influence of religion in society. Many sociologists argue that religious institutions and ideas are losing their influence and society is becoming more secular. For example, church attendance rates continue to decline. As a result of secularisation, the traditional opposition of the churches to divorce carries less weight in society and people are less likely to be influenced by religious teachings when making decisions about personal matters such as whether or not to file for divorce.

1. Declining stigma and changing attitudes

Stigma refers to the negative label, social disapproval or shame attached to a person, action or relationship. In the past,divorce and divorcees have been stigmatised . For example , churches tended to condemn divorce and often refused to conduct marriage services involving divorcess. Juliet Mitchell and Jack Goody (1997) note that an important change since the 1960s has been the rapid decline in the stigma attached to divorce

As stigma declines and divorce becomes more socially acceptable, couples become more willing to resort to divorce as a means of solving their marital problems .

In turn, the fact that divorce is now more common begins to ‘normalise’ it and reduces the stigma attached to it. Rather than being seen as shameful, today it is more likely to be regarded simply as a misfortune.

Theorist explanations for high divorce rates

Feminist

Feminist argue that married women today bear a dual burden, they are required to take on paid work in addition to performing domestic labour(housework and childcare). In the view of feminists, this has created a new source of conflict between husbands and wives , and this is leading to a higher divorce rate than in the past.

While there may have been big improvements in women's position in the public sphere of employment, education, politics and so on, feminists argue that in the private sphere of family and personal relationships, change has been limited and slow. They argue that marriage remains patriarchal , with men benefiting from their wives’ ‘triple shift’ of paid work, domestic work and emotional work.

Similarly, Arlie Hochschild (1997) argues that for many women, the home compares unfavourably with work. At work, women feel valued. At home, mens continuing resistance to doing housework is a source of frustration and makes marriage less stable. In addition, the fact that both partners now go out to work leaves less time and energy for the emotional work needed to address the problems that arise. Both these factors may contribute to a higher divorce rate.

According to Wendy Sigle-Rushton (2007), mothers who have a dual burden of paid work and domestic work are more likely to divorce than non-working mothers in marriages with a traditional division of labour. But where the husband of a working wife is actively involved in housework, the divorce rate is the same as for couples with a traditional division of labour.

Criticism

• However Cooke and Gash (2010) found no evidence that working women are more likely to divorce. They argue that this is because working has now become the accepted norm for married women.

• Radical feminist such as Jessie Bernard (1976) observe that many women feel a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage. She sees the rising divorce rate, and the fact that most petitions come from women, as evidence of growing acceptance of feminist ideas : women are becoming conscious of patriarchal oppression and more confident about rejecting it.

Modernity and individualisation theory for divorce

Sociologists such as Ulrich Beck (1992) and Anthony Giddens (1992) argue that in modern society, traditional norms, such as the duty to remain with the same partner for life, lose their hold over individuals.

As a result , each individual becomes free to pursue his or her own self-interest. This view has become known as the individualisation thesis.

Relationships thus become more fragile, because individuals become unwilling to remain with a partner if the relationship fails to deliver personal fulfilment. Instead , they seek what Giddens calls the ‘pure relationship’ -one that exists solely to satisfy each partner’s needs and not out of a sense of duty, tradition or for the sake of the children. This results in higher divorce rates.

At the same time, the rising divorce rate ‘normalises’ divorce and further strengthens the belief that marriage exists solely to provide personal fulfilment.

Modern society also encourages individualism in other ways. For example, women as well as men are now expected to work and are encouraged to pursue their own individual career ambitions. This can cause conflicts of interest between spouses and contribute to marital breakdown. Some sociologists also argue that modernity encourages people to adopt a neoliberal , consumerist identity based on the idea of freedom to follow one's own self-interest. This pursuit of self-interest is likely to pull spouses apart.

The New Right

They see the high divorce rate as undesirable because it undermines marriage and the traditional nuclear family , which they regard as vital to social stability. In their view, a high divorce rate creates a growing underclass of welfare-dependent female lone parents who are a burden on the state and it leaves boys without the adult male role model they need. They believe it also results in poorer health and educational outcomes for children.

Marriage

There have been a number of important changes in the pattern of marriage in recent years:

• Fewer people marrying : marriage rates are at their lowest since the 1920s. In 2012 , there were 175,000 first marriages for both partners- less than half the number for 1970.

• There are more re-marriages. In 2012, one third of all marriages were remarriages for one or both partners. For many people , this is leading to ‘serial monogamy’.

• People are marrying later: the average age of first marriage rose by seven years between 1971 and 2012, when it stood at 32 years for men and 30 for women.

Reasons for changing patterns of marriage

1. Changes in the position of women

With better educational and career prospects, many women are now less economically dependent on men. This gives them greater freedom not to marry. The feminist view that marriage is an oppressive patriarchal institution may also dissuade some women from marrying.

1. Secularisation

The churches are in favour of marriage , but as their influence declines people feel freer to choose not to marry . For example, according to the 2001 Census, only 3% of young people with no religion were married, as against up to 17% of those with a religion.

1. Declining stigma attached to alternatives to marriage

Cohabitation, remaining single, and having children outside marriage are all now widely regarded as acceptable , so that pregnancy no longer automatically leads to a ‘shotgun wedding’. In 1989, 70% believed that couples who want children should get married but by 2012 only 42% thought so.

Cohabitation

While the number of marriages has been falling, the number of couples cohabiting continues to increase.

• There are 2.9 million cohabiting heterosexual couples in Britain, about one in eight adults are now cohabiting-double the number in 1996.

• There are an estimated 69,000 same sex cohabiting couples

Reasons for the increase in cohabitation

• Increased cohabitation rates are a result of the decline in stigma attached to sex outside marriage. In 1989, only 44%of people agreed that ‘premarital sex is not wrong at all’ but 65% took this view by 2012

• Increased career opportunities for women may mean they have less need for the financial security of marriage and are freer to opt for cohabitation.

• Patricia Morgan (2003) sees it as part of a worrying trend in which marriage is going out of fashion and the family is in serious decline. Morgan believes that cohabitation used to be seen primarily as a prelude to marriage but increasingly it is part of a pattern which simply reflects an ‘increase in sexual partners and partner change’ (2003). She quotes statistics from the British Household Panel Survey showing that fewer than 4 percent of cohabiting couples stay together for more than 10 years as cohabitants (although her own figures show that around 60 per cent get married).

• A different view is taken by Joan Chandler (1993). She believes that more people are choosing to cohabit as a long-term alternative to marriage. Chandler sees this as being reflected in the increasing proportion of children born out of marriage – partners no longer feel as much pressure to marry to legitimise a pregnancy. Although more children are born to unmarried mothers, an increasing proportion of these births are jointly registered to a man and woman and most of them share the same address (suggesting they are cohabiting).

Same-sex relationship

Stonewall (2012), the campaign for lesbain, gay and bisexual rights, estimates that about 5 to 7% of the adult population today have same-sex relationships. It is impossible to judge whether this represents an increase because in the past, stigma and illegality meant that such relationships were more likely to be hidden.

There is evidence of increased social acceptance of same-sex relationships in recent years. Male homosexual acts were decriminalised in 1967 for consenting adults over 21. More recently the age of consent has been equalised with heterosexuals . Opinion polls show more tolerance of homosexuality.

Social policy now treats all couples more equally. For example , since 2002, cohabiting couples have had the same right to adopt as married couples. In 2004, the Civil Partnership Act gave same-sex couples similar legal rights to married couples in respect of pensions, inheritance , tenancies and property, since 2014, same -sex couples have been able to marry.

Chosen families

Jeffery Weeks (1999) argues that increased social acceptance may explain a trend towards same-sex cohabitation and stable relationships that resemble those found among heterosexuals. Weeks sees gays as creating families based on the idea of ‘friendship as kinship’, where friendships become a type of kinship network. He describes these as ‘chosen families’ and argues that they offer the same security and stability as heterosexual families.

Other sociologists have noted the effect on same-sex relationships of a legal framework such as civil partnerships and marriage. For example, Allan and Crow argue that, because of the absence of such a framework until recently , same-sex partners have had to negotiate their commitment and responsibilities more than married couples. This may have made same-sex relationships both more flexible and less stable than heterosexual relationships.

One -person households

• There has been a big rise in the number of people living alone. In 2013, almost three in ten households (7.7 million people) contained only one person-nearly three times the figure for 1961.

• 40% of all one-person households are over 65. Pensioner one-person households have doubled since 1961, while those of non-pensioners tripled. Men under 65 were the group most likely to live alone.

Reasons for the change

• The increase in separation and divorce has created more one-person households, especially among men under 65. This is because, following divorce, any children are more likely to live with their mother; their father is more likely to leave the family home.

• The decline in the numbers marrying, and the trend towards marrying later, also mean more people are remaining single. The proportion of adults who are single has risen by half since 1971. Many of these are living alone. It is possible that a growing number are opting for ‘creative singlehood’- the deliberate choice to live alone

Criticism

While many of these choose to remain single and live alone, some are alone because there are too few partners available in their age group. These are mainly older widows.

‘Living apart together’

It is often assumed that those not living with a partner do not have one, whether from choice or not. However, research by Simon Duncan and Miranda Phillips for the British Social Attitudes survey (2013) found that about one in 10 adults are ‘living apart together’ or ‘LATs’-that is , in a significant relationship, but not married for cohabiting. This is about half of all the people officially classified as single. It has been suggested that this may reflect a trend towards less formalised relationships and ‘families of choice’.

Criticisms

Duncan and Phillips found that both choice and constraints play a part in whether couples live together. For example, some said they could not afford to. However, a minority actively chose to live apart, for example because they wanted to keep their own home, because of a previous troubled relationship or because it was ‘too early’ to cohabit.

Childbearing

• Nearly half 47% of all children are now born outside marriage : over twice as many as in 1986. However, nearly all these births are jointly registered by both parents. In most cases, the parents are cohabiting

• Women are having children later : between 1971 and 2012, their average age at the birth of their first child rose by four years to 28.1 years.

• More women are remaining childless: it is predicted that a quarter of those born in 1973 will be childless when they reach the age of 45.

Reasons for the changes

• Reasons for the increase in births outside marriage include a decline in stigma and increase in cohabitation. For example, only 28% of 25-34 year olds now think marriage should come before parenthood.

• The later age at which women are having children, smaller family sizes and the fact that more women are remaining childless, all reflect the fact that women now have more options than just motherhood. Many are seeing to establish themselves in a career before starting a family, or instead of having children at all.

Lone-parent families

Lone-parent families now make up 22% of all families with children. One child in four lives in a lone-parent family.

• Over 90% of these families are headed by lone mothers

• Until the early 1990s, divorced women were the biggest group of lone mothers. From the early 1990s, single (never married) women became the biggest group of lone mothers

• A child living with a lone parent is twice as likely to be in poverty as a child living two parents.

Reasons for the patterns

• The number of lone-parent families has risen due to increase in divorce and separation and more recently, due to the increase in the number of never-married women having children.

• Single by choice - Many lone-parents families are female-headed because the mothers are single by choice . They may not wish to cohabit or marry, or they may wish to limit the fathers involvement with the child,Jean Renvoize (1985) found that professional women were able to support their child without the fathers involvement.

• Equally, as Ellis Cashmore (1985) found, some working-class mothers with less earning power chose to live on welfare benefits without a partner, often because they had experienced abuse. Feminist ideas, and greater opportunities for women, may also have encouraged an increase in the number of never-married lone mothers.

Lone parenthood, the welfare state and poverty

The New Right sociologist Charles Murray (1984) sees the growth of lone-parent as resulting from an over-generous welfare state providing benefits for unmarried mothers and their children.

Murray argues that this has created a ‘perverse incentive’ that is , it rewards irresponsible behaviour, such as having children without being able to provide for them. The welfare state creates a ‘dependency culture’ in which people assume that the state will support them and their children.

For Murray, the solution is to abolish welfare benefits. This would reduce the dependency that encourages births outside marriage.

Criticism

Critics of the New Right views argue that welfare benefits are far more generous and lone-parent families are much more likely to be in poverty. Reasons for this:

• Lack of affordable childcare prevents lone parents from working: 60% of them are unemployed. This is twice as high as among mothers with partners

• Failure of fathers to pay maintenance, especially if they have formed a second family that they have to support.

Stepfamilies / reconstituted families

• Stepfamilies account for over 10% of all families with dependent children in Britain.

• In 85% of stepfamilies , at least one child is from the woman's previous relationship, while in 11% there is at least one child from the man’s previous relationship . In 4% of stepfamilies there are children from both partners’ previous relationships.

• According to Graham Allan and Graham Crow (2001). Stepfamilies may face particular problems of divided loyalties and issues such as contact with the non-resident parent can cause tensions.

Reasons for the patterns

• More children in stepfamilies are from the woman’s previous relationship than the man’s because, when marriages and cohabitation break up, children are more likely to remain with their mother.

• Step Parents are at greater risk of poverty because there are often more children and because the stepfather may also have to support children from a previous relationship.

• Some of the tensions faced by stepfamilies may be the result of a lack of clear social norms about how individuals should behave in such families.

Ethnic differences in family patterns

Black families

Black Caribbean and Black Africans people have a higher proportion of lone-parent households. In 2012, just over half of families with dependent children

headed by a black person were lone-parent families. This compared with only one in nine Asian families and just under a quarter for the population as a whole.

The high rate of female-headed, lone-parent black families has sometimes been seen as evidence of family disorganisation that can be traced back to slavery.

Under slavery, when couples were sold separately , children stayed with the mother. It is argued that this established a pattern of family life that persists today. It is also argued male unemployment and poverty have meant that black men are less able to provide for their family, resulting in higher rates of desertion or marital breakdown.

Criticism

However, Heidi Safia Mirza (1997) argues that the higher rate of lone-parent families among blacks is not the result of disorganisation, but rather reflects the high value that black women place on independence.

Asian families

Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian households tend to be larger than those of other ethnic groups at 4.4, 4.3, and 3 people per household, compared with 2.4 for both Black Caribbean and White British households.

Such households sometimes contain three generations but most are in fact nuclear rather than extended. Larger household sizes are partly a result of the younger age profile of British Asains, since a higher proportion are in the childbearing age groups compared with the population as a whole.

Larger Asian households also to some extent reflect the value placed on the extended family in Asian cultures.The South Asian population in Britain have a relatively ‘traditional’ family life. They have high rates of marriage and high fertility rates resulting in families with four or more children being quite common. Very few British South Asians cohabited outside marriage and rates of divorce were very low. Pakistani and Bangladeshi wives were more likely to act as full-time homemakers than other ethnic groups. One distinctive feature of this ethnic group was the prevalence of arranged marriages with more than a third of Sikhs and Muslims saying that their partner was chosen through this process. In this group, there are also relatively high rates of cohabitation with parents after marriage so three-generational households were not uncommon.

However, practical considerations, such as the need for assistance when migrating to Britain, are also important. For example, Roger Ballard(1982) found that extended family ties provided an important source of support among Asian migrants during the 1950s and 1960s.

In this early period of migration, houses were often shared by extended families. Later, although most Asian households were now nuclear, relatives often lived nearby. There was frequent visiting, and kinship networks continued to be a source of support. Today, sikhs, Muslims and Hindus are still more likely than other ethnic or religious groups to live in extended family units.

The extended family today

The existence of the extended family among minority ethnic groups raises the question of how widespread or important this kind of family is in the UK today. According to functionalists, the extended family is the dominant family type in pre-industrial society, but in modern society it is replaced by the nuclear family.

For example, as Nicki Charles’s (2008) study of Swansea found, the classic three-generation family all living together under one roof is now”all but extinct”. The only significant exceptions she found were among the city’s Bangladeshi community.

Criticisms

However, while the extended family may have declined, it has not entirely disappeared. Instead, as Peter wilmott(1988) argues, it continues to exist as a dispersed extended family’, where relatives are geographically separated but maintain frequent contact through visits and phone calls.

The beanpole family

The beanpole family is a particular type of extended family, which Julia Brannen (2003) describes as ‘long and thin’- it is extended vertically through three or more generations grandparents and children and it doesn't involve aunts, uncles, cousins etc

Beanpole families may partly be the result of two demographic changes:

• Increased life expectancy means more surviving grandparents and great-grandparents

• Smaller family sizes mean people have fewer siblings and thus fewer horizontal ties.

FAMILY DIVERSITY

Functionalism

According to Talcott Parsons, there is a ‘functional fit’ between the nuclear family and modern society. Parsons sees the nuclear family as uniquely suited to meeting the needs of modern society for a geographically and socially mobile workforce, and as performing two ‘irreducible functions’- the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities. These contribute to the overall stability and effectiveness of society.

In the functionalist view, because of the family's ability to perform these essential functions, we can generalise about the type of family that we will find in modern society-namely, a nuclear family with a division of labour between husband and wife.

Hence, other family types can be considered as dysfunctional , abnormal or even deviant, since they are less able to perform the functions required of the family.

The New Right

They have a conservative and anti-feminist perspective on the family. They are firmly opposed to family diversity. Like functionalists, The New Right holds the view that there is only one correct or normal family. This is the traditional nuclear family consisting of a married couple and their dependent children, with a clear-cut division of labour between the breadwinner-husband and homemaker-wife.

The New Right see this family as ‘natural’ and based on fundamental biological differences between men and women. In their view, this family is the cornerstone of society; a place of refuge and harmony.

The New Right oppose most of the changes in family patterns such as cohabitation, gay marriage and lone parenthood. They argue that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and the growth of family diversity are the cause of many social problems.

In particular, The New Right are concerned about the growth of lone-parent families, which they see as resulting from the breakdown of couple relationships. They see lone-parent families as harmful to children. They argue that:

• Lone mothers cannot discipline their children properly.

• Lone-parent families leave boys without an adult male role model, resulting in educational, delinquency and social instability.

Cohabitation versus marriage

The New Right claims that the main cause of lone-parent families is the collapse of relationships between cohabiting couples. For example, Harry Benson (2006) analysed data on the parents of over 15, 000 babies. He found that, over the first three years of the baby's life, the rate of family breakdown was much higher among cohabiting couples: 20%, compared with only 6% among married couples.

In the New Right view, only marriage can provide a stable environment in which to bring up children. Benson argues that couples are more stable when they are married. For example, the rate of divorce among married couples is lower than the rate of breakups among cohabiting couples.

In Benson’s view, marriage is more stable because it requires a deliberate commitment to each other, whereas cohabitation allows partners to avoid commitment and responsibility.

New Right and Conservative politicians have used evidence & arguments to support the view that both the family and society at large are ‘broken’.

They argue that only a return to ‘traditional values’ including the value of marriage, can prevent social disintegration and damage to children.

They regard laws and policies such as easy access to divorce, gay marriage and widespread availability of welfare benefits as undermining the conventional family.

Benson therefore argues that the government needs to encourage couples to marry by means of policies that support marriage.

Criticisms of the New Right

• Ann Oakley (1997) argues that the New Right wrongly assumes that husbands and wives roles are fixed by biology. Instead, cross-cultural studies show great variation in the roles men and women perform within the family. Oakley believes that the New Right view of the family is a negative reaction against the feminist campaign for womens’ equality.

• There is no evidence that children in lone-parent families are more likely to be delinquent than those brought up in a two-parent family of the same social class.

The growth of family diversity

The ‘typical’ family

Although there has always been a diversity of family types (Anderson, 1980) ‘march of progress theories’ assumed that a single family type (for example the extended or the nuclear family) has been dominant in any particular era. These theories suggest that the British family has gone through a series of stages as family life has adapted to changing economic circumstances. In the 1980s Ann Oakley (1982) described what was then the image of the typical or conventional family . She says, ‘conventional families are nuclear families composed of legally married couples, voluntarily choosing the parenthood of one or more (but not too many) children’. Traditionally, the husband is the main breadwinner in this type of family with the wife being mainly responsible for domestic tasks (while often being employed part-time as well). Oakley suggested that there were strong norms at that time which suggested that this was the type of family that people should live in, although as a feminist she was highly critical of this model of family life, seeing it as oppressive to women.

The ‘conventional family’ described by Oakley is very much in line with the functionalist view of the ‘isolated nuclear family’ which Talcott Parsons described as being typical of and well adapted to modern industrial societies. However, as we have already seen it is questionable whether this was ever the norm in the way that Parsons claimed and changes over recent decades suggest that the ‘conventional family’ has become less common. For example, the growing employment of married women since the 1950s has undermined the idea of the male breadwinner and the female housewife. Furthermore, many sociologists have pointed to the increasing diversity of family forms.

The rapoports : five types of family diversity

Robert and Rhona Rapoport (1982, 1989) were among the first to argue that family diversity was a growing trend in Britain, Europe and globally.

Rhona and Robert argue that diversity is of central importance in understanding family life today. They believe that we have moved away from the traditional nuclear family as the dominant family type, to a range of different types. Families in Britain have adapted to a pluralistic society-that is, one in which cultures and lifestyles are more diverse. In their view, family diversity reflects greater freedom of choice and the widespread acceptance of different cultures and ways of life in today’s society.

Unlike the New Right, the Rapoports see diversity as a positive response to people’s different needs and wishes and not as abnormal or a deviation from the assumed norm of a ‘proper’ nuclear family.

They identify five different types of family diversity in Britain today:

Organisational diversity- this refers to differences in the ways family roles are organised. For example, some couples have joint conjugal roles and two wage-earners, while others have segregated conjugal roles and one wage-earner.

Cultural diversity- Differences in cultural, religious and ethnic groups have different family structures. For example, there is a higher proportion of female-headed lone-parent families among African-caribbean households and a higher proportion of extended families among asian households

Social class diversity- Differences in family structure are partly the result of income differences between households of different social classes. Likewise, there are class differences in child-rearing practices.

Life-stage diversity- family structures differ according to the stage reached in the life cycle-for example, young newlyweds, couples with dependent children, retired couples whose children have grown up and left home and widows who are living alone.

Generational diversity- Older and younger generations have different attitudes and experiences that reflect the historical periods in which they have lived. For example, they may have different views about the morality of divorce or cohabitation.

The neo-conventional family

Chester (1985) recognises that there has been some increased family diversity in recent years. However, unlike the new Right , he does not regard this as very significant, nor does he see it in a negative light. Chester argues that the only important change is a move from the dominance of the traditional or conventional nuclear family, to what he describes as the ‘neo-conventional family’.

By the conventional family, Chester means the type of nuclear family described by the New Right and parsons, with its division of labour between a male breadwinner and a female homemaker.

Chester defines the neo-conventional family as a dual-earner family in which both spouses go out to work and not just the husband. This is similar to the symmetrical family described by Young and Wilmott.

Apart from this, Chester does not see any other evidence of major change. He argues that most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family on a long term-basis, and the nuclear family remains the ideal to which most people aspire. Although many people who are currently living in a one-person household , such as elderly widows , divorced men or young people who have not yet married, were either part of nuclear families in the past or will be in the future.

As evidence of his view that little has changed, Chester identifies a number of patterns:

Most marriages continue until death. Divorce has increased, but most divorcees remarry.

Although births outside marriage have increased , most are jointly registered, indicating that the parents are committed to bringing up children as a couple.

Postmodernism and family diversity

Postmodernists such as David Cheal (1993) go much further than the Rapoports. Postmodernists start from the view that we no longer live in ‘modern’ society with its predictable, orderly structures such as the nuclear family. In their view, society has entered a new, chaotic, postmodern stage.

In postmodern society, there is no longer one single, dominant, stable family structure such as the nuclear family. Instead, family structures have become fragmented into many different types and individuals now have much more choice in their lifestyles, personal relationships and family arrangements.

Some writers argue that this greater diversity and choice brings with it both advantages and disadvantages:

• It gives individuals greater freedom to plot their own life-course to choose the kind of family and personal relationships that meet their needs

• But greater freedom of choice in relationships means a greater risk of instability, since these relationships are more likely to break up.

The individualisation thesis

Sociologist Giddens and Beck have been influenced by postmodernist ideas about today’s society and have applied some of these to understanding family life. In particular, Giddens and Beck explore the effects of increasing individual choice upon families and relationships. Their views have therefore become known as the individualisation thesis.

The individualisation thesis argues that traditional social structures such as class, gender and family have lost much of their influence over us. According to the thesis, in the past, people's lives were defined by fixed roles that largely prevented them from choosing their own life course. For example, everyone was expected to marry and to take up their appropriate gender role. By contrast, individuals in today's society have fewer such certainties or fixed roles to follow.

According to the individualisation thesis, therefore we have become freed or ‘disembedded’ from traditional roles and structures leaving us with more freedom to choose how we lead our lives. As Beck (1992) puts it , the ‘standard biography’ or life course that people followed in the past has been replaced by the ‘do-it-yourself biography’ that individuals today must construct for themselves.

For Giddens and Beck, this change has huge implications for family relationships and family diversity, which we shall now examine .

Choice and equality

Gidedens (1992) argues that in recent decades the family and marriage have been transformed by greater choice and a more equal relationship between men and women. This transformation has occurred because:

• Contraception has allowed sex and intimacy rather than reproduction to become the main reason for the relationship’s existence .

• Women have gained independence as a result of feminism and because of greater opportunities in education and work.

As a result, the basis of marriage and the family has changed. Giddens argues that in the past, traditional family relationships were held together by external forces such as the laws governing the marriage contract and by powerful norms against divorce and sex outside marriage.

By contrast, today couples are free to define their relationship themselves, rather than simply acting out roles that have been defined in advance by law or tradition. For example, a couple nowadays don't have to marry to have children and divorce is readily accessible so they don't have to stay together ‘til death do us part’.

Same -sex couples as pioneers

Giddens sees same-sex relationships as leading the way towards new family types and creating more democratic and equal relationships.

In Giddens’ view, this is because same-sex relationships are not influenced by tradition to the extent that heersexual relationships are as same-sex relationships have been generally stigmatised and even criminalised. As a result, same-sex couples have been able to develop relationships based on choice rather than on traditional roles, since these were largely absent.

This has enabled those in smae-sex relationships to negotiate personal relationships and to actively create family structures that serve their own needs, rather than having to conform to pre-existing norms in the way that heterosexual couples have traditionally had to do.

For example, Watson (1992) found that same-sex couples created supportive ‘families of choice’ from among friends, former lovers and biological kin, while Weeks (2000) found that friendship networks function as kinship networks for gay men and lesbians.

Beck: the negotiated family

Another version of the individualisation thesis is put forward by Ulrich Beck (1992). Beck argues that we now live in a 'risk society’ where tradition has less influence and people have more choice. As a result , we are more aware of risks. This is because making choices involves calculating the risks and rewards of the different options open to us.

This contrasts with an earlier time when people’s roles were more fixed by tradition and rigid social norms dictated how they should behave. For example, in the past, people were expected to marry for life and, once married, men were expected to play the role of breadwinner and disciplinarian and to make the important financial decisions , while women took responsibility for the housework, childcare and care of the sick and elderly.

Although this traditional patriarchal family was unequal and oppressive, it did provide a stable predictable basis for family life by defining each member's role and responsibilities. However, the patriarchal family has been undermined by two trends:

• Greater gender equality, which male domination in all spheres of life. Women now expect equality both at work and in marriage.

• Greater individualism, where people's actions are influenced more by calculations of their own self-interest than by a sense of obligation to others.

These trends have led to a new type of family replacing the patriarchal family. Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim (1995) call this the ‘negotiated family’ .

Negotiated families do not conform to the traditional family norm, but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members, who decide what is best for themselves by negotiation. They enter relationships on an equal basis.

Criticisms

Although the negotiated family is more equal than the patriarchal family , it is less stable. This is because individuals are free to leave if their needs are not met. As a result, this instability leads to greater family diversity by creating more lone-parent families, one person households, remarriages and so on.

Criticisms of the individualisation thesis

• Firstly, the individualisation thesis exaggerates how much choice people have about family relationships today. As Budgeon (2011) notes, this reflects the neoliberal ideology that individuals today have complete freedom of choice. Inreality, however, traditional norms that limit people's relationships choices have not weakened as much as the thesis claims.

• The individualisation thesis ignores the importance of structural factors such as social class inequalities and patriarchal gender norms in limiting and shaping our relationship choices.

COUPLES

The domestic division of labour

In the traditional nuclear family, the roles of husbands and wives are segregated-separate and distinct from one another. In Talcott Parsons (1955) functionalist model of the family , for example there is clear division of labour between spouses :

• The husband has an instrumental role, geared towards achieving success at work so that he can provide for the family financially. He is the breadwinner.

• The wife has an expressive role , geared towards primary socialisation of the children and meeting the family's emotional needs. She is the homemaker , a full-time housewife rather than a wage earner.

Parsons argues that this division of labour is based on biological differences, with women ‘naturally’ suited to the nurturing role and men to that of provider. He claims that this division of labour is beneficial to both men and women to their children and to wider society. According to Parsons, for socialisation to be effective, a close, warm and supportive group was essential. The family met this requirement and, within the family, the woman was primarily responsible for socialising the young. Parsons believed that women should take on this role because women’s biology meant that they gave birth to and breastfed children and they were therefore naturally better at caring for children. Parsons characterised the woman’s role in the family as expressive , which meant she provided warmth, security and emotional support. This was essential for the effective socialisation of the young. It was only a short step from applying these expressive qualities to her children to applying them also to her husband.

This was her major contribution to the second function of the isolated nuclear family: the stabilisation of adult personalities. The male breadwinner spent his working day competing in an achievement-oriented society. This instrumental role led to stress and anxiety. The expressive female relieved this tension by providing the weary breadwinner with love, consideration and understanding. Parsons argued that there had to be a clear-cut division of labour by gender for the family to operate efficiently as a social system, and that the instrumental and expressive roles complemented each other and promoted family solidarity.

Evaluation

• Feminist sociologists reject Parsons' view that the division of labour is natural. In addition, they argue that it only benefits men.

• Young and Willmott (1962) argue that men are now taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners.

Joint and segregated conjugal roles

Elizabeth Bott (1957) distinguishes between two types of conjugal roles; that is roles within marriage:

• Segregated conjugal roles, where the couple have separate roles: a male breadwinner and a female homemaker/carer, as in Parsons’ instrumental and expressive roles. Their leisure activities also tend to be separate.

• Joint conjugal roles, where the couple share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend their leisure time together.

Young and Wilmott identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional working-class extended families in Bethnal Green, east london, in the 1950s. Men were the breadwinners. They played little part in home life and spent their leisure time with workmates in pubs and working men’s clubs. Women were full-time housewives with sole responsibility for housework and childcare, helped by their female relatives. The limited leisure women had was also spent with female kin.

The symmetrical family

Young and Wilmott (1973) take a ‘march of progress’ view of the history of the family. They see family life as gradually improving for all its members, becoming more equal and democratic. They argue that there has been a long-term trend away from segregated conjugal roles and towards joint conjugal roles and the ‘symmetrical family’. By the symmetrical family they mean one in which the roles of husbands and wives, although not identical, are now much more similar.

Reasons for the rise of the symmetrical family

Young and Willmott argued that the symmetrical family developed for several reasons:

• Increased employment opportunities for women made it more likely that women would become breadwinners alongside their husbands.

• Increasing geographical mobility has tended to sever kinship ties with other family members and strengthen the bond between husbands and wives.

• The reduction in the number of children provided greater opportunities for wives to work.

• With two earners , in dual earner families living standards rose and the husband was drawn more closely into the family circle, since the home was a more attractive place with better amenities and a greater range of home entertainment.

In 72 % of family households studied by Young and Willmott in London in the 1970s, men contributed to the housework. Furthermore, husband and wife increasingly shared responsibility for decisions that affected the family. They discussed matters such as household finances and their children’s education to a greater degree than in the past.

Evaluation of Young and Willmott

• Young and Willmott’s views on the symmetrical family have been heavily criticised. Ann Oakley (1974) argues that their claim of increasing symmetry within marriage is based on inadequate research. Although their figure of 72 per cent (for men doing housework) sounds impressive, she points out that it is based on only one question in Young and Willmott’s interview schedule: Do you/does your husband help at least once a week with any household jobs like washing up, making beds (helping with the children), ironing, cooking or cleaning?

• Oakley notes that men who make only a very small contribution to housework would be included in the 72 per cent. She says: “A man who helps with the children once a week would be included in this percentage, so would (presumably) a man who ironed his own trousers on a Saturday afternoon.”

A feminist view of housework

Feminist sociologists reject this ‘march of progress’ view. They argue that little has changed: men and women remain unequal within the family and women still do most of the housework. They see this inequality as stemming from the fact that the family and society are male-dominated or patriarchal. Women occupy a subordinate and dependent role within the family and in wider society.

Ann oakley (1974) criticises Young and wilmott’s view that the family is now symmetrical. She argues that their claims are exaggerated. Although Young and Wilmott found that most of the husbands they interviewed ‘helped’ their views at least once a week, this could include simply taking the children for a walk or making breakfast on one occasion. For Oakley this is hardly convincing evidence of symmetry.

She collected information on 40 married women who had one child or more under the age of five, who were British or Irish born, and aged between 20 and 30. Half of her sample were working class, half were middle class, and all lived in the London area. She found greater equality in terms of the allocation of domestic tasks between spouses in the middle class than in the working class. However, in both classes few men had high levels of participation in housework and childcare: few marriages could be defined as egalitarian. In her research of housewives, Oakley found some evidence of husbands helping in the home but no evidence of a trend towards symmetry. Only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework, and only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare.

Mary Boulton (1983) found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare. She argues that Young and Wilmott exaggerate mens contribution by looking at the tasks involved in childcare rather than the responsibilities. A father might help with specific tasks, but it was almost always the mother who was responsible for the child's security and well-being. Some empirical support for Boulton is provided by The Millennium Cohort Study (Dex and Ward, 2007) a longitudinal study based upon detailed quantitative research on a sample of babies born in 2000 and 2001. Over 28 000 parents were questioned when the baby was 9– 10 months old and over 23 000 when the child was three. It found that when a three-year-old child was ill, 69.6 % of mothers said that they did most of the child care whereas in only 1.1 per cent of cases did their partner take main responsibility. In 28.6 % of cases the responsibility was shared.

In general, Warde and Hetherington found that men would only carry out routine ‘female’ tasks when their partners were not around to do them. Nevertheless, they did find evidence of a slight change of attitude among younger men. They no longer assumed that women should do the housework, and were more likely to think they were doing less than their fair share.In 2012 in a majority of households within the sample , laundry , preparing meals and doing the household cleaning was usually or always done by women. In three quarters of households, small repairs around the home were usually or always done by men. Only in a small minority of households were men mainly or always responsible for caring for sick family members or preparing the main meal of the day . Nevertheless, in all areas of domestic work apart from making small repairs, there was a shift towards men taking on more tasks. Crompton and Lyonette (2008) used data from the British Attitudes Survey and other sources and found that there was a significant shift towards men doing a greater share of housework between the 1960s and 1990s. Since the 1990s though, men’s contribution has not increased to any great extent. The changes should not therefore be exaggerated but this evidence makes it clear that simply in terms of the division of labour, British households come nowhere near to gender equality.

Are couples becoming more equal ?

The march of progress view

Some recent sociologists take an optimistic view such as Young and Wilmott. They argue that women going out to work is leading to a more equal division of labour at home. In this march of progress, men are becoming more involved in housework and childcare just as women are becoming more involved in paid work outside the home.

For example, Jonathan Gershuny (1994) argues that women working full-time is leading to a more equal division of labour in the home. Using time studies, he found that these women did less domestic work than other women.

Similarly, Oriel Sullivan’s (2000) analysis of nationally representative data collected in 1975,1987 and 19997 found a trend towards women doing a smaller share of the domestic work and men doing more. Her analysis also showed an increase in the number of couples with an equal division of labour and that men were participating more in traditional ‘womens’ tasks.

These trends reflect changes in attitudes to the traditional division of labour. For example , the British Social Attitudes survey (2013) found a fall in the number of people who think it is the man's job to earn money and the woman's job to look after home and family. In 1984, 45% of men and 41% of women agreed with this view, but by 2012 only 13% of men and 12% of women agreed.

Fathers and childcare

Annette Braun, Carol Vincent and Stephen J. Ball (2011) point out that many surveys suggest men think they should be more involved in childcare and quantitative research in a variety of surveys does suggest that fathers are doing more than in previous generations. However, their own research suggests that men’s involvement is still limited and the research also suggests reasons for this.

Braun, Vincent and Ball did an in-depth study on working-class fathers from London with pre-school children using interviews with 70 families including 16 interviews with individual men. They also discuss evidence from an earlier study of middle-class fathers in the same areas of London (Vincent and Ball, 2006, cited in Braun, Vincent and Ball, 2011).

Half of these 16 working-class fathers were classified as ‘active fathers’ who were highly involved fathers although four of these still displayed a tendency to refer to the mothers for ‘instruction and reassurance’ (Braun, Vincent and Ball, 2011, p. 24). The others were classified as background fathers who did not spend much time with the children and saw the mother as primarily responsible for them. In the case of four of the active fathers, their partner was the main breadwinner and these fathers tended to feel that ideally they as the man of the house should be the main earner. Indeed, throughout the sample there was a strong provider ideology linking the breadwinner role with masculine identities.

There was only one father in the sample who had made any change in their work to spend more time looking after children. For most of the other fathers in the two research projects, childcare was largely seen in terms of their relationship with their partner. Contributing to childcare was a way of helping their partner rather than something that was primarily their responsibility to their children. Most saw financial provision as an important part of their role as fathers while spending time with children was not given the same importance as it was by mothers.

Many of the men also discussed how uncomfortable they felt looking after their child or children in public places when their partner was not present. Active fathers were ‘very aware and self-conscious of “moral-panics” linking lone men and children to paedophilia’ (Braun, Vincent and Ball, 2011, p. 29). Many of them avoided taking their children to organised activities (such as play groups) where they felt out of place and isolated.

Explanation for the gender division of labour

Rosemary Crompton and Ckaire Lyonetterr (2008) identify two different explanations for the unequal division of labour.

The cultural/ ideological explanation for inequality

In this view, the division of labour is determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape the gender roles in our culture. Women perform more domestic labour simply because it is what society expects them to do and has socialised them to do.

Evidence for cultural explanation

Equality will be achieved only when norms about gender roles change. This would involve changes in men and women’s attitudes, values and expectations, role models and socialisation. There is some evidence for this explanation:

Man Yee Kan (2001) found that younger men do more domestic work. Similarly, according to the Future Foundation (200), most men claimed to do more housework than their father and most women claimed to do less than their mother. This suggests a generational shift in behaviour is occurring.

Gillian Dunne (1999) found that lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationships because of the absence of traditional heterosexual ‘gender scripts’ , that is, norms that set out the different roles men and women are expected to play.

The material / economical explanation of inequality

In this view, the fact that women generally earn less than men means it is economically rational for women to do more housework and childcare while men spend more of their time yearning for money .

Evidence for material explanations

If women join the labour force and earn as much as their partners, we should expect to see men and women doing more equal amounts of domestic work. There is some evidence for this explanation:

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

• Sara Arber and Jay Ginn (1995) found that better-paid , middle-class women were more able to buy in commercially produced products and services, such as labour-saving devices, ready meals, domestic help and childcare , rather than having to spend time carrying out labour-intensive domestic tasks themselves.

Resources and decision-making in households

There is inequality in who gets what-in how the family's resources are shared out between men and women. This is linked to who controls the families income and who has the power to make decisions about how it is spent.

Michelle Barrett and Mary McIntosh(1991) note that :

• Men gain far more from womens’ domestic work than they give back in financial support

• Men usually make the decisions about spending on important items

• The financial support that husbands give to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with a ‘string’ attached.

Research shows that family members do not share resources such as money and food equally. For example Elaine Kempson (1994) found that among low income families, women denied their own needs , seldom going out, and eating smaller portions of food or skipping meals altogether in order to make ends meet.

In many households a woman has no entitlement to a share of household resources in her own right. As a result she is likely to see anything she spends on herself as money that ought to be spent on essentials for the children. Even in households with apparently adequate incomes, resources may be shared unequally, leaving women in poverty.

Power and money

Another approach to studying conjugal roles is to examine power within heterosexual relationships. This has usually been attempted through an examination of who makes the decisions. Power is often closely linked to control over financial resources which in turn is linked to different systems for managing household resources. In studying power and money, sociologists have asked who really gets their own way in relationships and who gets the most opportunity to spend money on what they want.

Power

A study by Irene Hardill, Anne Green, Anna Dudleston and David Owen (1997) examined power in dual-earner households in Nottingham using semi-structured interviews. The households were classified into those where the husband’s career took precedence in making major household decisions (such as what part of the country to live in), those where the wife’s career took precedence, and those where neither career clearly took precedence over the other. In 19 households, the man’s career came first, in five the woman’s career took precedence, and in six neither career was clearly prioritised. It was most likely to be the man who decided where the couple were to live, and men tended to make decisions about cars. However, husband and wife usually made a joint decision about buying or renting a house. Although men dominated decision-making in most households, this was not the case in a significant minority of households where there appeared to be more egalitarian relationships.

Money

The way that married couples and cohabiting partners manage their money can reveal a great deal about inequality. Research shows that couples use a wide variety of ways to manage money and these different approaches to money management have important implications.

Jan Pahl – systems of money management

Jan Pahl (1989, 1993) was the first British sociologist to conduct detailed studies of how couples manage their money. Her study was based upon interviews with 102 couples with at least one child under 16. The study found four main patterns of money management:

1. Husband-controlled pooling was the most common pattern (39 couples). In this system, money was shared but the husband had the dominant role in deciding how it was spent.

2. Wife-controlled pooling was the second most common category, involving 27 couples. In this system, money was shared but the wife had the dominant role in deciding how it was spent.

3. Husband control was found in 22 couples. Among these couples the husband was usually the one with the main or only wage, and often he gave his wife housekeeping money.

4. Wife control was the least frequent pattern, found in just 14 couples. This was most common in working-class and low-income households. It was most common in poorer households where the responsibility for managing the money was more of a burden than a privilege.

Inequality and money management

According to Pahl, the most egalitarian type of control is wife-controlled pooling where there tends to be a great deal of joint decision-making. Wife-controlled systems appear to give women an advantage over men. However, they tend to be found in households where money is tight and there is little, if anything, left over after paying for necessities. Often women will go short themselves (for example, by eating less, delaying buying new clothes and spending little on their leisure) rather than see their husband or children go short. Husband-controlled systems tend to give husbands more power than their wives. In these households, men usually spend more on personal consumption than wives. Where husband-controlled pooling occurs, men tend to have more power than women, but the inequality is not as great as in systems of husband control.

Overall, then, Pahl found that just over a quarter of the couples had a system (wife-controlled pooling) associated with a fair degree of equality between the partners. This would suggest that in domestic relationships, as in some other areas, women have not yet come close to reaching a position of equality.

Similarly Irene Hardill’s study of 30 dual-career professional couples found that the important decisions were usually taken either by the man alone or jointly and that his career normally took priority when deciding whether to move house for a new job. This supports Janet Finch’s (1983) observation that women’s lives tend to be structured around their husbands careers.

A ‘personal life’ perspective on money

The personal life perspective focuses on the meanings couples give to who controls the money. From this perspective , the meanings that money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted. For example , while we might assume that one partner controlling the money is a sign of inequality in the relationship, for some couples it may not have this meaning .

For example , there is evidence that same-sex couples often give a different meaning to the control of money in the relationship. 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. They did not see the control of money as meaning either equality or inequality in the relationship.

Similarly, Weeks et al (2001) found that the typical pattern was pooling some money for household spending, together with separate accounts for personal spending. This money management system thus reflects a value of ‘c0-independence’-where there is sharing, but where each partner retains control over some money and maintains a sense of independence. This is like the pattern among cohabiting couples found by Volger et al.

Smart found that there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them as a couple. She suggests that this may be because they do not enter relationships with the same ‘historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings around money’ that see money as source of power.

Domestic violence

Domestic violence is one of the ‘dark sides’ of the family and may be closely linked to inequality in relationships.

Evidence

• Police statistics: In the year to March 2016 there were over one million domestic abuse related incidents recorded by the police of which 41 per cent were deemed to involve criminal offences. A big majority, 78 % of these, were recorded as violent offences and just 3 per cent were sexual offences (criminal damage and arson were other significant categories). Around one in nine of all offences were related to domestic abuse as were around a third of violent offences.

• CSEW found a relatively narrow gender gap: 7.3% of women compared with 5% of men reported having experienced domestic abuse in the previous year . However, Other studies report a wider gap

Rebecca Dobash and Russell Dobash – structural and historical causes of domestic abuse.

In a pioneering study of domestic violence Dobash and Dobash (1979) interviewed female victims of domestic violence and police officers and examined a range of secondary sources including police statistics and statements from victims. The focus of the study was 109 wives who had been assaulted by their husbands. The Dobashes argued that domestic violence can only be understood in a broad historical and structural context and could not be seen as simply being a product of individual psychology. According to them, domestic violence is intimately linked with the existence of patriarchy and is essentially about the exercise of power by men over women in order to maintain that dominance. Historically, there has been widespread acceptance of violence by husbands against their wives. For much of the 19th century, for example, it was considered acceptable to publicly criticise and punish wives who ‘nagged or otherwise verbally abused their husbands’. This set of attitudes was reinforced by societal institutions which accepted physical ‘punishments’ of wives by husbands.

According to Dobash and Dobash, contemporary culture continues to accept that is appropriate and reasonable for husbands to use force to control their wives. Although public punishment of wives is no longer acceptable ‘the imagery of the provoking wife’ continues and acts as ‘a powerful justification and rationalisation for the physical punishments and degradation meted out by husbands in private’. Husbands are still expected to be dominant in families, which remain patriarchal institutions. Domestic violence is used to maintain patriarchal control as men try to ensure that their wives carry out what they see as their ‘duties’ as wives and mothers. These attitudes are reinforced by a police force which is reluctant to intervene in domestic disputes and by a wider culture which tolerates domestic violence.

Specific causes of disputes and violence

From a study of 122 violent men and 134 female partners of those men, Dobash and Dobash (1998) identify several types of situations and issues which led to violence. Conflicts of interest between husbands and wives were very important. Violence was often precipitated by situations in which the interests of the husband and wife diverged and the men wanted to ensure that their interests prevailed. For example, men became violent when they felt that their partners were not ‘servicing their personal needs’ such as preparing food that they approved of at a time of their liking. Women could even be ‘punished for not anticipating, interpreting and fulfilling men’s physical, emotional and sexual needs’. Conflicts of interest over money could also be important when men felt that they didn’t have enough money left for their personal leisure. Possessiveness and jealousy could be an important source of violence. Many of the men in the study were particularly possessive and could become violent if their wives had contact with other men or if they believed that their partners were being unfaithful. For many men, this was part of a wider view that women should not leave the home without their approval.

Masculinity and violence

The Dobashes accept that some women are violent, but argue that domestic violence is far more commonly used by men against their partners than by women against men. They see this as being part of masculine identity in which the use of force and intimidation are important signs of masculine worth. In violent encounters with other men, the willingness to use violence to defend yourself brings status regardless of whether you win a fight or not. In violent encounters against women, though, it is more important that men successfully assert their authority and control and do not allow themselves to be pushed around by a woman. This would challenge a man’s sense of masculine identity. For these reasons, most male domestic abusers are not ashamed of their actions but rather they feel they were pushed into it and have no choice but to respond forcefully to challenges to their authority by women.

Evaluation of Dobash and Dobash

Since some of the early research by Dobash and Dobash, attitudes towards domestic violence have changed, at least to some extent. Police forces make more effort to deal sympathetically with victims of domestic violence and government campaigns encourage the reporting of this type of offence. In part, these changes have taken place because the Dobashes and other researchers have brought the issue to public attention. Nevertheless, more recent research by Dobash and Dobash into men who murdered their intimate partners (Dobash and Dobash, 2011) has found that the assertion of male control continues to be important in male violence.

The research by the Dobashes is not always clear about why some men resort to violence and others do not. It has been argued that their research is not particularly sensitive to differences between groups of men and the different ways in which masculinity can be expressed. R.W. Connell (1995) argues that masculinity can take different forms and the dominant (or hegemonic masculinity) of professional and managerial men is less dependent on the use of violence than other forms of masculinity. The emphasis on masculinity does not explain the existence of domestic violence committed by women in heterosexual relationships or by women in lesbian relationships. The Dobashes have researched female domestic abuse against men (Dobash and Dobash, 2004) but conclude that most such violence tends to be much less harmful and less persistent than violence by men and, in any case, it is often a response to male violence and a form of self-defence. Nevertheless, they accept that there are a small number of serious, persistent female offenders who are not responding to violence or excessive control by men, but they don’t offer a clear explanation for their behaviour.

Explanations for domestic violence

The radical feminist explanation

Radical feminist interpret findings such as those of Dobash and Dobash as evidence of patriarchy. For example, Kate Millett (1970) and Shulamith Firestone argue that all societies have been founded on patriarchy. They see the key division in society as that between men and women. Men are the enemy as they are the oppressors and exploiters of women.

Radical feminist see the family and marriage as the key institutions in patriarchal society and the main source of women's oppression. Within the family, men dominate women through domestic violence or the threat of it.

For radical feminist, widespread domestic violence is an inevitable feature of patriarchal society and serves to preserve the power that all men have over all women. In their view this helps to explain why most domestic violence is committed by men. Radical feminist give a sociological , rather than a psychological, explanation by linking patterns of domestic violence to dominant social norms about marriage.

Evaluation

• Faith Robertson Elliot (1996) rejects the radical feminist claim that all men benefit from violence against women. Not all men are aggressive and most are opposed to domestic violence whereby radical feminist ignore this.

• Radical feminist also fail to explain female violence, including child abuse by women and violence against male partners and within lesbian relationships. For example the CSEW(2013) found that 18% of men (2.9 million) have experienced domestic violence since the age of 16.

The materialist explanation

The materialist explanation of domestic violence focuses on economic and material factors such as inequalities in income and housing to explain why some groups are more at risk than others. For example, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2010) see domestic violence as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequality.

Inequality means that some families have fewer resources than others. Those on low incomes or living in overcrowded accommodation are likely to experience higher levels of stress. This reduces their chances of maintaining stable, caring relationships and increases the risk of conflict and violence. For example:

• Worries about money, jobs and housing may spill over into domestic conflict as tempers become frayed.

• Lack of money and time restricts people’s social circle and reduces social support for those under stress

Therefore the findings of Wilkinson and Pickett show that not all people are equally in danger of suffering domestic violence : those with less power, status, wealth or income are often at greatest risk

Evaluation

• Wilkinson and Pickett’s approach is useful in showing how social inequality produces stress and triggers conflict and violence in families. As those in lower social classes face greater hardship and thus stress, this helps to explain the class differences in the statistics on domestic violence.

• However, unlike the radical feminist approach, Wilkinson and Pickett do not explain why women rather than men are the main victims

CHILDHOOD

Childhood as a social construct

Sociologists see childhood as socially constructed- something created and defined by society. They argue that what people mean by childhood, and the position that children occupy in society, is not fixed but differs between time , places and cultures.

Cross-cultural comparisons

Contemporary Western societies have distinctive ideas about childhood and it is often assumed that these ideas are normal and universal. From a social constructionist point of view they are not, as these examples illustrate:

1. In some societies it is still considered quite normal for children to do substantial amounts of work. According to the International Labour Organization there were 168 million child workers in 2012. Wyness (2012) cites a study by Banks (2007) which found that in Bangladesh children as young as 11 or 12 work as sex workers using forged papers. The ILO has found that many children are employed in hazardous occupations including construction, mining and quarrying. In sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and the Pacific, children are expected to work to contribute to the household income.

2. In many societies, circumstances lead to children taking on roles which are typically thought to be ones which only adults can carry out. Michael Wyness (2012) points out that children often act as carers for their own parents or other adults. Around 175 000 children were acting as carers according to the 2001 census in the UK.

3. According to Wyness (2012) typical estimates put the number of child soldiers at around 300 000. They have been used in recent years in more than 30 countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria and Sudan. According to the UN (2007) the availability of light and cheap weapons means that children aged 10 or even younger are sometimes used to fight.

4. Ruth Benedict (1955, discussed in Pilcher, 1995) found wide cultural variations in the roles of children. In Samoa, children were not considered too young to do dangerous or physically demanding tasks. In Tikopia in the Western Pacific, children’s individuality was respected and they were not expected to be obedient. Among First Nation Australians in the 1920s, children were not discouraged from playing sexual games. Benedict concluded that compared to Western societies, some other societies differentiated much less between adulthood and childhood. Social constructionist theories have also argued that contemporary Western ideas of childhood have only developed comparatively recently. The next section examines the historical development of ideas about childhood.

The modern western notion of childhood

It is generally accepted in our society today that childhood is a special time of life and that children are fundamentally different from adults. They are regarded as physically and psychologically immature and not yet competent to run their own lives.

There is a belief that children's lack of skills, knowledge and experience means that they need a lengthy, protected period of nurturing and socialisation before they are ready for adult society and its responsibilities.

Jane Pilcher (1995) notes that 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.

This is emphasised in several ways such as laws regulating what children are allowed, required or forbidden to do. Their difference from adults is also emphasised through differences in dress, especially for younger children, and through products and services specially for children, such as toys , food , books, entertainment, play areas and so on.

Related to the separateness of children’s status is the idea of childhood as a ‘golden age’ of happiness and innocence. However, this innocence means that children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection from the dangers of the adult world and so they must be kept ‘quarantined’ and separated from them. As a result, children’s lives are lived largely in the sphere of the family and education, where adults provide for them and protect them from the outside world.

Evaluation

• However, this view of childhood as a separate age-status is not found in all societies. It is not universal.In western cultures today, children are defined as vulnerable and unable to fend themselves. However other cultures do not necessarily see such a great difference between children and adults.

The globalisation of western childhood

Some sociologists argue that western notions of childhood are being globalised. International humanitarian and welfare agencies have exported and impostheb rest of the world, western norms of what childhood should be- a separate life stage, based in the nuclear family and school, in which children are innocent, dependent and vulnerable, and have no economic role.

For example campaigns against child labour, or concerns about ‘street children’ in developing countries, reflect western views about how childhood ‘ought’ to be- whereas in fact, such activity by children may be the norm for culture and an important preparation for adult life. In this view, western-style ‘childhood’ is spreading throughout the world. However, arguably such a campaign has little impact on the position of children in developing countries.

Historical development in childhood

Childhood in pre-industrial

The historian Philippe Aries (1960) argues that in the Middle Ages, ‘the idea of childhood did not exist’.

In the Middle Ages, childhood as a separate age-stage was short. Soon after being weaned, the child entered wider society on much the same terms as an adult, beginning work from an early age, often in the household of another family. According to Aries, children over the age of 6 or 7 were seen as ‘mini-adults’ with the same rights, duties and skills as adults. For example, the law often made no distinction between children and adults, and children often faced the same severe punishments as those meted out to adults.

As evidence of his view, Aries uses works of art from the period. The paintings show children and adults dressed in the same clothing and working and playing together.

Children were regarded as economic assets rather than as an economic liability.

Childhood & industrialisation

There was a growth in marital & parental love in middle-class families as the infant mortality rate started to fall.Social attitudes towards children really started to change in the middle of the nineteenth century. Children were excluded from the mines & factories where thousands of them had been killed or injured.

Some working-class parents, however, resisted these moves, because they depended on their children's wages.

Child prostitution & abuse were common features of most cities.

It was not until the late 1800s that the age of sexual consent was raised to 16.

The modern cult of childhood

However, this gradually began to change towards the end of the medieval era. Children’s toys and clothes were introduced, people started keeping paintings of children, children’s deaths were mourned more and taboos about children and sexuality developed.

According to Aries, elements of the modern notion of childhood gradually began to emerge from the from the 13th century onwards:

• Schools came to specialise purely in the education of the young. This reflected the influence of the church , which increasingly saw children as ‘fragile creatures of God’ in need of discipline and protection from worldly evils

• There was a growing distinction between childrens and adult clothing. By the 17th century, an upper-class boy would be dressed in ‘an outfit reserved for his own age group, which set him apart from adults

• By the 18th century , handbooks on child rearing were widely available, a sign of the growing child-centredness of family life, at least among the middle classes.

According to Aries, these developments culminate in the modern ‘cult of childhood’. He argues that we have moved from a world that did not see childhood as in any way special, to a world that is obsessed with childhood. He describes the 20th century as ‘ the century of the child’

Evaluation of Aries

The work of Ariès has generated considerable discussion and debate. Jane Pilcher (1995) notes a number of criticisms which have been put forward:

1. His work has been seen as value-laden. Ariès implies in his work that more recent child-centred views of childhood are superior to earlier views, which allowed children to be treated in ways that would be considered unacceptable today. Critics have argued that Ariès allows his own values to distort his work, leading him to be overly critical of medieval child rearing.

2. Ariès has also been criticised for arguing that there was no concept of childhood in medieval times. Others have suggested that it would be more accurate to say that ideas on childhood were simply different at that time rather than absent altogether. 3. Ariès has also been criticised for generalising about modern childhood on the basis of data largely confined to French aristocratic families.

Reasons for the changes in position of children

There are many reasons for the changes in the position of children. These include the following changes during the 19th and 20th centuries:

• Laws restricting child labour and excluding children from paid work. For example In 1833 the Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children working in factories. Young children were working very long hours in workplaces where conditions were often terrible. The basic act was as follows: no child workers under nine years of age.

• The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 raised the minimum age for execution to eighteen, raised the age of criminal responsibility from seven to eight, included guidelines on the employment of school-age children, set a minimum working age of fourteen, and made it illegal for adults to sell cigarettes or other tobacco products to children.

• From being economic assets who could earn a wage , children became an economic liability, financially dependent on their parents.For example the Children's Act defines parents as having ‘responsibilities’ rather than ‘rights’ in relation to children, while the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the-Child (1989) lays down basic rights such as entitlement to healthcare and education, protection from abuse and the right to participate in decisions that affect them such as custody cases.

• Declining family size and lower infant mortality rate have encouraged parents to make a greater financial and emotional investment in the fewer children that they now have.

• The introductions of compulsory schooling in 1880 had a similar effect, especially for the children of the poor( middle-and upper-class children were already receiving education). The raising of the school-leaving age has extended this period of dependency

The future of childhood

The disappearance of childhood

Neil Postman argues that childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed’. He points to the trend towards giving children the same rights as adults, the disappearance of children's traditional unsupervised games, the growing similarity of adults’ and childrens’ clothing , and even to cases of children committing ‘adult’ crimes as murder.

In Postman’s view, the disappearance of childhood lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture. During the Middle Ages, most people were illiterate and speech was the only skill needed for participation in society in the adult world. Children were able to enter adult society from an early age. Childhood was not associated with innocence nor the adult world with mystery. There was no division between the world of the adult and that of the child.

Postman argues that childhood emerged as a separate status along with mass literacy, from the 19th century on. This is because the printed word creates an information hierarchy : a sharp division between adults , who can read, and children, who cannot. This gave adults the power to keep knowledge about sex, money, violence , illness, death and other ‘adult’ matters a secret from children. These things became mysteries to them , and childhood came to be associated with innocence and ignorance.

However, television blurs the distinction between childhood and adulthood by destroying the information hierarchy. Unlike the printed word, TV does not require special skills to access it, and it makes information available to adults and children alike. The boundary between adult and child is broken down, adult diminishes , and the ignorance and innocence of childhood is replaced by knowledge and cynicism.

Therefore the counterpart of disappearance of childhood is the disappearance of adulthood, where adults and children’s tastes and styles become indistinguishable.

Evaluation

• Postman’s study is valuable in showing how different types of communication technology, such as print and television, can influence the way in which childhood is constructed. However, he overemphasis a single cause- television- at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood.

• Iona Opie (1993) argues that childhood is not disappearing. Based on a lifetime of research into children’s unsupervised games, rhymes and songs, conducted with her husband Peter Opie, she argues that there is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children’s culture over many years.

Childhood transition from modernity to postmodernity

Unlike Postman, Christopher Jenks (2005) does not believe childhood is disappearing , but he does believe it is changing. Society continues to impose rules on many aspects of childhood because of its symbolic importance. Children are still highly regulated and restricted by legal constraints governing their sexuality, education, behaviour in public places, alcohol consumption, political rights (or lack of them) and so on. Even though people are more aware that children can be violent, can misbehave, become sexually active and so on, society is still unwilling to accept that the idea of childhood is a social construction rather than a natural, biological category.

Childhood and modernity

Jenks characterises the development of modern childhood in terms of a shift from the Dionysian image of the child to the Apollonian image. The Dionysian image of the child is based upon Dionysus, the ‘prince of wine, revelry and nature’. According to this image, children love pleasure and are curious and adventurous. In the pursuit of pleasure children can get themselves into all sorts of trouble and can, potentially, act in evil ways. Children are therefore in need of strict moral guidance and control if they are to grow up to be responsible adults. There is little sentimentality in this image of children, and strict discipline can be used to control children.

According to Jenks, the Dionysian image was typical of pre-industrial societies, but it survived well into the modern era although it was gradually overtaken by an alternative Apollonian image of the child (from the Greek god Apollo). According to this view, children are born good but are quite different from adults. Because they are different they cannot be treated like adults. They need more careful handling, and the good side of their nature must be coaxed out of them sympathetically. Each child is an individual and therefore special. From such notions, the modern idea of the child developed. This in turn influenced ideas on child-centred education, the unsuitability of work for children, the avoidance of harsh or physical punishment, and the belief that children needed to be ‘enabled, encouraged and facilitated’.

Discipline and monitoring

Jenks does not believe that this resulted in children being left free to do whatever they wanted. Instead, new ways of monitoring and controlling children were introduced. These did not depend on hard physical violence but instead children were increasingly disciplined through the monitoring and control of space. They were restricted in where they could go at particular times and restricted in what they could do in different settings. At school, children spent more and more time sitting behind a desk and were expected to conform to school rules. Out of school, children were increasingly kept out of most public spaces unless accompanied by an adult. The modern family also monitored children and had become a rational institution designed to develop children so that they became productive and well-adapted adults. Childhood was increasingly concerned with futurity – what the child would become in the future – rather than the enjoyment and experience of childhood itself.

Late modern/postmodern childhood

Jenks believes that modernity has now been superseded by a new era. He refers to this new era both as late modernity and as postmodernity, using these terms interchangeably. Jenks, like many other sociologists, believes that the new era has resulted in a destabilisation of people’s identities, so that they no longer have a secure, grounded sense of who they are. For example, family life is insecure with frequent divorce, and people change jobs more often than in the past. People develop a reflexive sense of self – they constantly monitor, revise, try to change their sense of who they are. This can make people anxious and unsure about their identity since it no longer has firm foundations. Drawing heavily on the work of Ulrich Beck (1992), Jenks argues that children have become the final source of primary relationships – the most fulfilling and unconditional relationships, which last and from which people obtain the most satisfaction. Wives, husbands or partners used to be seen as the most important source of primary relationships, but an increasing proportion of such relationships break down through divorce, or separation. Because of this, parents now attach more importance to relationships with their children since unlike a marriage, the parent-child relationship is a permanent biological relationship. The relationship with children becomes the one thing on which adults can rely and they cling on to it in the uncertainty and instability of the postmodern world. However, there is still some ambiguity about childhood. According to Jenks, we live in a society in which the independence of the individual is seen as a necessity, and it is also seen as necessary for children to develop this independence. Yet, as ‘the symbolic refuge of ...trust, dependency and care in human relations’, there is a strong sense that children need to be protected so that the last vestiges of the old society do not disappear.

Child abuse

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that there is considerable anxiety about childhood. Childhood is so precious and symbolic that there is great concern if it is seen as under threat. This sense of anxiety is revealed in attitudes towards child abuse. Child abuse has become increasingly evident in contemporary society, with many more allegations of abuse than in the past and much more publicity given to the issue. People are therefore more aware of abuse and more fearful for their children. For example, many parents are worried about abduction and reluctant to let children go out without adult supervision. But however much parents want to protect their children from real or imagined threats, they ultimately feel that they cannot guarantee their safety. This is because they feel insecure themselves.

Conclusion

Given the ambiguity over childhood and the contradictory demands to protect children and to allow them to develop as independent individuals, Jenks suggests that it is now misleading to believe that such a thing as ‘childhood’ exists in reality. In contemporary society, the experiences and behaviour of children are extremely varied, and any single view of what childhood is will not do justice to the differences that exist between children.

Evaluation

However, many sociologists regard this view of childhood as far too negative. Overall, the health of children has improved and far fewer children die before reaching adulthood than in Victorian times (Cunningham, 2006). Deborah Chambers (2012) believes that a shift to a more child-centred family has produced benefits for children who are no longer treated simply as the ‘passive recipients of parental care and socialisation’ but are given more say in their own upbringing. Chambers argues that exposure to new media is not simply negative because, for example, the use of mobile phones is now essential to peer group integration and development as adolescents. Similarly, the purchase and use of different brands is part of developing an independent identity.

However, the increasing centrality of children in family life along with concerns about child safety fuels parental anxiety about being ‘good parents’. This in turn leads to some restrictions on children’s freedom of movement outside the home. For these reasons, Chambers acknowledges that childhood is changing but with mixed effects which are neither wholly negative nor positive. Instead, childhood is characterised by tension between managing and protecting children and giving children more rights, and giving them opportunities to make choices for themselves.

Has the position of children improved?

The march of progress view

The march of progress argues that, over the past few centuries, the position of children in western societies has been steadily improving and today is better than it has ever been. This view paints a dark picture of the past. Writers such as Aries and Shorter hold a march of progress view. They argue that today’s children are more valued, better cared for, protected and educated, enjoy better health and have more rights than those of previous generations.

For example, children today are protected from harm and exploitation by laws against child abuse and child labour , while an array of professionals and specialist caters for their educational, psychological and medical needs. The government spends huge sums on their education.

Better healthcare and higher standards of living also mean that babies have a much better chance of survival now than a century ago. In 1900, the infant mortality rate was 154 per 1000 births: today, it is 4 per 1,000.

Toxic childhood

Sue Palmer argues that rapid technological and cultural changes in the past 25 years have damaged children’s physical, emotional and intellectual development. These changes range from junk food, computer games, and intensive marketing to children, to the long hours worked by parents and the growing emphasis on testing in education. Concerns have also been expressed about young people’s health and behaviour. For example, UK youth have above average rates in international league tables for obesity, self-harm, drug and alcohol abuse, violence, early sexual experience and teenage pregnancy. A UNICEF survey in 2013 ranked the UK 16th out of 29 for children’s well being.

The conflict view

Feminist and Marxist views

There are some parallels between the position of children and women in society: for example, both are prone to being victims of domestic abuse and both are generally subordinate to men (Wyness, 2013). Furthermore, both children and women lack or have lacked in the past full social status which has made it difficult for women and children to assert their rights. Hood-Williams (1990, cited in Wyness, 2012) therefore argues that there are two types of patriarchy (or male dominance). Marital patriarchy involves the dominance of men over women. Age patriarchy involves the dominance of parents over children. However, this approach does not explain why age-based dominance should be seen as a form of patriarchy which implies the dominance of men rather than the dominance of adults . Furthermore, Michael Wyness (2012) suggests that there are some elements of feminism which prioritise the interests of women over those of children. Some feminists have ‘treated children as … a burden or obstacle to the realisation of women’s interests’ (p. 43). Wyness suggests that children are in a weaker position than women because they lack basic rights which women have now gained (such as property rights and the right to vote). Therefore, while feminism can help provide insights into the position of children in society, their position cannot be simply explained in terms of patriarchy. Marxists have tended to see the position of children in terms of economic exploitation. For example, Marx and Engels (discussed in Wyness, 2012) saw children during the industrial revolution as a source of easily exploited, cheap labour which could be used in times of labour shortage and discarded when not needed. However, it is hard to see children in these terms in societies where child-labour is illegal and children make a limited economic contribution (even in terms of unpaid domestic labour). For the above reasons, some sociologists have argued that existing perspectives on inequality and exploitation cannot fully explain the position of children in society. Instead they have developed a ‘new sociology of children’ which focuses on the disadvantaged position of children in the social structure without relying on theories designed to explain gender or social class inequalities.

Berry Mayall - sociology and children

Berry Mayall (2004) is critical of much of the sociology of childhood. She argues that it tends to see childhood in terms of the viewpoint and priorities of adults. It can therefore be accused of being adultist . Children are routinely portrayed as the passive recipients of socialisation (as Mayall puts it, as socialisation projects ), or as simply the occupants of the social role of childhood. As in society, where children’s views are rarely solicited or listened to, so it is in sociology. However, Mayall argues that several factors have led some sociologists to start to take children more seriously:

1. The women’s movement led to the opening up of sociology to one disadvantaged group – women. This paved the way for children to be given more attention.

2. A children’s rights movement has gained momentum in its own right since the Second World War. For example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child established the principle that children should be seen as having rights in the same way as adults.

3. Within sociology some writers began to question the way that children were portrayed. For example, Jens Qvortrup (1991) argued that the economic importance of children was seriously underestimated. Writing a report on an international study of childhood, he noted that children did a great deal of hidden work which made a significant contribution to the economy but which was largely ignored by economists.

Inequalities among children

Not all children share the same status or experiences. Alan Prout (2005) suggests that divisions within countries between different groups of children are important. In Britain, children from poorer backgrounds have higher rates of illness, do less well in education and probably suffer more neglect and abuse than children from richer backgrounds. Prout suggests that increasing family diversity leads to greater variety in children’s experience, as do factors such as class, ethnicity, disability and gender.

Poverty and social class

According to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG, 2017) there were 3.9 million children in poverty in 2014– 2015 and this had a significant impact on their experience of childhood. For example, for some it meant going hungry and it could restrict their ability to join in activities along with other children because of costs. 60 % of children in the poorest quarter of families could not afford to go on holiday. Poverty also impacts on the health of children with the result that poor children are more likely to have their childhood blighted by illness as well as having a lower life expectancy.

Gender

Girls and boys are not socialised in the same way and therefore do not have the same experience of childhood. For example, Angela McRobbie (2000) argues that pre-teen girls are given considerably less freedom than pre-teen boys. They are believed to be more vulnerable to assault or even abduction than their male counterparts so they are less likely to spend time in public places without adult supervision. In terms of the balance between dependence on adults and independence, childhood is not the same for girls and boys. Karen Wells (2015) therefore argues that childhood is gendered in ways which affect ‘the allocation of tasks’ and ‘the organisation of time and space’ (Wells, 2015, p. 49). Girls and boys have different amounts of choice in what they can do, where they can go and how much free time they have, with girls often expected to do a great deal more unpaid domestic work than boys.

Ethnicity

As an earlier part of this chapter showed (see pp. 285– 290) there are significant cultural variations between families from different ethnic backgrounds. For this reason, there are also significant variations in the experience of childhood for children from different ethnic groups. For example, Bhatti’s research (1999) found that more emphasis was placed on family honour and family

Neglect and abuse

Adult control over children can take the extreme form of physical neglect or physical,sexual or emotional abuse. In 2013, 43, 000 children were subject to child protection plans because they were deemed to be at risk of significant harm - most often from their own parents. The charity Childline receives over 20,000 calls a year from children saying that they have been sexually or physically abused. These figures indicated a ‘dark side’ to family life of which children are the victims.

DEMOGRAPHY

Key Terms:

Demography : is the study of the population. It includes the measurement of births, deaths & migration which can lead to changes in population size & structure. It also involves an examination of the reasons for changes in a population.

Births : How many babies are born

Deaths : How many people die

Immigration: how many people enter the country from elsewhere

Emigration: how many people leave the country to live elsewhere.

Birth rate : is used to measure birth and is the number of live births per thousand of the population per year

Total fertility rate: is the average number of children women will have during their fertile years.

Death rate: is the number of deaths per thousand of the population per year.

Life expectancy: how long an average person born in a given year can expect to live.

Net migration: is the difference between the numbers of immigrants and the numbers of emigrants , and is expressed as a net increase or a net decrease due to migration.

Globalisation: the idea that barriers between societies are disappearing and people are becoming increasingly interconnected across national boundaries.

Births

There has been a long-term decline in the number of births since 1900. In that year, England and Wales had a birth rate of 28.7, but by 2014 it had fallen to an estimated 12.2 .

However there has been fluctuations in births, with three ‘baby booms’ in the 20th century. The first two came after the two world wars(1914-18), as returning servicemen and their partners started families that they had postponed during the war years. There was a third baby boom in the 1960s , after which the birth rate fell sharply during the 1970s. The rate rose during the 1980s before falling again after the early 1990s, with some increase since 2001.

The total fertility rate

The factors determining the birth rate are the proportion of women who are of childbearing age and secondly , how fertile they are - that is how many children they have.

The UK’s TFR has risen in recent years , but it is still much lower than in the past. From an all-time low of 1.63 children per woman in 2001 , it rose to 1.83 by 2014. However, this is still lower than the peak of 2.95 children per woman reached in 1964 during the 1960s baby boom.

These changes in fertility and birth rates reflect the fact that :

• More women are remaining childless than in the past.

• Women are postponing having children: the average age for giving birth is now 30, and fertility rates for women in their 30s an d40s are on the increase.

Long-term trends in fertility rates are often explained in terms of the theory of demographic transition . This theory was first put forward as the 1920s when it was argued that demography was transformed when countries underwent the transition from relatively poor, less-developed societies to increasingly affluent industrial societies. In preindustrial societies women tend to have a large number of children because of the high infant mortality rate which meant that many children did not survive until adulthood. Furthermore, in preindustrial societies children were generally an economic asset because they started work at an early age. Having a large number of children (that is having a high total fertility rate) ensured that there was a high chance that some children would survive until adulthood and would therefore be able to provide economic insurance for parents. However, when the infant mortality rate started to fall due to a variety of factors, there was a period of adjustment before fertility rates fell. Eventually, though, adults cut the number of children they had and population growth levelled off. A transition was complete from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates.

Reasons for the decline in birth rate

1. Changes in women's position

There were major changes in the position of women during the 20th century . These include:

• Increased educational opportunities -girls now do better at school than boys.

• Legal equality with men, including the right to vote

• More women in paid employment , plus laws outlawing unequal pay and sex discrimination.

• Access to abortion and contraception, giving women more control over their family. Balbo, Billari and Mills (2013) suggest that developments in contraception have been crucial in allowing people to control their fertility. Latex (rubber) condoms first became available in the early years of the 20th century, but it was only in the 1950s that they became more reliable and easy to use. The most significant development in contraception was the development of the hormonal contraceptive pill which was first approved for use in the UK in 1961. It was available on the NHS from 1961, but only for married women and only in 1974 could it be prescribed for single women (Coast and Freeman, 2016). Since then the range of available contraceptives has expanded providing more ways of controlling fertility and thereby playing a role in reducing fertility rates.

According to Sarah Harper (2012), the education of women is the most important reason for the long-term fall in birth and fertility rates. It has led to a change of mindset among women, resulting in fewer children. Not only are educated women more likely to use family planning, they now see other possibilities in life apart from the traditional role of housewife and mother. Many are choosing to delay childbearing or not to have children at all, in order to pursue a career. For example, in 2012, 1 in 5 women aged 45 was childless-double the number of 25 years earlier.

In addition, Harper also notes that, once a pattern of low fertility lasts for more than one generation, cultural norms about family size change. Smaller families become the norm and large ones come to be seen as deviant or less acceptable.

1. Children are now an economic liability

Until the late 19th century, children were economic assets to their parents because they could be sent out to work from an early age to earn an income. However, since the late 19th century children have gradually become an economic liability.

Laws banning child labour, introducing compulsory schooling and raising the school leaving age mena that children remain economically dependent on their parents for longer and longer.

Changing norms about what children have a right to expect from their parents in material terms mean that the cost of bringing up children has risen. As a result of these financial pressures, parents now feel less able or willing than in the past to have a large family.

1. Child centredness

Increasing child centredness both of the family and of society as a whole means that childhood is now socially constructed as a uniquely important period in the individual's life. In terms of family size, this has encouraged a shift from ‘quantity’ to ‘quality’- parents now have fewer children and lavish more attention and resources on these few.

Future trends in birth rates

There has been a slight increase in births since 2001. A reason for this is the increase in immigration because on average, mothers from outside the UK have a higher fertility rate than those born in the UK. Babies born to mothers from outside the UK accounted for 25% of all births in 2011. However the projection for the period up to 2041 expects the annual number of births to be fairly constant, at around 800, 000 per year.

Effects of changes in fertility

The Family

Smaller families mean that women are more likely to be free to go out to work, thus creating the dual earner couple typical of many professional families. However, family size is only one factor here . For example, better off couples may be able to have larger families and still afford childcare that allows them to both to work full-time.

Public services and policies

A lower birth rate has consequences for public services . For example, fewer schools and maternity and child health services may be needed. It also affects the cost of maternity and paternity leave and the types of housing that need to be built. However , we should remember that many of these are political decisions. For example , instead o f reducing the number of schools , the government could decide to have smaller class sizes.

An ageing population

One effect of women having fewer babies is that the average age of the population is rising: there are more old people relative to young people . This ageing of the population has a number of important effects which we have to deal with.

Deaths

In 1900, the death rate stood at 19, whereas by 2012 it had more than halved, to 8.9. The death rate had already begun falling from about 1870 and continued to do so until 1930. It rose slightly during the 1930s and 1940s- the period of the great economic depression, followed by World War 2- but since the 1950s it has declined slightly.

Reasons for the decline in the death rate.

According to Tranter (1996), over three-quarters of the decline in the death rate from about 1850 to 1970 was due to fall in the number of deaths from infectious diseases such as diphtheria, measles, smallpox, typhoid and above all tuberculosis (TB) .Deaths from infectious diseases were commonest in the young and most of the decline in the death rate occurs among infants, children and young adults. By the 1950s, so-called ‘diseases of affluence’ such as heart diseases and cancers had replaced infectious diseases as the main cause of death.

There are several reasons why the death rate declined during the 20th century however social factors probably have a much greater impact on infectious diseases. These included improved nutrition, smoking and diet ,medical improvements and public health measures.

1. Improved nutrition

Thomas Mckeown (1972) argues that improved nutrition accounted for up to half the reduction in death rates, and was particularly important in reducing the number of deaths from TB. Better nutrition increases resistance to infection and increased the survival chances of those who did become infected

Criticism

However Mckeown does not explain why females , who receive a smaller share of the family food supply, lived longer than males.

1. Smoking and diet

According to Harper, the greatest fall in death rates in recent decades has come not from medical improvements but simply from a reduction in the number of people smoking. However, in the 21st century, obesity has replaced smoking as the new lifestyle epidemic. For example , in 2012, one quarter of all UK adults were obese.

Yet although obesity has increased , deaths from obesity have been kept low as a result of drug therapies. Harper suggests that we may be moving to an ‘American’ health culture where lifestyles are unhealthy but where a long lifespan is achieved by use of costly medication.

1. Medical Improvements

Before the 1950s, despite some important innovations, medical improvements played almost no part in the reduction of deaths from infectious disease.

However, after the 1950s improved medical knowledge, techniques and organisation did help to reduce death rates. Advances included the introduction of antibiotics, immunisation, blood transfusion , improved maternity services, as well as the setting up of the National Health Services in 1948.

More, recently , improved medication, bypass surgery and other developments have reduced deaths from heart diseases by one-third.

1. Public health measures

In the 20th century, more effective central and local government with the necessary power to pass and enforce laws led to a range of improvements in public health and the quality of the environment.

These included improvements in housing(producing drier, better ventilated, less overcrowded accommodation ), purer drinking water, laws to combat the adulteration of food and drink, the pasteurisation of milk, and improved sewage disposal methods. Similarly, the Clean Air Acts reduced air pollution, such as the smog that led to 4,000 deaths in 5 days in 1952.

Life expectancy

As death rates have fallen, so life expectancy has increased. For example:

• Males born inEngland in 1900 could expect on average to live until they were 50 (57 for females)

• Males born in England in 2013 can expect to live for 90.7 years (94 for females)

Over the past centuries, life expectancy has increased by about two years per decade. One reason for lower average life expectancy in 1900 was the fact that so many infants and children did not survive beyond the early years of life. To put the improvement in life expectancy into perspective, we can note that a newborn baby today has a better chance of reaching its 65th birthday than a baby born in 1900 had of reaching its first birthday.

The Ageing population

A combination of low birth rates and low death rates has resulted in an ageing population (a population in which the average age is rising). Falkingham and Champion (2016) note that the median age in the UK increased from 33.9 years in 1974 to 40.0 years in 2014. Furthermore, Maria Evandrou, Jane Falkingham and Athina Vlachantoni (2016) observe that in 1901 less than 5 per cent of the population was 65 or over, but by 2014 this had reached 17.7 per cent. The fastest growing age group in the UK has been the over 90s who made up just 0.4 per cent of the population in 1989 but 0.8 per cent in 2014 (Falkingham and Champion, 2016).

‘Age pyramids’ are another way of illustrating the changing age-profile of the population.These shows how older age groups are growing as a proportion of the population, while younger groups are shrinking . In fact, as Donald Hirsch (2005) notes, the traditional age ‘pyramid’ is disappearing and being replaced by more or less equal-sized ‘blocks’ representing the different age groups. For example , by 2041 there will be as many 78 year olds as 5 year olds.

This ageing of the population is caused by three factors:

• Increasing life expectancy- people are living longer into old age.

• Declining infant mortality, so that nowadays hardly anyone dies early in life

• Declining fertility -fewer young people are being born in relation to the number of older people in the population.

Effects of an ageing population

1. Public services

The ageing population has placed an increasing strain upon public funding for social care costs. Evandrou, Falkingham and Vlachantoni (2016) note that restrictions on public spending have led to a reduction in the spending on social care costs for older people who cannot care for themselves. This has placed a strain on family members and charities who have sometimes helped to fill the gap left by inadequate public funding. It has also impacted on the NHS, with older people sometimes being unable to leave hospital because of the lack of social care. This so-called ‘bed blocking’ has affected the ability of the NHS to provide care for other patients. Wesley Key (2016) notes that the average annual costs of hospital and community care are three times greater for those aged 85 and older than for 65– 74 year olds, putting extra strain on an already over-stretched NHS.

1. The dependency ratio

Like the non-working young, the non working old are an economically dependent group who need to be provided for by those of working age, for example through taxation to pay for pension and health care.

As the number of retired people rises, this increases the dependency ratio and the burden on the working population. In 2015, there were 3.2 people of working age for every one pensioner. This ratio is predicted to fall to 2.8 to one by 2033.

However, it would be wrong to assume that ‘old’ necessarily equals ‘economically dependent’. For example , the age at which people can draw their pension is rising- from 2020 both men and women will have to wait until they are 66 to access the state pension, rising to 67 from 2026.

1. Housing

Key (2016) suggests that the ageing population has led to an increase in single-person households as a result of widowhood. With a shortage of housing nationally and rising house prices, this creates pressure on the housing stock. The amount of sheltered housing has increased but it struggles to keep pace with the ageing population. Places in care homes have not expanded fast enough to cope with the rising elderly population requiring care. Some pensioners live on their own but occupy large houses, and an expansion of housing suitable for single retired people might help to ease housing shortages for younger age groups.

Ageism, modernity and postmodernity

A consequence of the ageing population in modern society is the growth of ageism - the negative stereotyping and unequal treatment of people on the basis of their age. Ageism towards older people shows itself in many ways, such as discrimination in employment and unequal treatment in healthcare. Similarly, much of the discourse(way of speaking and thinking) about old age and ageing has been constructed as a ‘problem’- for example in terms of the cost of pensions or health care for the old.

Postmodern society and age

Postmodern society argues that in today's postmodern society, the fixed, orderly stages of the life course have broken down. For example, trends such as children dressing in adult styles, later marriage and early retirement all begin to blur the boundaries between the life stages.This gives individuals a greater choice of lifestyle, whatever their age.

Unlike in modern society, consumption, not production, becomes the key to our identities. We can now define ourselves by what we consume. As Hunt (2005) argues, this means we can choose a lifestyle and identity regardless of age: our age no longer determines who we are or how we live.

As a result, the old become a market for a vast range of ‘body maintenance’ or ‘rejuvenation’ goods and services through which they can create their identities. These include cosmetic surgery, exercise equipment, gym memberships and anti-ageing products.

Modern society and old age

Many sociologists argue that ageism is the result of ‘structured dependency’. The old are largely excluded from paid work, leaving them economically dependent on their families or the state. In modern society, our identity and status are largely determined by our role in production .Those excluded from production by compulsory retirement have a dependent status and a stigmatised identity.

From a Marxist perspective, Phillipson (1982) argues that the old are of no use to capitalism because they are no longer productive. As a result, the state is unwilling to support them adequately and so the family, especially female relatives, often has to take responsibility for their care.

In modern society, life is structured into a fixed series of stages, such as childhood, youth and so on. Age becomes important in role allocation, creating mixed life stages and age-related identities, such as worker or pensioner. The old are thus excluded from a role in the labour force and made dependent and powerless.

Age concern (2004) found 29% reported suffering age discrimination than any other form.

Inequality among the old.

Pilcher (1995) argues that inequalities such as class and gender remain important. Many of these are related to the individual's previous occupational position.

Class - the middle class have better occupational pensions and greater savings from higher salaries. Poorer old people have a shorter life expectancy and suffer more infirmity(making it difficult to maintain a youthful self-identity).

Gender- women's lower earnings and career breaks as carers mean lower pensions. They are also subject to sexist as well as ageist stereotyping, for example being described as ‘old hags’.

The interpretation of age

Age as a social construct Hockey and James (1993) do not see the social roles of older people as a product of a functional disengagement from society. Instead they argue that the role of older people results from a particular interpretation of old age in Western societies.Age is to a considerable extent a social construct , meaning that it is dependent on the culture of a particular society at a particular time. Although biological changes do affect people as they age, it is the meaning attached to old age that can be more disabling than physiological changes. In contemporary Britain, everyday talk, stereotypes and the media all serve to make old age appear similar to childhood. In the process, old age is infantilised . Older people are made to seem childlike. As a result, they lose the status of being adults who have full personhood.

Migration

In the Uk , for most of the 20th century until the 1980s, there were fewer immigrants than emigrants.

Immigration

From the 1900 until the Second World War (1939-45), the largest immigrant group were the Irish, mainly for economic reasons, followed by Eastern and Central European Jews, who were often refugees fleeing persecution, and people of British descent from Canada and the USA. Very few immigrants were non-white.

By contrast, during the 1950s, black immigrants from the Caribbean began to arrive in the Uk, followed during the 1960s and 1970s by South Asian immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri lanka , and by East African Asians from Kenya and Uganda.

One consequence is a more ethnically diverse society. By 2011, ethnic minority groups accounted for 14% of the population. One result has been greater diversity of family patterns.

However more people left the UK than entered and most immigrants were white. Despite this a series of immigration and nationality acts from 1962 to 1990 placed severe restrictions on non-white immigration. By the 1980s, non-whites accounted for little more than quarter of all immigrants, while the mainly white countries of the European Union became the main source of settlers in the UK.

Emigration

From as early as the mid-16th century until the 1980s, the UK was almost always a net exporter of people : more emigrate to live elsewhere than came to settle in the UK. Since 1900, emigrants have gone to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The main reasons for emigration have been economic:

• ‘Push’ factors such as economic recession, war, poor health care etc

• ‘Pull’ factors such as higher wages or better opportunities abroad

These economic reasons for migration contrast with those of some other groups, who have been driven to migrate by religious, political or racial persecution.

The impact of migration on UK population structure

Recent years have seen an increase in both immigration and emigration. These trends affect the size of the UK population, its age structure and the dependency ratio

Population size- The Uk population is currently growing, partly as a result of immigration:

• There is a natural increase with births exceeding deaths. However, births to UK born mothers remain low. Births to non-UK born mothers are higher and account for about 25% of all births, but even with these, births remain below the replacement level of 2.1 per woman. If not for net migration, therefore the UK’s population would be shrinking.

Immigration lowers the average age of the population both directly and indirectly:

Directly-Immigrants are generally younger. For example, in 2011, the average age of UK passport holders was 41, whereas that of non-UK passport holders living in Britain was 31.

Indirectly- Being younger, immigrants are more fertile and thus produce more babies.

The dependency ratio:

• Immigrants are more likely to be of working age and this helps to lower the dependency ratio. In addition, many older migrants return to their country of origin to retire.

• However, because they are younger, immigrants have more children, thereby increasing the ratio. Overtime, these children will join the labour force and help to lower the ratio once again.

Migration has led to greater ethnic diversity in the UK. For example, between the 2001 and 2011 censuses the percentage of residents who were not White in the UK rose from 8.7 per cent to 14 per cent (Haralambos and Holborn, 2013). Falkingham and Champion (2016) note that by 2014, 13 per cent of the UK population were born abroad (8.3 million people) with 3 million from the rest of the EU. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China were the largest contributors to the foreign-born population from outside the EU.

Globalisation and migration

Globalisation is the result of many processes, including the growth of communication systems and global media, the creation of global markets, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the expansion of the EU.

Differentiation

There are many types of migrants. These include permanent settlers, temporary workers, spouses and forced migrants such as refugees and asylum seekers. Some may have legal entitlement while others enter without permission.

Globalisation is increasing the diversity of types of migrants. For example, students are now a major group of migrants: in the UK in 2014, there were more Chinese-born (26%) than UK-born (23%) postgraduate students.

Since the 1990s globalisation has led to what Steven Vertovec (2007) calls ‘super-diversity’. Migrants now come from a much wider range of countries. Even within a single ethnic group, individuals differ in terms of their legal status; for example as citizens or spouses . A given ethnic group may also be divided by culture or religion and be widely dispersed throughout the UK.

There are also class differences among migrants. For example, Robin Cohen (2006) distinguishes three types migrant:

• Citizens: with full citizenship rights (eg. voting rights and access to benefits). Since the 1970s, the UK state has made it harder for immigrants to acquire these rights.

• Denizens: are privileged foreign nationals welcomed by the state e.g billionaire ‘oligarchs’ or highly paid employees of multinational companies.

• Helots: slaves, are the most exploited groups. States and employers regard them as disposable units of labour power, a reserve army of labour. They are found in unskilled, poorly paid work and include illegally trafficked workers, and those legally tied to particular employers, such as domestic servants.

The feminisation of migration

In the past , most migrants were men. However today, almost half of all global migrants are female. This has been called the globalisation of gender division of labour, where female migrants find that they are fitted into patriarchal stereotypes about women's roles as carers or providers of sexual services.

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Hochschild (2003) observe that care work, domestic work and sex work in western countires like the UK and USA is increasingly done by women from poor countries. This is a result of several trends:

• Western men remain unwilling to perform domestic labour

• Western women have joined the labour force and are less willing or able to perform domestic labour

The resulting gap has been partly filled by women from poor countries. For example, Isabel Shutes(2011) reports that 40% of adult care nurses in the UK are migrants. Most of these are female. Migrant women also enter western countries as ‘mail order’ brides. This often reflects gendered and racialised stereotypes, for example of oriental women as subservient. Women migrants also enter the Uk as illegally trafficked sex workers , often kept in conditions amounting to slavery.

Migrant identities

We all have multiple sources of identity: family,friends.neighbourhood, ethnicity, religion, nationality and so on all give us a sense of belonging and of who we are. For migrants and their descendants, their country of origin may provide an additional or alternative source of identity.

For example, migrants may develop hybrid identities made up of two or more different sources. John Eade (1994) found that second generation Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain created hierarchical identities: they saw themselves as Muslim first, then Bengali, then British. Those with hybrid identities may find that others challenge their identity claims or accuse them of not ‘fitting in’.

The politicisation of migration

Migration has become an important political issue. States now have policies that seek to control immigration, absorb migrants into society and deal with increased ethnic and cultural diversity. More recently , immigration policies have also become linked to national security and anti-terrorism policies.

Assimilation was the first state policy approach to immigration. It aimed to encourage immigrants to adopt the language, values and customs of the host culture to make them ‘like us’.

Multiculturalism accepts that migrants may wish to retain a separate cultural identity. However, in practice this acceptance may be limited to more superficial aspects of cultural diversity. For example Eriksen distinguishes between ‘shallow diversity’ and ‘deep diversity’

• Shallow diversity,such as regarding chicken tikka masala as Britain's national dish is acceptable to the state.

• Deep diversity such a arranged marriage or the veiling of women is not acceptable to the state

Critics argue that multicultural education policies celebrate shallow

diversity-superficial cultural differences, such as ‘samosas, saris and steel bands’- while failing to address deeper problems facing children from migrant backgrounds such as racism.

From the 1960s there was a move towards multiculturalism but since the 9/11’ islmaist terror attack in 2001, many politicians have swung back towards demanding that migrants assimilate culturally. For example, in France, veiling of the face in public was made illegal in 2010.

A divided working class- Assimilationist ideas may also encourage workers to blame migrnats for social problems such as unemployment, wrestling in racist scapegoating. According to Castles and Kosack (1973), this benefits capitalism by creating a racially divided working class and preventing united action in defence of their interests.