FAMILY KEY SOCIOLOGISTS

FUNCTIONALISM

MURDOCK - functions of the family: EDUCATION (taught norms and values and primary socialisation). ECONOMIC (members pool resources and ensure have all items needed) REPRODUCTIVE (reproduce next generation) SEXUAL (ensures adult sexual relationships are controlled and stable)
PARSONS - warm bath theory occurs when a man comes home from a hard days work so he can relax and rewind, prepared for the next days work
PARSON - women adopt an expressive role (primary socialisation of the children and meeting the families emotional needs) men adopt an instrumental role (focus on achieving success at work so he can provide for his family financially)
PARSONS - functions of the family include primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities (family is a haven of support that allows adults to go out and serve society)
PARSONS - functional fit theory, the nature of the family has changed (from extended to nuclear) in order to fit the needs of a pre-industrial and then industrial society. A socially mobile workforce is now required as society is based on a constantly evolving science and technology, geographical mobility is also required in order to get to work, which is also easier with a nuclear family. The family has also moved from a unit of production to consumption.
YOUNG AND WILLMOTT (eval) - the pre-industrial society was nuclear
LASLETT (eval) - found in households in the 19th century were almost always nuclear due to late childbearing and a short life expectancy
YOUNG AND WILLMOTT (eval) - the hardship of early industrial period gave rise to the ‘mum centerd’ working class extended family
ANDERSON (eval) - poverty, sickness, early death and absence of a welfare state meant benefits of maintaining extended families wasn’t enough in the industrial period

MARXISM

ENGELS - this change in owning property was brought about by the monogamous nuclear family as this was essential for men in positions of welfare to ensure that private properties were inherited by biological children
ENGELS - industrialization brought about women’s sexuality under male control and turned into purely a means of producing children
BENSTON - housewives provide free care which keeps workers productive and women oppressed and powerless
ALTHUSSER - families are a part of the ISA and argues that socialisation teaches kids about inevitable social inequality which naturalises and reproduces it (reproduces false class consciousness)
COOPER - sees the family as an ideological conditioning device that causes children to conform to authority and be easily exploited
ZARETSKY - owners of production exploit labour of the workers to make a profit (keeping up with the Joneses)

FEMINISM

OAKLEY - gender roles are not biologically determined as there are cross-cultural references to non-biologically determined gender roles
DELPHY AND LEONARD - men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour and sexual services an dominate women through domestic and sexual violence They do this by: most heads of the households are men who make the decisions, the man provides the money although family members must work for him unpaid whilst domestic work and sexual labour remain a female responsibility, the amount inherited from the male head of the households is not related to the amount of work done its about their position in the household with sons often inheriting more despite doing no labour and the mn has greater control over property and money yet working women still shoulder the domestic burden at home
GREER - claimed there is a strong ideology that being a wife is the most important role and aspiration for all women and that they will be suberservient to their husbands. She points out that the high divorce rate in society is clear evidence that marriage makes women unhappy. Motherhood offers women little satisfaction and society does not value mothers’ work and women are expected to regain their figure quickly and return to work after childbirth which is exhausting for them. Society blames mothers for what goes wrong in children’s lives, single mothers are particularly targeted by the politicians and the press use them as scapegoats for crime, unemployment and anti-social behviour. Daughters in the familoy are also exploited through sexual abuse by older male relatives, the solution is a matrifocal society.
FIRESTONE - guidance, test tube babies with three women, households should consist of 7-10 people and people would apply for licenses to raise kids. Older children and adults would be carers which elimates matriachal/patriachal figures
OAKLEY - dual burden
DUNSCOMBE AND MARSDEN - triple shift
SOMMERVILLE - liberal feminist who used the march of progress view to recognise the signifixant progress that has been made for women in the family, the four main areas of progress are: changes in government policies, dual earning households, changes in parenting and changes in social attitudes. But it is inhibited by long flexible working hours and expectations in domestic labour, she also says ‘women are angry, resentful but above all disappointed in men’

NEW RIGHT

MURRAY - government welfare policies and social attitudes have undermines the nuclear family. Includes over-generous benefits to single mothers which allows fathers to opt out of the responsibility for raising and providing for children. This creates a dependency culture where an underclass of people live off benefits and have no aspiration to work for a living. Argues that teenage girls see pregnancy and single parenthood as a route to financial support and housing. The economic function of the family is carried out by the state
MURRAY - these households then create lots of deviant sons who turn to crime and drug abuse due to a lack of father or strong male figure in the media and he disciplines and responsibilities of normal society break down.
DENNIS AND ERDOS - children especially sons, raised in single parent households with absent fathers have: poorer health, lower levels of educational achievement, worse life choices, higher levels of unemployment and crime (they attributed these findings to a lack of a male role model and primary socialisation) but! is correlational research
BENSON - analysed data on over 15,000 babies and found that the rate of family breakdown within the first three years of a childs birth was much higher in cohabiting couples compared to married ones (20 vs 6%). Thus couples are more stable if they are married as it requires a deliberate commitment. The only way to prevent social disintergration and damage to children was to return to the traditional values of marriage, so the government should introduce policies that support marriage. (correlational research)
BENSON - the link between broken families and teenage mental health is well established, boys are more likely to experience behavioural problems and girsl emotional, one in eight teens report poor mental health, and a poor home life is a commonly cited reason
LEAH - describes the nuclear family as the ‘cereal packet family’

POSTMODERNISM

GIDDENS - pre-18th century economic basis of marriage, partners chose based on wealth so they could become a unit of production (survival), in the 18th century people began to marry for love, physical attraction, compatability and fulfilment, emergence of ‘love’ in the arts and led to the idea of long-lasting ‘romantic love’ but this lead to the dominance of men. In 1961 contraception was introduced which provided women with greater freedom and choice which led to plastic sexuality and reflexivity. This created confluent love (adopts a bottom up approach to relationships where people to choose to stay as long as the relationship benefits them. This in turn created pure relationships and the needs based family.
BECK - fewer people are getting married due to an increase in risk consciousness (more aware of heightened risks), reflecting ideas of individualisation and reflexivity, personal decisions are informed by observing society and the risk of marriage. This creates a new family structure, the negotiated family which adapts according to the needs of its members which can also create zombie families (unstable, diverse, changing families) WITH GIDDENS THIS CREATES THE INDIVIDUALISATION THESIS
STACEY - she assosciates change in the family with greater variety in families following movemnt away from a single, dominant family. Conducted her research in the silicon valley and found that women had forged the changes within the family by rejecting the housewife/mother role. The postmodern family has destroyed the series of logical stages a family progresses through (marriage,kids, empty nest, retirement, widowhood)
NORDQUIST AND SMART - looked into families with donor conceived children, research found that parents emphasised the importance of social relationships, not blood ones, mothers noted that being a mother was linked to the amount of time taken to raise a child, not genetics
SMART AND MAY -personal life perspective, views people as social beings who are influenced by their network of relationships and personal histories, focuses on relationships that are beyond the ties of blood and marriage and prioritises the bonds between people formed on things such as memory, cultural heritage, emotions and shared possessions, eg relationships with friends, fictive kin, gay and lesbian ‘chosen families’, relationships with dead relatives and pets. Also, criticise the individualisation thesis for exageratting how much choice people have over relationships, and instead argue the thesis only considers white, middle class american men, and ignores that personal decisions about relationships occur within a social context

SOCIAL POLICY

FLETCHER - health, education and housing policies have created a welfare state which supports the family in performing its duties effectively (eg the NHS and taking care of sick members)
DURKHEIM - its a cure for social problems and used effectively it can manage social change whilst managing social change whilst maintaining social cohesion and solidarity
DONZELOT - offers a conflict view of society and sees social policy as a form of state power and control over families. Uses Foucoult’s idea of surveillance to argue that social policy moniters, meaning power is diffused throughout society, notably in state services. Health professionals carry out surveillance to ‘police the family’ and social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change the family, this surveillance is not equal and poor families are targeted more as ‘'problem families’ and they are causes of crime and anti-social behaviour.
CONDRY - argues that the state seeks to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory parenting orders through the courts
DREW - social policies in countries can either encourage or discourage gender equality. familiastic gender regimes (eg Greece) reinforce traditional roles with unequal divisions of labour, little state welfare and women rely heavily on extended family. Individualistic gender regimes (eg Sweden) often have a strong welfare state, regard men and women as equal, eg handing out equal parenting leave
LEONARD - policies such as maternity leave appear to support women but reinforce patriachal nuclear families
LAND - policies are a self-fulfilling prophecy in the attempt to return to patriachal nuclear families by perpetuating female subordination (eg tax incentives), reinforce traditional gender roles, burden women with the responsibilty to care for kids and contribute financially

FAMILY DIVERSITY

SHAW - patterns continue ti change as migrant culture changes with british culture as a whole
BERTHOUD - british culture is becoming more individualistic and having an impact on patterns of families amongst dufferent ethnic groups. Compared family patters among three broad ethnic groups in the late 1990s (south asions, black british caribbean and white british)
BHATTI - signs of changing attitude among the young and some confilicts with the elderly, notably where the son chose to marry out of the ethnic group
BHATTI - study found that a high value was placed on the ‘izzat’ or family homour, especially in relation to the behaviour of daughters
QURESHI.- attitudes are not individulastic in west british Pakistani families are becmomh less distinctive. Found that the first generationmigrants had been strongly opposed to divorce but there was now a growing acceptance of this, partly due to cultural conflicts in arranged marriages between british born and pakistani born spouces were becoming a source of marital instability and seen as increasingly risky.
BERTHOUD - comapred with the general population the key feature of the caribbean family community is a very high rate of divorce and seperation
REYNOLDS - argues that the statistics on lone parenthoods are misleading in that many apparently lone aprents are in stable, supportive and non-cohabiting relationships with visting partners
PARSONS - extended families was the dominant pre-industrial whereas now its the nuclear
CHARLES - the study of swansea found that classic regeneration families living udner the same roof were all but extinct, only significant expectation that remained was amongst the bangladeshi community,
WILMOT - extended family continues to exist and its now the dispersed extrended family where the family is geographically seperated but connected through the internet
CHAMBERLAIN - study of caribean families in Britain, geographically dispersed but continues to provide support, described them as multiple nuclear families with close frequent contacts
BELLS - earlier research in Swansea found that both w/c and m/c families had emotional bonds with kin who they relied on for support. For the m/c they were more financial help, father to son. W/c families had more frequent contact but more domestic and mother to daughter
BRENNAN - BEANPOLE FAMILY
CHARLES - found the same high level of contact between mothers and daughters, but a sharp decline in support of brothers and sisters
FINCH AND MASON - found that over 90% of people have given financial help nd half of care for a sick relative (more expected of women than men)
CHEAL - when it comes to helping in domestic tasks the greatest obligation is by the spouse, then by the daughter
CHEAL - when personal care of an elderly relative is needed daughter, grandaughter, or daughter in law is preferred to a husband
MASON - much depends on the history of the relationship, the particular obligations women feel towards their relatives and what responsibility they have to give to not be involved
FINCH AND MASON - found that teh principal reciprocity or balance is most important - people felt that they should recieve what they should get in order to avoid indebtness
ANDERSON - no major family type
OAKLEY - media here is till a dominant family portrayed, in advertising there is still a ‘typical family’
LEACH - ‘cereal packet family’
RAPPOPORT AND RAPPOPORT - 5 types of family diversity: cultural (different cultural, religious and ethnic groups), organisational (difference in ways famiy roles are organised), generational (different attitudes and experiences), social class (different based on income) and life stage (eg difference between newly married couples and those with dependent children)
ALLAN AND CROW - diversification has continued, no fixed stages in life cycles and famileis follow a more unpredictable patterns, greater individual choice
ALLAND AND CROW - Following reasons for diversification - a rise in divorce rates, increase in lone parent households, cohabiting couples are increasingly accepted, decline in marriage rates and rise in number of stepfamilies
ROSENEIL - links the breakdown of the heteronormativity with the belief that all intimate relationships should be based on heterosexuality
CHESTER - an increase in family diversity but not as significant as others make out, the neo-conventional family instead has an equal division between male and females, duel earner families, due to our life cycles people will still be a part of nuclear families at one point or another. Statsitics re thus merely a snapshot of a single moment in time.
CHEAL - family structures are fragmented and individuals have much more choice in their liefestyles, personal relatonships and family arrangements, more diverse and depends on active hoices
STACEY - greater freedom has benefitted women, enables them to free themselves from patriachal oppression
FINCH AND MASON - study of extended families found that individuals can negotiate the relationships, but obligations restrict their freedom of choice
MAY - structures are not disappearing, just being reshaped
GIDDENS - same sex couples are not influenced by traditions so couples have developed ideas based on choice, not traditional roles
WESTERN - found that same sex couples created supportive ‘families of choice’, among friends, former lovers and biological kin
MORGAN - the institution of marriage is under threat from a range of fctors which include fallen marriage rates and people marrying later in life
WILSON AND SMALLWOOD - shows the rates of marriage in England and Wales have fallen for cohorts of women, born between 1974-86 but marriage rates do not point out that marriage rates do not include people married abroad and theres an increase in trend for british couple to marry outside the country
CHESTER - cohabitation is part of the process to marriage
BEJIN - is a choice to create normal equal relationship rather than a patriachal marriage
SHELTON AND JOHN - women who cohabit do less housework than their married counterparts
WEEKS - increased social acceptance may explain a trend towards cohabitation, gay people create their own families
WESTON - same sex cohabitation is a quasi marriage and notes some same sex couples npw decide to cohabit as stable partners
ALLAN AND CROW -until recently same sex couples have had to negotiate their commitment and responisbilities more than heterosexuals
EINASDOTTIR - although same sex couples can now marry, many dont as they fear it may limit their flexivility and negotiability and worry they will adopt heterosexual relationships norms
LEVIN - long term committed, intimate relationship[s where individual involved see themselves as a couple do not share a common home by choice
DUNCAN AND PHILLIPS - both choice and constraints play a role of whether couples live together (eg can’t afford it) however some actively choose to live apart (eg trouble in prior marriage). While LATS are no longer seen as abnormal, it is still not seen as a traditional relationship
MITCHELL AND GOODY - note that its important change since the declining stigma and social attitudes since the 1960s
ALAN AND CROWE - argue that marriage is less embedded in the economic system now, families are no longer a unit of production and women no longer have to rely on their husbands financially
FLETCHER - argues that the higher expectations people place on marriage today are the major cause of divorce rates

GENDER ROLES

BOTT - segregated conjugal roles (couple have totally seperate roles and leisure activities are totally seperate) and joint conjugal roles (couple share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend their leisure time together
WILMOT AND YOUNG - the symmetrical family, increasing interchangeability of roles. They studied families in London and found that the symmetrical family was more common amongst the geographically and socially isolated and are more affluent
SOUTHERTON - mothers expected to organise ‘family time’
WARDE - sex type of domestic task is still strong, women are 30 times more likely to do the washing and men 4x as likely to wash the car
OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATS - women spend on average 2.5 hours a day on housework, men spend 1
BOULTON - only 20% of husbands have a major role in childcare
BRAYFIELD, FERRI AND SMITH, MAN-GEE KAN AND HOCHSCHILD - all found that even in dual career families women had a major responsibilty in domestic tasks
MCKEE AND BELL - unemployed men resist pleas from partners to do housework
BRITISH SOCIAL ATTITUDES SURVEY - certain household tasks have become more equal than others
RAPOPORT AND RAPOPORT - career women are still viewed as ‘wives’ and ‘mothers’
OAKLEY - men participating in household activities are seen as ‘helping out their wives’#
MORLEY - women see the home as a place of work, men as leisure
CRAIG - women do a third more housework than men due to partnership penalty and marriage penalty
DUNNE - gay and lesbian couples are more equal/symmetrical but if there is unequal earning than there is an unequal division of labour

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

STANKO - a woman is killed by her current partner every 3 days in england and wales
YEARSHIRE - on average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report
CHEAL - state agencies are reluctant to get involved in the family as they assume the family is private, good and individuals can have what they wish
DOBASH - domestic violence occurs due to a challenge to male authority
OSBOURNE - 2 women a week are killed by a current/former partner
COLEMAN - women more likely than men to suffer from DV
DOBASH AND DOBASH - DV is evidence of patriachy (interviews in womens refuges), men dominate through DV. They found that in 1979 police didn’t usually record violence crime by husbands against their wives. Yet since then the police have set up specialist DV units but low rates of convictions remain. Until 1991 marital rape was legal
WILKINSON AND PICKETT - economic strife causes DV, low income groups are more at risk, stems from stress of family members casued by inequality and poverty, lack of resources, money and time

CHILDHOOD

PILCHER - most important feature in the modern idea of childhood is seperatedness as childhood is now a seperate and distinct life stage, occurs theough laws, dress, products, services, toys, food, books and entertainment. Now a golden age of happiness but also a vulnerable time so should be ‘quarantined’ from the adult world
WAGG - childhood is socially constructed and defined by societies western cultures views on childhood, childhood is a vulnerable time but this is not as much as society has shown
BENEDICK - children in simpler, non-industrial societies are treated differently due to: take responsibility at an early age, lass value is placed on children’s obedience, children’s sexual behaviour is viewed differently
PUNCH - in rural Bolivia, once kids reach 5 they take on work responisbilities
HOLMES - samoan village, found that ‘too young’ was never a reason not to do something
FIRTH - among the Tikopia, agreeing to expectations was not a requirement
MALINOWSKI - Trobiand islanders, found that there was a ‘tolerance and amused interest’ towards kids sexual exploarions
ARIES - in the middle ages, childhood did not exist as children were not seen as having a different nature/need to kids. In paintings, kids were identical to adults, viewed as ‘mini adults’
SHORTER - high IMR encouarges indifference and neglect to children as kids are often referred to as ‘it’ or given same name as dead siblings
ARIES - modern cult of childhood has emerged from the 13th century due to changes to school, clothing and handbooks. The 20th century was the ‘century of the child’
POLLOCK - middle ages simply has a different notion of childhood, but Aries work is still valuable as it shows the social construction of childhood
POSTMAN - childhood is ‘disappearing at a dazzling speed’, children are given the same rights as adults, kids commiting adult crimes, similiarity in clothes,
MURRAY - worried about lone parent families or children (can’t socialise them)
BERGER AND BERGER - origin of the tradittional nuclear family lies in the development of the middle classes in 19th century Europe, supports the idea of children disappearing as it causes children to grow up faster and become ‘mini consumers’ increasing social blurring
PHILIPS - sympathetic to the new right as a culture of parenting in the UK has broken down the innocence of the youth. 1) kids have too many rights and powers today (undermines parental authority and parents are criticised for resorting to sanctions such as smacking. 2) media and peer groups are more influential than parents, eg media encourages young girls to be seen as sexual from a young age
LEE - social construction of kids is changing (kids are seen as unstable and incomplete in comparsion to parents) however as adults are now seen as unstable (high divorce rates and job instability), means ‘growing up’ is now unstable and unclear
MORROW - children can be considered constructive and refkective contributors to family life, in the study most kids had a pragmatic view of the family (don’t want to make decisions but wants a say in what happens to them)
POSTMAN - view is based on 2 beliefs. 1) growth of television means there are no secrets from kids, exposed to the ‘real world’ of sex, disaster, death and suffering. 2) social blurring has occured so there is little distinction between kids and adults
PALMER - ‘toxic childhood’, materially wealthy but time poor, give it in to demands for consumer goods and operate as ‘electornic babysitters’, kids unhappy as they are victims of junk marketing and dangerously chemically enhanced foods, causing rising rates of hyperactivity, dyslexia, autism and dysppraxia

DEMOGRAPHY

WALKER - those living in the north and scotland have shorter lives than those in the south
HARPER - claims that the reduction in smoking has caused the greatest fall in death rates - however obesity os now a major problem in scoiety (2021, 25% of adults were obese)
MCKEOWN - increased resistance to infection and survival rates, however he cant explain why women get less foods but lived lomger, or why some infenctious diseases rose when nutition improved (eg measles and infnat diarohea)
TRANTER - decline in death rates between 1850-190 was due to the fall in deaths from infenctious diseases (eg smallpox, diptheria, measles, typhoid)
EHRENREICH AND HOCHSCHILD - care, domestic and sex work in western countries are increasingly being done by women from poorer countries
VERTOVEC - globalisation has led to ‘super diversity’ migrants have come from a huge range of countries, ethnciities, cultures and backgrounds
COHEN - 3 types of migrants, citizens with full voting rights, denizens (priviliged nationals welcomed by the state) and helots (most exploited group)
HARPER - the education of women is the most important reason for the long term fall in birth and fertility rates
HARPER - the fall in the IMR lead to a fall in the birth rate as parents no longer need to replace lost infants
BRASS AND KABIR - trend of smaller families began in urban areas, but it was in urban areas that the IMR began to fall so it may not have been the most important factor when considering birth rates