Family diversity
- Created by: Former Member
- Created on: 15-02-14 13:04
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- Family diversity
- Functionalists
- 2 married heterosexual adults are needed to provide children with role models, and adults with emotional support ('warm bath' theory)
- All family types offer benefits but mostly the traditional nuclear family
- Parsons: nuclear family is needed for primary socialisation of children and stabilisation of adult personalities
- Marxists
- Nuclear family is a negative problem which makes people privatise their lives and ignore their class
- Engels- the nuclear family props up capitalism:
- Prepares children for future roles in capitalist workforce
- Workers are afraid of losing their jobs and wages to provide for their family, making them easily controlled
- Teaches kids the value of capitalism, e.g. obedience to authority
- Feminists
- Ann Oakley- the nuclear family is patriarchal, with women doing a dual burden of paid and domestic work
- In the nuclear family, women do more housework, make fewer important decisions, and are exploited by men
- Postmodernists
- Diversity is good- old certainties and inequalities are gone, and we have more choice about who we are and where we live. There is no 1 best family type
- Ulrich Beck- we're in a 'risk society' without clear rules and institutions. We have negotiated families varying according to our wishes and expectations. Equal but less stable
- Social action- no dominant family type- individual social actors choose
- Judith Stacey- greater choices benefit women who can shape families to suit needs, e.g. divorce extended families where key members are typically female (daughter to ex-mother in law, etc.)
- Jeffrey Weeks- despite long term shifts in attitudes and sexual and family diversity, family patterns are still fairly traditional
- David Cheal- society has diversity and fragmentation, with rapid social change. Nuclear family is no longer dominant- individuals have greater freedom and risk of instability.
- David Morgan- pointless to make large scale generalisations. Family practises are influenced by beliefs about rights and obligations. Families aren't structures, just what people do
- New Right
- More family diversity= more crime and unstable families. We are abandoning best family life, as 2 parents are needed for socialising kids and providing role models for masculinity and femininity
- Nuclear family in decline due to:
- Higher divorce rate and legislation
- More single parent households
- More cohabitation
- Feminism
- Equal opportunities legislation
- Secularisation
- Welfare provision
- Contraception and abortion
- Changing social attitudes and decline in morals
- Attacks:
- Same-sex- children under same-sex parents will have homosexual relationships
- Single parents- children lack morals and discipline, turn to crime and boys won't become breadwinners or fathers (Charles Murray). Socialised into being benefit-dependent - forms a dependency culture
- Working women- children experience maternal deprivation. No important bond= later psychological problems
- Cohabitation- less stable than marriage
- Social policy should be geared towards life in nuclear families
- Functionalists
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