Families and households revision notes AQA

Sociology families and households revision

Socialisation

Norms: Are the specific rules that govern behaviour in particular situations
Values: General principles or goals
Sanctions: Describes anything that encourages people to conform to norms
and is a form of social control.
Primary socialisation: Takes place in the early years occurs largely within…

Agree with Marxists that there are fundamental divisions and conflicts in
society, but they see gender rather than class as the most important
division
They regard society and its institutions as maledominated or
patriarchal.

Functions of perspectives on the family
Murdock 1949 argues that the family performs four essential functions…

A unit of consumption Marxists believe the family plays a major role in
generating profits. Marcuse (1967) argues working class are encouraged
to pursue "false needs"
Marxist believe that the working class families had been deliberately
discouraged as its members were aware of social class position
Zaretsky (1976) sees the…

Post modernists view on the family
Do not emphasise the dominance of one family type
Think we now have greater choice in our personal relationships and
increased family diversity
Focus on life course analysis a belief that the meanings we give to
decisions effect our family life
Do not believe…

Believe the less the sate interferes in families the better the family life
will be

Criticisms
Feminists argue that this is an attempt to justify a return to the
traditional patriarchal family that subordinated women to men and
confined them to a domestic role.
It wrongly assumes that the patriarchal…

1970'sUK had the highest ever number of couples and reach an all time
low in 2005
However there have been more remarriages this is leading to serial
monogamy
People are marrying later
Couples are less likely to marry religiously

Reasons for changing patterns in marriage:
Changing attitudes less pressure to…

2007 Appeal court ruling: in divorce settlements, the principle of equality
applies so the starting point is a 5050 split of all assets

Reasons
Changes in the law such as equalising the grounds for divorce between
the sexes, widening the grounds for divorce, making divorce cheaper
Declining in stigma and…

Same sex couples
Stonewall 2008estimates about 57% of the world population today
have same sex relationships
Since 2004 the civil partnership act has given same sex couples similar
legal rights to married couples in respect of pensions, inheritance,
tenancies and property
Cheal notes that while many gays and lesbians welcome…

Social class diversity differences in family structure are partly the result
of income differences between households of different classes
Life stage diversity family structures differ according to the staged
reached in the life cycle
Generational diversity older and younger generations have different
attitudes and experiences that reflect the historical periods…

In her own research on housewives she found only 15% of husbands had a
high level of participation in housework and only 25% had a high level of
participation in childcare.
Boulton (1983) found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role
in childcare.
Warde and Hetherington (1993)…