Family Ideology

In a Western society, an 'ideal' family is stereotypically supppsed to look like;

• People are married once
• Maternal instincts are natural
• Only a stable familyt can ensure the successful unbringing of children
• The nuclear family is the best time of family
• No step familly
• All women want to have kids
• Heterosexual
• Father has biological kids
• Women are responsible for domesticity and childcare
• Parents stay together

Familial Ideology refers to the dominant set of ideas about how families are and what they should be like.

• Monogomous marriage - neither have been married before
• Privatised, nuclear family - Two parents living with their own, bilogical, dependent children.
• Maternal love - Mother is responsible for housework, childcare, nurting and caring
• Patriarchal - Male is the breadwinner and responsible for discipline

Edmund Leach (1967) stated that 'The term ceral packet family refers to a very specific tupe of nuclear family; There are 2 heterosexual parents and their own biological children. The father is the breadwinner and the mother is a housewife.

Diana Gittins (1993) believes that the idealised picture of the nuclear family acts as a powerful ideology defining what is normal and desirable so every other family type is seen as abnornmal and undesirable.