Sociology- Family
family
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- Created by: Sondos Arafa
- Created on: 10-05-09 15:44
Couples
Domestic division of labour
- Parsons: instrumental and expressive roles
- Bott: joint and segregated conjugal roles
- Young&Willmott: symmetrical family
- Feminist view on housework
The impact of paid work
- Gershuny: the trend towards equality
- The commercialisation of housework
- The dual and triple burden
- Lesbien couples and gender scripts
Resources and decision-making in households
- Decision-making and paid work (pooling&allowance system)
- Edgell: decisions made
Domestic Violence - statistics, radical feminist
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Childhood
Childhood as a social construct
- The modern western notion of childhood
- Cross-cultural differences in childhood
- Historical differences in childhood
- Reasons for changes in the position of children
Has the position of children improved?
- The march of progress view
- The conflict view - inequalities amount children, between children and adults, neglect and abuse, controls over children's space, time, bodies and access to resources.
The future of childhood
- Postman: the disapperance of childhood
- A seperate childhood culture
- The globalisation of western childhood
- Contradictory trends - the reconstruction of childhood?
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The functions of the family
The functionalist perspective on the family
- Murdock: universal. sexual, economic, reproduction and socialisation
- Critisms: feminsits - oppress women - marxist - benefits capitalism
- Parsons' 'functional fit' theory - geographically mobile workforce, socially mobile workforce, loss of functions, primary socialisation, stabilisation of adult personalities.
The marxist perspectice on the family
- Engles: Inheritance of property
- Zarketsky: Ideological functions
- Unit of Consumption
- Criticisms: ignores family diversity, gender inequalities, ignore real benefits of family.
Feminists perspective on the family
- Liberal Feminism
- Marxists feminism
- Radical Feminism
- Difference feminsits
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Changing Family Patterns
- Divorce & reasons for increase in divoce
- changes in law, declining stigma and changing attitudes, secularisation, rising expectations of marriage and changes in women's position
- The meaning of high divorce rates - new right, feminists, functionalists, postmodernists
Partnerships
- Marriage: Fewer people marrying, more re-marriages, people marry later, less likely to marry in church.
- Changing attitudes to marriage, secularisation, declining stigma attached to alternative to marriage (cohabitation etc.),changes in women's position and fear of divorce.
- Cohabitation: decline in stigma attached to marriage, the young more likely to accept cohabitation, secularisation.
- Chester: trial marriage
- Same-sex relationships
- One-person households
Parents & Children
- Childbearing - fewer children, children later, outside marriage, childless
- Lone-parent families - female headed, decline in stigma, the welfare state
- Step-families
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Family Diversity
Family Diversity
- The New Right - favour 'nuclear family' as natural, marriage is essentail, lone-parent are harmful, encourage 'dependency culture', 'perverse incentives'.
- Chester: the neo-conventional family (dual earner family) - diversity has been exaggerated, families still headed by couples, most adults marry and have children, re-marriages occur.
- The Rapoports: five types of family diversity (organisational, cultural, social class, life-strage and generational)
- Beck: 'risk society' tradition has less influence and people have more choice- greater gender equality, greater individualism.
- Stacey: divorce- extended family
- Weeks: the growing acceptance of diversity
- Against diversity - functionalists and new right
- In favour of diversity - feminists and postmodernists
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Social Policy
Social Policy
- Aboloshing family (russian revolution), china's one-child policy, nazi family policy.
- Functionalists - policies support family, good for all, policies help families to perform their cuntions more effectively and make life better for their members.
- The New Right - policies create 'dependency culture', perverse incentive, Murray: fathers abandoning children, generous benefits, council housing to young unmarried girls, less state interference.
- New Labour - positive role, policies improve family life, lifting children out of poverty, re-distriurting income to the poor.
- Feminism- conflict view- patriarchal, benefits men, policies help to maintain women's subordinate position and the unequal division of labour- courts give custody to mothers assuming their the 'natural' carer(Lang, Leach, Leonard).
- Marxists:- help maintain class inequality and exploitation, policies serve capitalism
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