Family Notes C

• The majority of people are leaving home to start an independent life rather than marry.
• There are other types of families, such as: Childless Families, Unhappy families, Empty shell marriages, and Symmetrical Family.
• Family structures are becoming more fluid and diverse.
• Raymond Firth studied kinship in the UK and made a distinction between effective kinship & non-effective kinship.
• Effective kinship refers to those whom we have an active social relationship with.
• Non-effective kinship refers to those whom we do not have regular contact with but they still form a part of our extended family group.
• In today's society, people refer to their non-family members in kinship terms.
• These are called fictive kin — these are blurring the boundary between family and non-family members.
• The perception of a family is socially constructed.
• Melanie Maunther studied changing forms of 'sistering' — how women perform the role of a sister.
• She interviewed 37 women from 19 sets of sisters and identified 4 ideas of sistering: Best Friendship, Companionship, Positioned relations, and Shifting positions.
• One of the major reasons why the female experiences gender inequality is because of the perceptions that society has on the female - work has to come second to having children & taking care of them.
• Society's perspective is that taking care of the children is considered as biological & automatic for females.
• The average wage of females is well below that of men.
• The gender pay gap is narrowing as time passes by.
• In 27 European countries in 2007, the gender pay gap was still on average.
• In Italy, the gender pay gap was 4% and in Estoniq, it was 30%.
• Housework is often referred to as the 'females' work' because it is like the female's housework is exchanged for the male's economic support.
• Females and males are divided into two different spheres — men are expected to be providers (public sphere); females are supposed to take care of the family (private sphere).
• In Greece, Turkey, and Malta, the housework difference between men and females is 70%.
• Rosemary Crompton argues that both females and males need to combine employment and caregiving roles in their everyday lives to ensure equality between both genders.
• Females spend 4 hours and 3 minutes per day taking care of their children, while men spend 2 hours and 17 minutes per day.
• Hochschild in 1989, argued that females are doubly exploited by men — during their first shift at work and at home.
• In Sweden and Denmark, the housework difference between men and females is less than 30%.
• Housework is often divided unequally between sexes, with men doing more housework than they used to in the 1970s and 1980s, but housework is still divided unequally and varies around the world.
• In modern society, females struggle to be economically independent and good mothers to their children.
• The NSPCC (The National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children) defines 4 categories of child abuse: Neglect, Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, and Sexual Abuse.
• Family relationships can be very fulfilling but there are some cases where these relationships bring tension, drive people to despair, filling people with guilt or anxiety.
• These traditional gender roles are all reinforced through the process of socialization.
• Research has shown that 10% to 20% of children in Europe will be sexually assaulted.
• Devault (1991) looked at the social construction of such activities — women perform the bulk of the housework because of the association of caring in the family with the female's role.
• Shelton in 1992, said that females have their second shift after work, going to work (their first shift), then they go back home to their second shift (housework & taking care of the children).
• There might also be cases of incest.
• Domestic violence, elder abuse and abuse of children are seen as the 'dark side' of the family as they are the most disturbing aspects.
• In Malta, it is said to be that women are paid 15% less than men.
• Violence by men against their female partners is the second most common type of domestic violence.
• In olden times, siblings used to have sexual relationships to keep their royal blood line strong.
• Rawsthorne believes that violence by women on men is often defensive and they resort to violence only after suffering repeated attacks.
• Domestic violence is common because of the emotional intensity found in family — quarrels in every family & some violence is often approved or else tolerated within the family itself.
• Rape in marriage is considered to be an aspect of domestic violence.