Families and Households

• Beanpole Family: A family with a long, thin structure, typically with 4 generations alive but each generation having few uncles, aunts, and cousins
• Blended family: Parents with children from previous relationships form new relationships and come together as one new, blended family
• Birth Rate: The number of babies born per thousand of the population per year
• Cereal Packet Family: A term for the traditional nuclear family presented as the norm on cereal packets in the 1950s
• Civil Partnership: The legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (or in some countries, two people of the same sex) in a committed relationship
• Cohabitation: Two people living together in the same household in an emotionally intimate, committed relationship without being officially married
• Commercialisation of Housework: New technologies lead to products that reduce the amount of domestic labor at home, such as hoovers, washing machines, and microwaves
• Death Rate: The number of deaths per thousand members of a population per year
• Divorce: The formal and legal end to a marriage
• Dual Burden: When someone does both paid work and a significant amount of domestic labor, mainly affecting women according to radical feminists
• Economic Factors: Refers to things related to money, such as the wealth of a society and the income of individuals or families
• Emotion Work: Thinking about the emotional well-being of family members and acting in ways that benefit them emotionally
• Extended family: Beyond the nuclear family, including aunts, uncles, and grandparents
• Family as a Unit of Consumption: The primary function of the family in capitalist societies is to consume products to keep capitalism going
• Functional Fit Theory: The main type of family changes as the structure of society changes to better fit with the later
• Gender Norms: The expected patterns of behavior associated with masculinity and femininity
• Gender Roles: Social positions and occupations associated with men and women
• Globalisation: The increasing interconnectedness of societies across the globe
• Ideological Functions: Ways in which ideas spread through institutions to maintain the power of dominant groups in society
• Individualisation: Individuals have more freedom to make life choices and shape their identities due to a weakening of traditional social structures, norms, and values
• Instrumental Role: The provider or breadwinner role within the family
• Matrifocal Household: A family structure where mothers are the heads of the household
• Migration: Moving from one country or area to another
• Multigenerational household: At least three generations living together in one household
• Negotiated Families: Vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members, more equal but more unstable than traditional nuclear families
• Net Migration: The difference between the numbers of people immigrating to and emigrating from a country
• Nuclear Family: A father and mother with their dependent children living together in one household
• Patriarchy: A society where men hold power and women are excluded, disadvantaged, or oppressed
• Personal Life Perspective: Understanding family life from the perspective of individuals within the family
• Polygamy: One husband having many wives
• Postmodernism: Social changes since the 1950s resulting in a world where individuals have more choice and freedom
• Primary Socialisation: Learning the norms and values of society primarily within the family
• Promiscuous Horde: Engels' idea of a tribal group structure in 'primitive societies' where all members share property and sleep together
• Pure Relationship: Couples enter an intimate relationship purely for mutual benefit
• Reconstituted families: One parent with a child from a previous relationship starts a new relationship with another partner
• Serial Monogamy: An individual having a string of committed relationships, one after the other
• Social Construction of Childhood: The norms and values associated with childhood influenced by society
• Stable satisfaction of the s*x drive: One of the essential functions of the nuclear family according to Murdock
• Stabilisation of Adult Personalities: The nuclear family provides emotional and psychological support for adult partners
• Symmetrical Family: Roles of husbands and wives are more similar, with both doing paid work, housework, and spending leisure time together