Family diversity

• There are now fewer one-person households than there were in the 1970s
• There are more lone-parent families and more couples, both straight and gay, now cohabit, many more children are born outside marriage than previously, and many more marriages end in divorce
• Family diversity


  Changing family patterns and increased diversity in the UK
• Sociologists have classified the different types of family diversity and tried to understand the causes and meaning of increased diversity today
• Modernist perspectives (functionalism, New Right)


  • See modern society as having a fairly fixed, clear-cut and predictable structure, with the nuclear family as the 'best' family type that slots into this structure and helps to maintain it
• Functionalism


  The nuclear family is uniquely suited to meeting the needs of modern society for a geographically and socially mobile workforce, and performs two 'irreducible functions' - the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities
• Functionalists see other family types as dysfunctional, abnormal or even deviant, since they are less able to perform the functions required of the family
• The New Right


  • Have a conservative and anti-feminist perspective, firmly opposed to family diversity, and see the traditional patriarchal nuclear family as the only correct or normal family type
• The New Right see the traditional nuclear family as 'natural' and based on fundamental biological differences between men and women, and as the cornerstone of society
• The New Right oppose changes in family patterns such as cohabitation, gay marriage and lone parenthood, and argue that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and the growth of family diversity are the cause of many social problems