Families

• What does Margaret benson argue?


  Women are abused by capitalims and are used as unpaid labour
• Who said "women are the takers of shit" and what does that mean?


  Fran Ansley. Men are stressed by the working world and go home and women have to deal with this and preform a service for capitalism by absorbing the anger from men
• What is meant by 'women as a reserve army of labour'?


  Capitalism exploits women by only using them when it suits them and changes rules so this can happen eg. WW2
• What does germaine Greer say about the family?


  - women as wives = women are used as a trophy for men and not seen as people

  - women as mothers = seen as someone who's only purpose is childbearing and women are made to feel this is what they want to do and then they're left alone

  - women as daughters = made to feel irrelevant but are then sexualised. Sexual assault often goes unnoticed when its within the family because its behind closed doors
• What does difference feminism say about families?


  We need to look at different women instead of grouping everyone together as all females have different experiences eg. Black Caribbean families being matrifocal. They say theres a myth of traditional family as there are so many alternative families now.
• What is personal life perspective?


  A non structural theory on family that says its not a fixed thing
• What are the overlapping features of personal life?


  Memory

  Biography

  Embeddedness

  Relationality

  Imaginary
• What does carol smart say about families?


  Views personal life as a I've project as our lives and relationships are ever changing. We have non biological fictive kin who are people you choose to see as family despite having no biological connection. She also has a connectedness thesis which says that although relationships are ever changing, we build very strong connections with people eg. It's hard to leave abusive relationships because of the emotional connection
• How do the overlapping features of personal life link together?

  Memories are everything we have of other people and experiences, these exist in our memory, the biography of our life is made up of memories, were so embedded in our relationships because of the memories we have, the relationships we have make more memories and carries on our biography
• What are the 4 functions of the family and who said this?

  George Murdock

  Economic - provide food, shelter

  Educational - teaches norms and values to children

  Sexual - provides an ideal, stable environment for sexual relations

  Reproductive - produces children
• What is the functional fit theory?

  Different family types fit different ages eg. The extended family fit in the agricultural age and now the nuclear family is more appropriate
• What are the 2 irreducible functions of the family?

  Primary socialisation of children and stabilisation of adult personalities
• Who came up with the warm bath theory?


  Talcott Parsons
• Who has the expressive and instrumental roles?

  Expressive = women

  Instrumental = men
• What encourages perverse incentives?

  Welfare state and welfare dependency
• What is the underclass?


  People who rely on the state
• What is meant by the commodification of personal services?


  The family no longer do tasks like looking after children and these things can all be done for you
• How does family create the illusion of security?


  It provides love and 'security' despite the dark side of the family. This is created by capitalism to relive the stress of work
• Family as a unit of "..." and what does this mean?

  Consumption. The family used to provide for themselves but now we just spend money after being alienated at work by capitalism
• What are the 3 features of the dominant framework?


  1. Deficit model of childhood

  2. Seen an incomplete beings

  3. Protoindividuals
• What does berry Mayal say about childhood?


  Approaches are adultist, meaning that adults think they know better and tell children what to do
• What is meant by the 'social construction of childhood'?


  Childhood is seen differently in different cultures and isn't universal
• What is the disappearance of childhood?

  a breakdown in information hierarchy has caused children to access the adult world through media
• What is toxic childhood and who said it?


  Sue palmer. Children have a lack of stimulation due to changes in technology which is affecting their physical and mental health, leading to eating disorders and learning difficulties
• Adults have control over children's ... ?

  - space

  - time

  - bodies

  - resources
• What is acting up/ down?

  Acting up is children acting older than their age to break out of the ideals that adults have put on them to keep them young.

  Acting down is children acting younger than they are to manipulate adults
• What are the 2 images of children?

  Dionysian = mischievous and needed strict rules

  Apollonian = innocent and special
• How should we look at childhood?

  Through the present tense of childhood (from a child's perspective, not an adults)
• How does lower birth and fertility rates impact gender roles?

  Women are able to work more and get into higher paid jobs which causes a decline in traditional gender roles
• What's the impact of lower birth rates and higher life expectancy on childhood?

  More child centred families and beanpole families
• whats the impact of lower birth rates, and higher life expectancy and net migration on patterns of marriage and divorce?

  - more ethnic diversity as migrant women are more likely to be in traditional families where they're married and they're very unlikely to divorce

  - when people live longer they're more likely to get a divorce, 50+ years of marriage has a strain on the relationship

  - without children, people are less inclined to get married
• whats the impact of lower birth rates, and higher life expectancy and net migration on increasing family diversity?

  - more hybrid identities due to translocalism

  - more family choice

  - people feel less inclined to fulfil the expectation of traditional family
• whats the impact of more egalitarian roles on demographic patterns?

  - lower birth rates

  - women have children later, average age is 30.5yrs old

  - feminisation of migration
• whats the impact of child centeredness on demographic patterns?

  - family diversity (beanpole families, childless couples)

  - lower fertility rate

  - increasing dependants in dependancy ratio
• whats the impact of lower marriage rates on demographic patterns?

  - 51.4% of live births happen outside of marriage
• whats the impact of increasing family diversity on demographic patterns?

  - 51.4% of live births happen outside of marriage, more single parent families

  - fertility rate is now 1.55, more childless couples, beanpole families
• what is the domestic division of labour?

  how work is divided in the family or household
• what are conjugal roles?

  roles within a marriage
• what do functionalists believe about conjugal roles?

  men and women should have segregated roles with men doing the instrumental role and the women doing the expressive role
• what is the sex-typing of roles?


  the stereotypes we have in our minds of mothers doing things like laundry and fathers fixing things around the house