Potential 5 markers

• Social construction 


  Social constructs have been created by people in society through shared interpretations and assumptions. This is shown in the way that many of these concepts are not universal but are instead understood differently in different societies or at different points in time.
• childhood


  Childhood is a modern concept that has become age-focused and universal in nature. This limits, but also protects, individuals within a particular age range, who are deemed to be children. Childhood usually ends at 16, but a young person must be 18 in the UK to enjoy full adult rights and responsibilities.
• age patriarchy


  Age Patriarchy: Where adults control children and keep them in a state of dependency. By exerting too much control over children's time, space, money and resources adults dominate children and prevent them from becoming independent.
• child centered society


  A child centred approach is fundamental to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of every child. It means keeping the child in focus when making decisions about their lives and working in partnership with them and their families.
• social construct of age


   Age is socially constructed because notions of age vary around the world. Different cultures fix age with different meanings and different values. Eastern cultures tend to highly value age and wisdom, while Western cultures tend to highly value youth.
• sandwhich generation

  1. a generation of people, typically in their thirties or forties, responsible both for bringing up their own children and for the care of their ageing parents.
• bean pole family


  A Beanpole family is a multi-generational family that is long and thin with few aunts, uncles and grandparents. This is a result of extended life expectancy and fewer children being born.
• single parent by choice


  A Single Mother by Choice (SMC) is someone who is unpartnered, and decides to become a mother knowing that at the outset they will be parenting alone.
• single parent by relationship breakdown


  Single paren as a result of relationship breakdown or death of partner
• gay family 


   the term ”lesbian and gay family” refers to lesbian and gay individuals or same sex couples and their children.
• reconstituted/blended family

  A reconstituted family is when two families join together after one or both partners have divorced their previous partners. This family option can sometimes be referred to as the blended family or step family.
• living apart together(LAT)


  Living apart together (LAT) refers to couples who are in an intimate relationship, but choose to live in different places
• co-parenting

  Parents who share the duties of bringing up (a child) (used especially of parents who are separated or not in a relationship
• family diversity


  refers to all the different forms of families and family life that exist in society, and to the characteristics that differentiate them from one another.
• nuclear family


  This is the traditional family as described functionalists like Talcott Parsons and the New Right: a married couple with their own children (2 or 3 of them) where the husband goes out to work and the wife looks after most of the domestic duties, with clear segregated roles.
• Extended family 


  refers to those family members who are outside the “nucleus”: aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, etc. Extended family households can be either:

  • Vertical. Multiple generations living together (e.g. grandparents and great grandparents. The vertical description relates to how it would appear on a family tree.
  • Horizontal. A household made up of aunts, uncles and cousins: the family extended horizontally across the same generation rather than vertically.
• Divorce


  Divorce is the legal dissolution of a marriage whereby a couple are no longer legally bound to one another.
• empty shell marriage


  Empty shell marriage refers to a husband and wife who live together, and remain legally married, but who experience no intimate or emotional relationship, e.g. remaining together for the 'sake of the children'.
• cohabitation


  Cohabitation is when a couple live together in one household but are not legally married. Cohabiting couples do not have the same legal protection as married couples
• same sex Couples

  Same-sex couple implies a couple living without children (coupling describes this household structure for both heterosexual and homosexual couples) but there are also same-sex families where there are children (either naturally the children of one or other parent or adopted).
• one person household


  Single-person households include those where a person lives alone in an individual housing unit, but they also include people who live independently as lodgers in a separate room within a larger housing unit with other occupants.
• Matrifocal lone parent family


  The most common lone-parent family is the matrifocal one: that is one where the lone parent is the mother of the child/children. 
• Patrifocal lone parent family

  A less common variation on the lone-parent family is the patrifocal one: a family headed by a single father.
• Dual income 


  The term dual-earner couple refers to a cohabiting couple where both partners work in the labor market. The term dual-career couple refers to a dual-earner couple where both partners are pursuing a career, that is, both are committed to work and perhaps also to progression at work.
• Household 


  A household is a group of people living together who may not be related to each other but share common living spaces, meals, and bills
• demography


  Demography is the study of the basic demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration and their relationships with and consequences for population distributions of various kinds including age and sex composition and the spatial distribution of population.
• organic analogy


  The organic analogy compares the different parts of a society to the organs of a living organism. The organism is able to live, reproduce and function through the organized system of its several parts and organs.
• value consensus


  the need for societies to have a common set of beliefs and principles to work with and towards, a consensus meaning a general agreement or sharing of ideas.
• modern industrial society


  an industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour.
• traditional pre industrial society


  Pre-industrial society refers to social attributes and forms of political and cultural organization that were prevalent before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which occurred from 1750 to 1850.
• geographically mobile workforce


  Modern society - industry is always changing. People have to move to where the jobs are. Parsons argues that the nuclear family is easier to move than the the extended family.
• Socially mobile workforce 


  Modern industrial society is based on constantly evolving science and technology and so it requires a skilled, technically competent workforce. An individual's status is achieved by their own efforts and ability not ascribed making social mobility possible.
• industrialisation


  the process of transforming the economy of a nation or region from a focus on agriculture to a reliance on manufacturing.
• bourgeoise


  The bourgeoisie is the ruling class in Marx's theory of class struggle under capitalism. The bourgeoisie is the property-owning class who own the means of production (e.g. factories) and employ and exploit the proletariat.
• proletariat


  The proletariat are the working class in Karl Marx's theory of class struggle under capitalism. The proletariat are employed by and exploited by the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and often suffer from false class consciousness and therefore often accept their own exploitation as inevitable.
• capitalism


  Capitalism is an economic system in which private individuals or businesses own capital goods
• monogamy


  Monogamy is when two individuals are in a partnership (relationship) and there are no more than two people in the relationship
• ideology

  Ideology is a set of beliefs that favours the interests of a group. There is a multitude of sociological perspectives on ideology and the impact it has on society.
• oppression


  "Oppression" refers to a combination of prejudice and institutional power that creates a system that regularly and severely discriminates against some groups and benefits other groups.
• expressive role


  The expressive role is a functionalist understanding of the female's function in the family. The role of the female is to provide personality stabilisation, emotional support and child rearing.