family sociology

• Delphy and Leonard are feminists who say the family is patriarchal men have finacial control over women as they play the instrumental role in the family and go out to work. Within the family the mum is also excpected to work and do all the house work being oppressive towards her.The family is seen as a heirchy by Delph and Leonard.
• Ann Oakely writes from the feminist perspective and says the conventional family is no longer the norm but the idea is still strong.Ann Oakley says middle class familys explored these ideas of diffrent family types because of factors like the changes in the role of women and the no fault divorec act in 1969 meant marriages could end forming family structures like lone parent.
• Oakley argues that there has been an increase in single parenthood due to divorce, separation or never married. The rise of cohabitation means more people live together without getting married.
• Ann Oakely says the family perfoms gender socialistaion through two factors the first being canalistaion(giving children gender specific toys)and the second being manipulation(language parents use to speak to their children)
• Zaretsky writes from the marxist perceptive meaning the family serves the needs of capitalism in 4 ways.The first being the consumer unit, the pass on of private property,passing on ideology and producing the next generation of workers.
• Parsons says the family during the pre-industrial revolution consisted on the extended family type to carry out functions ,for example the elders would act as childcare, an education facility and a healthcare facility.However as the UK became urbanised the family structure became the nuclear family as elders weren't needed because there was public places that for example carried out education like schools.
• Parsons says the family carrys out secondary socialization and stablisation of adult personalities.An example of this is when the husband goes back to work and can come home to distress after the eventful day this is known as the "warm bath theory"
• • The rapports write from the post modernest perspective family life was diverse
• Ways the Rapoports say the family is diverse

  • Organisational
  • Cultural
  • Class
  • Life course
  • Cohort
• Organisational


  The way a family might organise itself in terms of the roles people perform (e.g. traditional male-dominated families and more symmetrical ones)
• Cultural


  Families differ in terms of their beliefs and values. One example of this is between different ethnic groups, with some ethnicities placing a greater emphasis on family than others, some preferring different gender roles, etc.
• Class


  Much writing about the family assumes that family life as experienced in a middle-class family is the same for other social classes, but this is not the case. Availability of resources, quality of housing, leisure opportunities, etc. all impact the nature of families and family life.
• Life course


  We do not live in the same family structure, family set-up or type of household for the whole of our lives. We might be born into a traditional nuclear family. This might change later in our childhood (for example it might become a lone parent family and then a reconstituted family). When we leave home it might be to live on our own, or with flatmates. It might be to live with a partner as a couple without children. A couple with or without children might live with their parents in an extended family, or move away and form their own nuclear family.
• Cohort

  There is also change over time and what is the norm, in terms of family life, for one generation, is not for the next. As such, great grandparents and grandparents may have had several siblings, and later generations have far fewer; more recent generations are more likely than their parents and grandparents to divorce or to be single parents.