Families and Households

• Manipulation


  • Parents encourage behaviour that is normal for a child's sex (Praise)
  • Parents discourage different behaviour (disapproval/punishment)
• Canalisation

  Children are 'channelled' to certain toys and activities by their parents
• Verbal appellations


  We use gender in our praise (Good girl, Princess, Naughty boy, Bossy girls)
• Ann Oakley: 'Oakley argues that agents of socialisation create gender roles by passing on different gender messages to boys and girls from infancy'
• Ways the family socialise you into gender roles (according to Ann Oakley)

  
  

  Cannalisation- guided to gendered toysDifferent activities - Children are encouraged to do different things. Girls are expected to help their mother. Boys are given more freedom outdoors.
• It was acceptable for boys to be sexually promiscuous. They were regarded by their peers as 'a bit of a lad'
• A different standard was applied to girls, those who were sexually promiscuous were regarded as 'slags' or 'sluts'
• Double standard of morality (Sue Lees)

  A way the peer group controls the behaviour of girls
• Types of family diversity identified by Rhona and Robert Rapoport (1982)

  • Organisational diversity
  • Cultural diversity
  • Social class diversity
  • Life course diversity
  • Generational diversity
• Conventional Family (Robert Chester)


  The Traditional nuclear family with 'segregated conjugal roles' – Male breadwinner and female homemaker
• Neo-Conventional Family (Robert Chester)


  A dual-earner family in which both spouses go out to work
• Chester argues that most people are not choosing to live in alternatives to the nuclear family (such as lone parent families) on a long term basis and the nuclear family remains the ideal to which most people aspire
• In 1975 The Sex Discrimination Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of gender
• Changes in girls' priorities (Sue Sharpe)

  • In 1974 they were 'love marriage and husbands and careers' more or less in that order
  • By 1996 they were 'job, career and being able to support themselves'
• Symmetrical family (Young and Wilmott)

  Conjugal roles are similar in terms of contributions made by each spouse to the running of the household. They share chores, decisions etc.
• Young and Willmott found that the home centred symmetrical family was more typical of the working class
• Ann Oakley: 'The conventional nuclear family is a married couple and their children. Within this family, women are expected to do unpaid work outside the home and men have economic power from their income. Women depend on men for their wages.'
• Pahl found that more couples share decisions on household spending, than 30 years ago. However husbands are likely to dominate decision making. If the man and woman work, then there is more equality in the financial decision making.
• Palmer believes that many children experience a toxic childhood because they are damaged by junk food, excessive exposure to games and a lack of love or discipline from parents
• Aries believes that the 20th Century is the century of the child as the position of children has improved
• Postman's view


  Believes that the 'child centred' family has reversed and that children are becoming more like adults now. He believes that childhood is disappearing, mostly due to television culture.
• Murdock's four key functions of the family

  • Sexual
  • Reproduction
  • Economic
  • Education (socialisation)
• Parsons' two key functions of the family


  • Primary socialisation
  • Stabilisation of adult personalities (warm bath theory)
• Eli Zaretsky's views on the family


  • The family provides 'a cushion' from the effects of capitalism
  • The family allows the worker to relax, refresh and unwind after a days work
  • This stops a revolution from happening (Divide & Conquer)
  • Capitalism also encourages pester power
  • Children are brought up to do what parents tell them, preparing them for accepting authority at school and work
• Delphy & Leonard argue all the unpaid housework and childcare is done by women, who make the largest contribution to family life while men contribute the least but gain the most
• Dobash and Dobash found that most domestic violence occurs within marriage, due to the institution of marriage giving power to men through their wives' dependency on them
• Edgell found the important family decisions such as financial issues tended to be either made by the husband, while wives were free to make the trivial decisions
• Murray's views


  There is now an 'underclass' who are dependent on welfare benefits, more likely to be single parents or young parents, causing a lot of society's problems. The nuclear family is best at socialising children into societies norms and values, so divorce is not desirable.