1. Family

2. Family and identity
Families act as agents of socialisation (teaching us society’s culture) and agents of social control (controlling our behaviour).
We learn different social roles for example being a son or being a sister. Some are ascribed (given to us e.g. being a son or daughter) and some are achieved (chosen by us e.g. being a parent). All these roles and influences help to form our identity.
We must remember that the family is only one of many groups that influence our identity.

3. Family and socialisation
Socialisation is continually happening and is also a two way deal. Parents learn from their children as children continue to learn from their parents.
Methods of socialisation
Deliberate instruction
Role models
Positive/negative sanctions
Play

4. Conclusion about non-socialised children
Children need good physical care.
Children have the ability to learn.
Socialisation is essential in order to become a full member of society. The genes we inherit (which are given to us by our parents) only give us the potential to become members of society.
Some children recover if their early socialisation is disrupted.
If language learning starts too late a ‘critical time’ might have been passed and language may never develop fully.

5. Changing family relationships
 Children are now more likely to…
Survive childhood.
Be cared for by someone other than their parent in early years (often grandparent).
Have better living conditions e.g. their own room, money and ‘things’.
Have more parental supervision because parents worry about their safety.
Have a say in family decision making.
Be in ‘cash rich but time poor’ families, where both work and the dad helps out at home.
Experience the breakdown of the parents relationship but often not their death.
Spend all or part of their childhood in reconstituted, single-parent or same-sex families.
Depend on their families for longer and live in a ‘boomerang’ family when older.
Middle class kids are more likely to better off and better housed, to be healthier and often go to better schools.
Ethnic minorities, especially Asians, are often more likely to be part of extended families and to have more siblings and parents who don’t separate.
Gender differences remain. For example in the amount of work they are expected to do at home and the amount of supervision they get. Boys are favoured.

6. The dark side of the family
Functionalist sociologists have a very positive view of the family which is shared by many, however some researchers and sociologists (Feminists, Marxists) believe there is a ‘dark side’ to the family. A situation in which family life damages its members.
Leach (1967) said that nuclear families were too small to meet individual’s needs and that families were the source of conflict and disappointment.

7. Traditional family structures
Nuclear family:
Married parents
Didn’t cohabit before marriage
Vowed to stay together till death
Monogamous
Husbands and wives had different roles
The husband was the leader, the breadwinner
The wife was the housewife who would love, honour and obey
Criticism stated that women were unsatisfied, oppressed, had few choices (homosexuality, single parenthood considered deviant) and that there was often a hidden ‘dark side’ to the nuclear family.

8. Extended family
In the 1950’s Young and Willmott (1957) studied Bethnal Green, East London, then a white working class community.
They found that most people belonged to ‘extended families’, which usually included three generations; grandparents, parents and children. Family members spent a lot of time together and were matrilocal (mother/ daughter tie most important and married daughters would stay near their mothers).

9. The symmetrical family
In 1973 Young and Willmott suggested conjugal roles were becoming symmetrical i.e. shared by men and women which differed from traditional opinion about the traditional nuclear family. They found this ‘symetrical family’ to be nuclear, privatised (i.e. separate from relatives and neighbours) and symmetrical (husbands and wives had similar roles). They felt this type family began in the middle classes and was spreading throughout society. They found roles were ‘similar’ and not ‘identical’.

10. Response to the symmetrical family
Ann Oakley (1974) felt that Willmott and Young exaggerated the ‘symmetrical’ nature of these families. Her research concluded that women still felt they did the majority of housework and that the children were still their responsibility but that they did get more ’help’.
Women are often subject to the ‘part-time trap’. They are still expected to do more at home because they ‘only’ work part-time.
The dual burden of work and home because men are slow to help at home. Gershuny (1992) called this lagged adaptation. Men are adapting to women working and therefore having to do more at home more slowly than women are adapting to having to do both.
There is an increase in people employing house hold assistants to do cooking, cleaning and other household chores.

11. Structural changes in the family
The number of first time marriages has gone down from 400,000 in 1971 to 170,000 today.
Cohabitation, living together as partners without being married, is increasing.
Most people do marry though and feel it’s the best environment to raise children in.
Asian communities often don’t cohabit first, have high marriage rates and get married earlier than the UK average.

12. Divorce 1900 – Divorce is rare and seen as deviant.
Since the 1960’s divorce has increased. Today it is estimated that 45% of marriages will end in divorce.

13. Why? Legal change Changing attitudes
Changing expectations – people expect more from marriage and can be disappointed. People ask “is this marriage working for me?” This is referred to as confluent love.
Changing role of women
Isolation – with families increasingly being located away from their families there are less people around to stay together for or help couples stay together.
Lack of children
Longer life expectancy

14. Divorce and children
Divorce does have impacts on the children though. Rodgers and Pryor (1998) looked at these effects and found;
Short-term distress is common.
There is a risk of longer-term problems such as health and educational success but most children do not experience them.
Parent’s ability to cope, the amount of family conflict and the quality of contact with the absent parent do affect the outcome.

15. Alternatives to the family
Cared for children
Communal living
Friends
Living alone (12%)

16. 24 mark questions ‘We only need families for economic support.’
Roles in the family are no where near equal.’
‘Family life has not changed much since the 1950s.’
‘Marriage will never disappear.’
‘It is always best to raise children in a nuclear family.’

17. Other types of family Lone parent families Reconstituted families
Beanpole families
Gay and lesbian families

18. Sociologists Clarke – class- skinheads
Oakley – family manipulation and canalisation
Albert Cohen- Labelling – police
Rodgers and Pryor – divorce –impact on children
Leach – family – too many functions