Families
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This page deals with the second "bullet point" in the AQA specification for Module1: FAMILIES AND HOUSEHOLDS.
This is
Changes in family and household structure and their relationship to industrialisation and urbanisation.
This is another one that sounds difficult, but it really is simplicity itself. It is about the huge social changes that took place when the economy changed from an agrarian, rural economy, to an industrialised, urban one. More specifically, how did this affect the family? By family and household structure, we mean the overall shape of the family; its size, and who is in it.
One view (favoured by the functionalists) is that the family was changed from being an extended family to being a nuclear family.
An extended family is a three-generational co-residential group, consisting of blood relatives and their spouses: children would stay with the parents when grown up, and bring their spouses into the household and have their children there. A good example is the type of family studied by Arensberg & Kimball in rural Ireland. A nuclear family consists simply of parents and their offspring; mother, father, and their children, living apart ("structurally isolated") from their wider kin. Nuclear families are the norm in the U.K. today.
Functionalists such as Parsons thought that industrialisation and urbanisation created the "modern" nuclear family because of their theories about the "fit" between the family and the wider society. In an agricultural society (such as we had in Britain before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century, and they still have in developing nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) it makes sense to have a large family: it meets the needs of society. However, when an industrial economy develops, people need to be geographically mobile - to move around in search of work - and so the extended family is a hindrance. The nuclear family emerged at that point, because it meets the needs of industrial urban society for a mobile workforce.
Goode provides further evidence for this view. He says that as industrialisation affects societies, people choose nuclear families because of the extra freedom it gives them (Think about it: would you want to live in the same household with all your uncles and aunts, and get all the extra grief?!)
Another dimension to this which has interested feminists is the separation of the "home" and "work". (Hall, 1982). This works against the interests of women, who lose economic power to men, who become the sole breadwinners. Land has shown how the idea of the "family wage" for men helped keep women economically dependent.
The idea that the modern nuclear family emerged during industrialisation has been challenged by the historian Laslett. He used research based on Parish Records to show that large extended households were in fact quite rare prior to industrialisation. Nuclear families were the norm then, as now. Research by Anderson, who used Census data for the town of Preston in 1851, provides further evidence against the Functionalists. He found that Industrialisation could actually cause the extended family to develop, because people needed the greater support of their relatives in the difficult conditions (poverty, injury, early death and widowhood) of the industrial revolution.
Another study that is relevant here is by Young & Willmott. They argue (using a combination of secondary data and their own surveys) that the U.K. family underwent a four-stage development:
The agrarian family, which was a unit of production (they worked together)
The extended kin family. This was a strong extended family which provided mutual support, in particular for mothers and daughters.
The "Stage 3" or "symmetrical" nuclear family, which emerged towards the end of the twentieth century. The family became structurally isolated from kin, often as a result of slum clearance and rehousing. They became home centred, and the roles of husbands & wives becomes more equal as women go out to work, men do more housework, and the conjugal bond becomes "companionate".
The fourth stage is the "managing director family", which is more asymmetrical due to husbands spending long hours at work. Y & W thought this would be the future family, as they expected it to spread from the upper middle class throughout society.
This is basically all the information that you need. The material is very easy to plan a longer answer around: Parsons and Goode argue that industrialisation brought about the rise of the nuclear family that most of us live in today. Laslett used empirical (based on researched facts) research to disprove this; and the work of Anderson, and Willmott & Young, shows that the picture is more complicated. All of these views can be criticised on the grounds of their methods: how valid and reliable was the research? Finally, Postmodernists might argue that it is not possible to provide a definitive "story" about the development of the family. They are suspicious about claims to know "historical facts", as these facts are manufactured by the process of historical research.
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The material you need in Sociology in Focus for this section is on p. 244 250./B> .
Useful links
The next one is a bit slow to get started, but the powerpoint presentation is exactly what you need:- http://www.esociology.co.uk
Sociology Central also has some excellent notes, but you will have to scroll through until you find the relevant bits:- http://www.sociology.org.uk/drevise.htm
Don't forget that you can look up key terms (such as Industrialisation, Extended Family, etc) in the Sociology Dictionary:- http://www.iversonsoftware.com/sociology/sociology-index.htm
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Last updated 2002/09/28 21:52:50 GMT
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