Family
Functionalism
Wilmott and Young: 'Symmetrical Family'
Talcott Parsons
Fit Thesis
2 essential functions of the family: primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities
Murdock 4 essential functions of the family: stable satisfaction of the sex drive, socialisation, economic support and reproduction.
Marxism
Engles: monogamous family emerged with capitalism to reproduce inequality teaching passive acceptance of hierarchy.
Althusser: ideological state apparatus promoting values that ensure the reproduction and maintenance of capitalism.
Zaretsky: men alleviate stress in the family preventing revolution.
Warm bath theory
Nuclear family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy.
Organic analogy: society is made of different institutions that each perform different functions to keep society going.
Feminism
Liberal
Sommerville
Modesty policy reform will improve life not revolution.
Many ignore progress made with marriage, cohabitation and fertility.
Rise of dual-income households created greater equality for women.
Increased flexibility in paid employment will improve equality in relationships.
Ann Oakley
Gender role socialisation: canalisation, manipulation, verbal appellations, different activities.
Ideal nuclear family.
Leah 'cereal packet family'
Marxist Feminism
Women produce the next labour force through socialisation, domestic labour and servicing husbands.
Need to tackle capitalism to tackle the patriarchy such as paying women for domestic labour or the abolishing of capitalism and ushering of communism.
Warm bath theory is really just women absorbing the anger of men so they don't revolutionise.
Fran Ainsley: women absorb anger that would otherwise be directed towards capitalism.
Penny Red: concentration of women in low-paid/ un-paid work sustains patriarchy and capitalism as work they are doing for free is essential.
If women didn't do this work capitalism would fall to its knees.
Radical Feminism
Men are the cause of women's oppression and exploitation, the family is also the root of female oppression.
Paid wok has created the dual-burden of paid and un-paid labour.
Duncombe and Marsden: triple shift.
Dark side to the family.
British Crime Survey found domestic violence accounts for a sixth of all violent crime, and 1 in 4 women are expected to be victims.
Kate Millet
Family acts as a unit in the government of the patriarchal state which rules its citizens through its family heads.
Male priorities have been modified through granting for marriage protection, women's obligation to adopt husband's domicile, and legal assumption that marriage involves an exchange of sexual consortium from women for financial support.
Postmodernism
Increased social change, fragmentation and diversity have made families more unstable and diverse because they are a matter of personal choice.
No longer able to make generalisations about society like Marx and Parsons did.
Ulrich Beck
Risk consciousness
Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.
Individual desires are valued more than social commitments: individualism.
Patriarchal family was oppressive but provided a predictable and stable basis where roles were defined.
Giddens
Relationships are pure as they are a part of self discovery and couples are free to define relationships themselves.
With choice relationships became less stable, most teenagers believe their relationship will only last a year.
Stacey
Women have more freedom than every to shape family arrangements to meet their needs and free themselves of patriarchal oppression.
Found in studies in California women are the driving force behind changes in the families and rejecting traditional gender roles.
The 'divorce-extended family' are connected by divorce rather than marriage.
Hareven: life course analysis
The New Right
Charles Murray
Nuclear family being threatened by young women a the welfare state.
Marshalnd
Dependency culture and being married to the state.