Sociology - Unit 1:Families and households

Sociology - Unit 1:Families and households

1. couples

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • The domestic division of labour
     • the instrumental and expressive roles
     • joint and segregated conjugal roles
     • the symmetrical family
     • a feminist view of housework
     • Oakley: the rise of the housewife role
   • The impact of paid work
     • Gershuny: the trend towards equality
     • the commercialisation of housework
     • the dual burden
     • emotion work
     • lesbian couples and gender scripts
   • Resources and decision making in households
   • domestic violence
     • the radical feminist explanation
     • wilkinson: domestic violence, inequality and stress

2. childhood

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • Childhood as a social construct
     • the modern western notion of childhood
     • cross cultural differences in childhood
     • historical differences in childhood
     • reasons for changes in the position of children
   • Has the position of children improved ?
     • the march of progress view
     • the conflict view
   • The future of childhood
     • the disappearance of childhood
     • a separate childhood culture
     • the globalisation of western childhood
     • contradictory trends - the reconstruction of childhood

3. changing family patterns

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • Divorce
     • explanations of the increase in divorce
     • the meaning of high divorce rates
   • Partnerships
     • marriage
     • cohabitation
     • same sex relationships
     • one person households
   • Parents and children
     • childbearing
     • lone-parent families
     • stepfamilies
   • The extended family today
   • Ethnic differences in family patterns

4. demography

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • Births
     • reasons for the decline in the birth rate
     • effects of changes in fertility
   • Deaths
     • reasons for the decline in the death rate
     • life expectancy
     • the ageing population
     • effects of an ageing population
   • Migration
     • emigration
     • recent and future migration patterns

5. family diversity and the life course

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • modernism and the nuclear family
     • the new right
     • Chester: the neo-conventional family
     • The rapoports: five types of family diversity
   • Post modernity and the life course
     • life course analysis
     • family practices
     • post modernity and family diversity
     • Giddens: choice and equality
     • Beck: risk society and the negotiated family
     • Stacey: the divorce extended family
     • Weeks: the growing acceptance of diversity
     • two views of family diversity

6. the functions of the family

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • The functionalist perspective on the family
     • Parsons functional fit theory
     • loss of functions
   • The marxist perspective on the family
     • inheritance of property
     • ideological functions
     • a unit of consumption
   • Feminist perspectives on the family
     • liberal feminism
     • marxist feminism
     • radical feminism
     • difference feminism
     • criticisms of perspectives in the family

7. social policy and the family

   • Sociologists that you can use for this section: 
   • A comparative view of family policy
     • abolishing the family
     • chinas one child policy
     • nazi family policy
   • Perspectives on families and social policy
     • functionalism
     • the new right
     • new labour
     • feminism
     • marxism
     • Donzelot: the policing of the family