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aqa alevel sociology families summary
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A concise summary of all the content needed for aqa sociology A-level for the families module
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TOPIC ONE COUPLESDomestic decision of labour:
Young and Willmott- longitudinal (structured interviews) study of Bethnal Green in the 1950s and
1970s. march of progress because families became more symmetrical. Increasing similarity in leisure
time and chores, explained by the equal pay act of 1970, technology making chores easier and
standards of living increasing in the home as an incentive to do leisure at home as a couple. However,
it only counts the number of chores rather than the time/effort/frequency which means it's not actually
equal.
Oakley- in 1974 she studied 40 married women with a child and found that only 15% of men did “High
levels of participation”. However, it was a very small sample with a very specific criteria in order to
bias it towards what she wanted to find.
Dex and Ward- 78% of men are very involved in their child's hobbies but only 1% are primary carers
which means that women have to take time off work to care for a sick kid.
Paid Work:
Gershuny- women who work full time did 73% of chores but women who don't work do 83%.
Therefore there's a “new man” who helps out with the chores. However, it's not true equality.
Dual Burden is paid work and housework
Triple shift is paid work, housework and emotion work
Why?
cultural/ideological explanation- Patriarchal norms shape the gender roles in british culture and
socialise women into doing more chores just because it's expected of them. Evidenced by Dunne who
found that lesbian couples are more symmetrical due to a lack of traditional heterosexual gender
scripts.
material/economic explanation- women have less earning power so its economically rational for them
to quit their job to take care of the family. Evidenced by Kan who found that for every extra £10k a
year a woman earns she does two hours less a week
Finance and decisions
Pahl and Vogler- allowance (men give their wives a budget to run the house) is less popular than
pooling (both having access to income and expenditure) nowadays. This may be as the cost of living
is too high not to, or that online banking makes it more practical than cash. However, it's
oversimplified because there's more than just two ways of doing it.
Hardill- studied 30 dual income couples and found that “important decisions” were taken by the man
or jointly, never just by the woman. Also the man's career takes priority when deciding ( eg whether to
move house) so women still have to fit in around their husband, even when they have their own jobs.
However, the sample is very small, less representative so it is harder to make generalisations.
Domestic violence
Physical psychological sexual or financial violence between family members
Dobash and Dobash- relationships are still patriarchal and violence is used to control women.
Marriage legitimises this violence by giving men more authority and they used unstructured interviews
to find that many violent incidents were triggered by challenging his authority.
Cheal- police aren't very helpful because there's 3 assumptions about the family. It's in the private
sphere so state access should be limited, family is assumed to be positive and individuals are
assumed to be free agents, able to just leave whenever they want to.
Why?
Radical feminist- dobash and dobash etc say that the family is a way to keep patriarchal power in
society and ensure women are continually exploited by men. Eg, the male dominance of social
institutions to explain the reluctance to help DV victims, or the norms/values of marriage to legitimise
violence. However, it doesn't explain male victims and that many relationships are loving
Material- inequalities cause stress on the family which increases the risks of conflict but this doesn't
explain why 90% of DV victims are women
TOPIC 2 CHILDHOOD ( as a social construct)
, Historical differences, childhood is a new invention:
Aries- children in the middle ages were just mini adults with the same rights/duties as adults. found via
content analysis of medieval paintings but invalid because he may have a biased interpretation.
Modern cult:
Aries says that childhood begins to emerge from the 13th century and we can see this because
school was made compulsory for all (some working class kids couldn't afford to not go to work so
didn't go to school), childrearing handbooks were popular (only parents with the economic capital to
buy them and follow the ideas could benefit) and children were dressed in separate styles from adults
Modern western:
Childhood is a special time and children are different to adults so require nurturing, protection and
proper socialisation.
Pilcher- children should occupy a separate status to adults and childhood should be a distinct life
stage. For example, laws, services and products.
However, Wagg argues that this separateness isn't universal across cultures.
Globalisation of western:
International welfare agencies try to spread the western norm of a separate innocent student as a
child through thigns like anti child labour campaigns. However, this rarely has an impact in cultures
where children need to work.
Cross cultural
Benedict- children in industrial western societies are treated differently to nonindustrial ones.
Malinowski- childrens sexual expolorations are accepted in the trobriand islands but this is an
outdated study so things may have changed by now
Disappearance of childhood: children and adults are becoming more similar
Postman- the increase of television culture causes the breakdown of the information hierarchy.
Newspapers meant that only adults (who can read) can access information about sex, money and
illness so children remained innocent. Anyone can access TV so the lines between adults and
children are blurred and innocence becomes cynicism.
Palmer- cultural and technological changes in the past 25 years have caused a toxic childhood which
damages the physical, emotional and intellectual development of children. Eg, social media’s harmful
content damages emotional development. However there are age restrictions in place to prevent
children from accessing these things.
Jenks- childhood is changing, not disappearing. In a postmodern society with common divorce,
children become identities for adults so they are preoccupied with protecting them. We also have
more information and technology about dangers vs how to protect from them. However this is an
overgeneralization because not all families are the same, despite growing diversity.
March of progress,eg aries:
Child centred families - smaller families and higher living standards so parents can afford to properly
meet their children's needs
Conflict view:
Inequalities between children- poor mothers are more likely to have low weight babies which harms
physical and intellectual development but there are social policies to help this.
Inequalities between children and adults- adults control children's routine/time by telling them when
they are allowed to do things in a day and deciding when something is “too grown up” for them. They
also control children's bodies by dressing them, telling children how they can touch their own bodies
(e.g. dont suck your thumb) and having the power to pick them up, cuddle them, smack them etc. but
this power may be used to protect kids.
New sociology, children create their own childhood experiences:
Smart- we need to include the views/experiences of children as they live through it
Mason and tipper- children create their own definitions of families including people who are not blood
relatives, just close to them.
TOPIC THREE THEORIES OF THE FAMILY
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