Family and Households gcse/ AS revision

What role to functionalists say the family performs in society?

• Maintains a relationship between state and individual.

• Maintains social order and performs essential functions to help individuals fit into society?

• It's like a warm bath, and women help men to feel relaxed at home

• Provides new workers for the capitalist system

Some of the functions of the family according to Marxists are: (2 right answers).

• Produce new workers for the capitalist system.

• Ideological control - families spread ideas favourable to capitalism.

• Stabilise adult personalities

• socialise chidlren into communist perspectives.

Some of the feminist critiques of Marxist and feminist views of the function of the family are (3 answers)

• The family is an oppresive structure for women as it locks women into a narrow range of roles and responsibilities.

• Female roles within the family allow men to exercise economic power through the family as women provide free work in the household.

• Marxist feminists emphasize women's exploitation using the term, "dual burden"

• The family provides a warm bath-like experience which is good for all members of the family

Which of these is NOT one of Murdoch's four functional prerequisites of the family

• Socialisation into norms and values of society

• Economic provision for family members

• Sexual control or regulation

• Stabilisation of adult personalities

What statement best describes changing patterns of marriage and divorce.

• People are still keen on marriage, remarriages have reduced and divorces and decreased.

• There has been a fall in the number of first marriages, second marriages increased, and people marry later or not at all.

• People are getting married younger and divorcing more frequently.

• Marriages have overall decreased while people get married younger.

What is the functional fit thesis about?

• The way that society is like a human body. (organic analogy).

• The way that social order is maintained though social sanctions.

• The family is experiencing a loss of functions, and becoming smaller to suit the needs of modern industrial societies.

• Sometimes those who don't fit in join subcultures.

Select two criticisms of functionalist views of the role of the family.

• Doesn't explain structural differentiation or the way that famoiilies lose some of their functions as society develops.

• The functionalist view ignores negative aspects of the family such as the possibility that the family could contribute to the blocking of women's aspirations through women being steered into the housewife role.

• Doesn't explain the triple shift.

• It ignores the role of men in decision making and the abuse of male power, for example through domestic violence or the threat of it.

Define polygamy

• Having more wives if you are a man.

• Having more husbands, if you are a woman.

• Having a singe sexual or marriage partner, in succession.

• Having more that one sexual partner at a time.

Select some reasons why cohabitation has increased.

• Reduced social pressures to marry and changing social attitudes

• Changing approaches to love and relationships.

• Reform of divorce law

• Wider availability of contraception and abortion.

Answer explanation

Note: Although there are changing attitudes to love and marriage such as confluent love, make sure that you relate your idea to the question of cohabitation specifically.

Some of the reasons why divorces have increased since the 1970s (2 answers)

• Empty shell marriages are preferred to legal marriages.

• Divorce reform. The 1971 divorce act made it easier and cheaper to get a divorce.

• To try cohabitation instead.

• The increase of secularisation processes mean that people now view marriage as a "sacred institution" that must be preserved.