...Sociology Essay Assess the view that the nuclear family is no longer the norm (24 Marks) In today’s society, the family is not as big as it used to be earlier though the decades, the nuclear family at least. Many sociologists have criticised the family e.g. feminists and the way in which it is run. The Nuclear Family is known as the traditional family. The nuclear family was mainly dominant in the 1960s when most of the UK was working in factories and looking for jobs, this family type allowed families to move around the country easily enough, this aspect is called geographical mobility. Another aspect of the family in terms of Functionalist ideals, is the gender-role socialization in which the children are brought up in a way that gender stereotypes are made, for example boys are brought up to be tough and play with cars and play sports, while girls are brought up to be sensitive and play with dolls and gossip with each other. The final function of the nuclear family is the socialization of children which teaches them the norms and values of society. Functionalists have many studies of this, like Murdock who studied 250 societies and therefore decided that the nuclear family was Universal and that the nuclear family had 4 main functions: sexual, reproductive, educational and economic. However Parsons view along with this were both proven wrong as it was said their studies were too simplistic. However many perspectives disagree by saying that the nuclear family is used...
Words: 761 - Pages: 4
...Rosie Edwards, Sociology essay: Many different sociologists have different interpretations and opinions upon the family, the family is a very sensitive issue to many of the general public, so it’s a subject matter in which needs to be dealt with carefully. Sociologists have different opinions on when and how families developed into the popular family structures that we have today, the dominant roles within those families etc. Here are just a few examples of this: Functionalists believe that the family is the heart of society, it is essential in the world because the family set you up for your future. For example, without the family primary socialisation would not exist, and therefore we would not gain the acquired skills needed to survive in the future. Murdock, a famous Functionalist, claimed that the nuclear family is so useful to society that it is inevitable and universal, appearing everywhere all over the world. Also, Functionalists believe that there are four essential functions to a nuclear family. These being: sexual, this provides stability for the adults of the family. Reproductive, provides the new generation of the family and society. Economic, providing for the family, in nuclear families this is generally done by the male as he is the breadwinner. And finally, educational, the secondary socialisation needed to teach young adults and provide them the skills needed for the working world and the future. But, people have criticised the Functionalist perspective upon...
Words: 675 - Pages: 3
...WORKBOOK ANSWERS AQA AS Sociology Unit 1 Families and Households This Answers book provides some possible answers that might be given for the questions asked in the workbook. They are not exhaustive and other answers may well be acceptable, but they are intended as a guide to give teachers and students feedback. The responses for the longer essay-style questions are intended to give some idea about how the exam questions might be answered. Again, these are not the only ways to answer such questions but they can be treated as one way of approaching questions of these types. Topic 1 Functionalist and New Right views of the family How have functionalist and New Right thinkers explained family life and the relationship between families and social change? 1 The organic analogy refers to the extended comparison made by functionalists between the human or other living body and society, with the organs of the body equivalent to institutions and structures in society. 2 Primary socialisation refers to the first and most important stage of the socialisation process by which young children absorb the norms and values of their culture, mainly from their parents. Note: make sure your answer explains both ‘primary’ and ‘socialisation’. 3 One way in which the nuclear family is more suited than other types of family to modern industrial society is that it allows for geographical mobility; it is easier to move a nuclear family to a new area for, say, a new...
Words: 7450 - Pages: 30
...This essay will discuss the sociological imagination and social construction. It will offer insights of problem families and will look at it from a feminist theory and functionalism theory it will discus oppression and the impact on social institutions and underpin social work practise and the relevance. Charles Write Mills was an American Sociologist. His most famous was The Sociological Imagination, where mills states that personal troubles should become issues of the public. (mills books) By sharing these personal troubles with society will help a person realise they may not be alone and others maybe going through the same thing for example if a husband with his wife and children loses his job and is struggling to find another one. By...
Words: 1009 - Pages: 5
...Sociology essay: “The main purpose of family is to support capitalism” Marxists argue that the institutions such as the family help to perpetuate the continuation of the capitalist system and the dominance of the capitalist class within the capitalist system partly by spreading the ruling class ideology which encourages support for capitalism among the Proletariat or working class. Capitalist societies, by definition are based upon the private ownership of the means of production. The production process itself involves two major social classes: the Bourgeoisie who own the means of production and the Proletariat who have no property or means of production. The relationship between these two social classes is based upon exploitation, the Bourgeoisie exploit the by paying wages which amount to less than the value of the goods and services which the proletariat actually produce. Marxists would argue that families are a unit of reproduction, they believe that the family is essential in the reproduction of the labour force. In pre capitalist society people lived subsidence life’s meaning they only produced what they needed to live and little more. They only grew staple foods, drank water and lived simple life’s. People choose to have numerous children. More children meant more farm hands and help around the farm. It also acted as an insurance, against the famine, disease and other natural disasters. After the industrial revolution this all changed, Families would have less children...
Words: 612 - Pages: 3
...------------------------------------------------- Scly1 Summer 2013 Using material from Item 2B and elsewhere, assess the contribution of functionalist sociologists to our understanding of the family. INSTRUCTIONS to candidates AS ESSAY – Scly1 Family/Households - 24marks – 24 minutes i.e. 2-2.5 pages average sized handwriting (2 pages typed) (AO1-10 & AO2-14) * ADD your Name/Option Group to the header * Size 12 font/calibri * Email a copy to MY. * Print /submit hard copy to your sociology teacher [print off the whole document] Essay Cover sheet MTG (circle): | A | B | C | Grade (circle): | A | B | C | D | E | Teacher Name: MARK YELLAND | Raw Mark: | | Unit (circle): | Scly | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Section (circle): | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Green Pen (when you ‘green pen’ add your comments/extra points in the box below) | Student self-evaluation (circle the numbers successfully completed) i.e. I have: 1. Used largely accurate spelling, grammar and punctuation. 2. Written 3/4/5 sentences for every paragraph, in continuous prose ( & No bullets & No hyphens & No forward slash) 3. Written 1 page every 10mins (e.g. 30mins=3 pages). 4. Written the first paragraph outlining the ‘big picture’ including key specialist vocabulary. 5. Referenced the key terms from the question in every paragraph (& underlined them in the question). 6. Used the majority of the key concepts/ideas from the MS (& ER). 7. Used at least 5 sources...
Words: 2088 - Pages: 9
...Sociology essay Intro Assess the contribution of Marxism to our understanding of families and household. Marxism is the political and economic theory formed by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” – Karl Marx He is trying to say religion is the drug of people. It’s what keeps them alive in these wretched times. The oppressed creatures are the lower classed people forced to work every day just to feed their families. The heartless world are the capitalist, the selfish rich people who have never labored a day in their life. The soulless conditions therefore become the terrible conditions under which the poor have to work in. Marx is trying to show the system of hierarchy in the quote. Religion is the only thing the poor can hold on to, it can’t be taken away from them. Religion is the escape to find hope and salvation in the sense that one day they don’t have to work under the rich people. Marxism is the theoretical debate on understanding of different classes in society, taking as its starting point the necessary economic activities required by everyday people to provide for their material needs. Engels and zaretskys view will be discussed as well as the new rights, functionalists and Marxist feminists. Friedrich Engels Engels (1820-1895) was a German social scientist as well as becoming the joint father of Marxism. He had...
Words: 811 - Pages: 4
...Anthropology is the study of different ways of life, both past and present. It is comparative and cross-cultural, combining elements form biology, sociology, psychology, and history into a grand synthesizing endeavor (Heider, 2007). The focus of this essay is to take a holistic approach to the culture of Bali. Bali is an island located in Indonesia. Bali is full of traditional culture, belief, arts and performance. There are five main topics I would like to cover in this essay. The first is Social organization, what kinds of structure to the Balinese have? The second two topics are family and religion, we will find out that the two go hand in hand. The fourth topic is food, or rice cultivation, which is an important staple in the country. Finally we will cover the topic of Art. Art is important not only to the culture, but also to its economy. Social organization: The way in which Balinese culture is subdivided into smaller groups whose membership is determined by kinship, age, location. Most of Balinese social organization starts with its religious community. Hinduism is the most common religion in Bali. Villages in Bali have many different kinds of temples, but they all have a pemangku (priest): the more important ones also have a klian (secretary) and a beddesa (calendrical expert). The klian and bedesa are elected; the pemangku may be designated by patrilineal succession, elected by the congregation or chosen by God through a possessed temple medium (Barth, 1993). There...
Words: 1594 - Pages: 7
...pronounce in some binding way what family, marriage, parenthood, sexuality or love mean, what they should or could be; rather these vary in substance, norms and morality from individual to individual and from relationship to relationship.” (Beck, U and Beck-Gernsheim, E. 1995:p5). Through history there has been a varied view on the family, with changes in the functions, roles and relationships within the family being widely debated. There has been a major development with the types of family that exist in Britain today, with influences from the widening ethnicity of Britain it has adapted to many different cultures. Functionalism is considered the consensus view of the family. They see the family as a vital organ and the cornerstone of society. George Peter Murdock conducted a study entitled “social structure” (1949), in which he studied 250 societies both small and large. He claimed the findings of this was that some sort of family existed in every society which means the family is universal. (Haralambos, Holborn. 2008). According to Murdock the family is an institution which fulfils the functions essential for a harmonious society. He believed the family provided a stable environment hence strengthening the emotional bond between parents and children. Murdock believed that the family performed four essential functions sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. (Taylor. 1995). However Talcott Parson suggested that the family lost most of its main functions through...
Words: 3558 - Pages: 15
...Eugenia Akumiah 12 G….Sociology, The functions of the family Assess the contribution of functionalism to our understanding of families and households. (24) Functionalists take a consensus view of the role of family. They see it as a universal institution that performs essential functions for society as a whole and all members of the family. According to Murdock, it provides important sub-system that provides stable satisfaction for the sex drive and therefore avoids social disruption. As well as this, Murdock says the family reproduces the next generation and thus ensuring current society to continue. Parsons sees a functional fit with the nuclear family fitting modern society’s needs for a geographically and socially mobile labour force. However critics argue that he is wrong about the relationship between industrialisation and family structure. Moreover Marxists, Liberal, radical and Marxist feminist all view the functions of the family in different ways, this essay will assess the different perspectives in which all these groups view the functions of the family. Functionalists believe that society is based on a value consensus- as set of shared norms and values; into which society socialises its members. This enables them to cooperate harmoniously to meet society’s needs and achieve shared goals. They regard society as system made up of different parts or sub-systems that depend on each other, such as the family, the education system...
Words: 1561 - Pages: 7
...the contribution of feminist sociologists to an understanding of family roles and relationships. In this essay I will explore the different schools of feminism such as Marxist, liberal and radical feminism, who share the view that women are oppressed in a patriarchal society but differ in opinion on who benefits from the inequalities. Each school of feminism has their own understanding of family roles and relationships which I will assess through this essay. Firstly one must look at the division of domestic labour and conjugal roles. Conjugal roles refer to the roles performed by men and women in relation to housework, childcare and paid work. Traditionally men had the instrumental ‘bread-winning’ role which the women had the expressive role (childcare and primary socialisation). Feminists say that the traditional division of labour is neither natural nor beneficial to women as their expressive role is unpaid and taken for granted. However different feminist views disagree on who benefits from this unpaid labour. Marxist feminists would argue it is capitalism that benefits most as wives keep their husbands happy and therefore they are left with a content workforce. On the other hand, radical feminists would argue that men are the main people to gain from women’s oppression as we live in a patriarchal society. A functionalist view from Wilmott and Young says that there has been a ‘march of progress’ in which the family has become more symmetrical with more joint conjugal roles (where...
Words: 1876 - Pages: 8
...In a contemporary South African context a family would be classified as “a societal group that is related by blood, adoption, foster care, marriage, civil union or cohabitation and thus its definition go beyond particular physical residence” as it remains central in the lives of its members and provides them with emotional, economic support, socialisation, nurturing and thus care (Department of Social Development, 2012: 3). This essay therefore focuses on the role of care within families, how it is shaped by the racial trends in reference to the historical background of South Africa, the class distinctions that outline the access to care, the different gender norms and provision of care and thus the role of families, the state and the larger market place that persist to shape the provision of care for children within the family context of the contemporary South African context. Racialised trends of family life and care According to Budlender and Lund (2011) it was highlighted that the vision Apartheid was to reserve the cities for the White population and the African population was to live in ‘separate homelands’, furthermore this occurred through means of pass laws and restrictions that included the 1923: Native Urban Areas Act that shaped the housings that separated many African parents from each other, as men where often forced to move to urban areas for work, leaving women and children in rural areas (Bray et al, 2010), with limited resources and often under poor living...
Words: 1465 - Pages: 6
...The Family With its Narrow Privacy and Tawdry Secrets is the Source of all Our Discontent Edmund Leech’s statement from his Runaway World lecture in 1974 “the family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontent” suggests that the family is a negative force within society. This essay will describe what the family is, what its main functions are and outline the different types. It will explain how the family is detrimental to its members with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets and illustrate some of the consequences that these have on society as a whole. Society has to have a means of repopulating itself. The family is an institution with the key responsibility of the reproduction and social education of society’s members. New members must be taught by the family what it means to be a member of society. Weiss defines the family as “a small kinship structured group with the key function of nurturant socialization of the new-born” (quoted in Cree 2010). There are many different types of family. The nuclear family with 2 generations of family members under the same roof are the most common in modern society. Extended families with 3 or more generations living in the same household are becoming less frequent. These families can be extended either vertically, usually involving grandparents, or horizontally, with aunts uncles and cousins. Single parent families, as the name implies, involve a single parent with dependent child or children. Reconstituted...
Words: 1096 - Pages: 5
...SOCIOLOGY – AQA – UNIT 4 - CRIME AND DEVIANCE The exam is split into 3 questions: • Q.1 is a pure methods section which contains two parts a) 12 marks and b) 21 marks. You should spend 45 minuets on this question. • Q.2 is a method in context question. Part a) is for 9 marks [could also be a 3 and 6 mark question] and part b) is for 15 marks. You should spend 30 minuets on this question. • Q.3 is a theories essay for 33 marks. THIS QUESTION IS SYNOPTIC! You should spend 45 minuets on this question. Below is a list of all the areas and studies you need to know for each section of the exam. Don’t worry if you don’t know all the studies, each college/school are likely to teach slightly different ones, just make sure you know about that amount for each section. Q.1 For the first two pure crime parts you need to know: Functionalist theories of crime and deviance Durkheim – Social control, social regulation including suicide Merton-Strain theory, blocked aspirations Cohen – Status frustration Cloward and Ohlin – Deviant subcultures New Right/Right Realism James Wilson – Strict law enforcement needed Wilson and Kelling – Broken windows, zero tolerance Murray – Cultural deprivation, single parents and ineffective, the underclass Erdos – Families without fathers Subcultural theories Cohen – Delinquent subcultures Cloward and Ohlin – Delinquency and opportunity, criminal, conflict and retreatist...
Words: 2001 - Pages: 9
...Work and Change - The Family Sveinbjorg E. Olafsdottir Sociology-SSCI205 7th July, 2013 This essay will demonstrate the weakening of the modern family and how the weakening of the modern family is a cause for some of the social problems America and other western countries are facing today. What important or significant changes have been in families since 1960 and what factors are responsible for that change? Are families becoming weaker or simply different? And what can be done to straighten the modern family? Among the significant changes that have accrued in families since the 1960 are that there has been a dramatic rise in divorce rate and the ideal family structure has changed from the typical nuclear family. Families today can be combined of same sex parents, single parents, one parent and his/her partner where children have stepsiblings and children born out of wedlock. Since the 1960s women have become more financially independent and the society has become more inclusive. Women have their own career and therefore leave the home for work while in the 1960s women mostly stayed at home to take care of the children and the home. This change has caused more tension with in marriages and children get less time with a parent. (Editorial Board, 2012) Another factor for the change in families since the 1960 can be all the new technology, which brings more expenses for the families, and therefore to be able to afford everything that the modern family needs or is expected...
Words: 893 - Pages: 4
