Family Diversity Flashcards
What are the five types of family diversity, identified by Rapoport & Rapoport (1982)?
Organisational Diversity, Cultural Diversity, Social Class Diversity, Life-Stage Diversity, Generational Diversity
What is Life-Stage diversity?
Family structures differ according to the life stage reached in the life cycle - for example, young newlyweds, couples with dependent children, retired couples whose children have grown up and left home, and widows who are living alone.
What is Generational Diversity?
Older and Younger generations have different attitudes and experiences that reflect the historical periods in which they have lived. For example, they may have different views about the morality of divorce or cohabitation.
What is Social Class diversity?
Differences in family structure partly due to the result of income differences between households of different social classes. Likewise, there are class differences in child-rearing practices.
What is Cultural diversity?
Different cultural, religious and ethnic groups have different family structures. For example, there is a higher proportion of female-headed lone-parent family among African-Caribbean households and a higher families among African-Caribbean households and a higher proportion of extended families among Asian households.
What is Organisational diversity?
This refers to the differences families are organised. For example, some families have joint conjugal roles and two wage-earners, whilst others have segregated conjugal roles and one wage-earner.
What is Rapoports’ opinion on family diversity?
They see it as a positive thing as they view it as a positive response to fulfil different peoples beliefs.
What is the neo-conventional family?
Chester (1985) recognises that there has been some increase in family diversity in recent years. He does not regard this as significant, nor sees it as bad. Chester argues that the only important change is a move from the dominance of the traditional nuclear family, and move towards the ‘neo-conventional family’.
The neo-conventional family is a dual-earner home where both spouses work, this is similar to the symmetrical family.
Although many people are not apart of the nuclear family at one time, Chester argues that this is largely due to the life cycle. Many people who are currently living in a one-person household, are people who have potential to get married in the future or are widowed.
What does Benson (2010;2011) say about marriage?
He argues that couples are more stable after marriage. After studying the parents of a sample of 15,000 babies. He found that, over the first three years of the baby’s life, the rate of family breakdown was much higher among cohabiting couples: 20%, compared with only 6% among married couples.
In the new right view, only marriage can provide the stable environment required to raise a child.
How does Ann Oakley (1998) criticise the new rights view on family diversity?
Ann Oakley (1998) argues that the new right wrongly assume that husbands’ and wives’ roles are fixed by biology. Instead, cross-cultural studies show great variation in the roles men and women perform within the family. Oakley believes that the New Right view of the family is a negative reaction against the feminist campaign for women’s equality.
What does Parsons think of family diversity?
Parsons view there is a functional fit between the nuclear family and modern society. Parsons sees the nuclear family is required for a social mobile workforce, and for the stabilisation of adult personalities.
Hence, other family types can be considered dysfunctional, abnormal or even deviant, since they are less able to perform the functions required by family.
