key terms Flashcards
(20 cards)
Death Rate
The number of deaths per thousand members of a population per year.
Blended family
A type of reconstituted or step family where parents with children from previously existing relationship form new relationships come together as one new, blended family
Birth Rate
The number of babies born per thousand of the population per year
Cereal Packet Family
A critical term for the traditional nuclear family consisting of heterosexual parents and two children which was presented as the norm on cereal packets (and in the media more generally) in the 1950s
Civil Partnership
The legally or formally recognised union of a man and a woman (or in some countries two people of the same sex) in a committed relationship
Cohabitation
Two people living together in the same household in an emotionally intimate, committed relationship without being officially married
Warm Bath Theory
The Functionalist idea that within the nuclear family the wife takes on the role of the carer, providing support as a homemaker and carer while the man goes out to work. The role of the wife is to ‘run him a warm bath’ when he gets home to help him destress after a hard day of earning income for the family.
Triple Shift
Builds on the idea of the dual burden: women in families have three types of work: paid work, housework and emotion work
Toxic Childhood
Where social changes, especially the invention of new technologies, does increasing amounts of harm to children. For example, the internet and mobile phones results in screen saturation with increases anxiety and reduces attention spans.
Symmetrical Family
A family in which the roles of husbands and wives, although not identical are more similar. There are three elements:
– Both men and women do paid work.
– Men and women both do housework.
– Couples spend their leisure time together rather than separately
Stabilisation of Adult Personalities
Where the nuclear family provides a structure in which both adult partners gain emotional and psychological support from one another.
Stable satisfaction of the s*x drive
One of the four essential functions of the nuclear family according to Murdock who believed that the nuclear family provided a long term monogamous relationship in which s*xual desires could be met without recourse to frustration and promiscuity.
Social Construction of Childhood
The idea that the norms and values and social roles associated with childhood are influenced by society, rather than being determined by the biological age of a child.
Serial Monogamy
Where an individual has a string of committed relationships, one after the other
Dual Burden
When someone does both paid work and a significant amount of the domestic labour, such as housework at home. According to radical feminists, it is mainly women who suffer this.
Economic Factors
Refers to things to do with money – for example how wealth a society is and the amount of wealth and income an individual or family has
Emotion Work
Thinking about the emotional well-being of other members of the family and acting in ways which will be of emotional benefit to others. For example, hugging and reassuring children when they have nightmares, organising Christmas and birthday parties so that everyone feels included and has a good time
Extended family
Family beyond the traditional nuclear family, incorporating aunts, uncles, and grandparents. In the traditional extended family, members live in the same household, in more modern extended families
Family as a Unit of Consumption
A Marxist idea that the primary function of the family in capitalist societies is to consume products to keep capitalism going. Two main ways this is done is through spending on the children, especially at Christmas, and through spending on house and household purchases and improvements.
Functional Fit Theory
The main type of family changes as the structure of society changes so that the former better fits with the later. See Parsons’ Functionalist theory of the family for more details
