Assess The View That The Conventional Nuclear Family Remains The Norm
Asess the view that the conventional nuclear family remains the norm in Britain today.
[24 marks]
Sociologist Edmund Leech (1967) defined the nuclear family as the ‘cereal packet norm’ due to often appearing in advertisements for breakfast cereals. This type of family consisted of a male provider, enhancing the patriarchy with a female homemaker, along with their dependent children, originally assumed as the ideal family by Hilary Land.
Talcott Parsons believes that the conventional family type alters depending on changes in society. Structural differentiation refers to the idea that as society changes, institutions change to fit society, they lose functions in the process of them becoming more specialised. The main example of this is through Industrialisation, with the creation of the nuclear family and the end of the extended family. In …show more content…
This is defined as a dual-earner family to which both spouses gout to work, similarly described by Young and Willmott as the symmetrical family. Although many people are no longer part of a nuclear family, Chester says this is due to the lifecycle, changing family types that you are involved in throughout the course of your lifetime.
As evidence of his view that little has changed, Chester notices a number of patterns, such as the majority of people live in a patriarchal nuclear family with a married couple and their children. Most marriages continue until death although there has been an increase in divorce, most divorcees remarry. For Chester, the extant and importance of family diversity has been exaggerated, and agreeing with functionalists- he sees nuclear family as dominant within
[24 marks]
Sociologist Edmund Leech (1967) defined the nuclear family as the ‘cereal packet norm’ due to often appearing in advertisements for breakfast cereals. This type of family consisted of a male provider, enhancing the patriarchy with a female homemaker, along with their dependent children, originally assumed as the ideal family by Hilary Land.
Talcott Parsons believes that the conventional family type alters depending on changes in society. Structural differentiation refers to the idea that as society changes, institutions change to fit society, they lose functions in the process of them becoming more specialised. The main example of this is through Industrialisation, with the creation of the nuclear family and the end of the extended family. In …show more content…
This is defined as a dual-earner family to which both spouses gout to work, similarly described by Young and Willmott as the symmetrical family. Although many people are no longer part of a nuclear family, Chester says this is due to the lifecycle, changing family types that you are involved in throughout the course of your lifetime.
As evidence of his view that little has changed, Chester notices a number of patterns, such as the majority of people live in a patriarchal nuclear family with a married couple and their children. Most marriages continue until death although there has been an increase in divorce, most divorcees remarry. For Chester, the extant and importance of family diversity has been exaggerated, and agreeing with functionalists- he sees nuclear family as dominant within