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Family Roles and Relationships: Examining the Contribution of Feminist Sociologists

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Family Roles and Relationships: Examining the Contribution of Feminist Sociologists
Using material from Item 2B and elsewhere assess the contribution of feminist sociologists to an understanding of family roles and relationships.

In this essay I will be assessing the contribution of feminist sociologists to an understanding of family roles and relationships. There are different roles in families such as: Conjugal; where both the partners share task such as housework and childcare, the opposite of this would be segregated roles; where the couples have separate roles, the male is breadwinner and has the instrumental role and the female is the housewife and has the expressive role. A dual earner is a couple…. A single parent is a person who has been divorced or been widowed and has to take care of the children they had with the previous partner. Furthermore there are different types of relationships between families such as equal; where the husband and wife both have an equal say and are treated equally, however it can be one-sided; where the husband or wife are more dominant which can lead to domestic violence, it could also be democratic; where the family all vote for something instead of one person taking the decisions, but it can also be patriarchal; where the male take the main decisions and Is the breadwinner. A feminist is a person that argues that sociology has traditionally taken a ‘male stream’ perspective and ignores female viewpoint; they examine women’s experiences and study society from a female’s perspective. There are different types of feminism: Liberal, Marxists, Radical and Difference Feminism. They all tend to be critical of the nature of a women’s role and relationship inside families because they see them as grossly patriarchal, oppressive and unfair, as mentioned in Item B. On the other hand, the different types of feminist don’t agree with each other’s perspective on ideas of families and households, and they tend to clash.

Liberal feminists are concerned with the campaigning against sex discrimination and for equal

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