Sociological Explanations Of Changes In The Family Essay

50 years ago a married couple with children was known as a ‘normal’ family and the perfect ‘nuclear’ type. However, times have since changed to the family which means that there are more different types of family today than ever before. We now have a variety of different types of family for example changes to marriage, partnerships, children and families resulting in the nuclear family in decline as there is now greater variety for example single parent, same sex etc. (Goffs School Sociology, 2017)

Functionalist Murdock defined the family to been a universal structure, where there would be opposite sex parents in a legally recognisable relationship for example marriage with their children, this is recognised as been the ideal for functionalist

(Goffs School Sociology, 2017) Moreover regarding child rearing women are now having childen later on in life for example in 1971 the average women had a baby at 24 whereas in 2005 it was 27. (Goffs School Sociology, 2017)Also women are also having fewer children as in 1964 it was 3 per women and by 2006 it was 1.84 this is due to the changing attitudes as women now work more and put their career before family resulting in the roles of women now changed. (Goffs School Sociology, 2017) Furthermore, there is also the rise of single parent’s families, which make up to 24% of al families with 90% headed by the mother. There are currently around two million single parents and they make up to a quarter of families with dependant children. (Anon, 2017) Whereas up to the 1990s more were divorced women whereas today women

The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold. (AllAboutPhilosophy.org, 2017) Which Marxist-feminists then suggest that capitalism has stripped male workers of dignity and control at work. Ansley and Feele argue that the wife absorbs men’s frustration within capitalism in the form of domestic violence. The powerlessness that men experience at work can be partly compensated for by asserting power and authority in the home. (Revisionworld.com, 2017) Radical femisints then say that domestic violence is used to control and intimidate women to do what they want. However all feminists agree that domestic violence would be reduced if women had equality with men, with less power and authority in the men’s hands. Statistics tell us that domestic violence by men accounts for one –third of all report violence and to support this Mirlees-black and Byron (1999) found that to the british crime survey this was at 70%. Stanko’s (2000) survey found within every minute in britain there is one