Families and Households

What Families and Households covers

Families and Households is examined in Unit 1 Section B — one of two options, studied instead of Youth Cultures. It covers defining families and households, family forms and family diversity in England and Wales, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in family life, marriage, cohabitation and singlehood, divorce and separation, fertility, birth rates and family size, life expectancy, ageing and the beanpole family, the domestic division of labour, power, decision-making and domestic violence, childhood and parent–child relationships, functionalist and New Right theories of the family, Marxist and feminist theories of the family and postmodernism, the life course and personal life.

The 13 subtopics

Each one has its own page. WJEC AS Sociology students sit this topic in the first year.

• Defining families and householdsDifference between a household and a family, term nuclear family and extended family.Open →
• Family forms and family diversity in England and WalesCohort diversity, life course diversity and lone-parent family.Open →
• Ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in family lifeTransnational family and term remittances.Open →
• Marriage, cohabitation and singlehoodSerial monogamy, common law marriage myth and singlehood and why has it increased.Open →
• Divorce and separationHow secularisation helps account for rising divorce, empty shell marriage and new Right view of rising divorce.Open →
• Fertility, birth rates and family sizeBirth rate, total fertility rate and replacement level of fertility.Open →
• Life expectancy, ageing and the beanpole familyLife expectancy, ageing population and dependency ratio.Open →
• The domestic division of labourDomestic division of labour, principle of stratified diffusion and emotion work.Open →
• Power, decision-making and domestic violencePooling system, domestic abuse and radical feminist explanation of domestic violence.Open →
• Childhood and parent–child relationshipsMarch of progress view of childhood, conflict view of childhood and child-centred family.Open →
• Functionalist and New Right theories of the familyRecall questions on the functions claimed for the family, functional fit, the warm bath and conjugal roles, the New Right ideal, welfare dependency, and the feminist replies to both.Open →
• Marxist and feminist theories of the familyRecall questions on the origins of monogamy, the family as a unit of consumption, the reproduction of labour power, and the liberal, radical and difference feminist accounts.Open →
• Postmodernism, the life course and personal lifeConfluent love, individualisation thesis and life course perspective on families.Open →

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Take Families and Households further

The same content, four other ways.

Commonly confused

Pairs that lose marks when they are blurred together.

• Birth rate vs Total fertility rate

  Birth rate: the number of babies born alive per thousand of the whole population in a year. Total fertility rate: children per woman across her childbearing years.

• Vertically extended family vs Horizontally extended family

  Vertically extended family: an extended family that adds generations above or below the couple. Horizontally extended family: an extended family that adds relatives of the same generation.

• Joint conjugal roles vs Segregated conjugal roles

  Joint conjugal roles: conjugal roles in which tasks and leisure are shared. Segregated conjugal roles: conjugal roles in which tasks and leisure are kept apart.

Questions from this topic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is the difference between a household and a family?

   Model answer

   A household is one person or a group of people living at the same address and sharing facilities, while a family is a group connected by blood, marriage, civil partnership or adoption.

2. 2

   How did Murdock define the family in 1949?

   Model answer

   Murdock defined the family as a social group sharing common residence and economic co-operation, containing adults of both sexes in a socially approved sexual relationship together with their own or adopted children.

3. 3

   Give one reason Murdock's claim that the family is universal has been challenged.

   Model answer

   Anthropologists point to societies such as the Nayar of Kerala, where a woman's brothers rather than a resident husband formed the child-rearing unit.

4. 4

   Why is Murdock's definition criticised as ethnocentric?

   Model answer

   It treats the Western heterosexual nuclear family as the model everywhere and excludes same-sex families, lone-parent families and communal arrangements that function perfectly well as families.

5. 5

   Define the term nuclear family.

   Model answer

   A nuclear family is two generations living together, a couple and their dependent children.

6. 6

   What is an extended family?

   Model answer

   An extended family is one extended beyond the nuclear unit, either upwards to grandparents or sideways to aunts, uncles and cousins.

What is inside Levo

Six ways to work the same material.

Families and Households revision questions

Is Families and Households examined at AS in WJEC Sociology?

Yes. It sits in AS Unit 1, which you take in the first year, so it is on the AS paper as well as counting towards the full A level.

What does Families and Households cover in WJEC AS-Level Sociology?

13 subtopics: defining families and households, family forms and family diversity in england and wales, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity in family life, marriage, cohabitation and singlehood, divorce and separation, fertility, birth rates and family size, life expectancy, ageing and the beanpole family, the domestic division of labour, power, decision-making and domestic violence, childhood and parent–child relationships, functionalist and new right theories of the family, marxist and feminist theories of the family and postmodernism, the life course and personal life. Each one has its own page with questions and model answers.

How is Families and Households organised?

By the WJEC 601-5237-0 specification, subtopic by subtopic, so it matches the order you are taught it in.