Changing relationships within families

Overview

Pre-industrial families and industrialisation, Willmott and Young's symmetrical family and stratified diffusion, privatised families, the new man, caring for relatives, and arranged marriage.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

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1. 1

   What were family relationships like in pre-industrial Britain?

   Model answer

   Pre-industrial families were often units of production, working together on farms or in cottage industries. Peter Laslett's research on parish records suggests that most English households were nuclear, not extended.

2. 2

   How did Parsons think industrialisation changed the family?

   Model answer

   Parsons argued that industrial society needed workers who could move to where the jobs were. The small, isolated nuclear family fitted this need better than the extended family.

3. 3

   What was the idea of separate spheres?

   Model answer

   Separate spheres was the nineteenth-century belief that men belonged in paid work and public life, and women in the home. The idea spread as industrialisation moved work out of the home into factories.

4. 4

   Who were Willmott and Young, and how did they research family change?

   Model answer

   Peter Willmott and Michael Young were British researchers writing from a functionalist perspective. Willmott and Young surveyed almost 2,000 people in and around London for The Symmetrical Family in 1973.

5. 5

   What four stages of family life did Willmott and Young describe?

   Model answer

   Willmott and Young described the pre-industrial family, the early industrial family, the symmetrical family and the managing director family. The managing director family was work-centred, with the wife running the home.

6. 6

   What is a symmetrical family?

   Model answer

   A symmetrical family is a home-centred nuclear family in which both partners contribute equally. Partners share chores and decisions, though each may still do different tasks.

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