Family Diversity Essay - 1762 Words

A report investigating family diversity What is a family? Sociologist Brown defined a family as â€Å"a group of people who are related by kinship ties: relatives of blood, marriage or adoption† (Brown, 1998). But many people might argue this statement is not right anymore as this only defines a traditional family. There are many different types of family which include Nuclear, Cereal Packet, Extended, Single Parent, and Reconstituted. Over the years family life has become more diverse. There is a lot of evidence that there is no one particular family type in Britain. In this report I will be looking at the impact of diversity on the family; such as Social Class, Ethnicity, Sexuality and cultural differences in relation to family diversity.†¦show more content†¦This is a very rare type of Nuclear Family these days because women have equal rights to men and they also have careers and are joint ‘breadwinners’ in the family. Over the years the conjugal roles have changed and now most families have joint conjugal roles where a man and a woman share domestic tasks. Different ethnic and religious gro groups hold quite different values and beliefs, and these differences affect not only gender-role conceptions, the internal family division of labour and child-rearing, but alsoattitudes to work and other social institutions. (Michael Young, Peter Willmott, The Symetrical Family, 1973). This type of family involves additional family members. â€Å"Almost 36 million people in Britain now have experience of living as adults in the same home as another generation of their family† (www.telegraph.co.uk) There has been a slight increase in the number of extended families in the UK in recent history because of the increasing number of Asian ethnic minority households in the UK. Such family’s structure usually consists of grandparents, parents and children. There are 3 different types of Extended Family: vertical, horizontal and modified. Vertical Extended Family consists of three or more generations: grandparents, parents and children who live in a same household or nearby. People coming to live in Britain from other countries have helped creating greater family diversity. The increase ofShow MoreRelatedFamily Diversity2087 Words   |  9 Pagesa) Explain what is meant by the neo-conventional family (2 marks) Chester describes the neo-conventional family as a dual-earner family, in which both souses go to work. It is similar to Young and Willmotts idea of the symmetrical family. b) Explain the difference between expressive and instrumental roles. (4 marks) Expressive - homemaker, usually the females role as it is more caring and nurturing and stating that they should stay at home and be a housewife and not go to work. Read MoreFamily Diversity2452 Words   |  10 PagesDiversity In Families According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by comparable legal relationships-including domestic partnership, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership. Although many people (including social scientists) have understood familial relationships in the terms of blood, many anthropologists have argued that one must understand the notion ofRead MoreThe Importance Of A Family On Cultural Diversity1515 Words   |  7 Pagesbe a ‘family’ in various cultures. It will focus on three main points stated by Cheal, D (2001). The essay firstly looks at the different forms of family due to cultural diversity. Does it mean biology is important for kinship or can family be extended further than the blood? (Eriksen, 2004). 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Rapoport and Rapoport agreed that there are five types of diversity in a contemporary family, these are: OrganisationalRead MoreEssay on Diversity in Types of British Families595 Words   |  3 PagesDiversity in Types of British Families Britain has changed in many ways in recent years, not just by advancing in technology but in social ways too. One of these ways is the diversity in types of families. Fifty years ago, in would be extremely unusual to have a divorced family, a un cohabiting couple with children or lone parent families. Nowadays, Britain has the highest divorce rate in Europe and 40 percent of marriages end in divorce. There are a few reasonsRead More contemporary diversity in the structure of the family Essay2652 Words   |  11 Pages Q: Examine the sociological evidence concerning the idea that there is contemporary diversity in the structure of the family. The family is often seen as the corner stone of society. 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In both premodern and modern societies families have been seen as the most basic unit of a social organisation that carries out vital tasks, such as socialising children. Whereas a ‘household’ consists of a groupRead MoreRandom Family Is A Complex Web Of Diversities And Inequalities Essay1770 Words   |  8 PagesBehind every family lies a complex web of diversities and inequalities. In Leblanc’s Random Family the reader is introduced to the true lives of Jessica and Coco. These young women both become teen mothers and are forced to learn how to survive in their poverty stricken neighborhood. They utilize government subsidies but also take advantage of strong and weak ties in order to get what they want and need. Random family is an example of the power of a family as a social institution. The extensions