In Britain today, most people live in nuclear families - The aim of this piece of coursework is to look at different sources to investigate this hypothesis.

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In Britain today, most people live in nuclear families

The aim of this piece of coursework is to look at different sources to investigate the hypothesis above. This will show me whether despite the variation of attitudes in society today there is still a dominant view of the family and also different types of family in a household structure.

There is no single right or wrong definition for the family, which applies to all societies as families can come in all different shapes and sizes. The stereotypical view of husband and wife with two children no longer exists. An argument put forward by many sociologists is the family as a unit has lost many of its functions. For example in pre-industrial society parents’ are responsible for the health, welfare and education of their children. But now the state in the form of specialised organisations such as hospitals, schools and social security have adopted these roles. But I think it is difficult to say that the family has lost many of its functions when there is no clear definition for what a family is. In views of a British sociologist Ronald Fletcher “Parents are expected to do their best to guide, encourage and support their children in their educational and occupational choices and careers.” Quote taken from Sociology textbook.

Families vary enormously in structure and size from society to society, as do the roles played by different members. For instance, the nuclear family usually consists of two adults and their children that can be biological or adopted. The extended family may include three or four generations, as well as uncles, aunts, and cousins. In India, for example, households often include parents, all their children and all their children’s spouses and children, and sometimes the parents’ own brothers and sisters! However in recent years in western societies there has been an increase in the number of one-parent families, which may consist of an unmarried mother and her child or children, or else of a father or mother, left without a partner through death or divorce, and his or her children. The reconstituted family is becoming increasingly popular as the number of divorces and remarriages increases, so do the numbers of families, which are headed by stepmothers or stepfathers. The children of the family may be a combination of two or more previous marriages.

 There are many perceptions towards the family; some people are for the family and some against. The beneficial view of the family is that they can help each other, work for each other and influence the course of each other’s lives. Families can also provide the vital link between an individual and society. However there is a critical view of the family to balance with the benefits. Critics have pointed out the various harmful aspects of family life. They point out that violence against children and wives is commonplace and each year in Britain some children are actually beaten to death by their parents.

There have been attempts to abolish the family; probably the most famous is the kibbutz of Israel. The Israeli kibbutz or agricultural collective is an attempt to break away from the stereotypes of the family: members of the kibbutz live communally and bring their children up collectively, but even here, parent-child relationships are encouraged. The advantages of living in the kibbutz is that everyone is equal as jobs and procedures are shared between all the members, not one single person would keep to the same job. It is a large support network. But the disadvantages are that you would not have the chance to become individual in your own family as people are shaped to that of the whole kibbutz collective. As marriage is seen to be unimportant this could lead to a decline in the number of children born, also if children are born they are not the responsibility of the parents but of the whole group. They could feel disowned and not feel part of close support network that you would get n the family, you would live with the same people everyday for the rest of your life.

All cultures organise and structure the relationships between men and women though which society as a whole reproduces itself, but there is great variation in the rights and duties associated with marriage in different societies. In many cultures, marriage is theoretically regarded as a permanent bond, dissoluble only through divorce, but marriage may also be a temporary arrangement. Marriage can affect society by birth rates, government; availability of financial support, housing, education and healthcare, divorce rates and development of society. A person could have one partner this is called monogamy or many partners, polygamy in the case of men and polyandry in case of women. Most societies have rules prohibiting marriage amongst certain categories of kin (incest) and people may be forced to marry outside a ‘group’, exogamy. On the other hand, people also often marry within a specific category, endogamy. This is the case in Indian societies of people who marry into the same caste. For example in Sikhism marriage in seen to be a commitment for life, so it is the parents’ duty to find the right partner for their child. Although Western societies place great emphasis on romantic attraction and individual choice of marriage partner, marriage always involves a much wider group of people than the husband and wife; most other societies recognise this, and the wider kin group plays an important part in the choice of marriage partner, and in the exchange of gifts and payments such as dowry and bride wealth. Marriage in some religions like Christianity and Islam can be seen as an important rite of passage; it involves particular rituals, often religious in character, which emphasise the importance of marriage to society as a whole. In Hinduism marriage is the second stage in life and therefore it a sacrament or sacred ritual. In Christianity matrimony is regarded as a sacrament. However, unmarried cohabitation is an increasing phenomenon worldwide, especially in countries in which a diminishing number of people treat marriage as sacrament.

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Source one

Source one was collected from the government website that is specially devised to give statistics. The information from this source can be found at .  There have been large changes in family types in which children live as shown by the statistics. Over the last twenty years there has been a decrease of the number of dependant children living in couple families and in increase in the number of dependant children living in single parent families. In Spring 2002 when these statistics were complied around one fifth of dependant children in Great Britain lived in single/lone ...

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