Assess the view that working class underachievement in education is the result of home circumstances and family background.

Authors Avatar

Assess sociological views of the relationship between the family and industrialisation.

Industrialisation has had a significant affect upon the family and there are a variety of studies and theories to explore and explain the relationship between them.

Industrialisation occurred mainly during the 18th century. Before this, Britain was agricultural and the majority of its citizens were self-sufficient. The pre-industrial family, according to Wilmott and Young’s historical study of the family, was responsible for the production of the food and clothing, and would trade with neighbours or extended kin for other good they required and were unable to produce themselves. There was no separation between the home and the work place as the family was a unit of production, usually in agriculture or textiles, and roles were based on ascription rather than achievement. Duty and obligation to the family were key values and meant that role bargaining did not take place as family members accepted these roles without question.

Peter Laslett concluded that kinship based families and the classic extended family were the only two possible forms of pre-industrial families. He also found that from the mid 1500’s to 1800’s, only 10% of households contained kin beyond the nuclear family. He believed that due to short life expectancies and people marrying later in life, the gap between the death of a parent and the marriage of their children was short and meant that diverse family types did not exist.

Join now!

Michael Anderson’s research, however, directly opposes this view. He says that on average the size of a pre-industrial family was above six, and he concluded that “The pre-industrial family in Europe was characterized by diversity without any type of family predominant.” From the census figures, he found that ¼ of all households contained some form of extended kin, a direct contrast to Laslett’s view that extended kinship in families was almost non-existent. Lack of grandparents did not necessarily mean that family types were all nuclear however, as kinship networks could also consist of cousins and other relatives. This is a ...

This is a preview of the whole essay