An investigation looking at nuclear families and the roles and responsibilities of each member in Britain today.

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 INTRODUCTION

Thesis: An investigation looking at nuclear families and the roles and responsibilities of each member in Britain today.

This investigation seeks to identify whether the changes in our society have affected the roles and responsibilities of the members of nuclear families or not, and if so, then how and to what extent.

The conventional nuclear family is seen as the best type of family for modern life by functionalists and the New Right. However the number of nuclear families in Britain has been in decline as there has been a massive rise in other families such as lone parent families. The roles of nuclear families are often stereotyped in media and politics. The stereotype contains two ideas:

  1. that a family should be made up of father, mother and children
  2. that the father and mother should have different roles. It is assumed that men are naturally better suited for the world of work, and that women are better at doing domestic work, looking after the home and family.

For functionalists, the conventional nuclear family is the ideal family for modern society because it fits the needs of society so well, and makes the best use of men and women’s different natural abilities. Functionalists like Parsons who were writing some years ago before the rise of feminism made assumptions that women should not go out to work. Recently a new set of ideas have arisen. The New Right View is concerned by the decline e of the nuclear family. It is argued that the stable environment children need has been undermined by a whole series of changes beginning in the 1960s.

In this investigation, I am going to look at whether these stereotypes are proven to be right or wrong. Also, I will look at how the conventional nuclear family is portrayed in society by the media as well as other members of society.

I chose this topic to research because I find it interesting and it is a topic that has always raised a few questions in my mind. I myself have lived in different types of families, one of them being a nuclear family. The opinions and preconceptions about nuclear families held by other people in our society always made me curious. I was always intrigued to find how some stereotypes could be totally incorrect and misleading. So, I wanted to research this topic to see if people still hold those same views or has there been any changes.

I am going to use the following questions as the basis of my research:

  • Are men still seen as the main breadwinners of the family?
  • Are women the housewives, taking care of the house and the family?
  • Have the roles of the children extended from being just children? Do they have any responsibilities?

To carry out my investigation, I will use a selection of research methods. This will include questionnaires and interviews.

METHODOLOGY

To research for information in order to reach a conclusion for my investigation, I will need to use a selection of methods. These are:

  • social surveys- questionnaires
  • informal interviews
  • participant observation
  • use of secondary data such as books, Internet, newspapers, magazines, television etc.

After I have collected all the necessary information for my investigation, I will need to produce the results in the form of quantitative data by using pie charts, tables, graphs etc. I will also represent some information as qualitative data. This is descriptive, in the form of words rather than numbers.

Whether the findings of my research are acceptable or not will depend on the validity or reliability of the information or maybe even both. The Validity refers to whether the findings accurately reflect the reality they are describing. The validity can be altered if someone decides to fill in a questionnaire in the way he/she thinks the researcher would like to get rather than the most truthful way. The reliability refers to whether the findings can be checked by another researcher. If so, the research is said to be reliable. Both validity and reliability are important but sociologists do not agree on whether validity or reliability is more important.

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Questionnaire- I have produced a questionnaire that I will fill out as I interview 15 different people. The sample that I have chosen to interview belongs to large age group, from 12 to 35 years old. I have decided to use a questionnaire because the results are comparable as all respondents answer the same questions. I decided to use interview questionnaires because they generally have a good response rate and also it allows me to explain the purpose of the research and answer any questions that they may have. In my questionnaire I have used both closed questions and ...

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