Saturday 24th August.
Today I read chapters 6,7 and 8 and continued to make notes.
Sunday 25th August
Today I read chapter 9,10 and 11 and finished the book as well as my notes on the book. This book has been extremely useful, as it has given a huge insight into the questions I need to ask in my research, as well as similar studies to what I am doing.
Monday 26th August
Today I went to Derby City library and looked for another book to help me with my research, but there wasn’t any which really looked in depth into one study regarding the family. So, as time is running out I have decided to use the information out of my sociology text book, Introduction o Sociology by Mike O’ Donnnell. Even though this is not the type of information I really wanted it does go into depth about certain individual studies, which will be useful
Tuesday 27th August
Today I read the chapter in Introduction o Sociology by Mike O’ Donnnell on Households, Families and Marriage (page’s 52-81) and made notes. This book contained very similar information as ‘The Family’ but it did contain more quotes and figures than the family did, so it was still useful.
Wednesday 28th August
Today I looked though Sociology Review Volume 11 and found some interesting articles in issue 1, ‘Understanding family diversity’ by Jon Bernardes (pages 10-13) and ‘The marriage debate’ (pages 28-29), which I made, notes on. I also re-wrote my notes on Chapter 5 – ‘Families’ – ‘Divorce and the changing nature of families’ - from John C, Coleman and Leo B. Hendry, 1980 The Nature of Adolescence as these are extra notes I can use when writing about similar studies. I also wrote a short hypothesis, of what I hope to find through my research, too.
Thursday 29th August
Today I wrote some of the similar studies looking into the nuclear family and why it is becoming a thing of the past. I also wrote what my research method is and why I choose it, too.
Friday 30th August
Today I wrote out my surveys and asked 10 people who I knew, who fitted the quota sample and asked them the questions of my survey.
Sunday 1st September
Today I wrote up a short evaluation about my people study, as well as going over all of my pilot study and working out how I’d improve it for my real study.
Pilot Study
Is the ‘nuclear family’ still the norm in British society?
Hypothesis
When writing about the family George Murdock (1949) wrote, “It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved relationship, and on or more children, own or adopted, of sexually cohabiting adults.” This research attempts to look at if Murdock’s ‘family’ is still the norm in British society. I expect my findings will confirm that Murdock’s ‘family’ is decreasing in percentage. The reason being that Murdock’s model of the family does not allow for divorce, re-structured families, single parents, cohabitation couples, extended families etc these reasons I hypothesise that Murdock’s ‘family’ is no longer the norm in British society, but it is on the course of a rapid decrease because the rise in divorce, re-structured families, single parents, cohabitation couples, extended families and serial monogamy is steadily increasing.
Similar studies
Various sociologists have investigated into the nuclear family and whether it is still the norm. However there has not been one importicular sociologist who has investigated the subject as whole but Sociologists have looked into the following studies:
- Explaining types of Families in Britain:
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George Murdock in his 1949 book, Social structure he claims, “The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes at last 2 of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of sexually cohabiting adults”.
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Liz Steel & Warren Kid in their book “The Family” describe the nuclear family as a “mother, farther and children living together in harmony with mother looking after home and farther going to work to support the others.”
- Explaining the is the nuclear family still the norm in Britain:
It is no longer the norm:
- “Less than 30% of households in Britain typically consist of a married couple in their children”
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Jon Bernardes in his book ‘The family in question’ (1990). “I purpose that there is no such thing as ‘normal families’ [the nuclear family]. ”
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Talcott Parsons (1955) in the book Family socialisation and Interaction Process “the changes that have taken place in the family and the nature of the modern family are related to the impact of the process of industrialisation”
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Mike Featherstone (1991) “we can no longer point to a single, all uncompromising family type or structure and say for sure that this type is the most common”
It is still the norm
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Robert Chester (1985) “argues that the nuclear family and marriage remain the normative experience for the great majority of Britons”
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Mike O’Donnell “…the majority of married people still do not get divorced but remain committed, more or less happily to one partner for life”
- Explained the reasons for the decrease in the nuclear family:
Liz Steel & Warren Kid
- “There has been a huge rise in the proportion of married women working outside the home”
- “The increase in the extended, single-parent family and constituted families”
- “…The increase of co-habitation…”
- “As society changes so does the family”
- “Divorce increased markedly from the 1970’s but became relatively stable in the 1990’s”
The General Household survey 1989 proposes,
- “By 1989 cohabiting couples and their children formed 26% households”
- “Single person households increased from 17% from 1971 to 25% in 1989”
- The proportion of single parent families increased from 8% in 1971 to 17% in 1989. 15% wee lone mothers and 2% lone fathers.
The change in the reasons why people marry:
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Philippe Aries (1973) “suggests that before the rise of individualism under capitalism, marriage was usually a matter of economics: it was based on the exchange of property”
The Change in women roles
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Wilmott & Young (1975) “Husband now do their fair share of the domestic chores”
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Gittens (1993) “Traditionally a man’s place was at work, however it is slowly becoming more acceptable for men to be house husbands…”
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Anthony Giddens (1992) “The male control of females sexuality with the traditional patriarchcal family and the ideology of the compulsory heterosexuality are both being broken down and as a consequence our traditional notions of family life and relationships are changing
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Hannah Gavron (1960): (The captitive wife: conflicts of household mothers) Technique- investigated how much personal freedom middle and working class young mothers had in their marriage by completing unstructured interview.
Found: “Clearly the nature of women’s roles is changing”
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Helen Crowley “Women have acquired a political voice”
Diversity
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Judith Stacey (1990) “Contemporary family diversity has opened up a great deal of choice for omen: family structure have changed and are sill changing, divorce is more commonplace than ever before as are illegitimacy, homosexuality and cohabitation.”
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David Morgan (1996) “Diversity in family forms may be evidence of the wider plurality, fragmentation and fluidity that characterises post-modern society”
Sex
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Giddens (December 1995) the transformations in the attitudes to sexuality that have occurred have liberated individuals from traditional family values, leaving them much freer to explore their sexuality in ways that were previously deemed deviant”
- Mike O’ Donnell
- “Improved methods of birth control and the resultant decrease in the fertility rate families tend to be much smaller
- “Many people no longer associate sex with marriage
Divorce
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Liz Steel & Warren Kidd: Reasons for increase in Divorce rates:
- Changes in the law
- Its more socially acceptable
- Young people have high expectations of marriage and there often not met
- Increased awareness of women’s rights might make more women file for divorce as society now expects them to be treated much better than in the past
- Longer life expectancy might mean that as married couples grow older they grow apart
- Increased economic pressure
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David Morgan (1996) “…for many in society divorce…has become another commonplace point in the life coarse of the individual.”
Increase in reconstituted families
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Mike O’Donnell “In a society in which at least 1 out of 3 marriages involves partner who is remarrying, the reconstituted family is becoming increasingly common”
Increase in lesbian and homosexual led families
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Mike O’ Donnell “The number of lesbian and homosexual couples who bring up children is small but increasing
Increase in lone parents
- Hillary Land (1995) – Facts on lone motherhood
- There has been a rise in lone motherhood during the 1980’s
- The majority of lone mothers were reliant upon state benefit
- Only ¼ of lone mothers were receiving support from the absent farther
- By 1987 14% of families with dependent children were lone parents
- In 1989, 664,000 lone parents received state benefit to provide for over a million children
- By 1989 27% of all births took place outside marriage
- In 1989 75% of all births to teenage girls took place outside marriage
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Social Trends 1997: “In 1994 1 in 5 families with dependent children in Britain were headed by single parents, over 90% of whom were women”
Research Method
For my research I have chosen to complete an extensive survey to find out if the nuclear family is still the norm in British society. The reason I have chosen to complete a survey is because it will produce a wide variety of data, which can easily be, turned into quantitative data i.e. percentages. These will allow me to easily analyse and draw conclusions to whether the nuclear family is the norm in Britain today. I have chosen to use a Quota Sampling. The Quota, which I shall use, will be 5 females and 5 males from the age range 20-70. As this will allow my research to be more representative allowing me to make more accurate conclusions to whether the nuclear family is still the norm in British society. In order to gather the information accurately and quickly, I will use a questionnaire with closed questions. As when it comes to writing up my results I will be able to clearly work out percentages, and conclusions than I would if I used open questions, which would mean I would have to depict, the questions fist, leading to a wider chance of gathering in accurate results. The questionnaire, which I used when conducting my survey, are on pages 9-11. The 10 people I interviewed were 10 people who I knew who fitted the quota sample requirement. By conducting a survey in this way will allow me to collect the data easily and quickly and cost effectively, which is an added bonus.
Survey Results
From the results of my results I am able to conclude that the Nuclear family is becoming a thing of the past as according to my results only 20% of the people who I interviewed claimed to have a nuclear family. The reason being that other types of households were emerging such as cohabitation, flat shares and lone parents, showing the nuclear family to be a thing of the past. When attempting looking into reasons for the decrease in the nuclear family, I found some interesting results. I found that serial Monogamy was extremely common as 40% of the people I interviewed had been married more than once, which is one of the reasons for the decrease in the nuclear family. Another reason I found that could be linked to the decrease in the nuclear family is that of the amount of people who have children out of wedlock. I found that 20% of the people I interviewed were lone parents. All of the results I found from survey are displayed on pages 12-17 of my pilot study.
Evaluation
The a pilot study of my research into the family has been extremely useful, as it has given me an insight into the aspects of the family, which I have never considered I would need to investigate into if I hadn’t conducted the research. This especially regards to the changing role of women as being one of the reasons for the change in the family.
By conducting the pilot study I am able to think of how to improve my research study when it comes to he real thing. The key elements, which I realised, were unsuitable for my research was the structure of the questionnaire. The reason being that as he questions included a lot of open ended questions, in my real research I will attempt to use more closed questions allowing myself to more effectively figure out the results and conclusion.
For one of the questions when I ask about what type of family do you have, I will have a piece of paper with a list of the descriptions of and ask them to pick which one they have. This will allow me to see if the nuclear family is still the norm more efficiently. The reason beginning that in my pilot study I found that, I asked about marital status and children separately which made it more difficult when analysing my results to see if people were really in a nuclear family or not.
Also in regards to the questionnaire I will attempt to include more questions about why the nuclear family is becoming a thing of the past such as what are their feelings on the topic. I will also ask more in-depth questions into their family situation such as why did they divorce, do single choose to be on their own and if so why? As this will allow me to make more accurate conclusions into why the nuclear family is no longer the norm in Britain today.
When conducting my survey for my research I have also decided to survey 50 people instead of 10 as this will allow me to have a more representative analysis of the population as it will include more of the population but will still allow me to easily turn my results into quantitative data.
Overall, after completing my pilot study, I have found it extremely useful as it has helped me to think of ways of adapting my research to allow for a more representative and useful piece of research.
Questionnaire
- How old are you?
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Are you Male of Female? Male Female
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Are you? Straight Gay Bi-sexual
- What is you occupation?
- Where do you live?
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Are you married? Yes No
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Have you been married before? Yes No
- How many years?
- At what age were you when you got married?
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Why did you get married? Love Money Children
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Have you been married before? Yes (q13) No
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How many times? 1 2 3 4
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Why did you get divorced? No longer in love Financial reasons
Your expectations of marriage weren’t met Grew apart
Other =
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Do you want to get married? Yes No
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Why?
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Do you have any children? Yes No
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How many? 1 2 3 4 5
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Do you want children in the future? Yes No
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Why?
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Do you live with the farther of the children? Yes No
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Are you a lone parent? Yes No
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Do you receive financial support from him? Yes No
- Do you receive financial support from the government for your children?
Yes No
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Are you parts of a step - family? Yes No
- Does your partner have any children from a previous marriage?
Yes No
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Do you have any children from a previous marriage? Yes (Q23) No (Q24)
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Do they live in your household? Yes No
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Do they live in your household? Yes No
- In your view who has the final in an argument in your household?
Man Women Equal
- Who does the majority of the cleaning in the household?
Male Female Equally
- Who does the majority of the DIY in the household?
Male Female Equally shared
- Who raises the children in your household?
Man Woman Equal
- Where do your parents live?
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Do they give you financial support? Yes No
