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Introduction

Sociology Since the last 100 years family life has changed dramatically the way they behave and socialise, this essay will show what and how families have changed, they have changed in many different ways, some in a good and some in a bad way, I.e. more mothers work outside the house, more school educated, different races, useage of more technology, Murdock's view on families etc. This change has been brought up by the media, the environment families were in and inventing new things have also been a part of changing our family life's. The term family means that a group of people who live together under the same roof, who are socially-related to one another and that there is a sense of family as our universal kinship, its meant by that we are connected/related to each other by blood or marriage. An example of kinship relations is a mother and a child. There are three divisions of family, these are called, extended families/Nuclear families/ and re-constitutional families. George Peter Murdock, an functionalist sociologist, defined family as a quote, it stated that ''the family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic co-operation, and a reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least to of whom maintain a socially approved s****l relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted of the s******y co-habiting adults.'' ...read more.

Middle

In those days families relied on each other to get through life, I.E Hunters and Farmers, they had to work all together to get through the day, everyone had a job in the house. Extended families were placed a lot of emphasis on because that was your strength and network, for example if you had to work you could let your kid at your families house. But nowadays that has dramatically changed because no one has got time for one another, everyone is busy. There have been dramatic improvements such as transport, trying to make life more simple by inventing things such as technology, I.e. mobile phones, laptops, net-books, touch screen computers etc., one of the biggest improvements is that allowing families to be more open minded, moving further away from their traditional areas without being scared or having fears of being isolated, that is why day by day more and more women start to work outside the house. The women's role within the family was affected by World War II, they were the housewives when men went off to fight, men had a taste of being independent, and self reliance by working and earning their own money, even when the World War ended, most of them continued to work, that is why men are called bread-winners and their role is to provide for the whole family. ...read more.

Conclusion

There is a big lack of respect compared to 1960. In the later part of the 20th century family life has become more complex than the extended and nuclear family types earlier. A. Kuper & J. Kuper argue that a major reason for complexity is the high level rates of divorce, co-habitation, births to unmarried women (mothers) and reconstitute families, which means remarried families. All this is because there are more diverse pathways than the recent past. Overall we can see that there have been a lot of radical changes in the concept of family over the past 100 years. A lot of family generations lived together under the same roof or near by each other. We have moved from a time when men where the head of the family and the bread winners who provided the family and when women stayed at home as the home maker and child carer, they also used to do the household tasks which were laborious, time consuming and do things by hand because there were no such things as washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc. But over the past years technology has made the household chores easier by less time consuming. Education has improved opportunities in employment, people are more likely to get good paid jobs now. There are less children born because of the contraception although there is health care advance. The laws for women have changed, now women are equal to men, they have got the same right. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level Sociological Differentiation & Stratification section.