Attitudes to gay and Lesbian families

Rationale

For my study, I am proposing to see what the attitudes towards Gay and Lesbian families and how they different from regular families. I chose this because it is interesting and I could imagine would yield unusual results.

I believe that in today’s ever changing society, people will have varying opinions but will regard any two people in a relationship, under a household, a family.

My objectives for my study will be to find contexts which relates to this subject, so I can get an outline and foundation of studies that may have already been done for my own study. My next objective will be to find out peoples opinions on the matter and assess their views.

Context

Allan and Crow (2001) study family diversity and say that families have changed because of rising divorce rates, which has affected many Western world countries, which is related to their other contributing reason, which is that single parent households have increased in number, because of divorced but as well as people don’t feel they need to legitimise pregnancy with marriage. This then links to the fact that marriage rates have fallen because people have started marrying later.

Due to this, variations from a standard family unit has become acceptable, and Gay and Lesbian families are more commonplace, just as Allan and Crow as well as other sociologists agree that homosexual families do constitute as proper families.

Ann Oakley (1982) described a typical or normal family as “conventional families are nuclear families composed of legally married couples, voluntarily choosing the parenthood of one or more (but not too many) children.” Leech (1967) called this the ‘cereal packet image of the family’. The idea of this kind of family is popular among advertisements for “family sized” products.

Sociologists such as Barrie Thorne have argued with the one sided views of this kind of family, which has domesticated women into a housewife stereotype and gave the husband the “breadwinner” image. As a result, people’s views of a family are restricted to this which doesn’t allow for any other kinds of families to be portrayed as normal.

These two studies are relevant to my own study as the first shows that family diversity has increased because of the way our society has changed, and the way people are more open minded as their own lives have moved along. The main reason for including this context is because it is a modern and recent approach to our modern society. As a result, different kinds of families have been considered as normal and acceptable.

The second study is appropriate because it describes how older sociological views consider anything but the nuclear family to be deviant and would cause them to be marginalised against society. It also describes how other forms of society such as the media also helped portray a conventional family as a nuclear family.

Using these two contexts I can compare my data after my study to see if people still have views that are similar to older sociological ideologies or whether society has moved on and taken on a newer approach.

Methodology

My suggested method to find ...

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Methodology

My suggested method to find out the required information for my study is to use questionnaires, as they would eradicate many problems which may arise in interview situations, which would have been my next option.

The problems that are eradicated are things like interview bias so the interviewee would not try to answer questions to please me, which is also called The Hawthorne effect. Also, by not being involved in actively gathering the information, the participant won’t be affected by certain issues such as my class or personality.

The strengths of my choice in obtaining data are that questionnaires are quick and cheap so it won’t cause any major inconvenience by taking part in it. They’re also reliable and standardised and give open ended answers, which will give further information and insight such as meanings and motives, which is what I am aiming for. Lastly, I can look for patterns in answers which will help make comparisons and allow to me to make generalisations.

Weaknesses are that respondents may not tell the truth which would mean the questionnaires aren’t very valid. Another weakness is that the questions may be misleading or may mean different things to different people, which may not be helpful if they give information which I’m not asking for.

I want to use questionnaires because I can set the questions in a format I want, such as closed or open questions, to receive a specific type of answer. However, as I mentioned I weaknesses of questionnaires, the respondent may not understand the question or answer it a certain way. By doing this the questions are standardised which makes them reliable, so that anyone emulating my study would be achieve approximately the same results.

Things I have to consider when planning and writing my questionnaire is that the questions need to be clear and simple so they’re easy to understand. By doing this, I won’t confuse the respondent or cause them to reply with information that would be useless to me. I also need to have clear instructions and a simple layout so I don’t intimidate anyone. Another thing I need to take into account is that on multiple choice questions, I have to give multiple choices to choose as an answer, so the respondent isn’t lead to choose a certain answer. Lastly, I need to give relevant answers that relate to my subject, otherwise I won’t obtain information that I need.

My choice in respondent in 6th form students, all of whom have different backgrounds and stereotypes, so I believe I would receive a variety of answers. However, as the participants all attend the same 6th form, then they may share certain beliefs and values, which may give similar answers in results.

I’m going to hand out my questionnaires to 15 6th form students because there would be too much data to process and view for patterns, as they are all open ended questions.

Evidence

The objective of my study is to find out what people’s opinions are on families, and whether homosexual families are considered deviant of the norms of society, or whether they can be considered conventional and be accepted.

People from the questionnaires generally defined a family as being a place where adults choose to raise children happily in a loving household. This has changed from older sociological views, where people believed a family was where a man and woman raised children. A possible explanation for the change may have been that, despite my efforts, my questions may have been misleading, or the participants misunderstood the questions. A more likely explanation as I hypothesised is that in our modern society, people have become more open minded and accepting of differences in individuals.

When participants were asked why this was their definition, they seemed to be unsure, which may have been the format of the question, but the majority of people said that, they were brought up to believe that a family is a place where adults and possibly children live happily in love.

When respondents were asked whether homosexual families were normal, their answers were of a mixed response, some said yes because everyone is entitled to be happy, whereas others said as long as they don’t have children. This shows views have changed along with our society but some people still don’t believe it is conventional to raise children in an unusual but normal family.

People generally agreed that homosexual stereotypes or views came from religion and the media. This shows that both still have dominion over views in our society and would probably lead to an interesting find, if investigated further.

Opinions, for and against homosexuality, have changed recently which participants agreed with. They said they believe this is because family diversity is more normal and there are more homosexual couples in society to avoid breaking any norms. Also because civil partnerships have became legal for homosexuals and as a result, to think that these are bad things would be considered deviant as they’ve now been introduced as norms into the society.

Those who did my questionnaire ended by saying that they believe homosexual families are generally accepted in society because love and happiness is the important feature in a household. However, some disagreed and noted that, as homosexuals are a minority in society, that they will be rejected or marginalized, as some traditionalists cannot accept change.

Evaluation

Overall, I think my study was successful and achieved the goals to which I had aimed. However, lack of experience in conducting a study may have altered my results which, had I been more efficient or affective in may have given more or less valid results. I also believe that if this study would be done again in the future, it may have similar or more positive results towards homosexual families, which would mean that my study is reliable.

A problem faced during this study was that this study had not been done or there it was not popular enough to use contexts upon to base my investigation. As a result if I had to interpret other contexts, which may not be the point the sociologist was trying to make. Another problem may have been that despite my efforts not to be misleading, I may have given the impression that I wanted a participant to answer a certain way. I do not believe this was the case though, as most participants gave an equal amount of for and against views. A problem I do believe occurred however was that my questions may have been complicated or the participants may not have understood because some questions were not answered. If I were to repeat the study, a solution to this may be to use more than one methods of research and to compare advantages and disadvantages of each one more closely. One of the largest problems was that not all of the questionnaires were filled out so without a large response rate, I cannot get a valid view of what people’s opinions are. Lastly, a problem that can be considered a possibility is that people may have not told the truth, which would also affect the validity.

Positive points are that I achieved my rationale, by finding out what people believed to be a normal family and if homosexual families can be considered conventional. Also that my hypothesis was correct and people generally believed homosexual families are normal and that people are more accepting in today’s society.