Families and households

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What is the domestic division of labour?

It refers to the roles men and women play.

For example,

  • Housework.
  • Childcare.
  • Paid work.

There are different views on this;

  • Functionalism.
  • The 'March of Progress' view.
  • Feminism.
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What are the Functionalist views on the domestic d

Parsons identifies two conjugal (married) roles:

  • Instrumental - Male Breadwinner role.
  • Expressive -  Female Homemaker role, nuturer/carer.

Parsons argues that this gender division of labour among couples is a functional fit for the family, its members and wider society.

He sees the division as biologically based:

  • Women are naturally more suited to nurturing.
  • Men to providing.
    • So everyone benefits from this specialisation.

The New Right agree with Parsons that this biologically based gender division of labour is the best way of organising family life.

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What is the March of Progress view on the domestic

They see conjugal roles becoming more equal in society.

Bott identifies two types of conjugal roles:

  • Segregated conjugal roles are seperate. There is a sharp divison of labour between the male breadwinner and the female homemaker, where lesuire time is spent seperately.
    • Young and Willmott found segregated conjugal roles in working-class extended families in Bethnal Green.
  • Joint conjugal roles involve couples sharing domestic tasks and lesuire.
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What is the March of Progress view on the domestic

What is the symmetrical family?

Young and Willmott see a long term trend towards joint conjugal roles, where roles are more similar and equal.

This is where:

  • Most women now go out to work.
  • Men help out with housework and childcare (the 'new man').
  • Couples spend their lesuire time together.
  • Men have become more home-centered and the family more privitised.

Why has the symmetrical family increased?

Due to the major social changes during the 20th century.

For example:

  • Higher living standards, labour-saving devices, better housing, women working and smaller families.
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What is the Feminist view on the domestic division

Feminists reject the March of Progress view.

They see the family as patriarchal, not symmetrical or equal.

This is because women still do most the tasks such as:

  • Housework.
  • Childcare.

Oakley found no evidence of symmetry in domestic labour.

  • She argued that Young and Willmott exaggerate mens role. Although husbands did help, this was very limited.

Boulton argues that we need to look at who is responsible for the tasks, not just who performs them.

  • The wife is seen as responsible for childrens welfare, even when men 'help'.
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According to the March of Progress view are couple

More women today are in paid work.

Therefore it is argued that this is leading to a more equal division of domestic labour.

Sullivan found:

  • Women now do less domestic work.
  • Men do more traditional 'womens tasks'.
  • More couples have a more equal division of labour.
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According to Feminists are couples becoming more e

They do not believe women working has led to greater equality.

Women now carry out a dual burden of paid and domestic work.

  • British Social Attitudes Survey found that women do twice as much and couples still divide households tasks along traditional gender lines.

Responsibility for children.

Although fathers help with specific tasks, its usually mothers that take responsibility for childrens well-being.

  • Dex and Ward found that only 1% of fathers took the main responsibilty for caring for a sick child.
  • Braun et al found that most fathers were 'background fathers'. They held a 'provider ideology': their role was breadwinner and not primary carer.
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According to Feminists are couples becoming more e

Responsibility for 'quality time'.

Women generally take responsibility for managing the familys 'quality time'.

But in late modernity, the 24/7 society and flexible working hours mean peoples time is more fragmented and de-routinised.

Working mothers find themselves juggling competing demands on their time.

The triple shift.

  • Duncombe and Marsden found that women were required to not only carry a dual burden, but a triple shift:
    • Emotion work.
    • Domestic labour.
    • Paid work.
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What is the first explanation of the gender divisi

1) The cultural or ideological explanation

Patrichal norms shape gender roles. Women perform more domestic labour because this is what society expects and has socialised them to do.

The evidence - Equality will only be acheived when attitudes, values and expectations, role models and socialisation changes.

There is some evidence for this:

  • Gershuny argues that couples are adapting to women working full time, establishing new norms of men doing more domestic work.
  • Kan found younder men do more domestic work.
  • British Social Attitudes found a long-term change in attitudes.
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What is the second explanation of the gender divis

2) The material or economic explanation.

Women earn less than men, so its economically rational for them to do more domestic labour while men spend more time earning money.

The evidence - If women earn as much as their partners, we should see couples doing more equal amounts of domestic work.

There is some evidence for this:

  • Arber and Gin found better-paid women could buy in products and services like childcare instead of carrying out domestic tasks themselves.
  • Ramos found that where the women is the full-time breadwinner, and the man is unemployed, they do equal amounts of domestic labour.
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Same sex couples and gender scripts.

Radical feminists argue that heterosexual relationships are inevitably patrichal and unequal - even when women are in paid work.

They constrast this with the same-sex relationship.

For example, Dunne's study if 37 lesbian couples with children found a more equal division of labour.

Dunne uses the idea of gender scripts.

  • Heterosexuals were socialised into gender scripts that set out different masculine and femine roles and gender identities.
  • Lesbians did not link household tasks to gender scripts, so they were more open to negotiation and thus more equal.
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Who controls the resources in the family?

Kempson found women in low-income families denied their own needs to make ends meet.

But even households with adequate incomes, resources are often shared, unequally, leaving women in poverty.

Unequal shares of resources are often the result of who controls the family's income and who makes the decisions about spending it - usually the man.

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Who makes the decisions in the family?

One reason men take a greater share of resources and demand a bigger say in decisions is because they earn more.

This is supported by Pahl and Vogler.

They identify two types of control over family income:

  • The allowance system is where men work and give their non-working wives an allowance from which they budget to meet the families needs.
  • Pooling is where partners work and have joint responsibility for spending.
    • For example, a joint bank account.

There has been a big increase in pooling in recent years.

However, Vogler found that men tended to make the major decisions, reflecting their greater earnings.

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What is Edgell find about decision making in profe

Edgell found that where both partners work full times there is inequalities.

  • Very important decisions, such as finances and moving house were either taken by the husband or with him having the final say.
  • Important decisions were usally taken jointly.
  • Less important decisions, such as food purchases were usually taken by the wife.

Explanations - There are two main explanations for inequalities in decision making:

  • Material - Men have more power because they earn more. Women are more economically dependent, so they have less say.
  • Cultural - Feminists argue, that gender role socialisation in patriachal society instils the idea that men are the decision makers.
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What is the personal life perspective on money?

Focuses on the meanings couples give to who controls the money.

The meanings that money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted.

Nyman argues that different couples give money different meanings. These meanings reflect the nature of relationships.

Smart found that some same-sex couples did not see the control of money as meaning either equality or inequality.

This may be because they do not enter relationships with thesame 'heterosexual baggage of cultural meanings', that see money as a source of power.

Hence Smart argues that it is essential to start from the personal meanings of the actors involved in the situation.

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What are the domestic violence statistics?

Domestic violence is too widespread to be the just the behaviour of a few 'disturbed' induviduals.

The British Crime Survey (BCS) estimated that there are 6.6 million assaults per year.

However, assaults are not random - they are mainly by men against women.

According BCS, nearly 1 in 4 women is assualted by her partner at some time.

However, police statistics under-estimate its extent because of under-reporting and under-recording:

Under-reporting - Domestic violence is a violent crime least likely to be reported to the police. The BCS estimated that under 1/3 of assauts are reported. Yearnshire found that on average a women suffers 35 assaults before reporting abuse.

Under-recording - Police are often unwilling to record, investigate or prosecute domestic violence because they are relectant to become involved in the 'private sphere' of the family. They often take the view that induviduals are free to leave if unhappy. Many women cannnot leave because they and their children are financially dependant on their partners. 

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What is the radical feminist explanation of domest

They see domestic violence as a result of patriarchy (male domination).

In their view, all societies are patriachal and the key is the division is between men and women.

  • Men oppress women, mainly throufh the family, where they benefit from womens unpaid domestic labour and sexual services. Domestic violence (or the threat of it) enables men to control women, so it is inevitable in patrichal society.
  • Men also dominate the state explaining why the police and courts fail to take domestic violence seriously.

Dobash and Dobash provide supporting evidence.

They found violence was triggered when husbands felt their authority was being challenged.

They conclude violence is legitimised in marriage by giving power to men.

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What is the materialist explanation of domestic vi

Focuses on the economic factors such as inequalities in income and housing to explain why some groups are more at risk:

Women are not the only group at risk.

Other groups likely to be victims include:

  • Children and young people.
  • Poor and lower clases.
  • Alcohol and illegal drug users.

Lack of resources

Wilkinson and Pickett argue that these patterns are a result of stress on the family caused by social inequality. Families that lack resources suffer more stress and this increases the risk of violence.

Marxist feminists also see inequality producing domestic violence. Ansley argues that male workers exploited at work take out frustration on their wifes.

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What are the cross-cultural differences in childho

Benedict argues that children in simpler, non-industrial societies are treated differently for their modern western counterparts:

  • They have more responsibility at home and work.
  • Less value is placed on obedience to adult authority.
  • Childrens sexual behaviour is often viewed differently.

Also, the behaviour expected of children and that expected pf adults is less clearly seperated.

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What is childhood in the West like?

Unlike in simpler societies, the modern Western notion of childhood has the following features:

  • Childhood is seen as a special, innocent time of life.
  • Children are seen fundementally different from adults - as physically immature and not competent to run their own lives.
  • Children need a lengthy, protected period of nuturing and socialisation.
  • Childhood is a distinct life stage.
  • According to Pilcher, a key feature of the modern idea of childhood is separateness.
  • According to Cunningham, children are seen as the opposite to adults, with the right to happiness.

These differences illustrate the key sociological idea that childhood is not fixed in the same form in all socities - different cultures construct it differently.

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What are the historical differences in childhood?

The modern Western idea of childhood is a relatively recent innovation.

According to Aries, in medieval Europe, the idea of childhood did not exist.

  • Children were not seen as having a different 'nature' to adults.
  • Work began from an early age.
  • Children were 'mini-adult' with the same rights, duties and skills as adults.

According to Shorter, parental attitudes towards children were very different, e.g. high child death rates encouraged indifference and neglect, especially towards infants.

The modern notion of childhood began to emerge from the 13th century:

  • Schools began to specialise only in the education of the young.
  • The church incresingly saw children as fragile 'creatures of God' needing discipline and protection from evils.
  • There was a growing distinction between childrens and adults clothing, setting children apart from adults.

Aries argues that this resulted in the 'cult of childhood' and 'the century of the child'.

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Why has the position of children changed?

Due to major social changes during the 19th and 20th centuries:

  • Lower infant mortality rates and smaller families means infants surviving meant that parents had fewer children and made a greater financial and emotional investments in them.
  • Specialist knowledge about childrens health, e.g. theories of child development stressed that children need supervision and protection.
  • Laws banning child labour from the 1840's onwards changed children from economic assets to economic liabilities.
  • Compulsory schooling since 1880 has created a period of dependency on the family and has seperated children from the adult work of work.
  • Child protection and welfare laws and agencies emphasised childrens vunerability and made their welfare a central concern.
  • The idea of childrens rights e.g. the Children Act sees parents as having 'responsibilities' towards their children rather than 'rights'.
  • Laws about social behaviour, e.g. minimum ages for a wide range of activites, from sex to smoking, reinforce the attitude that children are different from adults.

Industrialisation was the underlying cause, e.g. modern industry needs an educated workforce, so compulsery education is needed.

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What is the future of childhood?

Postman argues that childhood as we know it is dissapearing and children are becoming more like adults - gaining similar rights and acting in similar ways, e.g. clothing, leisure and even crime.

For Postman, this is a result of a television culture replacing print culture:

  • In print culture, children lacked the literacy skills needed to access information, so adults could keep knowldge like sex, money, violence and other 'adult' matters secret.
  • Television culture makes information avaliable to adults and children alike. The boundary between adulthood and childhood is broken down and adult authority is weakened.

However, Opie believes childhood is not dissapearing, e.g. a seperate childrens culture stills exists in the form of games, songs, jokes etc.

Others argue the Western childhood is not dissapearing but spreading.

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What does Jenks say about childhood in postmoderni

Jenks argues that modern society created childhood to prepare the induvidual to become productive future adults. To achieve this, the vunerable, undeveloped child needed to be nutured and protected.

In postermodernity, adults relationships become unstable and relationships with their children become adults last refuge from insecurity.

They become even more fearful for their safety, leading to a greater regulation of childrens lives.

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Has the position of children improved according to

Aries, Shorter and others argue that the position is steadily improving and today its better than its ever been.

Family and society have become more child-centered.

  • Children are better cared for in terms of their education, psychological and medical needs.
  • Most babies now survive and infant mortality rates have dropped.
  • Higher living standards and smaller family sizes mean parents can afford to provide for childrens needs.
  • Children are protected from harm and exploitation by laws against child abuse and child labour.
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What does Palmer mean by a toxic childhood?

Palmer argues that rapid technological and cultural changes are damaging childrens development.

For example:

  • Junk food.
  • Computer games.
  • Testing in education.
  • Long hours worked by parents.

Depriving children of a genuine childhood.

  • UK youth are at or near the top of the international league tables for obesity, self-harm, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and teenage pregnancies.
  • UNICEF ranked the UK 21st out of 25 for childrens wellbeing.
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What is the conflict view on whether the position

Conflict theorists, e.g. Marixists and Feminists argue that the March of Progress view is an over-generalised and idealised image. It ignores inequalities among children and between children and adults.

Inequalities among children:

Third world children have different life chnaces from those in the West and Western socities, there are:

  • Gender differences, e.g. girls are expected to do more housework.
  • Ethnic differences, Asian parents are more likely than parents of other ethnic groups to be stricter towards daughters than sons.
  • Class inequalities, e.g. poor children are more likely to die in infancy or so bad at school.

Inequalities between children and adults:

Child liberationists such as Firestone argue that extensive care and protection are just new forms of opression - e.g. being banned from paid work is not a benefit but a form of inequality, subjecting them to even greater adult control.

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How does age patriarchy effect childrens position

Gittins argues that there is an age patriarchy of adult domination that keeps children subordinate.

For example, adults exercise control over childrens time (e.g. bedtimes), space (e.g. where they are allowed to go) and bodies (e.g. what they eat and what they wear).

Adults make children economically dependant by preventing them from working, e.g. through child labour laws.

Adults control can lead to physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Resistance

Children may resist the restricted status of a 'child' by acting older, e.g. smoking and drinking alcohol etc.

For Hockey and James, this shows modern childhood is a status that most children want to escape.

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What is the Functionalist perspective on the famil

They see society based on a value consensus - a shared set of norms and values.

This shared culture enables members of society to co-operate to meet societys needs.

The organic analogy.

Functionalists see society as being like a biological organism.

  • The body is a system made up of different parts that function together to meet its needs and maintain it.
  • Society is a system made up of different but interdependant parts or sub-systems, such as institutions like the eduaction system, the economy, religion, the state etc.
  • The function of any part is the contribution, it makes to maintaining the social system as a whole.

The functions of the family.

The family plays a vital role in maintaining the social system as a whole, as well as meeting the needs of other sub-systems. Functionalists take a positive viw of the family seeing it as performing beneficial functions. However, there is a disagreement to what these functions are.

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What does Murdock believe about the functions of t

Argues that the nuclear family performs 4 essential functions for society and its members:

  • Stable satisfaction of sex drive with the same maritial partner. This prevents the social disruption would be caused by a sexual 'free-for-all'.
  • Reproduction of the next generation, without which society would cease to exist.
  • Socialisation of the young into societies norms and values enables new members to integrate into society.
  • Satisfaction of members economic needs e.g. providing food and shelter. In pre-industrial socities, the family is a unit of production but modern socities have become a unit of consumption only.

Practicality and universality

By performing these functions, the nuclear family helps to maintain social stability.

For Murdock, the 'sheer praticality' of the nuclear family as a way of meeting these needs explains why it is universal - found in all human societies.

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What is Parsons 'functional fit' theory?

Parsons argues that the kinds and range of functions the family performs depends on th etype of society in which it is found. This also determines the type of structure the family will have.

Parsons identifies 2 types of family structure:

  • The three-generational extended family, found in pre-industrial society.
  • The two-generational nuclear family, found in modern industrial society.

The extended family was multi-functional - a unit of both production and consumption, e.g. all members worked the land together, and it often performed military, religious or other functions.

The nuclear family fits the two key needs of modern society.

  • Geographical mobility - Where industries constantly spring up and decline in different places. It is easier for the compact two-generation nuclear family to move to where the jobs are.
  • Social mobility - Because status in industrial society is achieved and not ascribed, adult sons can now achieve higher status than their fathers. Breaking away to set up their own nuclear family unit removes the status conflict that would result if they stayed.
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According to Parsons, what are the two irreducible

  • Primary socialisation of the young, equipping the next generation with basic skills and societys values.
  • Stabilisation of adult personalities, enabling adults to relax and release tensions so that they can return to work and perform their roles effectively.

Parsons also believes in segregated conjugal roles:

Distinguishing between the male instrumental and the female expresive role.

He sees the gender division in labour within the family as biologically based.

For example, women give birth and this is why they are suited to the expresive role.

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What is the New Right perspective on the family?

Its a political rather than sociological perspective.

It is a conservative view on the family based on the following assumptions:

  • A biologically based divison of labour:
    • Like Functionalists, the New Right see the divison of labour in the family between a male breadwinner and a female homemaker as natural and biologically determined. Similarly, they see the nuclear family with segregated roles as the best place in which to socialise children.
    • Families should be self-reliant:
    • Reliance on the state welfare leads to a dependency culture, undermining traditional gender roles and producing family breakdown and lone parent families.
    • Lack of a male role model for boys results in social problems and delinquency.
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What is the Marxists perspective on the family?

Conflict view of society,

It sees modern capitalists as divided into 2 classes:

  • The capitalist class (or bourgeoisie), who own the means of production.
  • The working class (or proletarait), who own only their labour, which they are forced to sell to the capitalists in return for wages. This enables the capitalist employer to exploit the working class in order to produce profit.
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For Marxists, what are the functions of the family

Marxists see all institutions in capitalist society as contributing to the maintenance of exploitation. The family in seen as an opressive institution that performs several important functions for capitalism:

  • Passing on wealth:
    • Engels argues that, as private property became more important, men who controlled it needed to ensure they could pass it to their own sons and this led to a monogamous marriage. But this also meant the women becoming the private property of her husband, who controlled her sexuality to ensure he was the father to her children.
  • Ideological functions:
    • Zaretsky argues that there is a 'cult of private life' - the belief that we can only gain fufilment from family life - and this distracts us from the expolitation.
  • Unit of consumption:
    • Capitalism needs consumers to buy its products. The family is an important market for consumer goods and therefore enables capitalists to make profits.
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What is the liberal feminist theory of the family?

Argue that gender inequality is gradually being overcome through legal reforms and policy changes (such as equal pay), challenging stereoypes and changing peoples attitudes and socialisation.

This is a 'March of Progress' view - e.g. the 'new man' is becoming more wide spread.

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What is the Marxists feminist theory of the family

They argue that capitalism is the main cause of womens opression in the family and this performs several functions for capitalism:

  • Reproducing the labour force, where women socialise the next generation of workers and service the current ones, for free.
  • Absorbing mens anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism. Wives soak up their husbands frustration that comes from being expolited at work.
  • A reserve army of cheap labour but when not needed, women workers return to their domesric role.

Marxist feminists argue that womens opression in the fmaily is linked to the exploitation of the working class. Therefore the family must be abolished at the same time as capitalism.

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What is the radical feminist theory of the family?

Argue that patriachy is the main cause of womens opression. The family and marriage are the key patrichal institutions.

  • Men benefit from womens unpaid domestic labour and sexual services.
  • Men dominate women through violence or the threat of it.

For radical feminists, the patriachal system must be overturned and the family abolished.

Some believe in 'political lesbianism' and complete separtatism from men.

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What is the difference feminism theory on the fami

They argue that not all women share the same experiences of opression - women of different ethnicities, class backgrounds etc may have different experiences of the family.

For example, by regarding the family a solely a source of opression, white feminists neglect black womens experience of racism.

Many balck feminists view the black family as positively a source of support in a racist society.

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What is the personal life perspectives theory of t

Takes a 'bottom up' approach: to understand families we must look at the meanings individual family members give to their relationships.

This constrasts with functionlism, marxism and feminism, which take a 'top down', structural approach.

By focusing on peoples meanings, PLP draws attention to a range of other personal relationships that are important to people even though they may not be conventionally defined as 'family'.

These include all kinds of relationships that induviduals see as significant and that give them a sense of relatedness, such as relationships with same-sex chosen families, fictive kin, friends, dead relatives and even pets.

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Whether a population is growing, declining or stab

  • Birth and immigration, increasing population.
  • Death and emmigration, decreasing population.
  • Natural change which is the number of births minus the number of deaths.
  • Net migration is the number immigrating into a country minus the number emigrating from it.
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Reasons for the fall in birth rate?

Changes in the position of women:

  • Increased educational oppurtunities.
  • More women working.
  • Changes in attitudes to family life and womens role.
  • Easier access to divorce.
  • Access to abortion and contraception.

Remember to explain how such factors effect the birth rate.

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Other reasons for the fall in birth rate?

Fall in the infant mortality rate can be caused by:

  • Improved housing.
  • Improved sanitation, nutrition, including that of mothers.
  • Knowledge of hygiene and child health.
  • Health services for mothers and children.

Medical factors did not play much of a part until the 1950's, when the IMR began to fall due to mass immunisation, antibiotics and improved midwifery.

Children as an economic liability:

Until the late 19th century children were an economic asset but now are an economic liability:

  • Laws banning child labour and introducing compulsery schooling means they remain economically dependant for longer.
  • Changing norms about childrens rights to a higher standard of living raises their costs.

As a result, parents may be unable to afford to have a large family.

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How has an increase in child centeredness caused a

Childhood is now socially constructed as a uniquely important period and this has led to a shift from 'quantity' to 'quality'.

Parents now hae fewer children and lavish more attention and resources on these few.

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What are the effects of a falling birth rate?

Lower birth rate and fetility rates have several effects on the family and society.

The dependency ratio is the relationship between the size of the working class population and the size of the non-working (dependent) population.

  • The working populations earnings and taxes support the dependant population.
  • Children are a large part of the dependent population, so fewer children decreses the burden.

Public services as fewer schools and child health services may be needed, and less needs to be spent on maternity and paternity leave.

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What are the reasons for the fall in death rate?

Improved nutrition: According to McKeown, better diet accounted for half the reduction in death rate, increasing peoples resistance to infection.

Medical improvements: From the 1950's, the death rate fell due partly to medical factors such a vacination, antibiotics, blood transfusion, better maternity services and the creation of the NHS.

Public health improvements: Enforced laws led to improved public health, e.g. better housing, purer drinking water and cleaner air etc.

Other social changes such as the decline of dangerous manual occupations, smaller families reducing transmission of infection, greater public knowledge of causes of illness and higher income.

Falling infant mortality: Low life expectancy in 1990 was largely due to the high IMR. As the IMR fell, life expectany rose.

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