AS revision - family & households

AS Sociology revison – family & households

Definig the family & family types

Murdock used the following definition of the family as a s starting point in his classic cross national study of families in more than 250 societies

“A social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction.”

Family types

The Nuclear Family – two parents with biological children living in one household

The reconstituted family – two partners living in one household sharing parental duties for one or more children, but only one of them is the biological parent.

The single parent family – one adult with one or more children living in one household

The extended family – where relatives such as uncles/ aunts or grandparents reside permanently in the same household as those making up the nuclear family

A household -   a group of people who share a residence in common and share such things as meals, bills, facilities or chores, or…