quote a 1990 article in the ‘journal of marriage’. it states that mortality rate in:

• non-married women = 50% higher than married
• non-married men = 250% higher than married

'Policing of Families'

safe and secure institution. freedom & self expression away from repressive, exploitative society.

• loved
• appreciated
• humanised
• not just an 'empty stomach'
• particularistic judgement

both Lasch and Donzelot argue that while the family is genuinely a safe haven, it still is insufficient. There is a trend of invasion or interference with the family.

family = an "ideological conditioning device in an exploitative society"

Cooper also talked from a radical psychiatrist perspective.

• the family destroys the inner self of a person
• by trapping us in relationships based on loveit creates self-other dependencies .
• we constantly rely on lovefor our wellbeing, and soon this becomes a basis for repression, violence, and guilt.

"as an economic unit the nuclear family is a valuable stabilising force in capitalist society."

(2006) research based on data from The British Household Panel Survey. more than 2000 working women (single or cohabiting; with or without children). 15hr/week on housework when they cohabit; 10hr/week when single.

(2013) 'Emotion work'. Women perform emotional labour of:

• resolving family fights
• handling and managing family feelings

• 1994
  • 45% of men
  • 41%of women
• 2012
  • 13%of men
  • 12%of women

believe that it is the man's job to be the breadwinner, and the woman's to be the nurturer. This shows that there is a decline in the percentage of both genders believing in/accepting traditional Parsonian gender roles as legitimate. Therefore there is a march of progress away from these sexist, unequal notions.

gave 2 explanations for gender DoL:

1. cultural - gender roles are shaped by patriarchal norms and values; the social expectations of women. (see Man-Yee Kan, 2001; Dunne, 1999; BSAS, 2013).
2. Material/economic: gender roles arise from economically rational decisions made by couples. given that women earn less, and so should contribute to the family more through domestic labour.

both of these explanations support the liberal feminist or functionalist march of progress notion that with changing cultural attitudes and economic arrangements, men and women can progress towards symmetrical DoL.

better-paid mc women are more able to buy labour-saving devices. (this supports Crompton and Lyonette's economic explanation for gender DoL).

radical psychiatrist and phenomenological psychiatrist (meaning only studies the family interactions when one member is schizophrenic.

• the family is an arena.
• in which members play a complex tactical game
• the family group is known as the Nexus
• the nexus is a place of reciprocal concernmeaning: each member is concerned with what other members think and feel about them.
• because of this, there is a constant unmet requirement by all members for 'mutual concern anxiety', meaning: the offerance of mutual protection against each others' violence (kind of like a truce).
• Laing found that, within such a family, there was 'reciprocal interiorization', meaning, that members internalised the idea of themselves as a single unit; a family together, rather than a collection of individuals in their own right.
• Laing considered this negative, as it restricted self development. when members carried around a blueprintof how their family is and how they are expected to behave as a member of that family.
• this situation led to them having no autonomy of self.

Laing further argued that this harms wider society

• it creates a virtue out of blind obedience to authority, and therefore citizens don't question their leaders, and soldiers shoot civilians on command.
• it creates an us vs. them ideology (the family unit against everyone else; the reciprocal concern of the family nexus, according to Laing, is one which puts its members in constant mutual fear of and reliance upon eachother; so they reject the outside world as a threat to this. From this Us vs Them ideology, many racist and bigoted ideas are prone to form.

1980 study ‘Becoming a Parent’ explored how parents’ roles are defined and developed. Found that family life is a strong socialisation process for both the parents AND the children, and that it occurs through trial and error.

Also found that the images/perceptions that parents have of children, and the way they label what they perceive as ‘problems’ with a child’s behaviour, is based on reference to popular knowledge/understanding of ‘stages of child development’, and these collective understandings are built in order to help parents cope with the uncertainty of child development.

Note: this can be related to the work of Chris Jenks within the Childhood topic.

Compiled statistics: 1 child per week is killed by parent/carer (Home Office, 2004; Crime in Eng and Wales, 2002-3).6% of children experience frequent and severe emotional maltreatment. 18% of children experience some absence of care.