The Conservative Model of Family Breakdown Focuses on

A summary of liberal, marxist and radical feminist views on the traditional nuclear family

Almost all feminists agree that gender is socially constructed. This means that gender roles are learnt rather than determined by biological science, and the most meaning establishment where we are socialised into our appropriate roles and norms of behaviour is the family.  The proof for this theory is found in the sometimes radically different behaviour nosotros run across between women from different societies i.e. unlike societies construct being "women" in unlike means (This is obviously true for men every bit well).

This post summarises Feminist perspectives on the family, focusing on liberal, radical and Marxist Feminism, and is primarily designed to assist students revise for the AQA A level folklore paper 2, families and households choice.

Feminism and the Family

Feminists take been central in criticising gender roles associated with the traditional nuclear family, especially since the 1950s.  They have argued the nuclear family has traditionally performed two key functions which oppressed women:

a) socialising girls to take subservient roles within the family, whilst socialising boys to believe they were superior – this happens through children witnessing then recreating the parental human relationship

b) socialising women into accepting the "housewife" role as the only possible/acceptable role for a women. Indeed it was the just way to be feminine/to be a woman. Essentially, feminists viewed the office of the family as a breeding ground where patriarchal values were learned by an individual, which in turn created a patriarchal society.

Feminism today tends to exist split into three distinct branches: Liberal Feminists, Marxist Feminists and Radical Feminists. They differ significantly over the extent to which they believe that the family unit is withal patriarchal and in what the underlying causes of the existence of patriarchy might be. Call back – all the theories below are discussing the "nuclear" family.

Liberal Feminism

(Run into also – A liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family for more depth)

Executive Summary

Causes of inequality in relationships – A combination of ii things – (ane) Mainstream working culture which requires long and inflexible working hours which are nevertheless based on the idea of the main breadwinner, (2) Men refusing to pull their weight in relationships.

Solutions to Inequality – Greater gender equality in the public sphere -achieving equal admission to didactics, equal pay, ending gender differences in subject and career choice won primarily through legal changes.

A key thinker who tin be characterised as a liberal feminist is Jennifer Somerville (2000) who provides a less radical critique of the family than Marxist or Radical Feminists and suggests proposals to improve family unit life for women that involve pocket-sized policy reforms rather than revolutionary change.

Somerville argues that many immature women exercise not experience entirely sympathetic towards feminism even so still experience some sense of grievance.

To Somerville, many feminists take failed to acknowledge progress for women such as the greater freedom to go into paid work, and the greater degree of choice over whether they marry or cohabit, when and whether to accept children, and whether to accept part in a heterosexual or same-sex human relationship or to simply live on their own.

The increased choice for women and the rise of the dual-earner household (both partners in piece of work) has helped create greater equality inside relationships. Somerville argues that 'some modernistic men are voluntarily committed to sharing in those routine necessities of family survival, or they can be persuaded, cajoled, guilt-tripped or bullied'. Despite this, however, 'women are angry, resentful and above all disappointed in men.' Many men do non take on their total share of responsibilities and often these men can be 'shown the door'.

Somerville raises the possibility that women might practice without male partners, peculiarly as and then many prove inadequate, and instead get their sense of fulfilment from their children. Unlike Germain Greer, however, Somerville does not believe that living in a household without an adult male person is the answer – the high figures for remarriage suggest that heterosexual attraction and the demand for intimacy and companionship hateful that heterosexual families will non disappear.

Even so, it remains the case that the inability of men to 'pull their weight' in relationships means that high rates of human relationship breakdowns will continue to be the norm which will atomic number 82 to more complex familial relationships as women end 1 relationship and endeavour to rebuild the next with a new (typically male) partner.

What Feminists thus need to practice is to focus on policies which will encourage greater equality within relationships and to help women cope with the practicalities of daily life. One set of policies which Somerville thinks particularly important are those aimed at helping working parents. The working hours and civilisation associated with many jobs are incompatible with family life. Many jobs are based on the idea of a male person breadwinner who relies on a non-working wife to take care of the children.

Somerville argues that in order to achieve true equality within relationships we need increased flexibility in paid employment.

Evaluation of the Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family unit

• Sommerville recognises that significant progress has been made in both public and private life for women
• It is more appealing to a wider range of women than radical ideas
• It is more practical – the system is more than likely to accept minor policy changes, while it would resist revolutionary change
• Deviation Feminists debate that this is an ethnocentric view – it reflects the experiences of mainly white, middle class women. (See this post for more than particular – Is the UK really the 18th near gender equal land in the world?)
• Her piece of work is based on a secondary analysis of previous works and is thus not backed up past empirical evidence
• Radical Feminists such every bit Delphy, Leonard and Greer argues that she fails to deal with the Patriarchal structures and civilization in gimmicky family life.

Marxist Feminism

(Meet too –A Marxist Feminist Perspective on the Family for more depth)

Marxist feminists contend the principal cause of women's oppression in the family is not men, merely capitalism. They debate that women'southward oppression performs several functions for Capitalism

1. Women reproduce the labour force – through their unpaid domestic labour, by socialising the next generation of workers and servicing the current workers (their husbands!)
2. Women absorb anger – Retrieve dorsum to Parson's warm bath theory. The Marxist-Feminist estimation of this is that women are merely absorbing the anger of the proletariat, who are exploited and who should be directing that anger towards the Bourgeois
3. Women are a 'reserve army of cheap labour' – if women's primary part is domestic, and they are restricted from working, this likewise means they are in reserve, to be taken on temporarily every bit necessary by the Bourgeois, making product more flexible.

Cardinal thinker – Fran Ansley (1972) argues women absorb the anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism. Ansley argues women's male partners are inevitably frustrated by the exploitation they feel at work and women are the victims of this, including domestic violence.

Key thinker two – Penny Red's Socialist Feminist Web log

"The freedom that'due south offered to everyone under Capitalism is the freedom for a few to cocky-concretize in an extremely narrow, homogenous way past shopping and consuming, whilst the rest of us work long hours for low wages or no wages. Freedom from economic exploitation isn't the sexy kind of female empowerment we've all become used to, just without information technology we won't be moving forward.

The way in which women's labour is used and abused—the concentration of women in depression-paid or unpaid caring and domestic roles, for example, is not only one of the things that sustains patriarchy, it also sustains commercialism. Without the piece of work that women do for complimentary, the markets would be on their knees in a day. And notwithstanding, information technology just goes to evidence that in that location is, in fact, plenty of work out there, it's just that most of it is existence washed by women, for free."

Marxist Feminism – Solutions to Gender Inequalities within the family unit

For Marxist Feminists, the solutions to gender inequality are economic – We need to tackle Capitalism to tackle Patriarchy. Softer solutions include paying women for childcare and housework – thus putting an economical value on what is still largely women'southward work, stronger solutions include the abolition of Commercialism and the ushering in of Communism.

Evaluations of Marxist Feminism

• I limitation is that this sounds very dated for the 2020s: women today are just as likely to be in paid work as men, and so they no longer act as a 'reserve army of labour' for example.
• A further limitation is that women's oppression was clearly in prove earlier capitalism – if anything, women are probably more oppressed in pre-capitalist, tribal societies compared to inside capitalist societies.
• In that location appears to be a correlation between capitalist development and women's liberation – suggesting that capitalism has the contrary effect from that suggested past Marxist Feminists.

Radical Feminism

(Encounter also – A Radical Feminist Perspective on the Family for more than depth)

Radical feminists argue that all relationships betwixt men and women are based on patriarchy – essentially men are the cause of women's exploitation and oppression. For radical feminists, the unabridged patriarchal system needs to be overturned, in particular the family, which they view equally root of women's oppression.

Confronting Liberal Feminism, they contend that paid work has not been 'liberating'. Instead women take acquired the 'dual burden' of paid work and unpaid housework and the family remains patriarchal – men benefit from women's paid earnings and their domestic labour. Some Radical Feminists go further arguing that women suffer from the 'triple shift' where they have to do paid piece of work, domestic work and 'emotion piece of work' – being expected to take on the emotional burden of caring for children.

Radical Feminists also fence that, for many women, there is a 'dark side of family life' –  According to the British Offense Survey domestic violence accounts for a 6th of all fierce criminal offense and nearly 1 in iv women will feel DV at some point in their lifetime and women are much more probable to experience this than men

Key thinker –Kate Millet (see beneath) was one of the leading American 2d Wave Feminists in the 1960s and 70s

Solutions to gender inequality

In short, Radical Feminists advocate for the abolition of the traditional, patriarchal (as they see it) nuclear family unit and the establishment of alternative family unit structures and sexual relations. The various alternatives suggested by Radical Feminists include separatism – women only communes, and Matrifocal households. Some also practise political Lesbianism and political celibacy every bit they view heterosexual relationships every bit "sleeping with the enemy."

Evaluations of Radical Feminism

• In some ways this perspective is less relevant today than in the 1960s – women are much less probable to endure from the dual burden and triple shift, for example.
• In some ways, nonetheless, information technology still seems very relevant. For case, the ME Besides campaign and the Harvey Weinstein scandal both evidence that harassment and sexual corruption of women remain common.

Supplement: Kate Millett: On the sociology of Patriarchy

Patriarchy's chief establishment is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger gild; a patriarchal unit of measurement within a patriarchal whole. Mediating between the private and the social structure, the family unit effects control and conformity where political and other government are insufficient. Equally the central instrument and the foundation unit of measurement of patriarchal society the family and its roles are prototypical. Serving every bit an agent of the larger lodge, the family not simply encourages its own members to adjust and conform, but acts as a unit in the regime of the patriarchal land which rules its citizens through its family unit heads.

Traditionally, patriarchy granted the begetter nearly full ownership over married woman or wives and children, including the powers of concrete abuse and often even those of murder and auction. Classically, every bit head of the family the male parent is both begetter and owner in a system in which kinship is property. Still in strict patriarchy, kinship is acknowledged merely through association with the male line.

In contemporary patriarchies the male's priority has recently been modified through the granting of divorce protection, citizenship, and property to women. Their chattel status continues in their loss of proper name, their obligation to adopt the married man'due south habitation, and the full general legal assumption that marriage involves an substitution of the female's domestic service and (sexual) consortium in render for fiscal support.

The master contribution of the family in patriarchy is the socialisation of the young (largely through the example and admonition of their parents) into patriarchal credo's prescribed attitudes toward the categories of office, temperament, and status. Although slight differences of definition depend here upon the parents' grasp of cultural values, the general effect of uniformity is achieved, to be further reinforced through peers, schools, media, and other learning sources, formal and informal. While we may niggle over the residue of authority betwixt the personalities of various households, 1 must remember that the entire civilisation supports masculine dominance in all areas of life and – outside of the home – permits the female none at all.

Although there is no biological reason why the 2 cardinal functions of the family (socialisation and reproduction) need exist inseparable from or even accept place within it, revolutionary or utopian efforts to remove these functions from the family have been so frustrated, then beset by difficulties, that well-nigh experiments so far have involved a gradual return to tradition. This is strong evidence of how bones a course patriarchy is inside all societies, and of how pervasive its effects upon family members.

A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

If you similar this sort of thing, and then you might similar my AS Sociology Families and Households Revision Packet which contains the post-obit:

1. 50 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within families and households
2. heed maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering perspectives on the family
3. short respond exam practice questions and exemplar answers – 3 examples of the x mark, 'outline and explicate' question.
4.  9 essays/ essay plans spanning all the topics inside the families and households topic.

Related Posts

• The Functionalist Perspective on The Family
• The Marxist Perspective on The Family unit
• The New Right View of The Family
• Feminist Theory – A Summary

Sources Used to Write this Post

• Haralambos and Holborn (2013) – Sociology Themes and Perspectives, Eighth Edition, Collins. ISBN-ten: 0007597479
• Chapman et al (2015) A Level Folklore Student Volume Ane, Including Equally Level [Fourth Edition], Collins. ISBN-x: 0007597479
• Robb Webb et al (2015) AQA A Level Sociology Book 1, Napier Press. ISBN-10: 0954007913

Footnotes

(i) This division goes dorsum to Alison Jaggar'due south (1983) Feminist Politics and Homo Naturewhere she defined four theories related to feminism: liberal feminism, Marxism, radical feminism, and socialist feminism

druittrets1975.blogspot.com

Source: https://revisesociology.com/tag/families-and-households/page/3/

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