Which of the following are global trends in family life that have been identified by sociologists quizlet?

How I would have answered the AQA’s families and household option on A-level sociology paper 7192/2, June 2018.

Answers to the AQA’s A-level sociology (7192/2) ‘topics’ exam: families and households section A only. Just a few thoughts to put students out of their misery. (Ideas my own, not endorsed by the AQA)

I won’t produce the exact questions below, just the gist…

Q04: Outline and explain two ways in which government policies may affect family structure (10)

Very easy…..

Simply select two policies and try to discuss their effects on as many different types of family structure as you can, without overlapping!

I would have gone for….

• The 1969 Divorce act, and linked this to reconstituted families, single parent families, the negotiated family, divorce extended families… and contrasted the New Right and Postmodernism.
• The 2013 Civil Partnership Act and linked this to changing gender relations, gender roles, equality and children in the family, and childless/ adopted families. I also would have applied and contrasted the New Right with Radical Feminism

I would have gone for two very basic ‘topic based’ areas to start: something about aid and improving women’s health and the knock on effects, and then something about women’s education, linked to work.

Q05: Applying materal from item C, analyse two ways in which demographic trends since 1900 may have affected the nature of childhood in the United Kingdom today.

Using the item, you need to use the following:

• Life expectancy increasing and more generations of the family being alive – here you need to discuss the bean pole family, sandwhich parents, extended families maybe (and the modified extended family)
• People having fewer children – probably most of your marks will come from this…. contrast march of progress with paranoid parenting/ cotton wool kids.

They DO like asking about childhood, don’t they!Q06: Evaluate Dependency theory essay

Evaluate the view that individual choice in personal relationships has made family life less important in the United Kingdom today (20)

The item basically directs you to discuss postmodern perspectives on the rise of individualisation and the decline of the family and to evaluate this.

Not an easy question, but workable…

General points you could use:

• Outline the postmodern view….. Allen and Crow and Beck-Gernsheim are the two ‘extreme individualisation’ theorists – lots you could discuss here.
• Maybe dramatise this with the increase in divorce, rise of single person households.
• Discuss Giddens’ idea of the Pure Relationship – higher rates of family breakdown are now more likely because of this!
• Discuss Beck’s idea of the Negotiated family – similar to Giddens.
• Criticise PM with the Personal Life Perspective…. which finds that family life is still important, it’s just that family life has changed – people now effectively regard pets etc. as part of their families.
• Criticise with the ‘criticisms’ of increased family diversity…. most people still have families, nuclear family still the most common, etc….

This is the kind of question you may have had to think about for some time.

All in all, quite a nice section of the paper!

Related posts

• The 2018 Education and Theory paper
• The 2018 crime and theory paper.
• The 2017 families section of paper 2.
• My main page for exam advice.

A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

1. 50 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within families and households
2. mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering perspectives on the family
3. short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – 3 examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ question.
4.  9 essays/ essay plans spanning all the topics within the families and households topic.

how have increasing trade, migration and the globalisation of the media effected family life?

One of the more difficult topics on the families and households specification is how globalisation influences family life. Below are some examples. I’ve also tried to take these examples from different areas of the families and households specification (e.g. marriage, childhood etc.)

Whether you regard the points below as positive or negative is open to interpretation!

Some positive/ neutral consequences of globalisation for family life

• Global optimists argue that economic globalisation has resulted in increasing trade which in turn has resulted in huge economic growth and rising prosperity, correlated with declining birth rates and family size.
• Immigrant families to the UK have on average higher birth rates than non-immigrant families. A positive effect of this is that it reduces the dependency ratio, however a claimed negative consequence is an increased strain on public services, mainly schools.
• Increasing migration to the U.K = increasing cultural diversity and diversity of family structures.  After several generations, more ethnic diversity.
• Increased migration means more families are stretched across national borders and have family members living abroad, which in turn reinforces globalisation as more families maintain contacts through media and physical visits.
• Cultural globalisation means more people create friendship groups based on shared interests online. Many people regard these friendship networks as ‘family’, if we follow analysis from the Personal life perspective.
• There seems to be a globalisation of ‘single person households’. There seems to be a global trend of increasing numbers of people choosing to live alone (not necessarily not being in relationships.

Some negative consequences of globalisation for family life

• Part of globalisation is people displacement following conflict, which sometimes results in the breaking up of families, U.K. policy has focused (to an extent) on taking in orphan refugee children, meaning more ‘global step/ foster families’.
• Globalisation = increasing inequality in family life and increasing cost of living for the poor. Property price speculation has driven up prices in London meaning the basic costs of maintaining a family household had doubled in the last 30 years relative to inflation, this helps explain why so many young adults today ‘choose’ to live with their parents.
• Globalisation = more diversity, choice, uncertainty, resulting in decline of people committing to long term relationships and more ‘pure relationships’. (Giddens)
• Globalisation = more media flows – children more active users of media, more exposed to global media events can have negative effects:
  • More difficult for parents to prevent radicalisation (e.g. Shameena Begum)
  • More exposure to global media events (mass shootings in USA, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, war and conflicts) children are more risk conscious – anxious kids, more mental health issues. (More ‘toxic childhood’)
  • Parents are more paranoid, more restrictive parenting, less outdoor

Signposting

This post has primarily been written for students studying the families and households topic for A-level sociology.

Students may also like to read this broader introduction to Globalisation.