Download Family and Household Structures

Family and Household Structures
Using the card sort you have just completed, fill in the blanks of the following passage. Each
dash represents one word.
The nuclear family means just the parents and children, living together in one household. This is
sometimes called the two-generation family, because it contains only the two generations of
parents and children. The extended family is a grouping consisting of kin. The classic extended
family consists of several related nuclear families or family members who live in the same
household, street or area and who see one another regularly. The modified extended family is one
where related nuclear families, although they may be living far apart, maintain close relations made
possible by modern communications, such as car travel, phone, letters or e-mail. This is probably
the most common type of family arrangement in Britain today.
The beanpole family is a form of the extended family in a pattern which is long and thin, reflecting
the fact that people are living longer but are having fewer children.
The lone parent family is today largely a result of the rise in the divorce rate, although it may also
arise from the death of a partner, the breakdown of cohabiting relationships, or a simple lack of
desire to get married. Nine out of ten of these families are headed by women, and known as
matriarchal. The reconstituted family is one where one or both partners have been married
previously, and they bring with them children of a previous marriage.
It remains a popular impression that the most usual kind of family in contemporary Britain is the
symmetrical family where both husbands and wives or cohabiting partners are likely to be wage
earners, and share the housework and childcare. However, some argue that men still dominate in
the family and make most of the decisions, and it therefore remains patriarchal.
In Britain, the structure of the family is constantly changing as social attitudes and norms develop.
Such changes include the emerging gay male and lesbian family which includes same sex couples
living together with children. This family type has only become possible with the slow acceptance of
their relationship and the change in the law. Similarly, an increasingly common household found in
Britain today is that of the single person where the individual lives alones. Both of these new
family structures threatens the ideology of the family and have come into criticism by those who
believe the traditional values of the family should be maintained and aspired to. Sociologists
describe the cereal packet family which is seen as the ideological family structure and is the
image most often portrayed by the media, with the wife as the housewife and child carer and the
father as the main ‘breadwinner’.