THE MANOR ACADEMY
Industrialisation and the
family
What does
Industrialisation mean?
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Activity
What would happen if all families were
banned by law tomorrow?
What tasks currently carried out by your own
family would someone else have to
perform?
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Talcott Parsons
• Functionalist
• Industrialisation has led to the isolated nuclear family
• In pre-industrial times extended families all lived and
work together.
• The nuclear family has become isolated because
• 1) Its lost all its functions (we no longer make anything
as a family)
• 2) Status is achieved not ascribed, you no longer need
your family to get somewhere in life
• 3) We need a mobile workforce and so large extended
families are not functional. Large families tie you down
with lots of responsibility
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Summary of Parson’s
• The isolated nuclear family is ideally suited
to modern industrial society.
• Although it is slimmed down, it can still
perform its essential functions i.e. the
socialisation of children and the
stabilisation of adult personalities
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Peter Laslett
• Questions the view that everybody lived in
a extended family in pre-industrial society.
• He looked at Parish records
• He found that only 10% of people in
England between the years 1564 and
1821 lived in extended families
• In 1981 the figure was 9% in England
• So nuclear families were the norm in preindustrial England.
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However……..
• His research was based on households
but people do NOT have to live under the
same roof to form a extended family.
• Extended families may have been
important even though relatives did not
live under the same roof.
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Michael Anderson
• The early stages of industrialisation may have
encouraged the development of extended
families.
• 1851 census showed that 23% of households
contained kin beyond the nuclear family
• Most of these households were working class.
• They lived together to help each other in times of
hardship.
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What do you think?
• Which of the three viewpoints do you
agree with the most and why?
• Do you think it is useful to look at families
in terms of nuclear and extended?
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Ann Oakley (Women and
Industrialisation)
• During the early years of industrialisation
the factory steadily replaced the family as
the unit of production.
• Women were employed in factories where
they often continued their traditional work
in textiles.
• 1819 factory act stopped child labour and
so women now had to stay at home to look
after the children.
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• Women were seen as a threat to men in
the workforce and many men called for
them to be sent home.
• Laws were past preventing female
employment in many industries.
• In 1851 one in four married women were
employed.
• By 1911 this reduced to one in ten.
• By 1970 half of all married women were
employed but they still saw their role in the
home as most important.
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Ann Oakley summary
Industrialisation had the following effects on the
role of women:
• 1) It separated men from the daily routines of
domestic life.
• 2)The economic dependence of women and
children on men.
• 3) The isolation of housework and childcare from
other work.
AS A RESULT THE MOTHER-HOUSEWIFE
ROLE BECAME THE PRIMARY FOR ALL
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WOMEN.
THE MANOR ACADEMY
Is the position of women
changing?
• In 2000 75% of married women of working age (16-59)
were economically active (in work or seeking work)
• There’s been a decline of full-time mothers and
housewives
• Celebrity mums racing to get back into their mini-dress
and back to work. Commenting on Amanda Holden,
back on Britain's Got Talent barely three weeks after an
horrific ordeal giving birth to her daughter
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
• As the power we command in the role of mother has been rescinded
by government and social pressure, and the way in which society
views women who choose to stay at home with their family has
taken a decidedly negative turn, we find ourselves in a position
where motherhood has been 'de-professionalised'. The full time
mum just isn't taken seriously anymore - and yet she's so important.
• Statistics show that 86% of UK families name mum as the primary
carer, and a 2008 study demonstrated that most important family
decisions - finances, schools, leisure time - are taken by women
• Yet 29% of mums work full-time and a massive 63% of married
mums with pre-school children work, despite government
recommendations that children should have one-to-one care from a
family member until they are three.
• In America, a career woman who becomes a full-time mum is
referred to as 'opting out'
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Do you think the position of women in
society has really changed?
• What sort of family would you rather be
part of, one where both parents go out to
work or one where the mother stays at
home?
• What about the position of men in society,
has that changed?
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Families in the 20th Century
• There is evidence that the working class
family continued well into the 20th Century.
• For example in 1950’s Liverpool dock
area, in Yorkshire mining towns and in the
East end of London.
• Willmott and Young studied families in the
Bethnal Green area of London. (1950’s)
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• They looked at extended families in Bethnal
Green and then they looked at families from
Bethnal Green who had been rehoused in
Greenliegh, a new council estate in Essex.
• Their family life had become home-centred and
privatised. It was now based on the nuclear
family.
• Living 30 miles from Bethnal Green wives lost
regular contact with their mothers and became
more dependent on their husbands for
companionship and support.
• Husband were cut off from social contacts in
Bethnal Green e.g. going to the pub with work
mates, and so became more involved in
domestic activities.
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Goldthorpe and Lockwood
• In 1969 Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s did
research involving highly paid manual
workers in Luton. They worked for
Vauxhall.
• Many had moved to Luton in search of
better paid jobs.
• They led privatised, home-centred lives.
The home and the nuclear family were the
focus of their leisure
activities.
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But do we actually have
symmetrical families today?
• Willmott and Young claim that families are now
symmetrical, but are they?
• Fiona Devine (1980’s) repeated Goldthorpe and
Lockwood’s study of Vauxhall workers in Luton
(which found that working class families had
become privatised and nuclear) She said that
Goldthorpe and Lockwood exaggerated the
extent to which the families had become
privatised. Most couples still had regular contact
with kin, especially parents. Many had been
helped by kin to find jobs and housing when
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moving to the area.
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Research on families with both partners in
full-time career jobs suggest that these
professional wives are still expected to take
major responsibility for dealing with
childcare arrangements, sick children and
housework. However this is the group that
Willmott and Young argued would be most
likely to display symmetry in marriage.
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THE MANOR ACADEMY
Criticisms of the view that modern marriages and cohabiting relationships are really more
equal.
The view that there is more equality in modern family relationships has been subject to very strong criticism,
particularly by feminist writers, and there is not really much evidence that the family is now typically
"symmetrical". The following summarizes several of these criticisms:
1. Inequalities in the division of labour in the household - Surveys suggest that women still perform the
majority of domestic tasks around the home, even when they have paid jobs themselves. This is true even
among full-time working women, where one would expect to find the greatest degree of equality. 77% of all
women took all or most of the responsibility for household food shopping. In 1997 the Office for National
Statistics found that women spend twice as long as men on cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and
looking after the children. Housework is the second largest cause of domestic rows, after money. Crude
indicators are often used to measure integrated roles, such as shared friends are often seen as evidence of
"jointness", but shared friends may mean the male partner's friends, and involve the woman being cut off
from her friends, resulting in more dependence on her male partner and greater inequality. Ann Oakley, a
feminist sociologist, argues 72% of married men claim to "help their partners in the home in some way
other than washing up at least once a week" but this could mean anything from a quick pass of the vacuum
cleaner, to just ironing his own trousers.
2. The unequal distribution of power and authority in marriage and cohabitating relationships
3. The effects of housework and childcare on women's careers Domestic labour
4. The emotional side of family life and women's "triple shift" (Paid employment, Housework and childcare,
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and Emotional work).
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The British Social Attitudes
(BSA)
• This is a survey based on a representative
sample of adults aged 18 and over.
• The 1986 and 1995 surveys looked at frequency
of contact with kin.
• They indicate a significant decline in contact with
kin.
• The most likely explanation is that more women
are working outside the home and so don’t have
time to see theirPowerpoint
mothersTemplates
so much for example.