Expand+SOC20280 Sociology of Family
Academic Year 2021/2022

This module will explore key issues in the sociology of family and childhood. In particular, it will focus on how perceptions and experiences of family shift over space and time. Students will ...

Hide-SOC20280 Sociology of Family
Academic Year 2021/2022

This module will explore key issues in the sociology of family and childhood. In particular, it will focus on how perceptions and experiences of family shift over space and time. Students will develop an understanding of key sociological perspectives on childhood and the role of the family in society. The module will explore the social construction of childhood, including changes in the rights of a child, different cultural views of childhood and experiences across the world.
This understanding of childhood will be examined in relation to increasingly diverse family and household structures, such as same sex parents, lone-parents, divorced/step families. We will consider how these changes impact individual and family relationships. Within this, the module will develop understandings of kinship, friendship. This module examines if/how new forms of partnership challenge traditional gendered inequalities that were structural to marriage and parenthood.

Throughout the module we will develop an appreciation of how family relationships are constructed in the context of wider changes in social and economic conditions that constrain and shape the apparently individual and private decisions that people make.

What will I learn?
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the module the student should be able to:

understand key theories and concepts in family sociology;

understand how and why the organization of family life has been altering throughout history;

understand the relationship between the organization of family relationships and wider social change;

Indicative Module Content:
The module content includes (but not limited to) the following topics (in no particular order):

What is a family? Key sociological theories of family
Historical and cultural perspectives on family
Theoretical perspectives on ethnicity and family
Work/life balance in 21st century
Families, education and social class
Families and food
Adoption, divorce and family
Women's reproductive rights and state policies in different contexts
Family and violence