Family Sociology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Family Sociology - Essay Example According to the NSCFC (2010), the family system in UK has undergone many solid changes during the past fifty years. According to their statistics, fifty years ago only 25 percent of people above thirty were single, however this percentage has reached to 55% in 2007. The discipline of Sociology views the family as being the basic unit of society (Bernardes, 1997). The idea of nuclear family is quite powerful; it includes the correctness of gender specific roles and also the responsibility of parents regarding the well being and upbringing of children (Muncie, 1995; cited in Bernardes, 1997). Immigration, technological development, economic pressure, homosexuality and increased broken and displaced families have created great diversity among the UK family system (Diversity in families and households, 2010). Ethnic families are more extended as compared to British families that are more nuclear. Separated and reconstituted families are also common in which children from different parents have to live with their step siblings. In secularized countries, the family is more cohabitation based than legal marriage based and homosexual co habituation is also common (Cheal, 2002). According to Bernardes (1997), it is a common perception among people that a family consists of a heterogeneous couple, with a small number of healthy kids, where the women have the primary task of care taking and may be occasional supportive income source and the men have the real bread winning task. Women having young children are usually financially dependent on men and are not a part of the paid work world at all (Allan, 1999). As soon as a baby is born, the women are forced to stay at home and care for the young one, while men are expected to earn enough to provide for the family. This snatches the privilege of being paid for work from the women despite the fact that they work at home as much as men do