Ok these were my answers (what I can remember!)
1.
- Risk of partaking in immoral/illegal activities (I remember giving an example of "if a sociologist was researching gang crime then he might choose an overt style for his own safety")
- Deception and said that it could be immoral if the sociologist doesn't allow fully informed consent (think I mentioned children) so may therefore opt for an overt method
2. - I gave an intro defining what official statistics are and gave an example of the BCS.- I split the following into 3 paragraphs with 1 strength and 1 weakness:
Strengths = results easy to analyse and compare and so positivists love this compared to qualitative methods such as interviews, quick cheap and relatively easy to obtain due to many being public documents, also wrote about larger sample n therefore increased representivity due to wide geographical and social areas being covered
Weaknesses = interpretivists argue for lack of validity due to it being essentially just surface facts and doesn't paint a true picture, many organisations work for the government so there can be political influence/bias, the wording of categories can be vague or inapplicable to sociologist terminology as well as many names changing over time which makes it difficult to study longitudinally
- then I summed it all up in a conclusion
FAMILY SECTION
1. I defined serial monogamy as:
"Serial monogamy is when someone has more than more marriage in their lifetime. However, an individual is only with one person at any one time. Serial monogamy may be increasing in the UK due to rising divorce rates."
2. I wrote that women are believed to be exploited in the home by the way that their domestic labour maintains and reproduces a capitalist workforce. (Mentioned Benston) For example, a woman's cooking/cleaning for her husband revitalises him and keeps him at work and so the workforce is maintained, also childbearing reproduces the next generation of capitalist workers.
3. My 3 reasons for women delaying childbirth:
- changing attitudes towards childbearing due to the genderquake (Wilkinson), women may see these things as optional now
- equal pay act and increasing educational success of women which has encouraged girls to do well in school and aim for a career, therefore prioritising it above childbearing
- commercialisation of childhood has perhaps led to many women delaying childbirth until they are financially stable enough to support a child
4. For my two government policies affecting childhood I first wrote an introduction
- then i wrote about compulsory schooling coming in first in 1880 and raising of the leaving age through the butler education act and how this would affect children's experience of childhood because they would be in school longer, thus protecting them from early child labour which was acceptable before
- I wrote about introduction of the NHS in 1948 and it positively affected children's experience on childhood due to mass immunisation from diseases such as whooping cough. Mentioned lowered IMR as well.
- summed it up in a conclusion
5. Well, in a nutshell I wrote like quite a few paragraphs plus an intro and conclusion because I had bags of time lmao?????
- intro basically said how Marxists view the family as an institution working together to benefit capitalism (quoted item B). However Functionalists and feminists may disagree as to how well this contributes to our understanding of the family
- first para was a small explanation about how Marxists view the family as a microcosm of society, I explained each person taking on a symbolic role (father - bourgeoisie and mother as proletariat) and how this exploitative relationship reflects the wider society. Outlined that the family performs 3 main roles - ideological, inheritance and consumption.
- okay I got going here! Para 1:
P - one function of family according to Marxists is an ideological function
E - Zaretsky
E - family socialises children into capitalist ideology, also added that Marxist Feminist Benston believed that this was done by women maintaining and reproducing workforce
Para 2:
P - Marxists say that the family is a unit of consumption
E - Zaretsky
E - families are pressured to 'keep up with the joneses' by buying all the latest gadgets, clothing etc. This is further reinforced by peer pressure and stigmatisation of children if they don't own these things. The mass media targets children in the hopes that they will used their 'pester power' in order to persuade parents and by consumption a capitalist society is maintained.
Para 3:
P - family performs a function through inheritance
E - Friedrich Engels
E - he argues that the only reason the nuclear family continued post-industrialisation was due to encouragement from the bourgeoisie in order to protect their property and wealth. Monogamous relationships ensures legitimacy of children and direct heirs to inheritance, therefore maintaining class inequality.
Para 4:
P - these previous points are the Marxist contribution to our understanding of the family but Functionalists argue that they ignore the benefits that the family brings to society
E - Murdock
E - Functionalists such as Murdock argue that primary socialisation of children encourages a spirit of meritocracy (hard work) and respect
Para 5:
P - feminists argue that Marxists ignore gender inequalities in the home
E - delphy
E - think I briefly mentioned domestic violence but elaborated more in my conclusion
- summed it up in my conclusion saying that the Marxists contribute to our understanding of the family through 3 main functions. However, Functionalists would argue that Marxists ignore the benefits of family in society. Feminists argue that Marxists ignore evidence of gender inequalities in the home. For example, Oakleys research into male participation in domestic labour, she found that just 15% were actively partaking in housework. Additionally, a further criticism of the Marxist perspective is that it tends to assume that the nuclear family is the dominant family type in society. However it only accounts for around 26% of family types at any one time and so they ignore family diversity.
WHEW! Someone please give me an idea of how I did????