# Family, Gender and Sexuality

Sociology I · Foundations and the Great Themes · https://tryals.app/learn/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality

## Households, Families and History

Start with a core sociological distinction:
- A **household** is a set of people sharing a dwelling.
- A **family** is a set of people related by descent, marriage, or adoption.

In 1949, **George Murdock** surveyed 250 societies. He claimed the nuclear family is universal. This claim has held up badly. Exceptions include the Israeli kibbutz and matrifocal arrangements in the Caribbean.

**Peter Laslett** and the Cambridge Group analysed historical records. They showed mean household size in England remained stable at roughly **4.75 people** (or 4.75) for centuries. 

**John Hajnal** identified the **European Marriage Pattern** west of a line from Trieste to St Petersburg. It featured late marriage and high celibacy across north-west Europe.

| Approach | What the family is | What it explains well | What it misses |
|---|---|---|---|
| Functionalist (Parsons) | System-serving institution | Role specialisation | Costs of specialisation |
| Marxist & feminist | Site of unpaid labour | Power and property | Affective family ties |
| Historical-demographic | Recorded co-resident group | Household composition | Subjective meaning |

## Gender and Modern Trends

Sociological views of gender evolved across three major waves:
- **Ann Oakley** introduced the sex and gender distinction to British sociology.
- **West and Zimmerman** in 1987 argued we are constantly "doing gender" in social interaction.
- **Judith Butler** argued in *Gender* Trouble that sex itself is culturally produced.

Spain illustrates rapid family change:
- Divorce was legalised in **1981** and reformed in **2005**.
- Spain legalised **same-sex marriage** in 2005.
- Around **half** of all births now occur outside marriage.
- The mean age at first birth is **31**, among the highest in the European Union.

> **Common pitfall:** believing modern industrialisation broke up large extended families. Small households existed first in western Europe, over 20 decades ago.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Laslett found mean household size in England stable at about 4.75 people from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. Why does that finding undercut the claim that industrialisation broke up the extended family?

A. Small pre-industrial households mean no large extended units existed to be broken up
B. It proves Murdock's functionalist claim that nuclear families are universal to humans
C. Early factory labour actively encouraged extended kin to co-reside and pool resources
D. Parish records had consistently misrecorded resident servants and apprentices as kin

**Answer:** A. Small pre-industrial households mean no large extended units existed to be broken up

**Why:** A story about a break requires two different states, and the household listings show one. Where pre-industrial households were larger, the extra people were usually servants, apprentices and lodgers, and few grandparents survived to co-reside. The nuclear household in north-west Europe is older than the factory.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/laslett-found-mean-household-size-in-england-stable-at-about-4-75

### 2. Sort each description by whether it defines a household or a family.

**Answer:**

- Household: People who share a dwelling and normally a common budget, May consist of a single person living alone, The unit a census enumerates at an address
- Family: People connected by descent, marriage or adoption, May be spread across several countries at once

**Why:** The distinction is not pedantry: statistics on "family breakdown" are usually built from household data, so a couple who separate and keep parenting together become two households and register as a change in family structure. Knowing which unit a number counts is the first question to ask of any figure about family life.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/sort-each-description-by-whether-it-defines-a-household-or-a-family

### 3. Which findings count against Murdock’s 1949 claim that the nuclear family is universal?

A. Nayar descent and residence arrangements did not require a co-resident husband and father
B. Matrifocal households are a normal and stable form in parts of the Caribbean
C. No society has ever been found that provides for the rearing of children
D. Israeli kibbutzim organised child-rearing collectively rather than within couples

**Answer:** A. Nayar descent and residence arrangements did not require a co-resident husband and father; B. Matrifocal households are a normal and stable form in parts of the Caribbean; D. Israeli kibbutzim organised child-rearing collectively rather than within couples

**Why:** The three counter-cases attack the form, not the function. Every known society provides somehow for reproduction and child-rearing; what varies is whether that provision takes the shape of a co-resident couple with their children. The third option would deny the weak claim as well, and nothing in the record supports it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/which-findings-count-against-murdocks-1949-claim-that-the-nuclear

### 4. The distinction between sex as biological and gender as social was introduced into sociology by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False**, twice over. Oakley put the distinction into British sociology in 1972, drawing on earlier clinical usage. And Butler’s book questions the distinction rather than introducing it, arguing that the supposedly pre-social category of sex is itself produced within a gendered framework.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/the-distinction-between-sex-as-biological-and-gender-as-social-was

### 5. Complete the account of what historical demography established about the north-west European household.

**Answer:** Laslett and the Cambridge Group found mean household size in England stable at roughly **4.75** people over three centuries. Hajnal described a marriage pattern west of a line from Trieste to **St Petersburg** characterised by **late** marriage and a substantial share who never married. Larger pre-industrial households usually contained **servants** rather than co-resident grandparents.

**Why:** The pattern hangs together: if couples must establish an independent household before marrying, they marry late, some never accumulate enough to marry at all, and the households they eventually form are small and neolocal. Servants circulate between them as a life-cycle stage rather than a permanent class, which is what makes the counts look larger than the families inside them.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/complete-the-account-of-what-historical-demography-established-about

### 6. Sociology distinguishes a household from a family. Why is this distinction crucial when interpreting historical parish records of domestic life?

A. Parish registers omitted residents who lacked biological relations
B. Kinship ties inevitably dissolved whenever individuals lived apart
C. Co-resident domestic groups often contained unrelated individuals
D. Nuclear structures only emerged once marriage became legally secular

**Answer:** C. Co-resident domestic groups often contained unrelated individuals

**Why:** Equating domestic coresidence with kinship distorts historical demography, as servants and lodgers formed households without sharing descent. Treating spatial separation as kin dissolution confuses residence with kinship networks.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/sociology-distinguishes-a-household-from-a-family-why-is-this

### 7. Match each concept to the sociologist who introduced it.

**Answer:**

- The sex and gender distinction in British sociology → Ann Oakley
- Doing gender as an interactional accomplishment → West and Zimmerman
- Gender as performative rather than expressive → Judith Butler
- The second shift of unpaid work after paid work → Arlie Hochschild

**Why:** Read in sequence the four are a steady movement outward: from a property of persons, to something produced in interaction, to something constituted by repetition, to a measurable quantity of unpaid labour hours. Each move makes gender less a thing someone has and more a thing that is done, and each licenses a different kind of study.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/match-each-concept-to-the-sociologist-who-introduced-it

### 8. West and Zimmerman argued in 1987 that gender is something people do rather than something they have. How does that reformulation change what a sociologist looks for?

A. Collapsing gender into biological sex, focusing purely on innate body markers
B. Seeing gender as an unconstrained act freely adopted or abandoned at will
C. Shifting focus away from structural inequality to private identity choices
D. Directing attention to interactions producing gender over internal traits

**Answer:** D. Directing attention to interactions producing gender over internal traits

**Why:** Locating gender in interaction makes the research site a conversation, a workplace or a queue rather than a questionnaire item. The distractors reflect common misreadings: conflating gender with biological sex, treating the performance as entirely unconstrained rather than normatively accountable, or assuming interactionism ignores structural power.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/west-and-zimmerman-argued-in-1987-that-gender-is-something-people-do

### 9. Estimate the percentage of births in Spain that now take place outside marriage.

**Answer:** 50 (within ±6)

**Why:** **About 50 per cent** on recent INE figures, up from under 10 per cent in the early 1980s. The change is one of the fastest in Europe, and it happened without a corresponding collapse in couple formation: what shifted was the sequence, with childbearing no longer waiting on marriage.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/estimate-the-percentage-of-births-in-spain-that-now-take-place

### 10. The mean age of women at first birth in Spain is among the highest in the European Union, at around 31.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, on recent INE and Eurostat figures. The usual explanations are labour-market entry, housing costs and the age of leaving the parental home rather than a preference for fewer children, since surveys consistently record a desired family size well above the number actually achieved.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/family-gender-and-sexuality/the-mean-age-of-women-at-first-birth-in-spain-is-among-the-highest-in