The changing family

AQA Families & households sits under Topics in Sociology. The family is not fixed. Functionalists (Murdock, Parsons) see the nuclear family as universal and functionally fitted to industrial society, performing sexual, reproductive, economic and educational functions, with Parsons' 'functional fit' theory linking the shift from extended to nuclear families to industrialisation.

Marxists (Engels, Zaretsky) argue the family serves capitalism: it reproduces labour power cheaply, absorbs male frustration ('takes the strain'), and is a unit of consumption. Feminists split three ways: liberal feminists point to slow legal and cultural progress; radical feminists (Delphy and Leonard) see the family as the site of patriarchy itself, built on women's unpaid domestic and emotional labour; Marxist feminists (Ansley) see women's oppression as serving capitalism.

Family diversity

Rapoport and Rapoport identified five types of family diversity: organisational, cultural, social class, life-stage and cohort. The postmodernist Stacey argues we now live with the 'divorce-extended family', showing family forms are chosen and negotiated, not fixed. The New Right (Murray) argues state welfare has created a 'dependency culture' and an underclass of lone-parent families, contrasting with functionalist and feminist readings of the same trend.

Demographic trends and key figures

Know the direction and cause of change, not just the label. Marriage rates have fallen since the 1970s; cohabitation and divorce (Divorce Reform Act 1969, extended grounds) have risen; the average age at first marriage has risen into the low 30s; birth rates have fallen while life expectancy has risen, producing an ageing population. Beanpole families (Brannen) are taller and thinner across generations rather than wide, reflecting fewer children and longer lives.

Domestic labour and power

The symmetrical family thesis (Young and Willmott) claims growing conjugal role equality, but feminists (Oakley, Boulton) find this exaggerated: women still carry the mental load and 'triple shift' (paid work, housework, emotional work). Look at decision-making studies (Edgell) showing men retain control over 'important' financial decisions.

Common mistakes

• Don't describe theories only; always link back to the exact question command word (assess, evaluate, applying material from Item).
• Don't confuse correlation (divorce rose after 1969) with sociological cause — always name the theorist's explanation.
• Don't treat 'family diversity' as one idea — name Rapoport and Rapoport's five types specifically.
• Always use the Item in Paper 2 Section A; examiners penalise answers that ignore it.

The role of education

Functionalists (Durkheim, Parsons) see education as performing social solidarity, role allocation and value consensus. Durkheim argued schools teach shared norms and 'specialist skills' for the division of labour. Marxists (Bowles and Gintis) counter with the correspondence principle: school mirrors the workplace hierarchy through the hidden curriculum, producing an obedient workforce for capitalism. Willis's Learning to Labour (1977) studied 'the lads' who rejected school values yet still ended up in working-class jobs, showing agency alongside reproduction.

Differential achievement by class

Working-class underachievement is linked to material deprivation (poverty, housing, diet) and cultural deprivation (restricted speech codes - Bernstein - versus the elaborated code of the middle class). Bourdieu's cultural capital explains how middle-class pupils' knowledge, tastes and confidence are valued by schools. Compensatory education like Sure Start and the Pupil Premium (introduced 2011) tries to offset this.

Gender differences

Girls have outperformed boys at GCSE and A-Level since the early 1990s. Explanations include the impact of feminism raising girls' ambitions, changed coursework and assessment styles, teacher expectations, and laddish subcultures among some boys (Epstein). Subject choice remains gendered - girls still under-represented in physics and computer science, boys in psychology and sociology.

Ethnicity

Attainment gaps vary hugely by ethnic group - Chinese and Indian pupils tend to outperform the national average; some Black Caribbean and Gypsy/Roma/Traveller pupils underperform. Explanations include labelling and teacher racism (Gillborn), institutional racism in the curriculum, and the ethnocentric curriculum. Always avoid treating 'ethnic minorities' as one homogeneous group in exam answers - AQA rewards nuance here.

Marketisation and policy

The 1988 Education Reform Act introduced the National Curriculum, league tables, Ofsted inspections (from 1992) and open enrolment, creating an education market. Ball and Whitty's parentocracy critique argues choice benefits sharp-elbowed middle-class parents who can navigate the system and afford transport/tutoring, widening inequality rather than raising standards for all.

Common mistakes

• Don't confuse correlation with causation when linking class to grades - always name a mechanism (cultural capital, labelling, material deprivation).
• Cite named theorists and studies, not vague claims - AQA AO1/AO2 marks reward this.
• Remember education is a compulsory topic paired with methods in Paper 1 - practise applying research methods (e.g. covert observation, questionnaires) to education studies specifically.

Quantitative vs qualitative data

Quantitative data is numerical (statistics, tables, graphs) and comes from methods like questionnaires, structured interviews and official statistics. It's seen as reliable and good for spotting patterns and correlations across large samples.

Qualitative data is descriptive (words, images, quotes) from methods like unstructured interviews, participant observation and diaries. It gives rich, detailed, valid insight into meanings but is harder to generalise from.

Positivism vs interpretivism

Positivists favour quantitative, scientific methods that are reliable and can be repeated, aiming to uncover cause-and-effect laws of society (like Durkheim's study of suicide statistics). They prefer structured, standardised methods that keep the researcher detached.

Interpretivists favour qualitative methods to get verstehen (empathetic understanding) of meanings behind action. They argue human behaviour cannot be reduced to statistics because people are conscious, reflective beings.

Key concepts to define precisely

• Reliability: whether a method gives the same results if repeated by another researcher under the same conditions.
• Validity: whether a method truly measures what it claims to measure (a true, authentic picture).
• Representativeness: whether the sample reflects the wider population, allowing generalisation.
• Generalisability: applying findings from a sample to the whole target population.

Practical, ethical and theoretical factors (PET)

Always structure method-choice answers around PET.

• Practical: time, cost, funding, access to subjects, researcher's skills, subject matter (sensitive topics suit qualitative).
• Ethical: informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, protection from harm, right to withdraw, no deception (BSA guidelines).
• Theoretical: positivist v interpretivist preference, reliability v validity trade-off, and which is more suitable for the research aim.

Sampling methods

• Random sampling: everyone in the sampling frame has an equal chance of selection.
• Stratified sampling: population divided into subgroups (e.g. age, gender) and sampled proportionally.
• Snowball sampling: existing subjects recruit future subjects — used for hard-to-reach groups.
• Sampling frame: the list from which a sample is drawn (e.g. the electoral register).

Common mistakes

• Confusing reliability with validity — reliability is about repeatability, validity is about truthfulness.
• Forgetting to apply PET factors when asked to evaluate a method for a specific topic.
• Assuming quantitative always means positivist and qualitative always means interpretivist — some positivists use qualitative data and vice versa.
• Not naming specific studies (e.g. Young's participant observation of drug users, Durkheim's suicide statistics) to back up evaluation points.

What counts as crime and deviance

Crime is behaviour that breaks the law; deviance is behaviour that breaks social norms and gets negatively sanctioned. Something can be deviant but not criminal (eating a live spider on TV) or criminal but not seen as deviant (some tax fiddles). Both are socially constructed - they vary between cultures, historical periods, and situations (killing in war vs murder).

Functionalist and strain theories

Durkheim said a small amount of crime is normal and even useful: it creates boundary maintenance (a shared reaction against wrongdoing unites society) and can act as an adaptation/change mechanism (todays deviance can become tomorrows norm). Merton's strain theory (1938) argues crime happens when there's a gap between culturally approved goals (money success) and the legitimate means to reach them. He identified five adaptations: conformity, innovation (accepting goals, using illegal means - most linked to crime), ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion.

Subcultural and labelling theories

Cohen argued working-class boys who fail by mainstream (middle-class) standards suffer status frustration and invert those values in delinquent subcultures, gaining status through being 'bad'. Cloward and Ohlin distinguished criminal, conflict, and retreatist subcultures depending on access to illegitimate opportunity structures. Labelling theory (Becker, 1963) says no act is inherently deviant - it becomes deviant when a social audience labels it so. A master status label can trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant career; Lemert's key distinction is primary deviance (unlabelled, trivial) versus secondary deviance (result of the label and societal reaction).

Marxist, right realist and left realist views

Traditional Marxists see law as protecting ruling-class/capitalist interests, with selective enforcement targeting the working class (crimes of the powerful under-policed). Right realists (Wilson and Kelling's 'broken windows' thesis) stress rational choice, control, and zero-tolerance policing of low-level disorder to stop escalation. Left realists (Lea and Young) use victim surveys and stress relative deprivation, marginalisation, and subcultures together, favouring community policing.

Common mistakes

Don't confuse crime (illegal) with deviance (norm-breaking) - always define both. Don't present labelling theory as claiming acts are never really harmful, only that meaning is socially constructed. Always link theories to evidence (official statistics limits, self-report and victim studies) and evaluate: official crime stats undercount unreported/unrecorded crime (the 'dark figure') and are shaped by police discretion.

What theory and methods actually tests

This topic sits across all three A-Level Sociology papers and asks you to link theories (functionalism, Marxism, feminism, interactionism, postmodernism, late modernism) to research methods, and to justify method choices using PET+M: Practical, Ethical, Theoretical issues plus Methodological considerations.

The big theory positions

• Structural/consensus theories (functionalism) see society shaped by shared norms and value consensus; favour quantitative, positivist methods to find cause-and-effect laws.
• Structural/conflict theories (Marxism, feminism) see society shaped by power and inequality (class, patriarchy); often mix methods but stay broadly positivist about structures.
• Interpretivist/action theories favour qualitative methods (unstructured interviews, participant observation) to get verstehen, meaning from the actor's point of view.
• Postmodernists reject grand narratives entirely, arguing knowledge is fragmented and relative; late modernists (Giddens, Beck) say we are in a new risk society, not post-society.

Positivism vs interpretivism

• Positivists want reliable, representative, generalisable data: structured questionnaires, official statistics, structured interviews, experiments.
• Interpretivists want valid, in-depth, meaningful data: unstructured interviews, covert/overt participant observation, case studies, personal documents.
• Reliability = same results if repeated by another researcher; validity = a true, authentic picture of what's really going on. You cannot maximise both at once.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Do not just describe a method — always link it to a named theory's view of society and knowledge.
• Do not confuse reliability with validity in an exam answer; define both precisely, every time.
• Remember value freedom is contested: Weber argued sociology can be value free in method even though topic choice is value-laden; Gouldner argued full value freedom is impossible.
• Funding and career pressures (Becker's hierarchy of credibility) can shape what gets researched and published — always a strong evaluation point.
• Feminist methodology (Oakley) criticises 'malestream' sociology and traditional interview hierarchy, favouring reflexive, collaborative research with women.

Science and sociology

• Popper: real science must be falsifiable; Marxism and functionalism have been criticised as unfalsifiable, closed systems.
• Interpretivists argue society is not like the natural world, so cannot be studied with lab-style methods — meanings must be understood, not just measured.

What counts as religion?

Sociologists disagree on how to define religion.

• Functionalist (substantive) definitions, like Durkheim's, focus on WHAT religion is: belief in the sacred and supernatural, separate from the profane (everyday) world.
• Functionalist/inclusive (functional) definitions focus on WHAT religion DOES for society, eg providing shared values - this lets things like civil religion or football fandom count as 'religion-like'.
• Weber used a substantive definition too, focusing on belief in a superior or supernatural power above nature that humans must obey.
• Interpretivists argue you cannot define religion at all without asking believers what it means to them - definitions should be built from the meanings social actors give.

Religion, science and ideology

• Science relies on empiricism and falsification (Popper) - claims must be testable and open to being proved wrong.
• Religion relies on faith and is not falsifiable in the same way, so functionalists like Durkheim say science and religion serve different social purposes rather than being direct rivals.
• Marxists (Marx) see religion as ideology: the 'opium of the people', dulling pain and justifying inequality so the proletariat accept their position - note Marx never called it the 'opiate', that's a common misquote to avoid in exams.
• Neo-Marxists like Engels stressed religion can also be a force for change, eg liberation theology in Latin America challenging poverty and dictatorship from the 1960s onwards.

Organisations, sects and NRMs

• Troeltsch's church-sect typology: churches are large, bureaucratic, and aligned with the state; sects are small, exclusive and often in tension with wider society.
• Wallis (1984) classified New Religious Movements (NRMs) into three types by orientation to the world: world-rejecting (eg Children of God), world-accommodating (eg Neo-Pentecostalists), and world-affirming (eg Scientology).
• Stark and Bainbridge's supply-side theory argues religious 'firms' compete for members like a marketplace, explaining why sects and cults keep appearing.

Secularisation debate

• Bruce argues Britain is secularising: church attendance has fallen from roughly 40% in 1851 to under 10% today, and religion has lost social significance.
• Davie counters with 'believing without belonging' - people still hold private beliefs without formal attendance.
• Stark and Bainbridge reject secularisation entirely, arguing religion is cyclical - old religions decline but new sects and cults constantly emerge to replace them.

Common exam mistakes

• Don't confuse cult, sect and denomination - examiners want precise use of Troeltsch/Wallis terms.
• Always link theory explicitly to the AO1/AO2/AO3 command word in the question (eg 'evaluate', 'analyse').
• Use contemporary examples (eg rise of 'religious nones' in British Social Attitudes data) alongside classic theorists for AO2 marks.