The family is not fixed. Functionalists like Murdock (1949) said the nuclear family is universal because it performs four vital functions: sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Parsons (1955) argued industrialisation caused a 'functional fit' where the nuclear family lost some functions (education, welfare) to the state but kept two 'irreducible' ones: primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of adult personalities.
Critics disagree. Feminists (Oakley, Delphy and Leonard) argue the family is patriarchal, benefiting men through unpaid female domestic labour. Marxists (Zaretsky) see the family as a unit of consumption that props up capitalism and absorbs male frustration ('safety valve' - Engels). Postmodernists (Stacey) argue we now live in an age of the 'negotiated family' with huge diversity and choice, not one dominant form.
The Rapoports (1982) identified five types of diversity: organisational (how tasks are divided), cultural (ethnic differences), social class, life-stage (different points, eg newly-wed vs retired), and cohort (generational attitudes). Chester's 'neo-conventional family' argues most people still live in a version of the nuclear family at some point, so diversity is overstated.
Young and Willmott (1973) proposed the 'march of progress' thesis - families are becoming more symmetrical (joint conjugal roles). Feminists reject this: Oakley found little evidence of a 'new man'; the 'triple shift' (paid work, housework, emotion work) still falls on women. Edgell studied decision-making power and found men dominate major decisions.
Aries argued childhood is a social construction, not a biological given - in medieval times children were 'mini adults'. Postman argues childhood is now disappearing due to media blurring the adult/child divide.
Functionalists (Durkheim, Parsons) see education as performing positive functions: secondary socialisation, teaching shared norms and values, social solidarity, and role allocation via meritocracy. Parsons called school a 'bridge' between the particularistic values of the family and the universalistic values of wider society.
Marxists disagree sharply. Bowles and Gintis' correspondence principle argues school mirrors the workplace, teaching obedience and hierarchy rather than genuine ability, to produce a docile workforce for capitalism. Their concept of the 'hidden curriculum' is key: the unofficial lessons pupils absorb about power, competition and conformity.
This is the biggest topic area. For social class, know Bourdieu's cultural capital (middle-class pupils' knowledge and tastes are valued by schools), and Bernstein's elaborated versus restricted speech codes. Also learn material deprivation (lack of money for resources, uniform, trips) and cultural deprivation explanations, plus in-school factors like labelling, streaming and the self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal and Jacobson).
For gender, girls have outperformed boys at GCSE since the late 1980s. Explanations include equal opportunities policies (GIST, WISE), changing girls' ambitions (Sue Sharpe), and teacher attention/laddish subcultures affecting boys (Epstein).
For ethnicity, know Gillborn and Youdell's work on labelling and the 'A-to-C economy', and institutional racism debates. Different minority ethnic groups show different attainment patterns, so avoid treating 'ethnic minority pupils' as one uniform group.
Know the key policy shifts: the 1988 Education Reform Act introduced the National Curriculum, league tables, and open enrolment (marketisation). New Labour (1997-2010) pushed Education Action Zones, EMA and Academies to tackle inequality. The Coalition and Conservatives expanded free schools and academies further, and raised tuition fees to £9,000 (2012), later up to £9,250+.
Sociology exams love to test whether you can judge if a method is any good. Always weigh up four things for every method: PRACTICAL issues (time, cost, access, skills needed), ETHICAL issues (consent, harm, privacy, deception), THEORETICAL issues (reliability, validity, representativeness) and, for some boards, whether it fits a POSITIVIST or INTERPRETIVIST approach.
Positivists (e.g. Durkheim) prefer quantitative methods - surveys, structured interviews, official statistics, experiments - because they want reliable, generalisable, hard data that reveals social facts and laws. Interpretivists (e.g. Weber) prefer qualitative methods - unstructured interviews, participant observation - because they want verstehen, a deep empathetic understanding of meanings.
Reliability means a method gets the SAME results if repeated by another researcher - structured methods (questionnaires, structured interviews) score high because they are standardised. Validity means the method captures a TRUE, authentic picture of social reality - unstructured methods score higher here because people can explain things in their own words.
Crime is behaviour that breaks the law; deviance is behaviour that breaks social norms and may not be illegal (eg queue-jumping). Something can be deviant but not criminal, or criminal but not seen as very deviant (eg speeding). Definitions vary by culture, time period and situation (situational deviance) - this is the core insight of social constructionism.
Durkheim argued crime is normal and even functional: it reinforces social solidarity through shared outrage, clarifies moral boundaries, and can act as a safety valve or warning sign that change is needed (eg suffragettes). Merton's Strain Theory says crime results from a gap between culturally approved goals (money, success) and legitimate means to achieve them - he identified five adaptations: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion.
Cohen argued working-class boys who fail at school suffer status frustration and form delinquent subcultures with inverted values. Cloward and Ohlin identified three subculture types based on access to illegitimate opportunity structures: criminal, conflict and retreatist.
Becker: no act is inherently deviant - it becomes deviant when others label it so. A master status label can trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy and secondary deviance (Lemert). Cicourel showed police typifications of a 'typical delinquent' lead to differential policing of working-class and ethnic minority youths - a key exam point on statistics being socially constructed, not objective facts.
Marxists (Chambliss, Snider) argue law is made by and for the ruling class, criminalising the poor while corporate and white-collar crime (Pearce) goes unpunished. Left realists (Lea and Young) stress relative deprivation, marginalisation and subculture together cause crime, and take victims' experiences seriously - unlike traditional Marxism.
Heidensohn: the criminal justice system is patriarchal and controls women more than men, explaining lower female offending rates. Official statistics show men commit roughly four times more recorded crime than women, though this gap may reflect chivalry thesis leniency or under-recording rather than true behaviour.
This topic asks you to link sociological theories (consensus, conflict, action, postmodern) to how sociologists choose and use research methods. Examiners want you to connect a theory's view of society to its preferred method, not describe theories and methods separately.
Edexcel wants you to compare functionalist, Marxist, feminist and postmodernist views of religion, plus ideology, science and secularisation. Do not just describe theories, always link back to the question about beliefs in society.