SOC-20041 - Module Specification
School of Social, Political and Global Studies
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2023/24

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2023/24

This module aims to provide a students with a solid understanding of key issues in the sociology of family life. It will be particularly concerned with the ways in which people's experiences of families have been changing over the last 50 or so years.
The module will be concerned with the diversity of family and household construction, in particular with regard to intimate and domestic partnerships. Demographic changes in family and household organization will be analysed, as will changing notions of commitment.
The diversity of family life will be also be explored through patterns of separation and divorce, the circumstances of lone-parent families, and analysing the particular issues stepfamilies face. We will explore the role of grandparents and siblings in family and consider the issues of domestic divisions of labour and domestic abuse.
The module will be concerned throughout with developing an appreciation of how family and personal relationships are constructed in the context of wider changes in social and economic conditions that constrain and shape the apparently individual and private relational decisions that people make.

To enable students to:
understand key theories and concepts in family sociology;
understand how and why the organisation of family life has been altering over the last 50 years;
understand the relationship between the organisation of family relationships and wider social change

Intended Learning Outcomes

summarize how family relationships have been altering over the last 50 years and relate these changes to wider shifts in social and economic structure: 1,2
summarize the different theoretical approaches that have been used within sociology to explain change in family and household organization: 1,2
review how family experiences alter across the life course: 1,2
analyze the complexity of family transitions (eg partnership formation; separation and divorce; widowhood) and link the experience of these transitions to the biographical and social circumstances of those involved: 1,2
review explanations of the diversity there is in contemporary family and household patterns: 1,2

Study hours

20 hours contact
60 hours seminar preparation
70 hours assessment preparation

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment