- Define and explain Families Around the World in your own words
- Use key terms such as Extended family accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Families Around the World: travel the globe to see how family life differs between cultures.
Travel the globe to see how family life differs between cultures.
Key ideas
Families look after each other
Every family, whatever its shape, does similar jobs: giving love and care, providing food and shelter, and teaching children how to behave and stay safe. Sociologists say the family is the first place where we learn the rules of life. When you look at what families do rather than just what they look like, you can appreciate every kind of family.
Different is not wrong
In some countries most children live with just their parents, while in others three generations share one home. Some children are raised by a grandparent, an aunt or a single parent, and all of these are real families. Respecting different family shapes is one of the first lessons of sociology.
Key term — Extended family: A larger family group that includes grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins, often living together or very nearby. In many cultures this is the normal way of family life.
Imagine a class of 30 children draws pictures of their families and pins them on the wall. Some pictures show two parents, some show one parent, some show grandparents and cousins living in the same house, and one shows a child living with her aunt. What would a sociologist notice?
Step 1: Sort the pictures into family shapes: nuclear, extended, one-parent and blended. Step 2: Count how many of each shape appear, and notice that no single shape fits everyone. Step 3: Ask what the families have in common: each picture shows people caring for a child. Step 4: Conclude that families differ in shape but share the same important jobs.
Answer: A sociologist would say the gallery proves there is no single normal family. The variety on the wall shows that families come in many shapes, and what matters is the care people give each other, not the shape of the household.
- Assuming your own family is what every family looks like Family shapes differ between cultures and even between streets in the same town, so always check before you assume.
- Thinking there is only one proper kind of family Many families are nuclear, but extended, one-parent and blended families are just as real and loving.
Practice
Grandparents can help raise children and share work and costs, and caring for elders is an important value in many cultures.
Families change and grow: a new shape does not mean a broken family, and one-parent families are real, loving families.
For example: our families look different but they both take care of us.
A nuclear family is two parents and their children; an extended family also includes grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "Extended family"?
Mia lives with her mum and her stepdad, and she has a stepbrother. What kind of family is this?
Name two jobs that almost every family does for its children.
- Families Around the World: travel the globe to see how family life differs between cultures.
- Families look after each other: Every family, whatever its shape, does similar jobs: giving love and care, providing food and shelter, and teaching children how to behave and stay safe.
- Blended family: A family formed when two families join together, for example when parents remarry and children gain stepbrothers or stepsisters.
- Watch out for: assuming your own family is what every family looks like