Coffee-making Task!

Read the follow text (which is from here) and answer the following questions in full sentences.  Bring the answers to Miss Smith or Ms Dent-Cowan and we will sign your cards!


It is easy to forget how woeful the legal and economic position of married women and cohabitees was in the 1970s, and Mary’s work, both political and academic, was a powerful force for change at that time. In particular her book The Anti-Social Family (Verso, 1982), written with Michele Barrett, was a cornerstone of modern socialist feminist thinking on the family. In that text, Mary and Michele argued against the hallowed status of the concept of ‘the family’ because of its overburdened ideological content. ‘The family’, they argued, was not a simple description of how people organized their personal lives, but an ideological form which justified the dominant status of men and the submission of women and children. The rosy view of ‘the family’ that dominated both popular culture and sociological writings at that time was seen as almost a confidence trick, which hid women’s economic vulnerability, domestic violence and women’s lack of welfare, pension and employment rights. In preference, they argued for the use of the term ‘households’ as this freed thinking from the gender bias inherent in the concept of the family. But this book also took issue with radical feminist thinking of the time and rejected the increasingly prevalent concept of patriarchy. Patriarchy, Barrett and Mcintosh argued, was a transhistorical concept based on biological determinism. In its stead, they argued for a historically contextualized understanding of social relations which combined analysis of class difference with that of gender difference. In this argument, Mary’s socialist, and specifically Marxist, background was central to the development of a highly significant branch of feminist thinking.














(Sorry - fought the technology - lost - gap stays!)


Also, from here:


Barrett and McIntosh acknowledge that the family satisfies ‘real needs’. On the other hand they argue, in The Anti-social Family, that the institution is ‘deeply unequal’ (to the disadvantage of women) and is an ‘antisocial’ force that promotes selfishness and private interest at the expense of wider community values and equality. In their view, the family monopolises ‘caring, sharing and loving’ and prevents these qualities finding an outlet in the wider social world.

Q1:  Explain how Barrett and Mcintosh agree with many Feminist theorists.


Q2: Explain how Barrett and Mcintosh disagree with many Feminist theorists.


For a second signature:


Q3: (AO2) How does this argument compare to a Functionalist understanding of the Family?


For a third signature:


Define the highlighted terms.






Revision material - Family - Diversity - Childhood - sooooo much more can be found here