Family diversity is the varying types of family’s in society, this is has increased massively in the last 50 years, and sociologist have disagreed if this is having good or bad effects on society.
The nuclear family structure has typically been the most popular in modern society, but is now under threat due to the demand of other family structures. Contacts with wider kin (aunts and cousins, for example) are usually infrequent and more likely to involve ‘impersonal contacts’ such as texting, telephone, facebook or email. For this reason, this family structure is sometimes called an “isolated nuclear” (reflecting its isolation from wider kin or conjugal family. This is a unitary family unit, self-contained unit and they are independent, economically and psychologically.
A variation of the nuclear family is the cereal packet family, this is considered the ideal family by functionalists, refers to the image most people hold of the family. It is also the picture of the family that the media tends to present, especially in adverts. The cereal packet family comprises of: Parents Children The woman is a housewife and full time mother and the man is the 'breadwinner' i.e. he is the one who has to go to work to earn money.
Extend family has two types: Vertically extended consists of three or more generations (grandparents, parents and children) living in the same household or nearby. Horizontally extended involves relations such as aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. (relations of the same generation as the parents). These ‘extensions’ to the basic family group branch out within generations – a wife’s sister and her partner, for example, living with the family group. Modified-extended refers, according to Michael Gordon (The Nuclear Family in Crisis: The Search for an Alternative, 1972) to the idea that wider family members keep in regular touch with each other. This may be both in the form of spending time together and when that is not possible, using email, texting...