Links: Families and Households: www.sociology.org.uk

AS Sociology Teaching Guide	This publisher's site has some sample pages on the domestic division of labour, taken from the book of the same name, to download. The material is in .pdf format (with watermarks) but a simple cut-and-paste into something like Word makes them usable as class notes.
Cardiff High School	This is the Family section of a larger school site that offers revision notes on Liberal and Marxist feminism and New Right theories of family life. In addition there are some PowerPoints dealing with various aspects of gender socialisation.
CARE	This Factsheet (in Word format) - put together by CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) - brings together a range of UK data about things like marriage, divorce, cohabitation, lone parenthood and so forth. As such it's a useful guide to changing trends in UK family life.
Children in the 1800's	These online notes provide an overview of different aspects of childhood (education. leisure, etc.) in 19th century Britain. The notes are relatively brief and could provide useful background material when discussing areas like historical changes in the perception of children and childhood.
Dave Witt	Dave's self-styled "experimental pages at the University of Akron" may not be pretty on the eye (or any other part of the anatomy come to that), but they do contain a wealth of useful information about Family Life. This includes material on family diversity, gender roles, Consensus and Conflict theories (amongst others). It's all a bit text-heavy (there are some illustrations to lighten the load), but it's well-focused and probably useful to those studying the Family topic.
Families and Social Capital	Although the material available for download is quite advanced (aimed more at an undergraduate audience), if you're looking for some up-to-date material on the relationship between families, social change and social capital this is a good a place as any to start. The Publications section has a lot of useful material to download.
Family Factbook	The Factbook is a small part of a much larger (blogging) site that's well worth exploring if you've got the time (especially The Blog section that covers social studies and media criticism) and represents a spin-off from research carried-out for a book on various aspects of family life. The information available is a mix of the quantitative and the qualitative (although, in the main, the focus is on American family life and experiences this could be useful for comparative purposes) and covers a number of aspects of family life - from questions about structure through gender roles to the "family breakdown" debate.
Family Formation	This is the full text (in pdf format) of Richard Berthoud's "Family formation in multi-cultural Britain: three patterns of diversity" research paper. Berthoud’s (influential) research compares the family structures of ethnic minority groups in Britain with those of the white population.
Family, Sex and Society	A range of podcasts, from the BBC World Service, that focus on areas like Gender, Family Structure and Social Change. You will need to have the Realplayer plug-in installed to listen-along (for some obscure reason BBC radio favours what, IMO, has historically been a bloated piece of software that tries to install all kinds of rubbish on the hard drives of the unwary - still each to their own, I suppose and if you need it the plug-in is available free from: http://uk.real.com/player/more).
Gender and Society	Although this is part of the massive "Trinity" site, it's an interesting site in its own right, containing information and links relating to male and female lives and relationships. If you're looking for background material relating to gender studies (albeit with an American slant), this is a good starting point.
Guide to the Family	This is a massive site containing a wealth of data (statistical as well as qualitative) relating to all aspects of the sociology of family life (structures and processes, relationships, marriage and cohabitation, family history, socialisation and much, much, more...). It's designed to be an interactive tutorial (i.e. there's some hyperlinks to follow), but it's basically a load of interesting text about all aspects of family life.
History of Marriage	This online article offers a brief - but concise - "history of marriage" in Britain that includes useful observations about things like divorce, cross-cultural perspectives and alternatives to marriage.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation	The Foundation publishes a wide range of useful research into areas like family life and this particular piece of research looks at the concept of cohabitation in terms of why people cohabit and, most interestingly, what happens when a cohabiting relationship breaks down.
Marriage Quiz	Although not, in itself, particularly useful this short quiz entitled "Choosing the Right One: 16 Questions to ask yourself before you marry" contains some interesting material that can be adapted for classroom use when considering questions about who marries and who divorces.
Quantitative Research Lab	This site contains some fairly basic notes based around the theme of "measuring family decline" as well as further notes on defining a family. The material is generally from a Functionalist perspective (Murdock, Shorter, Stark...) and a little dated but it serves as a useful starting-point for discussion in this particular area. The site flags the promise of further materials on other areas of family life, but this resembles an incomplete project rather than work-in-progress...
Sex and Marriage	This site describes itself as "Introduction to the cultural rules regulating sexual access and marriage", in the course of which it offers a range of notes covering various aspects of marriage around the world (although with a North American bias in terms of focus). Amongst other things (such as quizzes) there's a useful glossary of family terms, an interesting feature of which is the use of sound files to illustrate the pronunciation of some of the more difficult concepts.
Social Gerontology	Another part of the massive Trinity University site, "Resources in Social Gerontology" aims to provide comprehensive coverage of the themes and issues surrounding the concepts of age and ageing (albeit with a bias towards modern America) To this end it covers areas such as the biology and psychology of age as well as linking the concept into areas such as family life, media, politics, health and so forth. In short, if you're looking for information relating to age-related inequality, this is probably a good place to start (especially since links to related sites are also included here).
2-in-2-1	An online article that poses the question "Can Governments Rescue Marriage?" through an examination of American New Right attempts to "stabilise marriage".