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Functionalist view on Family - Coggle Diagram
Functionalist view on Family
4 Functions
Murdock
The nuclear family is universal and performs four essential functions.
Educational
Children are taught the norms and values (Primary Socialisation)
Economic
Provides all members with pooled resources and ensuring all have what they need.
Reproductive
Produces the next generation of the society.
Sexual
Ensures all adults’ sexual relationships are controlled and stable.
2 Irreducible Functions
Parsons
Updated Murdock’s theory as he argued that the state provided education and could perform an economic function (welfare provisions) leaving the family with 2 irreducible functions.
Primary Socialisation
Families taught children the norms and values associated with their family and community.
Other institutions in wider society provided them with universal norms. (
Secondary Socialisation
)
Stabilisation of Adult Personalities
Help prevent adults acting in disruptive ways, encouraging hem to conform to social norms
Warm Bath theory
, where man comes home late at night, where he could relax into his family, taking away the stress, preparing him for the next day
Functional Fit Theory
Parsons
As society changes, the type of family that fits int society and the functions of it change.
Change from pre-industrial to industrial saw the shift from an extended family to the nuclear family, over the last 200 years.
A larger family unit fitted pre-industrial society as the family was responsible fort the education of children, providing food and caring for the sick.
An isolated nuclear family is a mobile workforce, as the extended family was too difficult to move, when searching for more work in the rapidly changing economy.
Less need for extended family as more and more functions were carried out by the state.
Criticisms
Social change does not occur in an orderly manner.
The family is suggested to be nuclear prior to industrialsation as
Laslett
found Church records to show 10% of households contained extended kin.
Young and Wilmott
Extended kin networks were
Summary
Essential foundation in stable societies.
Nuclear family is ideal for industrial society.
Positive functions such as socialising children and providing emotional security for parents.
Evaluations
Conflict theories argue that it is too much an idealistic picture of family life
Also question whether the roles families perform benefit the whole of society to the powerful.
Ansley
Marxist feminist says women are ‘takers of shit’
These theories are outdataed and deterministic, suggesting all families are all traditional nuclear families.
For Murdock, other institutions can perform some of these functions.