Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Functionalism in Family and Households - Coggle Diagram
Functionalism in Family and Households
George Murdock
Family performs 4 basic functions
Sexual
Economic
The basic economic function is to provide food and shelter for its individual members
Reproductive
Socialising
The functions are
universal
and that in the nuclear family there is a clear male and female role model which was biologically necessary and inevitable.
Argues that individuals work for wages and therefore are a 'unit of production'
Family also remains and important 'unit of consumption' of goods and services contrubuting to the circular flow of income
Emphasises the 'sheer practicality of the
nuclear family
Talcott Parsons
Bell and Vogel
Focuses upon some 'dysfunctional' aspects of the family
Argue that in the family, the parents will often turn the problems of the marriage onto the child.
Children are therefore used as
'emotional scapegoats'
for the tension caused by arguments between parents.
Although this is dysfunctional for the individual child, it has a positive influence for the family as a whole and therefore society
Criticisms
Over 50k children on protective registers
Divorce rate is at 42%
Promotes ideology that confines women to traditional roles at home
Ignores women in the workforce
Married women are more depressed than those single
Domestic Violence
Is family really necessary to meet society's needs?
Doesn't consider any other family types
Ignores two-way interactional process