1.1 functionalist views on the family

Question 1

What type of family do functionalists prefer?

Answer 1

the nuclear family as it contributes to the maintenance of social order and stability and an effective economy.

Question 2

What are Murdock’s 4 purposes of the family?

Answer 2

1) Education = primary socialisation of children
2) Sexual = provides a safe, sexual partner
3) Economic = stability to finance everyone’s needs
4) Reproductive = having children and raising the new generation

Question 3

How many societies did Murdock look at?

Answer 3

250 societies

Question 4

Evaluation of Murdock

Answer 4

• didn’t consider whether other social institutions could perform the family’s function e.g. schools can socialise children
• didn’t examine alternatives to the family
• Yanina Sheeran = the female-carer core is the most basic family unit and is > basic than a nuclear family

Question 5

What were Parsons’ functions of the family?

Answer 5

1) primary socialisation of children
2) stabilisation of adult personalities = the family provides a context where the husband and wife can express their childish whims and stabilise their personalities

Question 6

How did Parsons think the nuclear family emerged?

Answer 6

the industrial revolution
- pre-industrial = the family was a unit of production and everyone helped each other in an extended family
- post industrial = the family had to become smaller to be geographically mobile and get jobs -> nuclear family

Question 7

What roles did Parsons give men and women in families?

Answer 7

instrumental role = husband achieving success at work to provide for the family economically
expressive role = wife is focussed on looking after the children and the emotional needs of the family

Question 8

What is Parsons’ warm bath theory?

Answer 8

• the home was somewhere to relax after work
• the home is a safe space where you can be your authentic self

Question 9

How has the warm bath theory been criticised?

Answer 9

Feminists = this only benefits the men as the women have to do all the housework
Marxists = call is the cushioning effect as the family softens the blow of the exploitation from capitalism

Question 10

What is structural differentiation?

Answer 10

• the support that we used to get from extended families, we now get from the state
  e.g. the NHS provides midwives who help with prenatal care and birth, that women in the family used to help with
• the nuclear family can now focus on reproducing the next generation

Question 11

Evaluation of Parsons

Answer 11

• an ethnocentric view and reflective of a particular time and place
• ignores the exploitation of women
• downplays the darker side of the family
• there is a modified extended family = where people still live close to grandparents, cousins, aunts, etc and see them regularly

Question 12

What is an internal criticism of Parsons?

Answer 12

Fletcher(1966) = Parsons was wrong to suggest that the family had lost its function
- parents are constantly being watched + have to work harder in their parenting role to maintain high standards
- family plays an important role on the economy

Question 13

What did Young and Wilmott find in their study?

Answer 13

That the family had gone through 3 main stages:
1) pre-industrial family = the family is a unit of production where they all work as a team + this is gradually replaced during the industrial revolution
2) early industrial family = family ceased to be a unit of production, they extended their network to include relatives beyond the nuclear family, women created an informal trade union where mothers and daughters lived close to each other
3) symmetrical family = where the conjugal bond was strong and relationships between husband and wife involved close cooperation based on companionship, share many of the chores BUT there is still men’s work + women’s work

Question 14

Evaluation of Young and Wilmott

Answer 14

• feminists = argue that there has been little progress towards equality
• research by Wilmott himself hasn’t supported the concept of of the symmetrical family + in the 1980s found little evidence of the disappearance of extended family networks

Question 15

The Bethnal Green study

Answer 15

conducted in the mid 1950s
- at the time 2 out of 3 married couples had parents living within 2 to 3 miles
- found a close tie between female relatives
- >50% of the married women in the study had seen their mother during the previous day and >80% within the same week

Young revisited in 2006:
- found that the earlier family patterns had largely disappeared - 21% of the sample were living in single-person households
- individuals relied less on family and more on the welfare state
- this affected white family life BUT had little noticeable impact on Bangladeshi family life