Family Functions Essay
-Using material from item A and elsewhere assess the contribution of functionalism to our understanding of families and households.
A core component of the functionalist perspective is the belief that the family is a major sub-system of society. George Peter Murdock for instance, declares that the family performs four essential functions that serve the requirements of its inner members and also larger society. The item mentions two of these functions: ‘the stable satisfaction of sex drive’, which prevents social disruption and pleasures spouses within a family and secondly, the ‘reproduction of the next generation’. It is a part of human nature to want to reproduce, and in order for society to function people are required. This explains how the family functions for both itself and larger society in regards to the two functions mentioned in the item. Furthermore the family socializes the young into society’s norms and meets its members’ economic needs. Other sociologists have challenged Murdock’s view by stating that other institutions could perform these functions equally well. Post modernists acknowledge increased family diversity in society and view it as a positive development. They would argue that other family structures could perform the four functions listed by Murdock equally well.
The item informs us that Marxists (“Marxists snd feminists reject its consensus assumptions about who benefits from the family”) reject the functionalist theory of the family. They do not accept that the family performs the functions, which functionalist theorists such as Murdock and parsons claim they do and that in doing so they cater for the needs of the family’s inner members and wider society. It is seeped strongly in the theory of Marxism that the role of the family is to serve the interests of capitalism. According to Marxists the family performs ideological functions for capitalism via several means; such as the socialization of children into the idea that hierarchy
A core component of the functionalist perspective is the belief that the family is a major sub-system of society. George Peter Murdock for instance, declares that the family performs four essential functions that serve the requirements of its inner members and also larger society. The item mentions two of these functions: ‘the stable satisfaction of sex drive’, which prevents social disruption and pleasures spouses within a family and secondly, the ‘reproduction of the next generation’. It is a part of human nature to want to reproduce, and in order for society to function people are required. This explains how the family functions for both itself and larger society in regards to the two functions mentioned in the item. Furthermore the family socializes the young into society’s norms and meets its members’ economic needs. Other sociologists have challenged Murdock’s view by stating that other institutions could perform these functions equally well. Post modernists acknowledge increased family diversity in society and view it as a positive development. They would argue that other family structures could perform the four functions listed by Murdock equally well.
The item informs us that Marxists (“Marxists snd feminists reject its consensus assumptions about who benefits from the family”) reject the functionalist theory of the family. They do not accept that the family performs the functions, which functionalist theorists such as Murdock and parsons claim they do and that in doing so they cater for the needs of the family’s inner members and wider society. It is seeped strongly in the theory of Marxism that the role of the family is to serve the interests of capitalism. According to Marxists the family performs ideological functions for capitalism via several means; such as the socialization of children into the idea that hierarchy