🔥☑️✅☑️✅☑️✅🔹Functionalist Arguements

Question 1

Who started the functionalism theory?

Answer 1

Emile Durkheim

Question 2

What did Emile Durkheim believe about society?

Answer 2

He stated that “society is made up of interconnected institutions which all depended on each other in order for society to function”

Question 3

What do functionalists nickname the family unit? (2)

Answer 3

• cornerstone of society

- ‘personality factories’

Question 4

What kind of theory is functionalism?

Why?

Answer 4

• Consensus Theory

- it is concerned with the maintenance or continuation of social order in society

Question 5

What did G.P Murdock argue that the 5 essential function of the family were?

Answer 5

• satisfying sex drive within monogamous relationships
• biological reproduction
• socialisation if the young into their norms and values
• economic needs of food and shelter
• stabilisation

Question 6

How did G.P Murdoch test his theory about the family?

What results did he have?

Answer 6

• 1950’s he studied 250 societies to test his theory

- claimed the nuclear family was universal and needed to survive

Question 7

Name a positive of G.P Murdock argument (by Steel and Kidd)

Answer 7

Noted the family de-stress the adult by providing ‘in the home a warm, loving, stable environment’ where adults can ‘let themselves go in a childish’ way.

Question 8

Name 3 negative of G.P Murdock (3)

Answer 8

• not representative of all families (lone parent or same sex couples) as outdated SS can adopt (2005) and marry (2014)
• ethnocentric and reflective of an American 1940 family
• Social changes (feminism, divorce decline in fertility)

Question 9

What theory did Talcott Parsons coin?

Answer 9

• warm bath theory
• theory that the nuclear family metaphorically acts as a warm bath to relieve the stress of the hegemonic male breadwinner. E.g warm bath relieves deadlines and productivity

Question 10

What did Talcott Parsons like to enforce?

What is this?

Answer 10

-sex role differentiation
This is where the mother plays the expressive role (housewife) and is caring vs the husband plays the instrumental role (breadwinner) and provides economically.

Question 11

What is the organic analogy?

Answer 11

The functionalist idea where both the human and society consist of interrelated parts that need to rely on each other in order to successfully function. E.g each of the body has an essential function, so does the family

Question 12

Who invented the organic analogy?

Answer 12

Durkheim

Question 13

Name 1 positive in Parsons view of the family (Cockett and Trip)

Answer 13

• Exeter University 1995
• children from one parent families tend to suffer a wide range of disadvantages such as underachieving in school, higher rates of mental illness, divorce, suicide and are increased criminal convictions

Question 14

Describe what Goode states to contrast the view of Parsons

Answer 14

Goode says he saw the conjugal family as an ‘ideal type’ but recognised that real families can’t always be reduced to their nuclear core

Question 15

Describe what Jon Bernardes states that congrats Parsons view about the family

Answer 15

Functionalist view is an over-simplistic and romantic picture of family life
-no place for “anger, resentment, inequality, stress, depression, physical or sexual violence” that exists in society

Question 16

Statistics (3) that support criticism of Parsons claim about the family

Answer 16

1) over 58,000 children identifies as needing protection from abuse in the UK in 2016 (NSPCC)
2) 1 in 6 makes will experience domestic abuse
3) 1 in 4 females will experience domestic abuse

Question 17

What do functionalists wilmott and young argue about the family?

Answer 17

Studied east East end of London in the 1950s.
Found a number of ways that family life was changing for example the extended family persisted  which provided materials and emotional support to those in working class areas