Theories Of The Family

Question 1

What were Murdocks(1994) 4 functions of the family

Answer 1

Educational: children are taught the norms and values of society (also known as primary socialisation)

Economic: the family provides an economic function to all its members by pooling resources and ensuring all have what they need.

Reproductive: produces the next generation of the society.

Sexual: ensures that adults’ sexual relationships are controlled and stable.

Question 2

What theory is Murdock from

Answer 2

Functionalism

Question 3

What did parsons(1951) say the two irreducible functions of the family were

Answer 3

primary socialisation: families taught children social norms and values.

secondary socialisation: he argued that the family specifically taught children the norms and values associated with their family and/or community, while other institutions, such as schools, the media, religion, etc. taught children the universal norms and values of wider society.

Question 4

What was parsons warm bath theory

Answer 4

Parsons also argued that families helped to prevent adults from behaving in disruptive or dysfunctional ways, instead encouraging them to conform to social norms, especially at times of stress. The family provides emotional support to its members.

Parsons famously described this in his warm bath theory. This was the idea that when a man came home from a hard day at work, he could relax into is family like a warm bath and it would take away the stress and refresh him for the next day’s work.

Question 5

What do Marxists and feminists criticise functionalists for

Answer 5

Marxists and feminists who argue that this paints too rosy and idealistic a picture of family life. Families are certainly not like that for everyone. Many people have negative experiences of family life, and indeed they can cause stress as well as relieve it.

Question 6

What does Marxist-feminist Fran Ansley think about parsons warm bath theory

Answer 6

The Marxist-feminist Fran Ansley offers a different perspective on Parsons’ warm bath theory when she describes women in the family as takers of shit. By this she means that men coming home from work may have their stress relieved by the family, but only by dumping it on their wives.

Question 7

What is the functionalist view on families

Answer 7

Functionalists argue that all institutions in society have important roles to play in the smooth and functional running of society, and the family is no different. They argue that the family has important functions both for society and for individuals.

Question 8

What is the Marxist view on the family

Answer 8

The traditional Marxist view on families is that they perform a role not for everyone in society but for capitalism and the ruling class (the bourgeoisie).

Question 9

What was Engels(1884) view on the family

Answer 9

Engels argued that family had a clear economic function for capitalism, by ensuring that wealth remained in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Family relations, based on clear legal contracts, facilitate inheritance and therefore when rich people die it is their children who keep hold of their wealth.

For Engels, then, family is all about blood lines and proof of parentage.

Question 10

What was Zaretskys(1976) view on the family

Answer 10

An interesting variation on Parsons’ warm bath theory, Zaretsky argued that family life gave proletarian men something they could control and a space where they could be the “boss”. This provided a clear function for capitalism because it meant that workers would tolerate the powerlessness and frustration of being exploited at work because they had this private domain where they were “king of the castle” and could take out their stress and frustrations.

*links to fran ansley

Question 11

What is a criticism of Engels view of the family

Answer 11

Clearly family must be about more than what happens to your money when you die. After all, people who do not have property also choose to live in families (although Engels would argue this is because they are influenced by bourgeois ideology).

Question 12

What did functionalists criticise Marxists for

Answer 12

Functionalists point out that, in the vast majority of societies, humans live in families and that in fact the essential form and function of those families remain quite similar: it is not simply a feature of capitalist society.

Question 13

How can zaretskys theory be criticised

Answer 13

Zaretsky’s theory is clearly outdated: it assumes the worker is male and that there is only one worker in the family. It also ignores the other benefits that all family members may get from family life: the emotional support, comfort and generally the positive benefits.

Question 14

What theory did zaretsky believe in

Answer 14

Marxism

Question 15

What theory did Engels believe in

Answer 15

Marxism

Question 16

What do feminists believe about the family

Answer 16

Feminists, such as Ann Oakley, agree with Marxists and functionalists that the family is essentially a conservative institution that preserves the social order. They disagree with functionalists and agree with Marxists that in doing so it benefits only a powerful group within society. For feminists, this group is men. They argue that families preserve, support and embed patriarchy.

Question 17

What do liberal feminists believe about families

Answer 17

Liberal feminists focus on striving for legal equality between the sexes. The family has long been a clear source of inequality. Marital rape was not formally recognised as a crime in the UK until 1991

Divorce laws have been reformed on many occasions to make them more equal, but it used to be much easier for a man to get a divorce than a woman

Liberal feminists argue that most of those battles for legal equality have been won, however there is clearly still inequality between the sexes

Question 18

What do radical feminists believe about the family

Answer 18

Radical feminists do not believe that changing the law will ever be enough, on its own, to end the oppression and subjugation of women. They argue that men will always oppress women and the family is a vehicle for that oppression. As such women should find alternative ways of living where they are not subject to male oppression. This has led some radical feminists to favour gender separatism.

Radical feminists argue that girls are socialised (not least through families) to believe that oppression and inequality are normal and therefore they accept the inequality of family life: indeed they dream of it and work for it.

Question 19

Marxist feminist view of the family

Answer 19

Marxist feminists argue that families help to preserve both capitalism and patriarchy, and that the two work hand in hand. They point out that the capitalist system gets the benefit of unpaid female work as their workforce (and the next generation) are fed, looked after and kept happy to ensure they keep working hard and making profits for the bosses.

Question 20

What is the main criticism of feminists

Answer 20

As with Marxism, feminists may paint too negative and gloomy a picture. While some families may be unequal and male-dominated, there may well be families that are much more equal.

Question 21

What are radical feminists particularly criticised for

Answer 21

for presenting women as too passive. Postmodern feminists, for example, would point to how women do not have to accept patriarchy or inequality, and do not have to make a choice between family life and equality: they can take the initiative and resist oppression and assert their own power.

Question 22

What is the new right perspective of the family

Answer 22

Sociologists from the New Right argue that the nuclear family is the bedrock of society

The New Right argue that the nuclear family is essential for the functioning of a good society, but that various government policies and social attitudes have combined to undermine the family.

Question 23

What was Charles Murray’s perspective on the family

Answer 23

He argues that the welfare state has led to a dependency culture where an underclass of people live off benefits and have no aspiration to work for a living. He argues that teenage girls see pregnancy and single parenthood as a route to financial support and housing.

He further argues that, while Murdock suggested that the family had an economic function, for underclass families this function is now carried out by the state.

Question 24

What’s the main criticism of the new right

Answer 24

A lot of sociologists strongly disagree with the New Right view. They are accused of “blaming the victim”. It is a theory that tends to blame the poor for their own poverty, rather than seeking other explanations for why people find themselves in need of welfare payments, etc.

Question 25

Parsons theory of industrialisation

Answer 25

Industrialisation is the process whereby the economy shifted from being based largely around agriculture to being based on industry and manufacturing. In the UK, this processes happened rapidly, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, as the industrial revolution. Alongside industrialisation there was a closely-related process of urbanisation. This is the process where people move from rural communities into towns and cities, resulting in the rapid growth of those towns and cities.

Such massive social change inevitably impacts on the family, but Parsons argues that it was transformative: it created the nuclear family.

Question 26

Why did parsons believe industrialisation happened

Answer 26

Parsons, as a functionalist, believes that the institutions in society work together like the organs in the human body in order for society to work properly. Therefore, when there is social change, other institutions also have to change to ensure there is a functional fit: that the institutions fit society as it is, rather than as it was.

Question 27

How did the extended family fit pre-industrialisation

Answer 27

There was a functional fit between the extended family and the rural economy. Where people worked the land, the more family members to lend a hand the better: aunts, uncles, cousins and numerous children were economic assets. Everyone who was fit and able in the family had to be economically active, and so the presence of older relatives provided essential services in terms of childcare, education and healthcare. Families remained in the same communities and on same land for generations, and so there was no requirement to be geographically mobile to seek work, so a large family was not a burden.

Question 28

Why did the nuclear family become better suited for industrialised society

Answer 28

when people started moving from rural areas into towns and cities, in order to get jobs in factories and mills, this all changed. Work and home were now separated. Families needed to be geographically mobile: they could not take large numbers of dependents and extended family with them into the city. There was paid work for men in the factories and mills, and so a clear gender division of labour emerged, with women staying at home to look after the children and the house. Increasingly the state took over many of the roles of the family listed by Murdock, leaving the family with the two irreducible functions previously referred to.

Question 29

How did laslett criticise parsons industrialism theory

Answer 29

Peter Laslett (1972) conducted research into pre-industrial families in his famous work of social history The World We Have Lost. He found that the most common family form in the pre-industrial communities he studied was not the extended family but the nuclear family. People may well have lived close to extended family and worked together, but in terms of their households, most were made up of parents and children.

Question 30

What was Wilmington and youngs March of progress

Answer 30

Wilmott and Young (1973) established four stages of family development relating to the process of industrialisation

Question 31

What was the first stage of the March of progress

Answer 31

The pre-industrial family

The family works as a unit of economic production. There is no separation between work and home. Families live with or close to other family members and work together.

Question 32

What was the second stage of the March of progress

Answer 32

The early industrial family

Families move into towns and cities and home and work are separated as men go out to work. Women perform a domestic role. While pre-industrial extended families have broken up as a result of this, kinship networks remain very important and women especially rely on support from other female relations.

Question 33

What was the third stage of the March of progress

Answer 33

The symmetrical family

The modern nuclear family has less gender segregation than the early industrial family with men and women both in employment and both contributing to domestic chores. Also the family has ceased to be a unit of production and has become a unit of consumption. Families tend to be smaller, because children remain dependents rather than becoming financial assets. The family has become more isolated from kinship networks and so families spend more time together and generally there are joint conjugal roles as opposed to segregated conjugal roles.

Question 34

What was the third stage of the March of progress

Answer 34

The asymmetrical family
Wilmott & Young suggested that the family would become asymmetrical, with men increasingly spending their leisure time outside the home and without their partners.

Question 35

How do feminists critique the March of progress

Answer 35

There is lots of feminist research to suggest that the “symmetrical family” is a myth, as we will discuss in the section on gender roles.

Question 36

What are conjugal roles

Answer 36

The conjugal role refers to the separation of roles within the household based on the individual’s gender. This allows for a clear differentiation and segregation of tasks based on the role of the individual within the family. Traditional conjugal roles are that women are the main caregivers and housewives whilst men are the breadwinners and disciplinarians.