THEORIES OF THE FAMILY - MARXISTS

Question 1

What did Engels argue about the family?

Answer 1

Has a clear economic function for capitalism, wealth remains with the bourgeoise. 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.

Question 2

What did Zaretsky argue about the family being a ‘unit of consumption’?

Answer 2

Capitalism is based on exploitation, family plays a major role in the production for the capitalist systems. This mainly happens through advertising, things like Jet2 holidays advertisements or birdseye.

Question 3

What did Zaretsky argue about the family in similarity to Parson’s warm bath theory?

Answer 3

Family life gave
proletarian men something they could control and
a space where they could be the “boss”. They could go home to their private domain after enduring exploitation and powerlesness at work.

Question 4

What is a criticism of Engel’s theory on the family?

Answer 4

Engels’ theory is not a very romantic take on marriage. 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

Question 5

What is a criticism of Zaretsky’s theory on the family?

Answer 5

Clearly outdated: it assumes the worker is male and that there is only one worker in the family.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, comfort and generally the positive benefits. Feminists may argue something like this.

Question 6

Why might a functionalist disagree with a Marxist theory on the family?

Answer 6

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.