Families and Households Factsheet
Key -
Green = Functionalist
Pink = Feminist
Red = Marxist
Blue = New Right
Purple = Postmodernity/Personal Life Perspective
Red Highlight = Critique (sometimes text matches colour of those critiquing)
Sociological perspectives on Family
Functionalist
● Clear division of labour
● Homemaker/expressive (Parsons) roles are natural
Murdock - 4 essential functions
● Stable satisfaction of sex drive with the same partner
● Reproduction of next generation
● Socialisation of the young
● Meet family members economic needs - food/shelter
Nayar Tribe - Murdock Critique
● Nucfam is not universal
● Either party can terminate marriage
● Male partner has no duty to offspring - must compensate with food/clothes
Parson - Functional Fit
*Family changes structures based on society they are in*
● Geographically mobile workforce
- Workers no longer live/work in a small village -> Nuclear family is easier to
move around - best fit for this society
● Socially mobile workforce
- Modern society requires skilled and technically competent workers
- Production turned to consumption
- Pre-Industrial society
Agricultural, basic skills, status ascribed (fixed from birth), extended families
- Modern Industrial society
Evolving science and tech, skills needed, status achieved by efforts/abilities,
nuclear families
2 essential functions according to Parsons
1. Primary socialisation - integration
2. Stabilisation of adult personalities - Warm Bath Theory
, Evaluation - Functionalism
● Neglects exploitation
● Family suits mens needs
● ‘Takers of shit’ - Fran Ansley
● Meets needs of capitalism
● Nuclear family is not the universal family
Marxism
● Family fulfills capitalism
Engels - property inheritance
● Earliest classless society, primitive communism, no ‘family’, promiscuous hordes
● As wealth increased, monogamous nucfam became essential, men needed to know
paternity so they could pass on property
● Too economically deterministic, ignores oppression of women
Zaretsky - ‘safe haven’
● Parents power over children teaches them to accept hierarchy - prepare for work
Unit of Consumption
● Family creates profit for bourgeoisie
● ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’
● Children bullied for not having latest products
● Cupcake ideology - capitalism is hidden under the family
Evaluation - Marxism
● Assume nucfam is dominant
● Ignores other family types
● Ignores gender inequality
● Ignores benefits of family - intimacy and emotional support
Personal Life Perspective - Smart 2010
● Other perspectives are too structural and assume people don't have choice
● To understand the family we need to give meaning to relationships and interactions
rather than functions -
● Fictive kin - friends who are like family
● Gay/lesbians - chosen families
● Relationships with dead relatives - memories shape actions
● Relationships with pets
New Right Perspective
● Any non-nuclear family is inadequate - fail to socialise children
● Pro segregated roles
● Lack of male role models leads to crime
● Anti state welfare - perverse incentives
● Owen Jones - ‘Chavs’ book - underclass linked with crime
Key -
Green = Functionalist
Pink = Feminist
Red = Marxist
Blue = New Right
Purple = Postmodernity/Personal Life Perspective
Red Highlight = Critique (sometimes text matches colour of those critiquing)
Sociological perspectives on Family
Functionalist
● Clear division of labour
● Homemaker/expressive (Parsons) roles are natural
Murdock - 4 essential functions
● Stable satisfaction of sex drive with the same partner
● Reproduction of next generation
● Socialisation of the young
● Meet family members economic needs - food/shelter
Nayar Tribe - Murdock Critique
● Nucfam is not universal
● Either party can terminate marriage
● Male partner has no duty to offspring - must compensate with food/clothes
Parson - Functional Fit
*Family changes structures based on society they are in*
● Geographically mobile workforce
- Workers no longer live/work in a small village -> Nuclear family is easier to
move around - best fit for this society
● Socially mobile workforce
- Modern society requires skilled and technically competent workers
- Production turned to consumption
- Pre-Industrial society
Agricultural, basic skills, status ascribed (fixed from birth), extended families
- Modern Industrial society
Evolving science and tech, skills needed, status achieved by efforts/abilities,
nuclear families
2 essential functions according to Parsons
1. Primary socialisation - integration
2. Stabilisation of adult personalities - Warm Bath Theory
, Evaluation - Functionalism
● Neglects exploitation
● Family suits mens needs
● ‘Takers of shit’ - Fran Ansley
● Meets needs of capitalism
● Nuclear family is not the universal family
Marxism
● Family fulfills capitalism
Engels - property inheritance
● Earliest classless society, primitive communism, no ‘family’, promiscuous hordes
● As wealth increased, monogamous nucfam became essential, men needed to know
paternity so they could pass on property
● Too economically deterministic, ignores oppression of women
Zaretsky - ‘safe haven’
● Parents power over children teaches them to accept hierarchy - prepare for work
Unit of Consumption
● Family creates profit for bourgeoisie
● ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’
● Children bullied for not having latest products
● Cupcake ideology - capitalism is hidden under the family
Evaluation - Marxism
● Assume nucfam is dominant
● Ignores other family types
● Ignores gender inequality
● Ignores benefits of family - intimacy and emotional support
Personal Life Perspective - Smart 2010
● Other perspectives are too structural and assume people don't have choice
● To understand the family we need to give meaning to relationships and interactions
rather than functions -
● Fictive kin - friends who are like family
● Gay/lesbians - chosen families
● Relationships with dead relatives - memories shape actions
● Relationships with pets
New Right Perspective
● Any non-nuclear family is inadequate - fail to socialise children
● Pro segregated roles
● Lack of male role models leads to crime
● Anti state welfare - perverse incentives
● Owen Jones - ‘Chavs’ book - underclass linked with crime
