Assessment of the Usefulness of Functionalism in Understanding the Family

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Assessment of the Usefulness of Functionalism in Understanding the Family

Functionalism is a structuralist theory. This means it sees the

individual as less important as the social structure of society. It

is a ‘top down’ theory. The family can be defined as an intimate

domestic group composed of people related to each other by blood,

sexual relations and legal ties. When assessing how useful

functionalism is when looking at the family, other views/perspectives

need to be taken into account before making an overall conclusion.

Views from Talcott Parsons, George Murdock, Ann Oakley, Edmund Leach,

R.D Laing, David Cooper and Friedrich Engels will be taken into

account as well as perspectives from Marxism, feminism, family

diversity and radical psychiatrists. This will help draw the final

conclusion.

Functionalist sociologists suggest that the nuclear family is the norm

in modern day industrial societies.

George Peter Murdock (1949) supports the idea of functionalism. After

analysing 250 societies, Murdock argues that the family performs four

basic functions; sexual, reproductive, economic and educational.

These are the essentials for social life, since without sexual and

reproductive functions there would be no members of society, without

economic functions life would cease, and without education there would

be no culture. Human society without culture could not function.

Clearly, the family cannot perform these functions exclusively.

However, it makes important contributions to them all and no other

institution has yet been devised to match its efficiency in this

respect. A weakness of Murdock’s view is that some ...

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Now that perspectives and ideas criticising and supporting

functionalism have been illustrated. A conclusion can be made. If

looking at Murdock and Parsons it can be seen that they both tend to

only take into account Western societies, and tend to generalise.

Apart from that they both have strong, similar ideas on what the

family is. Oakley and Leach support their ideas on the nuclear family

being the majority of society. However, although the argument

supporting functionalism is sound, other views need to be taken into

perspective. For example Marxism, questioning the idea of a

universal/natural family. Family diversity offering different options

to how people choose to live, feminists saying the family exploits

women and radical psychiatry claiming the family is a dangerous place

and causes mental illness.

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