To sum up, Murdock feels strongly that the family is certainly universal as neither the individual or the society could survive without it. On the other hand, Felicity Edholm disagrees with Murdock and states the nuclear family is not universal. This statement comes from her work, ‘The Unnatural Family’, written in 1982. In ‘The Unnatural Family’, Edholm describes ways in which the functions mentioned by Murdock are carried out in different societies. For example, Murdock believes that the nuclear family supports both the individual and the society.
Whereas on the other hand, feminist see the nuclear family still as the norm as they live under an oppressed government who follow the traditions of the new right where they believe in the nuclear family as the norm. we live in a patriarchal society whereby men dominate over women through marriage and wages housewives do must of the housework. (Oakley 177). Unlike feminist, Marxist believes that the nuclear family is essential in reproducing capitalist’s ideals and workforce, Engels, 1880. There has been an increase in diversity of families due to different factors.
But an industrial society, Parsons argued, needed a different sort of family – a smaller, more geographically mobile unit – the nuclear family – and it became much more of a unit of consumption, rather than production. It needed this because large scale, industrial societies are meritocratic. They need to be he argued, in order to be fully productive; they simply would not succeed if they permitted the existence of the sort of privileged classes and cliques promoted by pre-industrial societies. However, Parsons also argues that the shift to an
The view that industrialization led to the decline of the extended family and the rise of the nuclear family is seen to be a functionalist view because this focuses mostly on the social structure and what effects it has to parts of the society, but not directly the people within it. The extended family fits the needs of the pre-industrial society because the extended family consists of extended kin networks who aided each other in mostly agricultural labor with the rest of the family. The nuclear family on the other hand benefits from industrialization because physical labor is not necessarily needed because people would rely on machinery to do things that the extended family would do by hand, therefore meaning that extra family members are not required to live together to get work done. On one hand, you could say that industrialization did not lead to the decline of the extended family and revive the nuclear family. For example, the sociologist Peter Laslett had explored the myth that the family was normal in pre-industrial Britain.
Body Paragraph # 2 Topic Sentence: There are differences in the three sociological theories of the family institution. Supporting Evidence: The conflict theory for the family does not believe in the myth that families are always harmonious but instead, believe that the family can deal with differences, change and conflict (Plunket, 2011). The functionalism theory for the family believes that the basic function for the nuclear family is that it fulfills four basic functions for society: the sexual, reproductive, economic and education functions ( Unknown, 2010). The interactionism looks at the ways that a family creates and re-creates themselves every day. This view looks at how the family unit is built through their interactions (Jacobsen,etc.
Parsons (1955) argues that nuclear families in post-industrialised societies, are more ‘specialised’ and isolated, particularly as independent units of consumption, due to factors such as increased geographical mobility and the breakdown of the extended family. This has reduced the essential functions to two; primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personality (ibid). This stabilisation is seen as the ‘warm bath theory’, whereby the family provides a loving and supportive haven from the stresses of modern life, primarily for the patriarchal figure fulfilling the
Although the modern family is the most well known, it may not be the most common family in the United States anymore. According to sociologists, present-day families have changed beyond resemblance. It is generally assumed today that the modern family has undergone significant structure transformations. The social changes have contributed to a reduction in the percentage of “typical” families, or nuclear families. Replacing these, are childless families, one-parent families, other family configurations and non-marital families (3).
However, Murdock’s view of the nuclear family eliminate any other family structures, which too are able to supply these functions, and also neglects the conflict and exploitation of family. Parsons evaluated how the family provides solutions to the needs of modern industrial society and pre-industry society. Geographical Mobility is a need of modern industrial society as jobs now require people to move nationally or internationally for jobs. In today’s society, they’re are less extended families, making it easier for families to
It also includes a sexual relationship and one of more children, own or adopted, of the sexual cohabiting adults. He studied 250 societies and decided that they all showed characteristics from the nuclear family, even though widely varied, concluding that the nuclear family is universal. However many would say that this theory is out of date as Murdock would have been living in a very religious period where the family would have been expected to live as a nuclear family and consist of these characteristics, whereas in the 20th century families have developed to the changing societies., this would show how the nuclear family is not universal. Also Murdock didn’t take into consideration all societies, such as those who practice Polygamy, a marriage that involves three of more people. This would involve the husband having more than one wife, or possible the wife having more than one husband.
It can also be seen like this in the present day. Murdock's definition does not cover the types of family that differ from the traditional family structure. Eventually most sociologists adopted a definition based on the idea of kinship and limited to the function of childcare. The debate over the universality and necessity of the nuclear family began in the early twentieth century. Pioneer anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1913) stated that the nuclear family had to be universal because it filled a basic biological need—caring for and protecting infants and young children.