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.
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
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
For example as the population increases the amount of resources used decreases, so less children would mean the less use of electricity or heating, helping society by using little resources. Reproduction of the next generation, so society can continue. Socialisation of the young, so they can learn the norms and values of life. This would benefit the individual (the child) as they will understand how everything works when they are older and overcome any obstacles due to them being well prepared. This would benefit society as they have more young workers coming from the families.
Functionalist perspective on the family Functionalists believe that society is based on a set of shared norms and values, into which society socialises its members. This enables them to meet society’s needs and achieve shared goals. -Functionalists regard society as a system made up of different parts or sub systems that depend on each other. -Functionalists often compare society to a biological organism like the human body. Murdock – argues that the family performs four essential functions to meet the needs of society and it members.
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
Reproduction is an organized which means for producing new members of the family and society needs it to survive. This play a major role in life with out it we will just have the four elements of life which is: water, air, earth, and fire. Reproduction is for society to be full with life. Its also is for getting a family together and adding more to the populations of life. There are similarities of reproduction in human as well as with animal species.
This essay is going to discuss what is meant by the term social context and how society today and its services benefit families in this term. It will identify relevant skills, principles approaches to the assessment process, explore the stages of this process and how these key services and findings from the article will help benefit the family in a social context. It will explore the findings of Morawska et al 2011 on his research on parenting programmes and culturally diverse families and if the findings from his research were valid. The term social context refers to the social and physical setting in which people live in or where something develops. This can include the culture in which an individual lived or was educated in as well as people or organisations they interact with.
The stabilisation of adult personalities – the family offers adults the emotional support to cope with the everyday stresses of life. Parsons also stated that there were four changes to the family that industrialisation borught, which include; geographical mobility – nuclear family move to different parts of the country as they aren’t as attached to other family relatives than the extended family. Isolated nuclear family- as the nuclear family were geographically mobile they felt isolated. Structural differentiation – this is where the nuclear family became a unit of consumption, instead of a unit of production. Husband & wife roles – the male was the ‘instrumental leader’.
The functionalist perspective recognises that families perform vital functions for their members and for their society, to ensure stability and harmony in order to achieve social order (Giddens, 2009). Functionalists say that society is held together by social consensus, in which members of the society agree upon, and work together to achieve, what is best for society as a whole. Emile Durkheim suggested that social consensus takes one of two forms, one of which is Mechanical Solidarity – the sense of togetherness within a society