Outline and assess functionalist and new right views on the family This essay aims to explore the views of the functionalist and new rights approach on the family. Functionalists argue that the family is the most important institution in society as it benefits both the individual and society. They have the most positive view on the family, and state that it performs vital functions for the maintenance of society. Their main emphasis is on the nuclear family which is the stereotypical family of married, heterosexual parents with children - they tend to ignore any other family types. The approach presents the family as a family isolated from wider kinships because of the mobility required by labour markets in industrial societies.
There are different views on the functionalism of the family and these views can change over time, between societies and between people in the same society. One man who expressed his functionalist view on the family was Murdock. He felt that the family was at the heart of society and that the nuclear family (mother, father and two or more children) was so useful to society it is inevitable and universal. This suggests that Murdock thought that the family was a natural part of society and happens all over the world. He felt that the family was multi-functional and could do a lot of things that needed to be done in modern day culture.
This means children are now expensive to have and people do not have the money to have as many children as they used too. Medical advances have been a consequence to the changes in population. Due to improvements in midwifery and immunisation, the infant mortality rate has decreased significantly. This now means partners do not need to have as many children as it is more certain their child will live through their childhood. This was not the case at the beginning of the 20th century.
Secondly, feminism is another reason that some people believe that nuclear families are no longer the norm. Within the 1940’s women were seen simple as housewives and mother, and education within their life wasn’t even thought about. Essentially they were expected to conform to the nuclear family model. Now women are just as likely to be in paid employment like men and therefore this gives them much more status and independence, which makes the nuclear family less likely. Yet others would argue that even the media still supports nuclear families and is socializing the next generation into thinking that it is right for example ‘The Simpsons’, so despite the increase in divorce and feminism the nuclear family will remain popular in British society.
With Reference to Item A assess the view that the nuclear family remains the norm and the ideal (24 marks) Item A; In recent years, sociologists have drawn attention to the growth of family and household diversity in Britain and elsewhere, arguing that we have moved away from the previous norm od a conventional nuclear family composed of a heterosexual married couple and their children, with a gender division of labour. They point, for example, to the fact about one household in 10 is now headed by a lone parent as evidence of the declining popularity of the conventional nuclear family. However some sociologists argue that despite recent changes, the conventional nuclear family remains the norm in Britain today. Writing in 1985, Chester claimed that the basic patterns of family life had remained largely unchanged for most people since the 1940’s. He argued that most adults still marry and have children.
In contrast, in more modern times, unwed mothers are more abundantly seen and accepted. In spite of what hardships it may bring, babies born to unwed mothers are now more often taken home to be raised by the mother and or extended family. Nevertheless, the most common reason for a mother to place her child up for adoption remains to be due to her being single. Secondly, in the 1950s society mainly concentrated on the negative views of being an unwed mother. The age of a person at the time of marriage was significantly lower than the age of today.
Functionalist believes every institution has its own purpose in order to exist. They compare the social institutions to the organs in the body, this theory is known as the analogy of body; they believe family is the most important ‘organ’ and functionalists believe the family has essential functions that needs to perform to meet the society’s needs. In this essay, I will mention Murdock and his 4 main functions that a family must perform, Parson and his 2 main functions, and Parsons’ warm bath theory. Unlike some sociological perspectives, functionalism takes a very positive view of the families and households. They believe nuclear family (and sometimes extended) family is the most ideal family because it is the only family that can perform all those functions that a family should in order to meet and achieve the society’s needs.Murdock, a functionalist believes a family is responsible to perform 4 main functions included sexual, economic, education and reproductive.
In the article “Just whom is this Divorce good for? By Marquart she explains, “We found that children of so- called “good” divorces often do worse even than children of unhappy low- conflict marriages. They say more often, that family life was stressful and they had to grow up to soon. They are themselves more likely to divorce and children of divorce feel like divided selves”. I would have to agree with that because I am actually going through my parents getting a divorce and when I found out I didn’t want to believe it at all I didn’t want to see my parents split up it just wasn’t right to me.
Earlier in Europe, mothers had avoided strong emotional ties to newborn children because of the constant risk of infant death. As the emergence of the family as an important institution grew, so did a growing emotional attachment to children. Women started to begin breastfeeding their own offspring rather than hiring a wet nurse to do so for them. Love and affection was also focused on older children and adolescents, as they too were involved in the strong bonds of emotional attachment to their mothers. Families often had less numbers of children as a cause of the reduced rate of the rates of mortality of infants, and also often strove to provide their children with opportunities in the world that they themselves never had, which is a concept that modern families have too.
Overall women are having less babies than they used to this is causing the birth rate in the UK to drop. In the 1960’s the average number of children being born went from 6 to 2.7. Women are also delaying having children in the 1970’s the average age for a women to have a child was 24 it is now 30. Some women are even choosing not to have children at