Structural Functional Theory Of Family

The Functionalist Perspective on the Family

By Charlotte Nickerson, published April 03, 2022 | Fact Checked by Saul Mcleod, PhD

Key Points

Functionalists believe that the institutions that brand up societies accept roles beneficial and essential to them. Family is ane example of such an institution.
Functionalists perspectives on the family agree that families perform functions such every bit socializing children, providing emotional and practical support, regulating sexual activity and reproduction, and providing social identity.
Prior to the industrial revolution, family members tended to perform productive tasks differentiated past sex and age. However, the emergence of mill labor shifted this dynamic, provoking families to serve complementary roles in providing back up for workers.
Murdock argued that families consist of instrumental and expressive roles. Instrumental roles provide financial support and constitute family status, while expressive roles involve providing emotional support and physical care.
Parsons devised the functional fit theory of the family, and argued that nuclear families, although performing a narrower scope of functions than those of the past, were essential to socializing members and stabilizing developed personalities through the emotional security of marital relationships.

The Functionalist View of Gild

Functionalism is what sociologists telephone call a structural-consensus theory. Past structural, sociologists hateful that functionalists argue that there exists a social structure that shapes individual beliefs through the procedure of socialization.

Functionalists believe that a successful gild is based on value consensus, people agreeing virtually a set of shared norms and values. In this manner, people can join forces in club to cooperate and work toward shared goals (Holmwood, 2005).

Functionalists posit that successful societies take a stable social structure in which different institutions perform unique functions that contribute to the maintenance of all of gild. This is similar to how unlike organs in the body perform different functions to keep an beast alive.

Functionalists presume that each of these institutional organs do things that are beneficial, or fifty-fifty essential, for the individual and society. Thus, the essence of the functionalist view of the family is that the family performs several essential functions for gild.

Families socialize children, provide emotional and practical support for their members, regulate sex and reproduction, and provide members with a social identity.

A corollary of this essentialist view of the family is the belief that a sudden or far-reaching change to family construction or processes threatens the stability of the establishment of family in itself, potentially weakening society (Holmwood, 2005).

Functions of the Family in Pre-Industrial Society

Pre-industrial families (before factories) — meaning those from the 17th to 19th centuries — tended to have big numbers of children. Economies in pre-industrial society were dominated by family-based economies — what Siskind (1978) calls the kinship fashion of production.

Typically, all family members worked at productive tasks differentiated by sexual activity and age. The family itself would have consisted of a construction, such as a caput of household, their spouse and children, the head's parents and possibly ancillary relatives.

Together, this unit worked productively, producing the things needed to sustain the family unit's survival. The kinship relation, in this time, represented a binding obligation to work for the subsistence of the family.

In the pre-industrial era, marriages were bundled largely for social and economic purposes, rather than for romantic honey. Matrimony served every bit a contractual agreement based on a specific partitioning of labor.

Although people would generally attend to their assigned roles within family units, these tasks may have been flexible, depending on the needs of the family unit. The tasks and the needs that the family unit construction could fulfill in pre-industrial gild included:

Beingness a unit of production
Caring for the immature, erstwhile ill and poor
The primary socialization and command of children
The education of children

Murdock'due south Four Functions of the Nuclear Family

The nuclear family unit is a family that consists of 2 generations; a parental married couple and their kin. In 1949, the sociologist George Murdock conducted a survey of 250 societies and determined that there are four universal residuum functions of the nuclear family: sexual, reproductive, educational, and economical.

ane. Sexual

Murdock considered the family to regulate sexual relations betwixt adults, ensuring that they are controlled and socially acceptable. While Murdock did not deny the existence of sexual relationships exterior of matrimony, he considered family to exist the socially legitimate sexual outlet for adults. Murdock believed that stable satisfaction of the sex drive within monogamous heterosexual relationships would prevent sexual jealousy (Murdock, 1949).

two. Reproduction

This sexual function of the family gives way to reproduction, which, Murdock argues, is necessary for ensuring the survival of society.

3. Socialization

The family plays a vital role in preparation children for adult life. The family, as a main agent of socialization and enculturation, teaches immature children ways of thinking and behaving that follow social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Parents, through teaching their children manners and civility, reverberate themselves in their offspring (Murdock, 1949).

4. Economic Needs

Additionally, parents teach children gender roles. Murdock argued that these gender roles are an important part of the economic part of the family.

Murdock idea of each family as having a division of labor that consists of instrumental and expressive roles. Instrumental roles are those that provide fiscal support and constitute family unit status, which Murdock purported were taken on by men. Expressive roles typically involve work inside of the family, providing emotional support and concrete care for children.

Functionalists considered this gender differentiation of roles to be an essential part of the family, because they ensure that the family is well balanced and coordinated. When family members motion outside of these roles, Murdock believes that the family is thrown out of residual and at adventure of plummet if not recalibrated.

For example, if a father decides to quit his job in favor of caring for children during the daytime, the mother must accept on an instrumental part, such as getting paid employment, in order for the family unit to maintain balance and function (Murdock, 1949).

Parsons - Functions of the Nuclear Family

According to Parsons (1951), although the nuclear family unit performs functions that are reduced in comparing to what information technology did in the past, it is yet the merely institution that tin can perform the core functions of primary socialization and the stabilization of adult personalities.

ane. Chief Socialization

Principal socialization refers to the early menstruation in a person's life where they larn and develop themselves through interactions and experiences around them. This results in a kid learning the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate to individuals every bit members of a particular culture.

This socialization is important because it sets the background for all future socialization. For example, if a child sees their mother denigrating a minority group, the child may then think that this behavior is acceptable, provoking them to go along to have this opinion about minority groups (Parsons, 1951).

Functionalists stress gender role socialization equally a vital part of primary socialization. If primary socialization is washed correctly, functionalists believe, boys learn to adopt the instrumental role in a family unit, provoking them to go to work and earn wages.

Meanwhile, girls learn to prefer an expressive part, provoking them to do care piece of work, housework, and bring upwardly children (Parsons, 1951).

two. The Stabilization of Adult Personalities

The stabilization of adult personalities, otherwise known as "warm bathroom theory," emphasizes the emotional security institute within marital relationships. This stabilization serves to balance out the stresses and strains of life faced by most adults.

In add-on, the stabilization of developed personalities within marriage allows adults to act on the child-like dimension of their personality past playing with their children, using their toys, and so forth (Parsons, 1951).

Another gene that aids the stabilization of developed personalities is the sexual division of labor inside nuclear families. Within isolated nuclear families, people are allocated particular roles in order to allow the unit to function correctly. There are the aforementioned expressive and instrumental roles (Parsons, 1951).

Parsons – Functional Fit Theory

Talcott Parsons (1951) kept a functional fit theory of the family, and devised a historical perspective on the evolution of the nuclear family. Co-ordinate to functional fit theory, the blazon of family unit that fits a society's construction, and the functions it performs, change as societies change.

For example, from the 17th to 20th centuries, as Western societies industrialized, the main family type inverse from the extended to the nuclear family unit.

The nuclear family is indicative of greater shifts in the structure of society, and how people subsisted inside it. Labor becomes decentralized and specialized, with workers in industrial plants taking on small tasks.

The emergence of factories allowed items that were once made by hand or within families, such as canned goods and vesture, to exist manufactured on a mass scale. The family unit unit no longer needed to account for the large undertaking of self-sufficiency.

Instead, instrumental family unit members could earn wages which other members could and then use to buy necessities. As young children could not contribute to this wage arrangement in the same way that they could to, say, a farm, the demand for large families to carry out labor lessened.

Additionally, declining infant and childhood mortality gave ascent to the expectation that most children would live to machismo.

Out of these broad-level societal changes came the nuclear family, which suited more than circuitous industrial society better, but performed a reduced number of functions. This smaller, nuclear family unit suited the need of industrial societies for a mobile workforce, one that could move to find work in a chop-chop irresolute and growing economy.

Additionally, the demand for extended family lessened as more and more than functions, such as instruction and healthcare, were gradually subsumed past the state (Parsons, 1951).

Criticisms of the Functionalist Perspective on the Family

The possibility that other institutions could perform the functions of the family. For example, a schoolhouse or workplace may provide daycare services, or regime subsidies may aid a family stay afloat instrumentally.

Murdock assumes that all nuclear families office well, ignoring families that are dysfunctional despite the presence of both instrumental and expressive roles.

Feminist sociologists posit that Murdock's argument that the family is essential is ideological, and that traditional family structures typically disadvantage women.

Parson'south view of the instrumental and expressive roles of men and women may have applied during the 1950s, but is now out of date. Women at present get out to work and the biological roles equally set out by Parsons no longer utilise as conspicuously.

Anthropological enquiry shows that there are some cultures that do not fit the traditional model of the nuclear family. One such instance is that of the Nair, a group of Indian Hindu castes, who lived historically in big family units called Tharavads that housed the descendants of one common female person ancestor. The marriage customs amidst this group have evoked much give-and-take and controversy among Indian jurists and social scientists (Panikkar, 1918).

Some functionalist sociologists disagree with Parson'due south thought that the nuclear family simply performs basic instrumental and expressive functions. Fletcher (1988), for example, argues that the family carries out iii essential functions that no other social institution tin can. These are the long-standing satisfaction of the sexual and emotional needs of parents, having and rearing children in a stable environment, and the provision of a common residence where all family unit members can return afterward piece of work or school.

Even so, Fletcher argues that the family also retains its education, health, and welfare function. Child-rearing and socialization in families are made more than constructive by state institutions offering resources such as prenatal intendance, health clinics, doctors, social workers, schools and teachers, and housing officers.

He notes that almost parents take master responsibility for their children'due south health - such as by teaching them hygiene and caring for and treating minor illnesses. Additionally, parents can guide and encourage their children on an educational and occupational level, too as provide material and welfare support, well beyond babyhood. Children often reciprocate these supports when their parents enter sometime historic period.

Fletcher, while acknowledging that the nuclear family has largely lost its economical function of product, highlights that it has shifted into a major unit of measurement of consumption. Families spend a large proportion of their income on domicile or family-oriented consumer appurtenances. Willmott and Young (1975) suggest that this tin can motivate family members to earn equally much every bit possible.

Historians accept suggested that Parson's interpretation of the functions of the family unit was overly simplistic. These historians take noted the evidence suggesting that industrialization follows unlike historical patterns in different industrial societies.

For example, in Nippon, industrialization stresses the importance of holding a chore for life with the same company, and employees are encouraged to view their colleagues as part of an extended family. This extends the kinship network (Jansenns, 2002).

The Marxist Functions of the Family

Charlotte Nickerson is a member of the Form of 2024 at Harvard University. Coming from a research groundwork in biology and archæology, Charlotte currently studies how digital and physical space shapes human beliefs, norms, and behaviors and how this can be used to create businesses with greater social impact.

Content is rigorously reviewed by a squad of qualified and experienced fact checkers. Fact checkers review articles for factual accurateness, relevance, and timeliness. We rely on the about electric current and reputable sources, which are cited in the text and listed at the bottom of each article. Content is fact checked after it has been edited and earlier publication.

This article has been fact checked past Saul Mcleod, a qualified psychology teacher with over 17 years' experience of working in further and higher pedagogy. He has been published in psychology journals including Clinical Psychology, Social and Personal Relationships, and Social Psychology.

Nickerson, C. (2022, Apr 03). The Functionalist Perspective on the Family . Simply Folklore. https://simplysociology.com/functionalist-perspective-family.html

References

Chambers, D., & Gracia, P. (2021). A sociology of family life: Alter and variety in intimate relations. John Wiley & Sons.

Crano, W. D., & Aronoff, J. (1978). A cross-cultural study of expressive and instrumental office complementarity in the family. American Sociological Review, 463-471.

Fletcher, R. (1988). The Shaking of the Foundations: family unit and society. Routledge.

Holmwood, J. (2005). Functionalism and its Critics. Modern social theory: An introduction, 87-109.

Janssens, A. (2002). Family unit and social change: The household as a process in an industrializing community (No. 21). Cambridge University Press.

Murdock, G. P. (1949). Social construction.

Panikkar, Grand. M. (1918). Some Aspects of Nayar Life. The Journal of the Purple Anthropological Institute of Great Great britain and Republic of ireland, 48, 254-293.

Parsons, T. Eastward., & Shils, E. A. (1951). Toward a general theory of action.

Siskind, J. (1978). Kinship and manner of production. American Anthropologist, 80(4), 860-872.

Young, M., & Willmott, P. (1975). Michael Gordon," The Symmetrical Family unit"(Book Review). Journal of Social History, 9(i), 120.