Theories of the family

Functionalists, New Right, Marxists, Feminism, Personal Life Perspective and Postmodernism

Functionalism:

• Structural or Social Action

• Conflict or Consensus

Structural

Consensus

New Right:

• Structural or Social Action

• Conflict or Consensus

Structural

Consensus

Marxism:

• Structural or Social Action

• Conflict or Consensus

Structural

Conflict

Feminism:

• Structural or Social Action

• Conflict or Consensus

Structural

Conflict

Personal Life Perspective:

• Structural or Social Action

Social action

Postmodernism:

• Structural or Social Action

Structural

Functionalism’s main principles about the family

Families have a number of responsibilities such as preparation for children, The family is a functional prerequisite, fitting with other institutions.

Functionalism

Murdock

Did research in 1949

4 key functions of the family:

1)Sexual

2)Reproduction

3)Socialisation - need to socialise the child into the core value of society.

4)Economic - need to provide for the child.

He found that by looking at the families across 250 societies the family that existed in every single family and he said that families have 4 roads (the 4 functions).

Functionalism

Parsons

2 functions:

1)Primary socialisation for children - equip them with basic skills and society's values.

2)SOAP - stabilisation of adult person - adults can relax 

Women act as a source of stability for men’s SOAP (women are the warm bath).

He argues that postindustrial families are losing their functions.

Evaluation for Functionalism

• Parsons - Young and Willmott say that from 1900 nuclear families started to emerge due to changes such as higher living standards and married women working. Extended families haven’t disappeared and they perform important functions e.g providing financial help.

• They idealise families and ignore the conflict and abuse and gender inequality inside of them. This is why functionalism is sometimes referred to as the warm bath theory.

NR’s main principles of family

They see families having functional benefits for society. Nuclear heterosexual families are the best families to raise children.

New Right

Murray

Growth in single parent families of the underclass has grown because of over-generous welfare states. He believes that welfare states should be abolished and that they should stand on their own 2 feet. 

New Right

Erdos

Single parent families will raise their children up to be juvenile and delinquents. 90% of these families are run by women and they believe that they don’t socialise boys properly because they lack a role model meaning these boys are less likely to follow norms values and rules this turns them into juvenile behaviour.

Marxists main principles of families

Marxist sociologists see a capitalist society as an unequal conflict between 2 classes (working and capitalist - who own the means of production).

Functions of the family are to benefit the capital system.

Marxism

Private property

As society developed, wealth increased. This causes the development of private property.

Marxism

Engels

Monogamy became essential  because of the inheritance of private property - men needed to make sure their wives only had children with them so that their children would inherit the private property. Engels the rise of nuclear monogamous families lead to the “world historical defeat of the female sex.” This was because it brought the woman’s sexuality under male control and turned her into “a mere instrument for the production of children”.

Marxism

What do they believe will happen if they overthrow capitalism (what will happen to women and private property)?

Women receive liberation from patriarchal control. A classless society will be created in which the means of production are owned collectively and not privately.

Marxism

What do Marxists mean by “ideology”

 The belief that justifies inequality and maintains the capitalist system by persuading people to accept it as fair, natural and unchangeable. 

Marxism

What do Marxist talk about the socialisation of children and capitalism?

Families socialise their children into the idea that the hierarchy and inequality is inevitable.

Marxism

Eli Zaretsky (1976)

Families serve an ideological function by offering an apparent ‘haven’ (place of safety and refuge)  for the harsh and exploitative world of capitalism outside.

However Zaretsky argues this is largely an illusion - a family cannot meet its member’s needs. e.g it is based on the domestic servitude (state of being a slave) of women.

Marxism

Althusser

The family is an ISA (ideological state apparatuses (machinery needed for a certain purpose)) which is concerned with passing on the ideology of the ruling class.

Marxism

How do capitalists exploit their workers

Capitalism exploits the labour of the workers, making a profit by selling the products of their labour for more than it pays the workers to make it.

Marxism

Families play a major role in generating profits for capitalists as it is an important market for the sale of consumer goods: (why do people buy products)

• Advertisers urge families to ‘keep up with Joneses’ (Joneses - a person's neighbour or social equal) by consuming all of the latest products.

• Media target children, who use ‘pester power’ to persuade parents to spend more.

• Children who lack the latest clothes or gadgets are mocked by their peers.

Evaluation points for Marxism

• Marxists tend to assume that the nuclear family is dominant in capitalist society (Ignores the wider variety of families structures now).

• Feminists believe that there are more fundamental than class inequalities and the family primarily serves the interest of men, not capitalism.

• Functionalists argue that Marxists ignore the real benefits that the family provides for its members.   

Feminism’s main principles

Women are oppressed. Women suffer from unequal and division of domestic labour  and women suffer from domestic violence.

Liberal Feminists

Concerned with the campaign against sex discrimination and equal rights and opportunities for women.

• Women’s oppression is being overcome gradually.

• They believe that we are moving forward  to greater equality however for further equality will depend on  further reforms and changes in attitudes and socialisation patterns of both sexes.

Liberal Feminism

Jenny Sommervile

Women have yet to achieve full equality even though their position has improved.

Marxist feminists

They are that the main cause of women oppression is capitalism (unlike other feminists who believe it is the patriarchy).

Functions that women’s oppression will perform for capitalism

• Women reproduce the labour force - They socialise the next working generation (they can raise them to think that capitalism is inevitable).

• Women absorb anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism. Fran Ansley (1972) describes wives as “takers of shit” who soak up the frustration of their husbands 

• Women are a reserve army of cheap labour that can be taken on when extra workers are needed. When no longer needed, employers can ‘let them go’  to return to their primary unpaid domestic labour.

Radical feminists say society is founded on the what?

Patriarchy

What was the key division of society against according to Radical feminists?

The key division in society is between men and women:

• Men are the enemy they’re the source of women's oppression and exploitation.

• The family and the marriage is the key institution in patriarchal society. Men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour and from their sexual services, and they dominate women through domestic and sexual violence or threat of it.

What do Radical feminists believe that women need to do to overturn the patriarchy?

Women need to go through separatism. This is when women must organise themselves to live independently. 

Radical feminists believe in political what?

Lesbianism - women to have a fair split in domestic labour they have to be gay.

What does Radical feminists Germaine Greer argue for?

She argues for matrifocal household as alternative to heterosexual families

Difference feminism

They argue that women of different ethnicities, classes will have different experiences of the family.

How does feminism other feminists other then difference feminists neglect

By regarding the family mostly  negatively, white feminists neglect black women’s experiences of racial oppression.

What do other feminists argue difference feminists neglects

Other feminists argue that difference feminism neglects that women share many of the same experiences (they all face the risk of domestic violence and sexual assault).

Evaluation of feminism

• Liberal - they are failing to challenge the underlying cause of women's oppression and for believing that changes in the law or people’s attitude will be enough equality. (Marxism and radical feminists)

• Radical - Liberal feminist Jenny Somervile (2000) - fails to recognise that women’s position has improved (e.g better access to divorce and better job opportunities). She says because of heterosexual attraction political lesbianism and separatism won’t work.

Personal Life Perspective main principles about family

People have a choice in creating our family relationships (e.g relationships in the family)

To understand families we need to focus on the meanings it gives their family members to their relationships and situations (rather than their functions).

Because Personal Life Perspective focus on meaning it draw attention to a range of what?

Other personal relationships which are important even though they may not define them as family.

Personal Life Perspective

Petra Nordqvist and Carol Smarts (2014)

Did research on donor-conceived children explorers “what counts as family when your child shares a genetic link with a ‘relative stranger’ but not with your partner?” 

Lets say some has a biological sister will they count them as their sister as they didn’t grow up with them.

Personal Life Perspective

What did Petra Nordqvist and Carol Smarts (2014) find from their study?

Issues of blood and genes raise ranges of feelings. Some parents will say that social relationships are more important over genetic ones.

Difficult feelings could flare up for non-genetic parents if someone was to say that their child looks like them.

Difference in appearance led the parents to wonder about the donor’s identity (possible donor siblings and if they count as family)

Personal Life Perspective

What is one of the problems that lesbains feel about donors and one of the mother being their child’s bio mum and the other is not?

They worry about the equality between genetic and non-genetic mothers and if the donor will be treated like the 2nd ‘real’ parent. 

Personal Life Perspective

Backette

Family life is individual and for most parents a trial and error process

Personal Life Perspective

Clark

 Identified 4 types of marriage : 

• struggling

• drifting 

• establishing 

• surfacing

Personal Life Perspectives

Morgan

‘families practises’, it is what we do that makes us family e.g cooking dinner.  

Evaluation of Personal Life Perspective

• It can be too broad

• Can ignore what is special about the relationship that are based on blood or marriage.

• It doesn’t see intimate relationships performing the important functions of providing us with a sense of belonging.

Postmodernists main principles

Growth in diversity of family types.

Postmodernists

Beck

More diversity creates more risk. There is less stability and certainty about what our family should look like and who should be in it .

Postmodernists

Giddins

More choice leads to more pure relationships, solely meeting the needs of each other.

Postmodernism

Stacy

Diversity has benefited women. Extended divorced families.