Families and households - Topic 3

Despite their disagreements, functionalists, marxists and feminists approaches to the family share certain similarities. They are all structural approaches: they see the family as a structure that performs certain functions - although they disagree about these function are and who benefits from them. Similarly, they all assume that by ‘the family’ we mean the conventional nuclear family. Other sociologists reject this structural approach. For example, the personal life perspective takes a bottom up view that focuses on peoples meanings and how they themselves define what counts as ‘family’.

Applying material from Item A, evaluate the usefulness of structural approaches to our understanding of families and households [20 marks]

The premise of the marxist approach consists of the upper class bourgeoisie who are exploiting the working class proletariat for more profits. The marxist approach states that in order for the bourgeoisie to keep their place at the top of the hierarchy then they need to keep the means of production and pass it down through the generations with inheritance. Engels stated there was no family in primitive communism due to the promiscuous horde, and so the move to monogamy ensured that people knew who to pass their assets to.

In the functionalist perspective, Murdock states that the family performs 4 functions which are: stable satisfaction of the sex drive, reproduction of the next generation, meeting the economic needs of the individual members and socialisation of the young. However, Murdocks view lacks temporal validity as his view has not lasted, due to it stating that both sexes need to be involved but now there are same sex marriages. It also doesn’t account for all families such as single parent families.

In the feminist view it states that there are four different types of feminism. Liberal feminism is more concerned about campaigning against sex discrimination and for equal rights and opportunities for women and argue that women are more equal but there is still work to be done. Marxist feminism claims that the main cause of women's oppression is capitalism. Radical feminism argues that men are the direct cause of women's oppression and that the patriarchy should be over turned. Difference feminism argues that we cannot generalise about women’s experiences and that all women have different experiences.

There are some similarities between these three approaches. One similarity is that they all make the assumption that the nuclear family is the dominant family structure in society. This is seen in the text where it says, “they all assume that by ‘the family’ we mean the conventional nuclear family.” These three approaches do not take any other family structures into consideration and this is a possible draw back for the approaches. Another similarity between the approaches is that they agree on the family socialising the young. This is seen in the text where it says, “they see the family as a structure that performs certain functions.” Approaches such as the marxist and functionalist approach both agree that the family socialises the children for later life but then disagree on the purpose of socialising the young. A third similarity is that they are all structural approaches. This is seen in the text where it says, “They are all structural approaches”. These three approaches take the view that things start at the top of the hierarchy and then move down and then affect the members of society. This then implies that the members of society are passive and is another possible draw back for the approaches.

There are also differences between the approaches. One difference is that marxists believe that the family only benefits capitalism, where as functionalists would argue that the family benefits both society and the individual members of the family. This is seen in the text where it says, “ they disagree about these functions and who benefits from them.” Marxists claim that that the family acts as a way for the bourgeoisie to retain the means of production between themselves through inheritance. They would also argue that with working class families, the family is a unit of consumption in which advertisers target families and children to continually purchase the latest products which gives more profit to the bourgeoisie. Functionalists would criticise this and would argue that marxists ignore all of the benefits that the family provides for its individual members such as supporting each other economically and would then put forward geographical mobility (people and families being able to move to different places for work) and social mobility (an individuals status being achieved and not ascribed at birth means that someone can be born of a low status and still achieve a high status due to their own efforts) as ways in which the family benefits society.

The personal life perspective consists of peoples private life and individuals own definitions of things such as what an individual would define as family to them. This perspective also consists of an individuals leisure activities. The personal life perspective is also a bottom up approach. This is seen in the text where it says, “the personal life perspective takes a bottom up view that focuses on peoples meanings and how they themselves define what counts as ‘family’ “ The personal life perspective is a bottom up approach as it takes into consideration how the meanings and actions of individuals shape their relationships.

The personal life perspective deals with the criticisms of the other structural approaches, such as functionalism, by recognising that relatedness is not always positive. For example, people may be trapped in violent, abusive relationships or simply ones in which they suffer everyday from unhappiness or lack of respect.

A strength of the personal life perspective is that it helps to understand how people themselves construct and define their relationships as ‘family’ rather than imposing traditional sociological definitions on family. This was argued by Nordqvist.

A criticism of the personal life perspective is that it is too broad. By including a range of different kinds of personal relationships, relationships that are based on blood or marriage can be ignored.