Family : Functionalist AO3

• -The sexual division of labour doesn’t always follow the traditional pattern identified by Murdock. A study by Cambridge University by Brendan Burchell in 2011 surveyed over 30,000 families across 27 EU member states. Burchell went door to door and asked families about their working practice, well-being and lifestyle at home. The survey found that the total number of working hours in a week was 55 for men and 68 for women. Of these hours, paid employment made up 40 hours a week for men and 21 hours a week for women. Work at home (chores) included 23 hours a week for women and 8 hours for men.
• -Data from the NHS show that 105,780 adults seeking help with drug addiction live with children. Police figures from 2012 report 1.2 million cases of domestic abuse against women and 800,000 cases against men. The charity Shelter report that in 2015 the number of homeless children was 99,080. Data from the NSPCC shows that police recorded 47,000 sexual offences against children in the UK in 2014/15. NSPCC statistics (2015) show that there are approximately 57,000 children identified as needing protection from abuse within the family.
• -Marxists argue that everyone in society working towards achieving shared goals only benefits the bourgeoisie instead of the society as a whole.
• -Feminists argue that everyone in society working towards achieving shared goals only benefits men.
• -Parsons’ stabilisation of the adult personality can be carried out by institutions other than family such as rehab or anger management classes. Elizabeth Stanko found that there is an average of 1 call per minutes to the police from a woman who was suffering from domestic abuse. Therefore, women taking on the burden of emotional outrage from their working husbands doesn’t help society at all since the people in the society are suffering. On top of that ONS data shows that there were 1.7million cases of domestic abuse against women and 700,000 against men.