Families

• Functionalism: Murdock identifies four functions of the nuclear family: sexual needs, reproduction, economic support, and primary socialisation.
• Rose-tinted view of the family: AO3 criticises Murdock's theory for focusing too heavily on positive functions and ignoring dysfunction and inequality in the family.
• Family diversity: AO3 also criticises Murdock's theory for ignoring other types of family structures, such as lone parent, extended, and blended families, which can also perform these functions.
• The meanings assigned by those trapped in abusive relationships are too broad, including a wide range of relationships in the category of 'the family' may ignore what is special about blood and marriage ties.
• The personal life perspective is not concerned with 'functions', but it appears that this approach considers the way in which the family gives 'identity' and a 'sense of belonging', which are similar to the functions that functionalists consider.
• By including a broad range of relationships, the term 'family' may lose its meaning and definition.
• Parsons' functional fit theory: Parsons argues that industrialisation created the need for families to be geographically mobile and socially mobile.
• Before the industrial revolution, the extended family existed, with families being large and multiple generations living under one roof.
• The extended family worked in business together, such as in farming, and were not able to move around easily.
• In pre-industrial society, the family was a unit of production, with family members working together to produce goods, like on the farm.
• With industrialisation, work moved into factories, meaning the family was no longer a unit of production.
• The nuclear family was left with two functions: primary socialisation, which involves transmitting norms, values, and skills to children so they can smoothly transition into society, and stabilisation of adult personalities, which involves adults being able to relax when with family, helping reduce their tensions/frustrations and thus return to work the following day.
• Laslett argues that most pre-industrial families were actually nuclear in structure due to the short life expectancy, meaning grandparents were not likely to live for long after their grandchildren were born.
• The extended family is still common amongst certain cultural groups, such as Pakistani families.
• Marxism: The family functions to maintain the capitalist system by providing free child care and domestic labour, emotional support, and ideological support.
• Zaretsky argues that the family allows workers to relax in a safe haven away from work, helping them feel refreshed for when they return the next day.
• In the 'promiscuous horde' society, there were no restrictions on sexual relationships.
• The family acts as the market for capitalist goods, encouraging consumption through adverts and putting a pressure on families to 'keep up with the Joneses'.
• Functionalists argue that the theory of the family ignores the positive benefits that the family provides for its members.
• Socialisation through the family teaches children into capitalist norms and values, preventing them from questioning these in wider society.
• Engels argues that prior to capitalism, there was a more equal society which Marx referred to as 'primitive communism'.
• Liberal Feminism celebrates the move towards gender equality in the family, arguing that this has been achieved through changes in law and social attitudes.
• Marxist Feminism argues that the main cause of women's oppression in the family is capitalism, which functions to maintain capitalism through emotional labour and the reserve army of cheap labour.
• Families produce children which, reproducing the labour force, allow capitalism to persist into future years.
• The concept of hierarchy within the family mirrors the hierarchy of classes in wider society.
• The monogamous nuclear family developed due to the industrial revolution, allowing men who owned money and property to pass this on as inheritance to children who they were certainly biologically related to.
• Feminists/Marxist Feminists argue that Marxists focus too heavily on class inequality at the expense of missing the importance of gender inequality.
• Functionalists argue that the family performs vital functions for the whole of society, providing support and emotional satisfaction to its members.
• Marxists see all social institutions as serving the interests of capitalism, arguing that institutions such as the family help to maintain the system of class inequality and exploitation.
• A communist revolution would abolish the family.
• Difference Feminism suggests that we cannot generalise about women's experiences, as lesbian and heterosexual women, black and white women, middle-class and working-class women, all have very different experiences of the family.
• bell hooks, a famous feminist, considers the intersection of gender and race.
• Capitalists need to retain control over their wealth in order to maintain their privileged position.
• Liberal feminists argue that the approach of Radical Feminism ignores the important improvements which have been made to the position of women’s lives.
• Political Lesbianism, another suggestion from Radical Feminism, encourages women to only have sexual relations with other women, as heterosexual relationships involve ‘sleeping with the enemy’.
• Gender inequalities in the family exist in non-capitalist societies, suggesting it isn’t capitalism which causes gender inequality.
• Reproduce the labour force — socialise the next generation into capitalist norms/values, producing compliant workers.
• Radical Feminism suggests that marriage and the family are the key institutions which cause the patriarchy, as men benefit from women’s unpaid domestic labour and sexual services, while women are subjected to men’s sexual and domestic violence.
• Capitalist society is based on a wealthy capitalist class exploiting the labour of a propertyless working class in order to extract a profit.
• Intersectional feminism, as coined by Crenshaw, carves out a kind of feminism which considers the intersection/interaction between gender and other social factors such as race, class, sexuality, etc.