Cards (7)

  • Murdock
    Family performs four essential functions through the nuclear family to meet its member’s, and wider society’s needs.
    1. Stable satisfaction of the sex drive.
    2. Reproduction of the next generation.
    3. Socialisation of the young.
    4. Meeting it’s members‘ economic needs.
    • food, housing, clothes - necessities.
  • Murdock AO3:
    Too rose tinted - fails to recognise individual family needs. Women shouldn’t have to serve men, and family should serve its members, not capitalism.
    Other institutions such as schools, charities and healthcare can provide these functions.
  • Parsons - ‘functional fit’

    In order to meet the functions outlined by murdock, and others such as welfare, military and political or religious functions, the family type must adapt to society.
    Nuclear family = modern society
    Extended family = pre- industrial society
  • Parsons - FF explanation
    From the late 18th century, extended families (worked on farms) moved to nuclear families (factory workers & housewives) because the family adapted with society (industrial revolutio).
  • Parsons
    Two essential needs of Industrial society.
    1. Geographically mobile
    2. Socially mobile
  • Parsons - FF AO3:
    Larslett study found that households from 1564-1821 were mostly nuclear.
    Willmott & Young said it was the hardship of industrial society created a mum-centered w/c extended family, with mothers and married daughters supporting one another.
  • Parsons - Loss of functions.

    Pre-industrial society was self preserved / sufficient, a means of production and a unit of consumption (multi-functional). So Industrial society meant that families became dependent on eachother.
    The nuclear family specialised into two ‘irreducible functions’:
    1. Primary socialisation of children
    2. Stabilisation of adult personalities (Warm bath theory).