Theorists

• Murdock (Functionalists)

  Family as basic unit around which all family systems are organised, provides 4 essential functions (SEER)
• Parsons (Functionalists)

  Family provides 2 functions - primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities (SOAP)

  Family is warm bath theory - family relieve stress and tension from work and helps adults personalities stabilize
• Fletcher (Functionalists)

  Functions of families Parson talks about never occurred as many children neglected

  Points out growth of welfare services the function of family have changed by adding more responsibility onto the family
• Dennis and Erdos (New right)

  Rising trend in fatherless families so boys become anti-social and undisciplined - suffer from poorer life chances and inadequate socialisation
• Murray (New right)

  Couples should get married before kids

  Lone parent families create issues as there is lack of male role models

  Women shouldn't have children if they can't maintain them
• Engels (Marxist)

  Inheritance of property - Monogamy most efficient means of ensuring transmission of private property through system of inheritance

  Capitalist pass wealth onto heirs

  Women known as glorified prostitutes - provide sex for economic security
• Althusser (Marxist)

  Ideological state apparatus - Family another way of passing on ideology

  Pocket money in exchange for tasks a way for children to learn about the economy and exploitation
• Marcuse (Marxist)

  W/C families encouraged to pursue false needs, led to believe they have latest gadgets and so are exploited by capitalism
• Zaretsky (Marxist)

  Family unit of consumption - capitalism built on exploitation of housewives, family consumes products of capitalism

  Primary socialisation - Makes children at accept someone always in charge and dependent on domestic exploitation of women who perform labour of love
• Cooper (Marxist)

  Family prepares individual for their induction into the role their meant to play in an exploitive society

  Highlights darker side of the family
• Edmund Leech (Marxist)

  Privacy becomes source of violence, creates an abusive and negative experience for many members
• Laing (Marxist)

  Family can be cause of mental illness, the stresses of living and coping in a competitive capitalist society
• Donzelot (Marxist)

  State apparatus used to control families much more direct and repressive than ideological - unfit parents can have children taken off them
• Ansley (Marxist - Feminists)

  Women absorb anger that would otherwise be directed at capitalism

  Male partners frustrated by exploitation at work and women are victims of this

  Function of family - Emotional safety valve absorbing husbands frustrations (takers of shit)
• Millett (Radical Feminists)

  Sexual politics - need to challenge patriarchy, more involvement by men would release burden
• Firestone (Radical Feminists)

  Dialectic of sex - biological division of labour root cause of male dominance
• Greer (Radical Feminists)

  Female Eunach - family disadvantages women as strong ideology that being a wife is most important role

  Women forced to be submissive role to fulfill male fantasies
• Purdy (Radical Feminists)

  Babystrike if men don't contribute
• Dobash and Dobash (Radical feminists)

  Violence against wives - women considered men property once married, violence occur when men authority challenged
• Somerville (Liberal Feminist)

  March of progress
• Oakley (Liberal Feminists)

  Housewife role
• Duncombe and Marsden (Liberal Feminists)

  Triple shift - Care of children, paid work and emotional work
• Stacey (Postmodernist Feminist)

  Divorce - extended family - Women have more freedom to shape their family to meet their needs and free self from patriarchal oppression
• Giddens (Post modernist)

  Increased freedom and choice personal relationships become less stable - family has changed because society has changed

  Challenging dominant or typical norms and values
• Beck (Post Modernist)

  Families changed by allowing too much freedom

  Rise in negotiated family
• Anthony Giddens (Post Modernist)

  Pure relationship - Relationships meet peoples needs so greater sexual and emotional equality

  Confluent love - instead of monogamy its now serial monogamy

  Plastic sexuality - Contraception allowed sex and intimacy to be main reason for relationship