The third function that Murdock constructed is the means of providing food and shelter for all family members. Murdock failed to realise that not all people may want or can have children. It is also possible that despite living in a nuclear family, children do not receive the love of both parents.Īccording to Murdock, family allows reproduction to take place which provides the society with the next members of society. This function can be criticised by stating that a stable sexual relationship does not always prevent affairs from occurring.

This will help ensure that the family unit remains intact and children can receive the love of both parents during their upbringing. The sexual function allows the married couple to enjoy a stable sexual relationship and to avoid affairs. These include sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. Murdock submitted that all families must perform four vital functions in order to help society function. Functionalist ignores these negative aspects and the ‘dark side’ of the family. This can lead to the children also growing up to follow in their footsteps. They would not be setting a good example for their children to live by. This can lead them to take their anger out on their wives or even their children. Many male have drug or drink related issues which can result from their day to day jobs. In some families, it may be possible that the mother and father are not good roles models. Marxists also argue that women serve the capitalist society through serving their husband and making them capable of going to work. Women are expected to raise the kids and look after her husband when he arrives home from work. Women are left to stay at home and carry out numerous domestic jobs during the day. Functionalists favoured these family roles as they ensure children have role models and figures to look up to and aspire to be like.įeminists however, despise these family roles as they believe that both males and females should have equal share in domestic responsibilities and feel that the family benefits males more than females. The woman takes on an expressive role, of nurturing and caring for the family members, while the male takes on the instrumental role as the breadwinner. There are specifics roles in the nuclear family which each member must perform. Nuclear family is a unit composed of a father, mother and at least one child. It is not fair to say that all children from single parent families will stray towards crime. They fail, however to see that there are many successful single parent families. The new right also back this idea and state that children from single parent families are more likely to end up in crime then children with both parents. Functionalist believe that one parent cannot possible provide for children the same as two parents can. Murdock was able to conclude that the best and most common family form was the nuclear family.įunctionalist favour the nuclear family and oppose single parent and same sex families. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, owned or adopted, of the sexually cohabited adults”.įrom his research, Murdock was able to come to the conclusion that the family is inevitable and is bound to exist in every society.

“The family is a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. By researching into these societies, Murdock was able to compile the following definition for family: George Peter Murdock was an American sociologist who studied over two hundred and fifty different societies worldwide. These two writers are George Peter Murdock (1949) and Talcott Parsons (1959). There are two main functionalist writers who examined the family and derived different functions that each believed the family perform for society’s stability. (24 Marks)įunctionalist view society as having many parts, which must work together efficiently in order to maintain social harmony and coherence. Assess the functionalist position on the role of the family.

Structural functional theory and family