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Reproductive
Function
Needless
to say, the major function of family is to reproduce and extend to next
generation. If there is no family, society may not be survived. Family can
satisfy the basic needs of social development. No society has succeeded in
finding an adequate substitute for the nuclear family.
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Economic
Function
In
the past, husband specializes to work (economic production) while wife usually
specializes in household. Nowadays, after industrialization, wife has a chance
to go to work. As a result, the economic expenses are usually shared by both
of them. Family acts as a social unit and a productive unit. It also a unit of
economic consumption united by companionship, affection and recreation.
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Educational
Function
Family
education is most important for the child development, which the child’s
personality firstly begins. Family provides a chance for children in learning
of many aspects of culture. E.g. language skills, values, norms, etc.
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Emotional
Function
Family
provides warmth, security and mutual support in the society. Marriage
Relationship provides emotional security to the couple. This acts as releasing
stresses and strain to maintain the personality stable. The emotional security
may build up through communication, encouragement and support. It is essential
for family members to communicate in order to satisfy their emotional wants.
Conflict approaches
Conflict approaches
(critical view) critical view opposes functionalist perspective that describe
family are full of concern, support and warm. Conflict approaches bring up some
ideas to against functionalist perspective.
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Female always
under male.
Family imaging woman
should be stay at home, rising kids, doing housework. They are restricted at
home and rely on their husband. And man seems to be the sustainer at home.
Male go out to work in order to maintain family. Woman becomes the enclosure
of man.
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Family abuse.
Conflict approaches
believe family, in fact, is not really so wonderful as functionalist describe.
Family abuse becomes more and more serious. It awakes the public concern. Some
serious cases are developed by family abuse.
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Reinforce
Stratification
Functionalist
emphasizes family offers people a social states, however they ignore peoples
are willing to accept it or not. Family encourages the stratification this
depresses social mobility. They are obstructing people behavior because family
labels people.
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Negate others
types of living style
Nuclear Family is
main family format of functionalist view. Others type of family and living
style only take a small proportion of society. Late marriage, stay single,
male housekeeper was not encouraged. Functionalist seems to be negate others
types of living style.
Marxism
The Marxist analysis of
society, unlike functionalism, concentrates on conflicts rather than consensus,
and therefore sees the functionalist image of happy families caring for each
other as rather blinkered and uncritical. In the view of writers such as Jacques
Donzelot (1980) the family is an instrument of the capitalist system, preparing
children to be obedient, docile workers and preventing workers from rebelling by
giving them family responsibilities and a safety values for their discontent.
Rather than having its own common values the family is subject to and a promoter
of the values and norms of the ruling class.
Feminism
Feminist sociologists
often agree with the Marxist critique, but also criticise functionalism for its
failure to recongnise women’s true position in the family. They highlight the
ways in which women are exploited within the family, the way in which their
labour is undervalued, and the patriarchal nature of most families. Men are seen
as dominating family relationships and the family perpetuates the ideology of
patriarchy. This state of affairs is considered to benefit men as well as the
capitalist system; it is also a long way from the complementary roles described
by Parsons.
Interpretive
approaches
Interpretive
sociologists have concentrated on the analysis of roles and relationships within
the family rather than the general role of the family in society as a whole. In
doing this they have looked much more closely than the functionalists at the
meaning and interpretation that individuals have of their own family situations
and relationships. As a result they have uncovered sources of conflict and
stress, and also negotiation and adaptation, which are overlooked by the
functionalists.
The New Right
In some respects New
Right thinking can be described as the modern equivalent of functionalism as it
sees the unclear family both as ‘normal’ and the ideal towards which we
should all be striving. The New Right, who are often politicians rather than
sociologists, deplore the ‘breakdown’ they feel has occurred in family life,
the diversity of family forms that now exist and the steady rise in social
problems as a consequence of these changes. The unclear family should therefore
be promoted and defended against such threats. Children need to be socialized by
the family in a stable environment, women need to make the care of their
families their first priority, and the spread of cohabitation, divorces and
single-parent families should be curbed.
Postmodernist theory
Some of the most recent
trends in theory stress the pluralism and diversity of modern life, including
family life. Rather than viewing the nuclear family as the norm and an ideal
structure for modern industrial society, postmodern approaches such ad that
developed by Judith Stacey (1990) recognize that there can be no one answer to
the question of how home life and relationships can be or should be organized.
This view is supported by the fact that we now seem to be experiencing a wide
variety of household composition and relationships. Indeed all individuals are
now likely to pass through numerous types if household and relationships during
their lifetime.
