Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Theories & Perspectives of the Family
- Functionalism
- Murdock
- Reproductive- continue to
create societies members
- Economics- pooling resources
to provide for each other
- Primary Socialisation- teaching
the norms & values of society
- Sexual Regulation- having a stable,
monogamous sexual relationships
for adults
- Criticisms
- Marxists- fails to acknowledge
how the family benefits
capitalism, be a source of
economic pressure
- Feminists- reinforces
patriarchy as women
serve the needs of men
- Parsons
- Primary Socialisation- teaching
the norms and values of society
- Warm Bath Theory- the mother
creates a warm, nurturing
environment allowing the family
to release tension created from
the outside world
- Functional Fit of the Nuclear Family
- The best type of family to meet
the needs of an industrial society
- Geographically Mobile- youngest
generation move away from family
to find jobs
- Socially Mobile- moving up/down the
social class, away from parents
(depending on education)
- Criticisms
- Young & Willmott- working class mothers
and married daughters kept ties for
emotional, financial and practical support
- Marxism
- Reproduction
- Marx
- Creating the next generation of members of
the labour force (wages slaves)
- Economics
- Zaretsky
- Family is the unit of production
(creating the products to benefit
capitalism) and the unit of
consumption (buys the products
through pester power, stigmatised
and buying the latest)
- Criticisms
- Functionlism's ideas make
more sense in today's
society
- Primary Socialisation
- Althusser
- Family socialises children into
beliefs that hierarchy and
inequality are inevitable to
prepare them for working life-
ideological function for capitalism
- Criticisms
- Too deterministic- fails to acknowledge
that the working class are aware of
inequality & assumes they're helpless
- Sexual Regulation
- Engels
- Women were seen as "glorified
prostitutes", with only a
sexual/reproduction function expected
of them (produce legitimate heirs to
inheritance of wealth)
- Criticisms
- Ignores family diversity- it's not just
about heirs & inheritance
- Criticisms
- Functionalists- majority of society live in a
family and that in fact the essential form
and function of those families remain
similar
- The New Right
- Support functionalist view (roles
in the house are biological)
- single parent families lack
(usually) male role models and
therefore lack discipline
- The government should
make divorce more
difficult to obtain
- The benefit system is too lenient
and creates perverse incentive
leading to a depending culture
which costs society
- Brenda Almond- the divorce
reform act (1969), civil
partnership, tax allowances-
creating less nuclear families
- Charles Murray- singles parents are
the most important social problem
of our time
- Criticisms
- Feminists- it encourages patriarchal nuclear
families which are harmful to women
- Feminism
- Reproduction
- Manipulates
women's
reproductive
capabilities
- Economics
- Women provide
free domestic
labour
- Primary Socialisation
- Passing on the
norms & values of
patriarchy to ensure
it reproduces
- Sexual Regulation
- The monogamous
nuclear family
controls women's
sexual behaviour
- Marxist Feminists
- See capitalism as the
major cause of inequality
- Benson- unpaid labour that
women do in the home helps to
support the capitalism system
(man becomes (bound to labour
to support family
- Ansley- women
are "takers of shit"
- Women reproduce,
bear and rear the next
generation of workers
- Criticisms
- Many nuclear families
are dual earning- women
will have more financial
control over the house
- Radical Feminists
- The patriarchy system is
male dominated & existed
well before capitalism,
and the nuclear family
functions mainly to
benefit heterosexual men
- Dworkin- the destruction of
patriarchy is what's going
to get rid of inequality
- Greer- men benefit from
marriage more than women
- Redfern & Aune- male violence
against women takes many
different forms e.g. marital rape
- Criticisms
- Sommerville-
separation is
unlikely to work
- Liberal Feminists
- Don't blame capitalism/men for
unequal treatment of women
- Sommerville- greater
equality because of more
access to paid work
- Oakley- gender socialisation
is a major source of
patriarchal discrimination
- Wilkinson- "gender quake" women earn
their own wage and have different
attitude towards marriage/children
- Criticisms
- Policies don't impact
all women in the
same way
- Difference Feminists
- Focus on the variety of
experiences of patriarchy
and have different goals
and interests
- Focus on the ethnic/racial
differences e.g. some
women have less power &
status in families
- Postmodernism
- After the industrial
revolution, the modern
society
- Stacey- women benefit from the
increased choice (household and
economically)
- Beck- families now are
characterised by "risk" and
uncertainty
- Interactionalism
- Reality is socially constructed-we
make our own reality within
social groups
- Focus on the meaning of the
family for the individual & roles
are negotiated among the
family
- Criticisms
- Marxists & Feminists- the
roles in the family are
ideology not indivdual
negotiation
- Personal Life Perspective
- Individuals decide their
families, increasing
diversity of family
- Relationships with
friends- sibling to you
- Fictive Kin- close friend
part of the family
- Gay/lesbian chosen families-
support network (may not be
blood relatives)
- Relationships with dead
relatives- memories
- Relationships with
pets- part of the family
- Smart- influences the
relationships people have
- Memory- shared
emotional memories
- Biography- history
- Embeddedness-
connection
- Relationality-
health
- Imaginary-
perceived
- Criticisms
- Too broad a view- special
about blood/marriage