Meeting its members economic needs – producing food and shelter for example. Socialisation of the young – teaching basic norms and valuesĤ. The biological reproduction of the next generation – without which society cannot continue.ģ. Stable satisfaction of the sex drive – within monogamous relationships, which prevents sexual jealousy.Ģ. Murdock suggested there were ‘four essential functions’ of the nuclear family:ġ. In other words, the nuclear family is in all societies! George Murdock was an American Anthropologist who looked at 200 different societies and argued that the nuclear family was a universal feature of all human societies. George Peter Murdock – Four essential functions of the nuclear family Stable families underpin social order and economic stability.īefore you go any further you might like to read this more in depth post ‘ Introduction to Functionalism‘ post which covers the key ideas of Functionalism. Different institutions perform specific functions within a society to keep society going, in the same way as the different organs of a human body perform different functions in order to maintain the whole.įunctionalists see the family as a particularly important institution because it as the ‘basic building block’ of society which performs the crucial functions of socialising the young and meeting the emotional needs of its members. The Functionalist View of Societyįunctionalists regard society as a system made up of different parts which depend on each other. Evaluations and criticisms of the Functionalist view of the family from other perspectives.The possible positive functions of the family today.Talcott Parsons’ Functional Fit Theory.George Peter Murdock’s theory of the universal nuclear family.The Functionalist Perspective on the Family: Overview Parsons developed the Functional Fit Theory: In pre-industrial society families used to be extended, but with industrialisation families became nuclear because they fitted industrial society better. (Obviously this has been widely criticised!) Murdock argued that the nuclear family was universal and that it performed four essential functions: stabilising the sex drive, reproduction, socialisation of the young and economic production. There are two main Functionalist theorists of the family: George Peter Murdock and Talcott Parsons. They tend to to see the nuclear family as the ideal family for industrial societies and argue that it performs positive functions such as as socialising children and providing emotional security for parents. References and Sources for Further Readingįunctionalists see the family as one of the essential building blocks for stable societies.A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle.Criticisms of the Functionalist perspective on the family.The Positive Functions of the Family: A summary.
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