Families need fathers - discuss.

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Families need fathers – discuss

Matthew Payne

According to Steve Chapman (2002) a family is “an intimate domestic group composed of people related to each other by blood, sexual relations and legal ties”

A nuclear family consists of 2 generations, parents and children, living in the same household. Traditionally we think of two parents when we think of a family, as that is how families are always presented especially in the media, but rising divorce rates mean that actually it is highly likely that a family consists of many variations on this theme.  

The Marxist view of the family is that the family arose in response to development of private property and the need for men to pass on their property to their own offspring, so the main function of the family was to keep the capitalist system going.

In 1977 Beechey argued that families perform two major functions for capitalism, providing free childcare for future labour and as a cheap reserve army of labour which can be returned home in times of recession. So the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the child carer and a kind of ‘emotional sponge’ looking after the children and listening to everyone’s problems.

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The nuclear family is seen by feminists such as Barratt and Mackintosh (1991) is an ‘ideological tool’, meaning that average families of two parents and their children are presented as the ideal for people to aspire to.  This means families that don’t fir this ideal are anti social and not as good.

Functionalists see traditional family structures as needed for society to be maintained.  They say a family made up of a father and caring mother where the father provides economically for the family is the most sensible and stable way for people to live in society.

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