The family’s purpose for society is inseparable from its purpose for its individual members. The sexual function is a good example that the family serves both at the same time in the same way. The husband and wife have the right of sexual contact to each other and there are rules unwelcoming affairs in most societies. It also strengthens the family since sexual activities often unite husband and wife. The sexual function also contributes to steady society. The rules (which keep sexual activity within the family) prevent the effects on social order that would result if the ‘sex drive’ were allowed ‘free-play’. Thus the family provide control and expression of ‘sexual drives’.
Furthermore, the family provide the individual with primary socialisation, which helps the individual to become accepted into society. Thus creating a more accepting and socialised society because the family has taught the individual to communicate and express their feelings in a manor that is acceptable in society. However, the family cannot provide all the socialisation the individual needs. That is why we have the education system which is secondary socialisation for the individual. The education system allows the individual to make friends and understand how to treat other ethnic backgrounds.
To continue, another purpose of the family for society and its individual members is the economic function. Murdock argues that the economic function is “most readily and satisfactorily achieved by persons living together”. He refers to the division of labour within the labour where the husband does certain activities and the wife does others. This provides rewarding experiences for the children working together, and fulfils the economic function of society.
However, there is some evidence of many exceptions to the family. For example, the sixties commune movement was a less organised effort to change the nuclear family. The commune movement has been around for thousands of years, where people have lived in small communities working and looking after their children together. People were persuaded by concepts of togetherness and sharing feelings and experiences. This is an enjoyable and practical social framework, which shares domestic work evenly between men and women. In my opinion, the commune movement is not a family because they are not related. The commune is a group of people sharing chores, yet a family is connected by blood and love. However, in the commune there are families living there so in parts of the commune you can class as a family. But this is only because they are connected by blood.
The new world black family is another exception. It was found in America and the Caribbean. Where many families are headed by others and the fathers are absent. This then causes the family to be a lone parent family. The reasons for these are either that this family type was common in Africa or that men had no jobs so the women kept the family. In my opinion, this is a family because the children are being looked after by their mother who is a blood relative. They are still a lone parent family, which in my eyes is a family.
Another exception is the Kibbutz. This is a type of family that a group of people live on a communal farm. This was set up in Israel in 1948. The work is shared by all the parents and the children are reared by special carers. The children only get to see their parents for a couple of hours a day and then they have to go and live in dormitories with all the other children. In my opinion, this isn’t a family because they are not cared for by their parents and they do not live with their parents. Because they do not live with their parents they cannot form special bonds and therefore cannot love them as much as they would if there was a bond.
Overall, I think that the family is a universal institution, because the family can have many different structures for different cultures and societies, which all meet the family functions in different ways. However the functionalist’s definition of the family is not universal because they do not see the sixties commune movement as a family. Therefore they believe that the family is not universal.
