Parsons believe that family has an important part in teaching values and norms as it is in the primary socialisation. Primary socialisation happens in the very early years of life, usually through parents. Parsons believe that there are expected roles for men and women. They claim that the male role is instrumental as they are better at providing for the family, and the women role is expressive, as they are better at emotional support.
The criticisms for the Parsons theory are that Marxist feminists would argue that the women end up staying at home, being a housewife and not getting paid for it. Also, in the modern day, many women go out to work and earn and the men stay at home and look after the children.
Another criticism would be that the traditional roles within the family given by Parsons, such as the male going out to earn and the women staying at home to look after the children, reflects on the male dominance in the family and not the instrumental characteristics. If the head male in the family is dominant and requires natural male and female roles, then this is what is most likely.
Also feminists may argue that when women go out and get a job, it could mean they have to accept the other ‘shifts’ that come with employment which are the housework when coming home from their job, looking after their children and handling the emotions from their family.
Murdock is also a functionalist sociologist. Murdock carried out a study of 250 societies of different cultures and came to the conclusion that families provide four functions:
- Sexual- stable sexual relationships for adults
- Reproductive-continuing to create society members
- Economic-pools resources to provide for each other
- Educational-teaches norms and values of society.
Murdock came to the conclusion that families are universal and inevitable and that families exist in every society.