Another element is that functionalist view the family as being responsible for the distribution of economic resources from those who earn them in the marketplace to those who depend on those earnings (Ross and saw hill, 1975; Duncan, 1984; thornton and freedman, 1983; Harrington, Murray, 1984).
They argue that the internal transfer system within the family is more efficient than the government in transferring economic resources. Further more the family achieves its efficiency with out a huge bureaucracy. The family also displays the capacity to transfer a much greater volume of resources than the government. In 1970in America it was responsible for $313 billion in economic transfers. The government on the other hand, only accounted for only $74 billion. Grants accounted for only $20 billion (Ross and sawhill, 1975:165).with this evidence its right to assert that the family is a cornerstone of society as per the functionalist approach.
Robertson (1989:249) contends that the functionalist view the family from the standpoint of universal functions. Among them the family provides to society: replacement of members sexual reproduction has ensured that reduction of
Extinction of the human resource is a vital component to the survival of the society. According to functionalists, marriage and the nuclear family provide the best opportunity for the socially controlled expression of the sex drive.
According to Robertson the family also acts as a socialisation agent to the stability of the society. The family is regarded is where early socialisation takes place according to the functionalist approach. socialization, meaning the process of being made fit or trained for a social environment, individuals learn the rules governing their behaviour toward other persons within the family before they are integrated in society, the groups of which they are members, and individuals with whom they come into contact. Within the family children learn language, sex role, moral and ethical principles, and appropriate behaviour. Also widely studied are the methods by which adults learn to adapt their patterns of behaviour when they are confronted by new situations in the society. By doing so the family is acting as a fundamental basis for the stability of the society.
Emotional support .functionalist see the family as playing the role of emotion support to its members .issues like divorce ,death, poverty and other social problems. The family provides all the emotions one might expect to be present when ones personal universe is destroyed. Many suicides could be prevented with this extra emotional support provided by the family. To this extent nuclear family acts a cornerstone to the society as per the functional perspective.
The functionalist perspective has been criticised on various fronts;
It has been deemed to overlook social patterns that vary from place to place, and they change over time; thus the notion that any particular arrangements are natural seems hazardous at best saw the social world as orderly and relatively fixed.
It emphasized social integration ignored divisions based on power conflict, social, race ethnicity and gender. Does not account for how diversity can generate conflict. Functionalist fails to ask for whom these problems are functional. They appear to overlook the fact that typically, only some groups benefit, while many suffer from particular problematic conditions. These overlooked problems in the family can on the other hand create a greater danger to the existence of the society.
Robert Merton criticises the views of the functionalist in his book (manifest and latent functions; 1968) he argues that not all behaviour patterns or elements of the family will be functional, that will contribute to the maintenance of society. Some patterns will lessen the adaptability of the system (society) and may thus be considered dsyfunctional, for example the bad behaviour learnt from the family socialisation process might act to destabilise the society. Invalidating the notion that the nuclear family is cornerstone to the society.
Another perspective that can be used to explain the above assertion that the nuclear family is the cornerstone of society is the Marxist feminist. The feminists see the oppression of women as the inherent biological trait of men, While functionalism is very keen to point out the benefits brought to both society and
individuals by the institution of the family others are determined to point out the dysfunction aspects of the family
Marxist feminist suggest that the nuclear family meets the needs of capitalism for the reproduction and maintenance of class and patriarchal inequality .it benefits the powerful at the expense of the working class and women. They look at issues like inheritance, individualism, privacy, women work and petty power.
The family is seen as an institution that reproduces barriers of sex and class. This is a class institution .The men originally acquired power over women because of biological factors. Women assumed the role of house wife and men that of bread winner. This ensures men’s domination of the labour market. This inequality with in the nuclear family according to the feminist has brought instability to the society as a whole. This is evident in the organisations its clearly difficult for many women to compete with men for full time jobs as employment is so designed as to make full time work incompatible with domestic/childcare responsibilities .To some extent men have gone on to dominate the work place, a good example is the government allocation of ministries which has been viewed as biased, though there are enough women to act as ministers. The posts have gone to men .as such they view the nuclear family not as a cornerstone of the society but rather a source of class inequality to the society.
On the other hand marxism provides a scientific materialist foundation, not only for socialism but also for women's liberation. It laid bare the roots of women's oppression, its relationship to a system of production based on private property and a society divided between a class that owned the wealth and a class that produced it. Marxism explained the role of the family within class society, and the function of the family in perpetuating the oppression of women.for them they do not regard the family as being the cornerstone or foundation of the existing society rather they view it as the oppression of women. After all, women constitute half the human race, and have faced discrimination and degradation in many areas of life. The oppression of women in the third world has reached abominable levels. It is accompanied by child prostitution, bonded-labour and slavery. It is capitalism in the raw. Recently, an Iranian Islamic court found a woman guilty of adultery. For this heinous crime, she was sentenced to death by stoning. Here, in its most cruel and brutal form, is reflected the worse features of class society. In the 'civilised' west, working class women are treated as second-class citizens, many of who are forced into the menial jobs on poor wages. Despite equal pay legislation, employers still continue to discriminate against women in terms of pay and conditions.it therefore looks at the destructive nature of the family towards the society emanating from the inneqaulities within the family.
The only way that karl marx believed this family life would improve is by the abolition of private property would provide a material basis for transferring to society as a whole all those onerous social responsibilities today borne by the individual family--the care of the old and sick; the feeding, clothing, and educating of the young. Relieved of these burdens, Marx pointed out, the masses of women would be able to break the bonds of domestic servitude, they would be able to exercise their full capacities as creative and productive--not just reproductive--members of society. Freed from the economic compulsion on which it necessarily rests, the bourgeois family would disappear. Human relationships themselves would be transformed into free relations of free people. The family is fundamental to capitalism and plays a specific role for the capitalists. The family is the material basis for the social oppression of women, lesbians and gay men and youth.
In conclusion there’s no one general sociological perspective that can fully certify or explain the working of the society.the functionalist have viewed the family as possessing basic functions requirements which must be met if the society is to survivehoewever they fail to indicate what’s functional and what’s not.It only looks at whats functional to the society.For Marxists, the root cause of all forms of oppression in the soceity consists in the division of society into classes,they are against the mistreatment of women within the family as the major cause of classconflict in society,hence the family is not a not foundation of social order to them . as for the feminists, on the other hand, the oppression of women is rooted in the nature of men. It is not a social but a biological phenomenon. This is an entirely static, unscientific and undialectical conception of the human race. It is an unhistorical vision of the human condition, from which profoundly pessimistic conclusions must flow. For if we accept that there is something inherent in men which causes them to oppress women, it is difficult to see how the present situation will ever be remedied. The conclusion must be that the oppression of women by men has always existed and therefore, presumably, will always exist. By Alan Woods. (July 19, 2001).