Evaluate the view that functionalism "ignores the problems that in reality underpin family life"

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Evaluate the view that functionalism “ignores the problems that in reality underpin family life”

        The view that functionalism ignores “the problem that in reality underpin family life” started when functionalists such as Parsons were initiating their theories of the family.  Parsons sees the nuclear family as a system or affective relationships, which meet basic human needs for love and intimacy.  Marriage is seen as a source of companionship, emotional gratification and psychological support.  The nuclear unit is seen as good for society and for the individuals who comprise it.  The precedence of the nuclear family was largely unquestioned.  

However, this positive picture of nuclear family life has come under sustained attack in the last thirty years.  Many commentators suggest that this rosy picture obscure the problems that in reality underpin family life and which have very negative consequences for some individuals.  Here, as in all areas of sociology, functionalist perspectives have been blamed of having a traditional bias.  With their accentuation on the universality and predetermination of the family, they warrant its existence.  With their engrossment with the positive aspects of the family, they render it with legitimisation. The view that the family is here to stay through time immemorial may be essentially a reflection of middle class values.

D.H.J. Morgan argues that functionalist perspectives on the family “give emphasis to the limits of human activity rather than potentialities.” (Morgan, 1975).  In doing so they embrace a conservative attitude.  By emphasising the universal necessity for the family and the essential functions it performs for the social system, they indicate that individuals must accept the inevitable.  Members of society must form families and act accordingly within the limits set by the conditions of the social system.

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Although functionalist views on the family are no longer particularly influential in sociology, similar views are still prominent in society.  New Right perspectives on the family have a remarkable similarity to those of functionalists.  Both approaches see the nuclear family as the perfect, neither believes that there are possible options to living in families, neither examines the ways in which families can harm individuals, and both see families as vital to producing social stability.

        

However, they do differ in the extent to which they see the family as under threat.  For example, Fletcher (1988) saw the rising divorce ...

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