The Universal belief comes from the words of Murdock (1949). He believes that the family structure is the basis for all societies and so the family was universal. In order to keep society-growing Murdock believed that the family performs three key functions:
*Sexual – Because it helps to stabilise the social system, reproduction and prevents conflict.
*Economic – This widens society when things are bought and sold to allow change and also provides basic requirements such as food and shelter.
*Reproduction – This allows population to grow and for cultures in generations to carry on.
And
*Educational – Serves the function to allow different cultures, norms and values to continue through socialization into the next generation.
Although Murdock outlined what a Universal family was (to serve particular functions for society and for all its members) not all functionalists agree on what functions are essential. Such as Parsons (1959) who only believes there are only two basic functions in modern society:
*Stabilization of the adult personality
And
*Primary socialisation of children.
Both Murdock and Parsons agree that for society to continue a family structure is essential and that this is how it always will be. The family is universal because any other institution cannot perform the family’s functions.
Many people believe that both Murdock’s and Parsons view on the family is a very narrow definition for many reasons.
The functionalist point of view of a family only describes the family as a harmonious way of living but instead the family role is ridden with conflicts and that there are negative sides of the family which functionalists do not disclose in their explanations of the role of the family. Functionalists also believe that there are two very different roles within the family of the man and wife. The man or husband is a hardworking man who provides economically to support his wife and children and that the wife stays at home cooking, cleaning and looking after the children and is very tender and gentile. In most cases in this age women are a lot more successful than men and very few spend their lives at home cleaning up after the males and children.
Feminists do not agree with the functionalist point of view at all because they fight for equal rights between males and females and don’t believe that females should have to take all the responsibilities within a relationship. Therefore they don’t agree with the view that males should go out to work and wives stay at home.
Many people also disagree with Murdock’s view of the family, as they do not reflect reality, as there are plenty of families who do not have two parents, or a male and female as parents. He gives insufficient attentions to the dysfunctions of the family and doesn’t pay much attention to variations in family and has very sexist views.
