His perspective is met with a great deal of criticism. His views are often accused of idealising family life, presenting pictures of well-adjusted children and caring parents. This is not the case in a great number of families in the modern world. He is also slated for failing to realise that children don’t always willingly accept what they are told by their parents. As their age increases they develop an increasing amount of independence and are often defiant. He also sees the family as being an isolated institution and fails to recognise that values and ideas don’t always come solely from the family and can come from other institutions such as the church and school.
A contrast to Parsons’ view is the critical theory, by Edward Leach, which presents a very pessimistic view of the family. He says that over time the family has become less and less involved with neighbours and has isolated itself so that the family only looks inward on itself. He then says that the family becomes ‘an overloaded electrical circuit’ and the demands made on it are too great. Family members expect too much of each other, which creates problems that have a wider effect on society. In its isolation, he sees the family as creating a barrier between itself and the outside world.
Far from the functionalist view that the family works together with other prerequisites to maintain society, Leach sees the family as a damaging institution. Rather than socializing the individuals within its own unit, the family separates them from the outside and makes too many demands.
However, Leach is an anthropologist and so his findings and viewpoints cannot be taken quite so seriously as those of an established sociologist. He has not conducted detailed fieldwork and so lacks any support for his findings. He has also been widely criticised for presenting a picture of society being out of control and the family being destructive. This is the complete opposite of the functionalist picture of a perfect society.
Another key functionalist idea comes from Murdock and is that the family performs four main functions; sexual, reproductive, economic and educational. He states that without these, society would not be able to survive. Without reproduction there would be no new members to maintain the society, without economical functions life would not be able to continue, without sexual functions sex drive would be allowed to run wild and there would be no stabilisation, and without education there would be no culture or values. Murdock acknowledges that the family does not do these things exclusively, but he does say that there is no other institution that can match its efficiency.
Murdock, like other functionalists, is criticised for painting a picture of the family and society that is too ideal. He sees the husband and wife (or just couple) as having a fair division of labour, cooperating economically and having a full sex-life.
His view can be contrasted with the Marxist feminist view of Fran Ansley (1972). Rather than seeing the husband and wife working together to create a stable family she sees the woman as playing the major role. She sees wives as having to “play their traditional role of takers of shit”. In doing this she believes that the wife acts as a ‘sponge’ to soak up all the anger and frustration of her husband, who is feeling oppressed and powerless at work. This then stabilizes the husband allowing him to vent his anger in a way that does not challenge society.
Although Fran Ansley sees the family as working to maintain society, her view is not as ideal as that of Murdock. She sees the function of the wife as being to absorb the anger of her husband to make sure he doesn’t challenge the system. So while the family does provide stability, it is not achieved as easily and sweetly as the functionalists would have it.
From this we can see that there are two contrasting and completely opposite ideas about the family. On the one hand the functionalists see the family as maintaining and stabilizing society, performing key roles such as teaching values, with utmost efficiency. On the other hand there are the critical views that the family is emotionally destructive and manipulates its members, placing them under strain. Strong critics of the family paint a picture of the family being useless and society being out of control, while lesser critics (such as Marxist feminists) would argue that while the family does still maintain and stabilize society, it is not as wonderfully sweet and efficient as the functionalists make out. We can assume that the true answer lies somewhere in the middle. Families are not always as efficient and pleasant as the functionalists argue, but are also not as destructive, manipulative and isolated as the critics say. While functionalists underestimate the strain placed on the family, the critics overestimate it.
