1996, eleven years after Parsons gave his updated version of Murdock’s doctrine, Ronald Fletcher fine tuned the functionalist theory and adapted the ideas to a new and different world compared to that of Murdocks and Parsons. Fletcher also believed that the family has lost functions. Fletcher also said that non-essential functions which families used to perform are now done by the state, These functions are health care, education and etc. Families are now left with three essential functions. They are stable satisfaction of sexuality, production and rearing of children and home provision. Fletcher as well as parsons and Murdock also believes that the family need to perform these ‘essential’ functions to maintain social control otherwise society would collapse as we know it.
Functionalist believe that families, particularly nuclear families, benefit all the individuals within and society as a whole, however, this optimistic idea has been strongly attacked by many perspectives for painting this image of a ‘cereal packet’ family and its ignorance of wealth, ethnicity, social class, religion and the reality of strain and exploitation which occurs within the family. Functionalists tend to ignore the ‘dark side’ of the family such as male dominance and child abuse. There is also insufficient attention placed upon the dysfunctions of the family and the harmful affects it may have on the wider society. The functionalist perspective has also received criticism from the feminist perspective for being sexist since this view sees women as having main responsibility for providing emotional support and succumbing to the fathers and children needs which can eventually lead to depression through stress overload.
The feminist perspective on family life has had the most influence than any other sociological perspective. This perspective tends to highlight the harmful effects which women are the victims of within the family. Society demands different things from men and women, therefore giving different psychological experiences for women. Feminist describe what is known as the ‘dark side’ of the family, a side which functionalist left out of there synthetic cereal packet family picture.
The dark side of the family complains that there is a sufficient amount of psychological harm for women; this is a result of the warm bath theory, which can be seen as an overload of many people’s emotions and problems which the mother has to deal with, as well as her own. This can cause depression or a nervous breakdown or in severe cases, suicide and even murder which is now becoming increasingly common in today’s society among women.
Another contributing factor to women’s exploitation within the family is the sexual and domestic abuse which takes place with in family household. These oppressed women feel their problems are restrained in the context of the ‘private’ family. This is the reason why many of these cases of exploitation go unnoticed and unrecorded in this patrichal society.
Edmund Leach, an anthropologist, has a pessimistic view of the family. He spent many years studying small-scale pre-industrialisation societies. Large networks of social relationships existed in these villages and where efficient in providing support emotionally and physically for each individual. In contrast to these small scale villages, modern industrial societies are largely disconnected from kin and the wider community. He wrote a lecture which summarised his ideas and his criticism of the stress and exploitation in nuclear families. Here is an extract from Runaway World? (1967)
“In the past kinsfolk and neighbours gave the
individual continuous moral support
throughout his life. Today the domestic
household is isolated. The family looks inward
upon itself; there is an intensification of
emotional stress between husband and wife
and parents and children. The strain is greater
than most of us can bear”
Leach further criticises the nuclear family believing that when individuals can break out of the prisons of the nuclear family, only then can the ills of society begin to diminish. Leach believed that “in their isolation, family members expect and demand too much from each other. The result is conflict”. The functionalist view basis itself on ‘consensus’, which displays Leach’s criticism of functionalism. This criticism attacks the idea that the nuclear family benefits all its members, and instead describes it as being the ‘source of all our discontent’ with its ‘narrow privacy and tawdry secrets’.
The politics of the family (1976), was one of many publications written by R.D Laing. In this publication she gave constructive criticism against the functionalist’s ‘cereal packet’ family ideal. R.D Laing main concentration was on families which had a diagnosed schizophrenic member and the exploitative aspects of family relationships. Laing has ideas which are likened to Leach, such as that families are causing problems in society. These problems are cause by interiorization and the nature of the nexus. In effect of interiorization and the nexus the family draws a line between them and the outside world. This leads to separation of ‘people like us’ and ‘people like them’, this leads to racism, bigotry and segregation.
While the functionalist theory may have an optimistic view about the family and its place in society, it has many criticisms which expose the holes it leaves and gives the ‘cereal packet’ family a harsh, reality check which it is desperately in need of.
