We people need stable relationships, emotionally and psychological support and comfort. The nuclear family provides all this and is a safe and secure place. We also need financial support, food and shelter to survive, again the nuclear family meets these needs. Not only does these needs meet an individuals needs but is very important for society, for society to survive it needs new members, the nuclear family reproduces the human race and future work force. And as the nuclear family is based on monogamy it helps us control the adult sexual behaviour .Primary socialization is an important factor to society, we need to ensure that people have learnt how to support societies norms and values, to more easily fit in society, conform and without braking laws and causing damage. By primary socialization you also learn the culture and way of life. The family acts as a social control and teaches its new members primary socialization. Functionalists also believe that if children develop into a stable adult, they are able to be brought up by parents living under the same roof, the children are thought to do better educationally physically, psychologically and socially then single parents. And children with lone parent families are thereby more disadvantaged. ‘In one parent families parents do not take on personal, active and long term responsibility for their social upbringing of their children’ There is evidence available that these children in average tend to die earlier, to have more illness, to do less well at school, to suffer of unemployment, to be more prone of crime and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered. Functionalists therefore argue that the nuclear family is positive and needed.
