Functionalists also believe in value consensus. It is the idea which suggests that the role of agencies such as the family is to socialise members of society into shared norms and values, which is the basis for social order. Primary socialisation completes this value consensus. Parsons was an American functionalist writer who examined family life in the 1950s. He argued that there are two basic functions of the family that are found in every society. These are the primary socialisation of children and the stabilisation of human personalities. Parson believes that this socialisation in the family is so powerful that society’s culture actually becomes part of the individuals’ personality – people are moulded in terms of the central values of the culture and act in certain ways almost without thinking about it. Parsons therefore argues that families are like factories producing human personalities, and only the family can provide the emotional warmth and security to achieve this. Parsons, seems however to have overlooked the fact that socialisation is not perfect and does not always work. This is obvious when you take the example of children, children are not perfect, they misbehave and get into trouble, this proves that socialisation whether inside or out of the family, be it nuclear or otherwise does not always work – in fact it barely ever works. Marxist and Marxist feminists believe that children are being socialised into capitalism, which will lead to a submissive and obedient workforce. They believe that the family is a social institution responsible for the reproduction of labour power for capitalism. The Radical Feminists believe that the family is meeting the needs of patriarchy by socialising children into traditional gender roles.
Parsons believes in ‘expressive’ and ‘instrumental’ roles. He claims that the women’s role in the family is expressive, providing warmth and security and emotional support to children and husband. The husband carries out an instrumental role as the family breadwinner, which leads to stress and anxiety and threatens to destabilise his personality, but the wives expression role relives tension by providing love and understanding: the sexual division of labour into the ‘expressive’ and ‘instrumental’ roles therefore contributes to the stabilisation of human personalities. This theory has been referred to as the ‘warm bath theory’ as the family is supposed to have the ability to sooth away all the aches and pains which is theoretically supposed to derive from the instrumental role. However, now that role is out-dated it makes this theory less useful. Women now go out to work and therefore would share this instrumental role. He [Parsons] only rights about the middle
class families in America, so therefore his opinion cannot be used across the board. He also overlooks family diversity, much as Murdock does, and does not consider situations like reconstituted or lone parent families. Parsons also assumes that all families get along, like all functionalists he over harmonies the good aspects of family life and pays no attention to the many bad points that families occur. The Marxist Feminists believe that instead that instead of the women soothing away the stress, they absorb it, they also believe that men take the stress out on their family, in various ways. Feely says that women are the ‘takers of shit’ within the family circle. Radical Feminists believe there is a dark side to family life, which includes violence against women and children. Both the functionalists and the Marxist Feminists have the same type of ideas but the functionalists over emphasise the good points where the Radical Feminists over emphasise the bad points as they think that it benefits patriarchy where the Marxist Feminists see it as benefiting capitalism.
Functionalists believe that the family or institutions are interdependent with each other. For example they would say that the family is interlinked with school, because the family will socialise their children into school and will then support them both economically and emotionally. They would also say that the family is linked to work because the family will socialise their children into their gender roles, to help them learn the appropriate behaviour and to prepare them for the world of work. This theory on the whole is true simply because it really does happen, but, they assume the nuclear family, they overlook diversity within the family for example gay and lesbian couples or the extended family. Marxist Feminists would say that this interdependence will lead to a submissive and obedient workforce which would benefit capitalism. The functionalists view is also shared by the ‘New Right’ movement; these are a group of right-wing conservative thinkers who stress the need for more individual freedom and responsibility and consequently less state interference in economic and social affairs. They believe that there should be a traditional nuclear family; they believe that society would work better within the nuclear family. They argue that lone parent families are responsible for crime and underachievement in school and work. However we now know that lone parent families are not reasonable for this antisocial type of behaviour the underlying cause is poverty, the two are closely linked but lone parent families are not the cause. To combat this problem the CSA was formed, supposedly to make fathers face up to their responsibilities, but in reality it destroyed lots of friendly and civilised arrangements between mothers and fathers who have parted ways. The New Right whole heartily believed in traditional family values, there views are strongly linked to functionalisation.
Looking at all the information I have compiled and analysed I have to come to the conclusion that functionalisation is not a very useful in understanding the family. This is because it is out of date. It was written in the 1950s when a typical woman stayed at home and looked after the children, in fact fifty years ago the functionalisation view would have been more or less spot on, but now in the twenty-first century times have changed, women now go out to work, and although gender roles are still important they are not as dictative and they don’t have to same influences as they would have done fifty years ago. The amount of diversity and variation within the family has changed so much, and not only has it changed it has become socially acceptable. A major cause in the soaring rates of lone parent families has been the sharp rise in divorce rates, 75 percent of these being initiated by women unhappy with their expressive roles as mother and carer, women now want equality – to have the same rights and responsibilities that men are allowed, to be able to have a career to have the option to chose. Functionalisation may be out dated but a movement has started to take it place – this is the New Right movement. These ideas were formulated in the 80s and 90s, and are based on functionalist views; however the New Right takes into account some of the family diversity that families face today solely because it was written when various family types were starting to be socially acceptable – therefore their opinions had to reflect the changing society if they were to be taken seriously. Therefore the newer up dated version of functionalisation is more useful than the original ideas and theories.
