Maciver and Page who are two American Sociologists believe that the family has nine different functions which are (economy, education, health, governmental, religious, recreational, provision of a home, stable satisfaction of sex needs and reproduction of socialisation). They also believe the first six functions are lost to family and are transferred to specialised agencies and the last three functions are retained by the family and improved in quality. This explains the process of industrialisation, the first six qualities(economy, education, health, governmental, religious, recreational) are taken over by agencies that are apart of the machine production industry. The last three qualities (provision of a home, stable satisfaction of sex needs and reproduction of socialisation) are retained by the family because they do not involve mass machine production.
But Ronald Fletcher who is a British writer does not entirely agree with Maciver and Page, he believes that all the functions are not entirely lost to the family, but that the family is crucial in all of them and none of these can function without the co-operation of the family.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s, feminist perspectives dominated most debates and research on the family. If previously the sociology of the family had focused on family structures, the historical development of the nuclear and extended family and the importance of kinship ties, feminism succeeded in directing attention inside families to examine the experiences of women in the domestic sphere. Feminists writings have emphasized a broad spectrum of topics and one of the central concerns which was explored in great depth was the way in which chores were allocated between members of a household. Among feminists there are differing opinions about the historical emergence of this division. While some feminists see it as an outcome of industrial capitalism, others claim that it is linked to patriarchy, and it predates industrialisation. There is some reason to believe that a domestic division of labour existed prior to industrialisation, but it seems clear that capitalist production brought about a much clearer distinction between the domestic and work realms. This process resulted in crystallisation of ‘male spheres’ and ‘female spheres’ and power relationships which are felt to this day. Until recently, the male breadwinner model has been widespread in most industrialised societies.
Feminist sociologists have done studies on the way domestic tasks such as childcare and housework, are shared between men and women. They have investigated the validity of claims such as that of the “symmetrical family” (Willmot and Young 1973), the belief that, over time, families are becoming more egalitarian in the distribution of roles and responsibilities. Findings have shown that women continue to bear the main responsibility of domestic tasks and enjoy less leisure time than men, despite the fact that more women are working in paid employment outside the home than ever before.
Marxism is based on the sociological views of Karl Marx. He sought to explain the changes that were taking place in society during the time of the industrial revolution. For him the most important changes were bound up with the development of capitalism. For Marx, a class is a group of people who stand in common relationship to the means by which they gain a livelihood. Before the rise of the modern industry, the means of production consisted primarily of land and the instruments used to tends crops or pastoral animals. In pre-industrial societies, therefore, the two main classes were those who owned the land (aristocrats or slave-holder) and those actively engaged in production from it (slaves and free peasantry). The two main classes are those who own the new means of production - industrialists or capitalists - and those who earn their living by selling their labour to them - the working class or, the term Karl Marx used was ‘the proletariat’. Marx believed that in the society of the future, production would be more advanced and efficient than production under capitalism. He didn’t mean that all inequalities between individuals would disappear but the economic system would come under communal ownership and a more humane society than he knew at that present time would be established.
Industrialisation took place between 1564 - 1821. It made difference to all family size, the pre-industrial family was 90% nuclear and the post-industrial family was nuclear. Early theories from functionalists about the family were wrong. Industrialisation began in Britain and North Western Europe and the nuclear family created the conditions for industrialisation. Between 1564 and 1821 only about 10% of all households in Britain contained kin beyond the nuclear family. This percentage is the same for England in 1966. More generally a European family which was also broadly nuclear was found in other countries such as Holland, Belgium and Northern France. While the Southern and Eastern European families were mostly extended. Based on evidence found by British Historian Mark Anderson, the post-industrial extended family began with industrialisation and reached its height during the early 20th century, during the depression. The family was no longer a unit of production as its members were wage earners. The family extended its network under conditions of hard times. The basic ties between a mother and her married daughters became stronger while conjugal ties were weak.
