Assess the contribution of functionalism to our understanding of families and households.

Functionalists believe the family has specific functions: Stabilisation of adult personality. Parsons spoke about the ‘warm bath’ theory, where the family relieves stresses of modern-day living for its adult members.  Gender Role Socialisation- Children learn the behaviour expected of their gender. Chapman (2004) notes that girls traditionally learn the right kind of their role of homemaker and wife and boys learn that they are expected to be breadwinners. Social Control- Murdock points out that the family is the family is regarded as the moral centre of society and sets the rules of how you should behave. Therefore, the family sets boundaries for deviant behaviour and ensures that children  to conform to laws and rules.

However, there are many criticisms towards functionalist views on the family. Marxists argue that the nuclear family reproduces and maintains class inequality and the working class are distracted from the fact that they are exploited by capitalism. E.g. having the father as the leader within the family discourages workers from questioning the hierarchy nature of capitalism. From a Marxist perspective, the nuclear family benefits those who run the capitalist system, not the whole of society.

Marxist-Feminists argue that the Nuclear family supports capitalism and benefits men. Women are pressure to have children, which then become the workforce. In addition, the socialisation of children ensures the pattern of male dominance and female subordination. Marxist feminists also look at the family in a negative and critical way. They argue the main cause of women's oppression is capitalism- the economic system that exists in the most countries in the world. Women look after men (Benson) preventing them from feeling the need for revolution. Men take out their frustration on wives and children (Ansley). Women give birth to the next generation of workers. Women are used as a 'reserve army of labour'- when men are not available, e.g. In the Second World War many women had to take the place of men to ensure industry and agriculture kept going.

Radical-Feminists- argue that nuclear family mainly functions to benefit men as patriarchal ideology is transmitted to children and encourages the nation that the sexual division of labour is natural and cannot be changed. Look at the family in a more critical way. They believe that men benefit more from family life than women do. Research into housework and childcare has found that men do very little compared to women. Men use violence if they do not get their own way. They support family diversity, especially single or gay/ same sex families and disagree with the nuclear family. They also support divorce as it allows women to escape a patriarchal lifestyle.

The New Right holds traditional values and believes that the 'normal' nuclear family is the cornerstone of society. They believe in the nuclear family (similar to conservatives). They believe that families are not changing but 'deteriorating' because of the decline in the Nuclear Family. Murray believed that the Beveridge report encouraged the welfare state instead of helping people the way it was intended to because social attitudes lead people to believe they have a right to receive benefits. He is highly critical of the Welfare state and believes that this started a dependency culture, which has now led to an Underclass.

In conclusion, functionalism does not contribute a lot to our understanding of families and households as there are many different views on the same concept by different sociological groups, therefore looking at just a functionalist argument would be bias and would only provide a narrow understanding of the whole concept of families and households.