Families promote status inheritance, so Marxists believe. This theory was backed up by Engel (1884) when he said that a family’s economic role is to maintain wealth and that money is kept in the family through inheritance. By saying this, he means that the family inherit money through ancestors. With money, comes power. The more money they inherit, the more power and status that they acquire. Berger and Kellner (1964) say that the roles in families are an ‘on-going construction’. This means that as children grow up and grow older their role and position with in the family will change. From being a child, they will grow up and mature and become aunties/uncles, parents and grandparents themselves. The children will also grow up to look after their parents when they become too old and incapable of doing things.
In contrast to Marxists, functionalists believe that society is held together by shared culture and the institutions. They believe rules in society exist to benefit both individuals and society. Murdock was a functionalist theorist that carried out a study of 250 societies. From this he identified 4 common functions of the nuclear family. These include: sexual; reproductive; economic and educational. The reproductive and sexual sector of the family provides and controls sexual relationships of its adult members. By doing this, they create a new member of society. When the child is born, families teach the child norms and values of society, therefore maintaining the value of consensus. This is what functionalist see as the educational side of the family. Parsons (1902-79) introduced the theory that there are two basic irreducible functions of the family. These include primary socialisation- through which children learn to accept values and norms of society and the stabilisation of adult personalities. This involves families providing adults with the emotional support necessary to cope with the stress of everyday life.
The economic side to the family is where the resources are shared out in the family so everyone is provided for and looked after. The money is spent on food, clothing and mortgage/rent to ensure that everyone has somewhere to sleep, something to eat and something to keep them warm.
However, critics argue that functionalists view the family as being ‘rose tinted’ as it ignores the negative aspects of the family. Functionalists say that divorce is a social dysfunction. By this they mean that society is not functioning as they believe it should, if divorce is occurring. This implies that they are ignoring conflict, abuse and gender inequality within the family. If functionalists were to decide the laws of the country, they would ban divorce. This would have a negative effect on society as people would be stuck in loveless marriages where they’re possibly being abused and not treated equally to their partners. Functionalists have also been accused of ignoring growing family diversity, because they believe that the nuclear family is the one that is best suited to the wider needs of society. They completely ignore all other family types such as extended, reconstituted and single parent. Be that as it may, every family may have their ‘dark side’. All types of families can consist of emotional blackmail and verbal/sexual abuse.
To conclude, I think both Marxists and Functionalist both have made some fair points with their theories. I think that Marxists have an acceptable point when they say that the family socialise children to accept capitalism and levels of hierarchy. I also agree with Berger and Kellner’s theory of ‘on-going construction’ throughout the family. With Functionalists, I agree with Parsons theory of the two basic irreducible functions of the family and to some degree I do agree with Murdock’s theory of socialisation. However, I do despise how Functionalists completely ignore the negative side to families and I think that this is a factor they should consider before they automatically assume that every nuclear family is rosy.
