Functionalist Concepts Of The Nuclear Family Essay Example

Functionalism is an approach within sociology that treats society as a system where the family supports society from within. Family members work in cooperation with one another and have different roles. Functionalist sociologists promote the idea of a nuclear family where there is a husband, wife and their biological children. In a hypothetical ideal nuclear family, there are two children, a boy and a girl, but the number of children does not really matter.  

The reason why functionalists assert a nuclear family as a perfect model type is because according to them, the roles that are found in the family are naturally tied to people’s gender. In particular, the husband plays an instrumental role, and the wife plays the emotive role, and these roles are predetermined by them being male and female respectively. 

To explain, the instrumental role of a husband means that at home, he directs his wife and children, sets rules, asserts law and order in the family. The wife’s emotive role means that she is supportive, she provides comfort for everyone in the household.

These ideas are central to Parsons’ understanding of a perfect nuclear family. Murdock’s observation that this is the most common type of family supports the idea that the nuclear family occurs naturally.  

Using a common-sense approach, I would say that the functionalist approach to family works because, in my lifetime, I mostly come across this type of family. Also, I would say that people who are over thirty years old would agree that the nuclear family works better than other types of families. 

However, there is a lot of criticism of the functionalist approach to a family.

Firstly, feminists like Greer criticise the traditional view of the family that devalues the female in her role as a wife. Greer even refers to “the ghastly figure of the bride” meaning that everything about traditional marriage symbolises and asserts the woman’s disadvantaged position. 

Looking at a nuclear family from the feminist perspective, we could say that instead of talking about fixed roles for a husband and wife, we should be talking about people doing different chores in the family. Family members should do chores and other things not because of their gender but because they, for example, have time to do it.

Focusing on the functions of the family, Parsons singles out two functions:  primary socialisation and the stabilisation of adult personalities. He argues that a nuclear family provides a secure environment for the children and also shows them an example to follow. Boys become breadwinners; girls learn to become carers – this is primary socialisation. As for the stabilisation of adult personalities, this refers to a so-called “the warm bath theory”, where the wife helps her husband to destress and is almost like a bath herself.

According to Murdoch, there are four functions that a nuclear family fulfils: 1) reproduction, 2) economics, 3) education, 4) sexual function. By reproduction, he means having babies. The economics of the family consists of the man earning money. Education means that the family educates their children, and the sexual function means sex in a marital relationship.   

But are all of these functions essential for a family? It could be said that the education function is not essential because school educates children and some parents are too busy to teach their children. Sexual function may not be necessary for some people and is seen as a distraction rather than a need. The economic function may not be essential because there are some really poor families that survive by mutual support. Reproduction can be another function that does not define every family because not all people can produce babies. There are foster families.    

The point I want to make is that a family can for example lose one of these functions but still be a family. My conclusion will be that as time has gone on, more and more functionalist theories become less acceptable. We accept that there are different types of functioning families, such as having same-sex couples, or single parents. In the past, people had a more stereotypical view of family life and family structure, and now in the twenty-first century, a nuclear family is seen as one of the types of families, not the only model to follow.