The Functionalist’s View of The Family in Society

Talcott Parsons (1965) was a functionalist sociologist who attempted to trace the historical development of the family and explain why the nuclear family had become so dominant. Parsons argued that before the industrial revolution societies were largely based on extended kinship networks. These networks are relationships between family members outside of the nuclear family such as grandparents and cousins. Roles in these family networks were generally on the basis of ascription rather than any educational achievement or skills. Parsons said that the industrial revolution brought on 3 fundamental changes. Firstly industrialization meant that the economy needed a more geographically mobile workforce. Geographical mobility led to people and families being isolated from their relatives and being less reliant on their kin for social supports. This made the nuclear family more dependent omn each other and so more home centered. The third change was when specialist agencies developed and took over the functions of a family. Originally a family would be together to produce something that could be sold so when agencies took over this extended kin families broke up and moved away to find other work. But Historians argue that Parsons was far too simplistic in his interpretation. Laslett (1972) recorded a study of types of family before the industrial revolution showing that only 10% of households were actually extended kin. This criticised Parsons view of their being no nuclear families before the revolution.

Despite doubts about the universality of the nuclear family at the time, functionalist sociologists focused their attention to the functions of the family. Nuclear families specialised in the primary socialisation of children. Parsons (1966) believed that personalities were “made not born” and that a child could only become a social adult by internalising the norms and values of their society. Therefore he saw nuclear families as “personality factories” churning out citizens who commit to the rules. This, by some people, could be intepretated as: if you are not a nuclear family but a single parent family or homosexual couple, that you cannot socialise your children properly and that they will not conform to social order or do well in their lives. This of course is not true as many single parent families bring up their children well and then they go on to better things.

Functionalists have always seen the family as a very harmonious relationship but Cheal (2002) notes that functional relationships can easily turn into dysfunctional relationships and that love can often turn to hate within a matter of days. Cheal also notes “we have to face the paradox that families are contexts of love but also contexts of violence and anger and that we have to work around this to make family as functional as possible for everyone.