Structural functional theory on family4/11/2024 ![]() As of today, the school is closed, and the house I grew up in has been torn down. My school was only two blocks from my house, and next to our house was an empty lot. Until about age eight, my mother and I lived with my grandmother in a pretty rough neighborhood. I think this explains my relationship with the rest of my family. To make it make more sense, I don’t expect anyone to be at my graduation except my mother and maybe my aunts. To be honest, I wish I had more fulfilling relationships with people of my family, but this is the way it has been since my great grandmother and grandmother passed away. She always looked out for me, and helped my mother whenever she could. ![]() My grandmother was like my dad, or my second mom. My grandmother is also included in this list even though she has left us for a better life in heaven. I am close with my mom, my two aunts, and a few cousins. Moving along, I do not get to spend much time with my family from home these days because I am away at school most of the year, and most of my cousins have grown up, moved and went their own ways. Our relationship has been rocky ever since I came to college and I started speaking up for myself because I do not agree with the way he treats me. I do not have much of a relationship with my dad, but it is by personal choice. I come from a single parent family, and I am the only child, so it is just the two of us and we are like best friends. It has always been a special bond between us because we have the same birthday. I was supposed to be born in the middle of September, but my mother went into labor in August at my cousin’s birthday party, and now we share the same birthday. My mother was eighteen when she was found out she was pregnant with me. My family is primarily from the Westside of Chicago with some family members living in Tennessee, Minnesota, and Hawaii. We will revisit this part of the discussion in a later section.I come from an African American background. By this she means that men coming home from work may have their stress relieved by the family, but only by dumping it on their wives.įurthermore, these theories are outdated and suggest families are all traditional nuclear families with men going to work and women in domestic roles. ![]() The Marxist-feminist Fran Ansley offers a different perspective on Parsons’ warm bath theory when she describes women in the family as takers of shit. In particular, feminists argue that families exist largely for the benefit of men. Many people have negative experiences of family life, and indeed they can cause stress as well as relieve it.Ĭonflict theorists also question whether the roles families perform really benefit the whole of society or really just benefit powerful groups within it. Families are certainly not like that for everyone. This was the idea that when a man came home from a hard day at work, he could relax into is family like a warm bath and it would take away the stress and refresh him for the next day’s work.Įvaluating functionalist views of the functions of families and householdsĪ standard criticism of functionalist views of the role of the family comes from conflict theorists like Marxists and feminists who argue that this paints too rosy and idealistic a picture of family life. Parsons famously described this in his warm bath theory. The family provides emotional support to its members. Parsons also argued that families helped to prevent adults from behaving in disruptive or dysfunctional ways, instead encouraging them to conform to social norms, especially at times of stress. Parsons called this first process primary socialisation and the latter secondary socialisation. taught children the universal norms and values of wider society. However, he argued that it specifically taught children the norms and values associated with their family and/or community, while other institutions, such as schools, the media, religion, etc. Similar to Murdock’s educational role, Parsons agreed that families taught children social norms and values. He argued that in modern, Western societies, the state provided education and could perform an economic function (through welfare provisions) but that the family still had two irreducible functions: ![]() ![]() Talcott Parsons (1951) updated Murdock’s theory. Murdock on Families - Short Revision Video Talcott Parsons on Families ![]()
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