The Institution of Family

The Institution of Family

Historically, functionalist sociologist George Peter Murdock ("Social Structure", 1949) states this: "The family is a social group characterized by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially-approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults."

Obviously, this definition of a family is based on an ancient social structure of what constitutes a family. In fact if, Murdock were to quote this in today's society, society would not accept him socially as this is not a true representation of a 21st Century family structure. In other words this is not a true definition of a family because of the many family types that are presently socially accepted, Murdock would be criticized for this comment as he pinpoints only one type of family that is accepted as a family. In fact, in today's society, the functions of the family are being performed by a many different family structures, aforementioned. However the feminists say that the nuclear family is designed to suit men's needs as married men get a servant and sex slave. Both men and women learn what to expect from marriage during socialization, so one solution may be to change the way in which children are raised. Feminists also argue that the decline in marriage is down to women realizing that they are being exploited in the nuclear family home and that they are just not willing to tie themselves down (White & Klein, 2008, p.35) .

In fact the decline of the family has been linked to the changing social attitudes in society when compared to that of the past. As mentioned above the conventional nuclear family is considered the only "real" or to be the best family. Functionalists (Murdock) (Parsons) have argued that the families decline is ideally situated to modern life. Specifically, according to these theorists, the decline of the family is said to be down to the direct result of many factors, such as the ease and quickness of divorce (more divorce is taking place than ever before), more families' cohabitating, easier abortion, the rise of lone parents, illegitimate births and women going out to work in greater numbers. Thus, from this vein of thought, these factors contribute to the vision that people's morals are collapsing and that the family is in crisis.

The family is not on the decline, when all types of family types are included in the final analysis. The rise in divorce rate only affects the conventional nuclear family type, which is indeed on the decline, due the many changing societal trends. In fact the rise of divorce is a result of a number of factors including changes in public opinion and the greater ability of women to support them. However, as we have discussed above, out of divorce other family types