Functionalist View of Changes in Family Free Essay Example, 5500 words

The nuclear family of Britain during the past century evolved according to the functionalist perspective because it was best suited to an industrial society. Its smallness of scale makes for ease of social mobility. It fits the needs of an advanced industrial society, in the same way, that larger extended families fitted the needs of an agricultural society (Covington, 1995, p. 2). Functionalist sociologists would say a new situation has come about, in which activities in the home are shared so society has entered into a new stable state. In truth, the functionalist point of view is that the increasing numbers of working women have been caused a negative effect on family life. They would argue that as soon as the wife acquires her own earnings, the balance of power and harmony of the typical marriage is altered and the family unit suffers. Each member of the family must assume different specific roles in order to function properly, for example, the father specialized in instr umental leadership, which are impersonal or formal, such as providing financial support for the family (Parsons, 1954). The stay-at-home mother, on the other hand, emphasized expressive leadership, which are personal and informal, such as supportive and emotional nurturing to all family members (Wallace Wolf, 1999, p. We will write a custom essay sample on Functionalist View of Changes in Family or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page The functionalist opinion is that families should be functional for both society and individuals. To accomplish this ideal, families follow the same essential criteria, the man married to a woman raising children. This ideology does not judge the single-parent family household to be practical and certainly does not hold those alternative lifestyle partnerships as beneficial to society.