Critically examine the functionalist views on the institution of family. How do those help us in understanding family in the present times? (2014)
Functionalism treats the family as a universal institution that meets the needs of individuals and society, and whose form adjusts to other parts of the social system. The view was dominant until the 1960s and is heavily criticised today. Stripped of its assumptions of harmony, it still offers useful tools.
The functionalist position
- George Peter Murdock (Social Structure, 1949) found the nuclear family in all 250 societies he surveyed. It performs sexual, reproductive, economic and educational functions, and no society has found an adequate substitute.
- Talcott Parsons (with Robert F. Bales, 1955): through structural differentiation, the family sheds production and education to specialised institutions. It keeps two “basic and irreducible” functions, primary socialisation and stabilisation of adult personalities. The isolated nuclear family “fits” the mobile, achievement-based industrial economy.
- William J. Goode (World Revolution and Family Patterns, 1963) predicted global convergence on the conjugal family.
- Ronald Fletcher (The Family and Marriage in Britain, 1966) argued that the family’s functions have been enhanced, not lost, with the support of schools and health services.
Critical examination
- Idealised and ethnocentric. David H. J. Morgan (1975) found Murdock’s family “remarkably harmonious”. Parsons generalised from the white American middle class.
- The historical fit fails. Peter Laslett found nuclear households in pre-industrial England, with only about 10% of households containing wider kin. Michael Anderson found more co-residence with kin in industrial Preston in 1851.
- Conflict ignored. Marxists (Friedrich Engels, Eli Zaretsky) tie the family to property and capital. Feminists show that the instrumental/expressive split sustains patriarchy (Ann Oakley).
- The dark side. 29.3% of ever-married women aged 18–49 reported spousal violence (NFHS-5, 2019–21). That is hard to square with “stabilisation of personalities”.
- Diversity. Judith Stacey and Anthony Giddens show fluid, chosen, often non-nuclear forms. In India, Milton Singer‘s Madras industrialists used the joint family as a business asset.
How functionalism still helps today
- Transfer of functions explains the welfare state. Differentiation predicts that the state takes on what families can no longer do. Examples are anganwadis for early childcare and the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007, which makes children’s duty of care enforceable.
- Primary socialisation is still familial. Filiocentric Indian families pour resources into children: 95% of students name household members as their main source of education funding (NSS Comprehensive Modular Survey: Education, 2025).
- Robert K. Merton’s revisions make it critical. Dysfunction covers dowry, domestic violence and family-related distress. Family problems were the leading recorded cause of suicide in 2022, at 31.7% of cases (NCRB). Latent functions cover caste endogamy reproducing status. Functional alternatives include crèches, old-age homes and chosen families.
- Functional definitions of family. In Deepika Singh v. CAT (2022) the Supreme Court recognised “atypical” families because they perform the same caring functions. The test is what a family does, not its form.
Conclusion
Functionalism is weak as a description: it is too harmonious, too nuclear and too American. As a method of asking what the family does, for whom, and what replaces it when it fails, it remains valuable. Refined by Merton and tested against Indian diversity, it helps explain why the family persists while its forms change.