FUNCTIONS AND DYSFUNCTIONS OF FAMILY

FUNCTIONS AND DYSFUNCTIONS OF FAMILY

SAROJ KUMAR SAMAL

DIRECTOR,SAROJ SAMAL'S IAS,DELHI

A society, in competition with other societies and with nature, can survive
only if its members, through their activities, perform certain social functions. These
functions will not be performed except when the activities are organized. Hence
any existent society will be found to possess an institutional structure through which
its functions are performed. In the case of the family we have an institutional complex
adapted for meeting certain social needs like for continual replacement of the social
membership etc. Sociologists hold different views on various functions performed
by the family.
T. Parsons
His analysis is primarily confined to American society. Even then, his analysis
is applicable to family, anywhere because he claims that the American family retains
the basic and irreducible functions of family .primarily socialization of children
and the stabilization of the adult personalities of the population of the society.
G. P. Murdock
Murdock took a sample survey of 250 societies ranging from small hunting
bands to the large-scale industrial societies. His study found that family’s structure
would vary from society to society, though it was always present. He also found
that the nuclear family was present in every society in his sample. This made him
conclude that the nuclear family was a universal human social grouping. Murdock
argues that family performs four basic functions in all societies: sexual, reproductive
economic, and educational (socializing). Indeed, family alone does not perform
these functions exclusively, but still it makes important contributions to them and
there is no other institution to match this efficiency.
Ogburn and Nimcoff
Ogburn and Nimcoff have pointed out the following functions of family:
(a) Affectional (b) Economic (c) Recreational (d) Protective and (e) Educational.
DYSFUNCTIONS OF FAMILY
Although the family has always been an universal social institution and has
been an inevitable part of human society, but in the contemporary modern societies
the very assumptions of family are being questioned by a number of sociologists.

R.D. Laing’s “The politics of the Family”
R.D. Laing refers to the family group as a matrix. He argues that the highest
concern of the nexus is reciprocal concern. Each partner is concerned about what
the other thinks, feels, does’. Within the nexus there is a constant, unremitting
demand for mutual concern and attention. Laing argues, “a family can act as
gangsters, offering each other mutual protection against each other’s violence”.
According to Laing, family is the root of all problems in society. Some families
live in perpetual anxiety of an external persecuting world. The members of the
family live in a family ghetto, as it were. Moreover, the most dangerous feature of
family is the inculcation of obedience in the minds of siblings. Later in life they
become soldiers and officials blindly and unquestionably following orders.
Edmund Leach’s “Runaway world”
Edmund Leach argues that the chief malady of the family is because of the
isolation of the nuclear family from kin and wider community. Leach summarizes
this situation and its consequences as follows: ‘in the past, kinsfolk and neighbourhood
gave the individual continuous moral support throughout his life. Today the domestic
household is isolated. The family looks inward upon itself; there is an intensification
of emotional stress between husband and wife and between parents and children.
The strain is greater than most of us can bear’. Thrown back almost entirely on its
own resources, the nuclear family becomes like an overloaded electrical circuit.
The demands made upon it are too great, and fuse blows. In their isolation, family
members expect and demand too much from each other. The result is conflict. In
Leach’s words: ‘the parents and children huddled together in their loneliness take
too much out of each other, the parents fight, the children rebel.
Vogel and Bell’s study of American family
Vogel and Bell argue that the tension and hostility of unresolved conflicts
between parents are projected on to the child. The child is often used as an emotional
scapegoat by the parents to relieve their tensions.

David Cooper’s “Death of the family”
David Cooper pronounces the death of family. He too maintains that the
child is destroyed by family since he is primarily taught how to submit to society
for the sake of survival. Each child has the potential to be an artist, a visionary, and
a revolutionary; but this potential is crushed in the family. The children are taught
to play the roles of son and daughter, male and female.
In the language of David Cooper. “The family is an ideological conditioning
device in an exploitative society”.
Marxist Perspective
Another critique of the institution of family is given by the Marxists. This
is primarily the contribution of Engels. According to him, family changed as per
the changes in the modes of production, which placed a greater restriction on the
number of mates that an individual could possess. When modes of production
were communally owned there was no family and promiscuity prevailed. The
monogamous nuclear family developed with the emergence of private property,
in particular with the advent of the State. The State readily instituted laws to
protect the system of private property and to enforce the rules of monogamous
marriage.
Kathleen Gough argues that this picture may not be that far from the truth.
She notes that man’s nearest relatives; the chimpanzees live in promiscuous hordes
and this may have been the pattern for early man.
This view of Engels was further examined in the 60s and 70s by several
feminist writers. According to them family is seen as a unit which produces one of
the basic commodities of capitalism, labour. It is .cheap for capitalists because they
do not have to pay for the production of children or their upkeep. The wife is paid
nothing for producing and rearing children. In .the words of Margaret Houston
“An economic unit, the nuclear family is a variable stabilizing force in the
capitalist society. Since the production which is done in the home is paid for
by the husband - father’s earnings, his ability to withhold labour from the
market is much reduce