According to functionalists, the family is universal because it fulfills six needs: economic production, socialization of children, care of the sick …show more content…
In tribal societies, exogamy functioned to forge alliances between tribes that otherwise might have killed each other off. In today’s society, exogamy extends a bride and groom’s social networks beyond the nuclear family by building relationships with their spouse’s family.
According to functionalists, one of the dysfunctions of the nuclear family is emotional overload since, unlike an extended family, there are few members to count on for material and emotional support.
To the conflict perspective, things are much less rosy. Marriage is the outgrowth of conflict between men and women. Marriage and family, is practiced in our society, that tend to control women to some degree. Although this is changing, marriage and family have, traditionally been a way for men to maintain their dominance.
From the conflict perspective, the struggle over who does housework, is a struggle over limited resources of time, energy, and leisure.
Since most husbands resist doing housework, wives end up doing most of it, even wives with other jobs to do outside of the …show more content…
From the symbolic interactionist perspective, every marriage is different. Marriage is, what couples make of it. There can be marriages in which one of the partners feels they are in control of the other, however, there can also be marriages in which the partners fulfill and complete one another. Symbolic interactionism sees marriage as something that differs from relationship to relationship.
The closer a husband’s and wife’s earnings, the more likely they are to share housework. Most husbands who get laid off, however, decrease their housework, while husbands who earn less than their wives do the least housework.
To explain why laid off husbands with more time on their hands and working husbands who earn less than their wives would do less housework rather than more, symbolic interactionists turn to gender roles. If a husband is laid off and/or makes less than his wife, it undercuts his traditional role as provider and, thus, threatens his