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Sociological Theory
& The Family
Marx & Engels
Past Exam Questions on Family
1998 - ?The Family is a thing of the past.? Discuss in relation to ONE society.
1999 - " Family forms vary over time." Explain and discuss sociological interpretations of this phenomena.
2000 - How have sociologists explained how the structure and functions of the family have changed in the twentieth century?
In order to begin answering any of these essays the main thing YOU MUST remember is to REFERENCE as much as you can.
Braverman?s Functions of the Extended Family
Biological - Individuals are replaced in society and where sexual urges are gratified.
Social Life - Social activities evolve around the family.
Production - Before Modernisation, production was centered around the family unit.
Consumption - a unit of for consuming goods and services.
Marxist approaches to the family argue that the family no longer performs these functions, that it has lost its reason for being/ existing.
The Family as a Bolster for Capitalist Society.
E. Zaretsky, (1976)
The Conflict paradigm views the family as central to the operation of society.
How the family perpetuates social inequality.
The bourgeois family was dominant in Marx?s time.
They are to be exploited.
Exploited as simply units of re-
production.
Abolish the Family. (The Communist Manifesto, 1848)
The bourgeois male has access to public and private spheres. The wife was confined to the private sphere - HOME.
Frederick Engels
Engels traces the origins of the family to the need to identify heirs in order to transmit property rights.
Therefore families support the concentration of wealth and reproduce the class structure in each generation.(Mare, 1991)
Marx argues that marriage is a form of prostitution.
Sexual services are given in return for room and board
Women were expected to be virgins at marriage and to be faithful to their husbands, thereby ensuring ?true heirs?.
SO within the family the male is the economic provider and the female provides sexual services in return.
Engels continued...
Patriarchy- women?s sexuality must be controlled to ensure true heirs.
Families transform women into the sexual and economic property of men.
Despite women moving into the workforce, women are paid less and still have to bear the major responsibility for child rearing and housework. (Fuchs, 1986, Hochschild, 1989, Presser, 1993)
Men are also unable to share in the satisfaction and growth derived from close interaction with their children.
Marx
The Community of Women.
The bourgeois family is merely hypocrisy.
Males use prostitutes.
And the bourgeois male takes great pride in seducing each other?s wives and daughters.
The bourgeois family is merely a property relation. And if private property disappears so will the family.
The proletarian family has been destroyed by capitalism.
Proletarian life is structured and centered around the factory.
Merely a means of producing the next generation of workers.
Engels and the evolution of the family
Marxism Family cont..
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