Each set in society has a different view of the main role of family is as it states in item 2b...
Marxists see all social institutions as serving the interest of capitalism. They argue that institutions such as the family help to maintain the system of class inequality and exploitation, one way which the family does this is by socialising children into accepting hierarchy. The family is also an important market for consumer goods.
Alternatively functionalists argue that the family performs vital functions for society, For example it benefits family members by offering mutual support and emotional satisfaction.
The role and the functions of the family are often discusses about. The family is the central unit of society wherever that may be. Individuals need the access to primary socialisation they acquire basic norms and values of society which are taught by family. Marxist undertakes a conflict view that views the society as serving the needs of a capitalist society. Additionally Marxists argue that family is one of the main institutions that help maintain class inequality and capitalism. Marxists shows how the bourgeoisie take advantage of proletariat and their labour.
Marxists views the theory in a superstructure which explains the class such as the base is the bottom which has the relations of production (bourgeoisie exploits the proletariat) also the base includes the means of production (all the things you need to produce machines, factories, land, raw materials etc) this is all owned by the bourgeoisies. On the top is the superstructure which maintains and legitimates the base, the base shapes the superstructure. The superstructure includes education, family, mass media, politics and religion. The proletariats are the key tool which are used to create profit margins which is all the money which is allocated for basic living standard needs which are at a acceptable level.
The family is an key market for sale for consumer goods which are bought by families, because families encourage themselves to be in competition with each other and to keep buying luxury goods. They also take advantage of children to use their power and encourage their parents to buy more things and spend more money on them due to seeing other rich class children with the more expensive and better toys or clothes. This is one of the ways that Marxists says the family serves capitalism because family produces profit for it. It is also has been said that capitalism which is the divide between society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. They reinstate that capitalism exploits the labour of the workers, by making a profit by the workers by selling the products made from their labour, for more than it costs them to be produced.
There is another argument from the Marxists point of view that the family performs ideological functions for capitalism by justifying and maintaining inequality, which maintains capitalism. As suggested in the item 2B they say that the family socializes children into accepting and being used to hierarchy and inequality. The parents power over their children to put them in power, they use their ideas to show them there is always someone in charge of them and there is always someone who is shaping them into who they are and their beliefs and attitudes. This prepares the children for work, where they will themselves contribute to capitalism by obeying the orders from their managers and employers. The men of the bourgeoisie needed to know who their children were therefore they could pass on their property to them.
The family was thought to be by Marxists as designed to control women and protect their property that they had owned. The bourgeoisie (nuclear family) took over capitalism in four different ways. One that the family teach their children norms and values of society, they produce labor power and accept capitalism. This would be a further argument put forward by feminists. Secondly women’s domestic work (childcare,
