Assess The Contribution Of Functionalism And Its Contribution To Society

Functionalism is the perspective that social events are best explained as the contributions they make toward society. Functionalism interprets each part of society and determines its contribution to the society as a whole. Functionalism originated from the works of Emile Durkheim who was mainly interested in the idea of what held society together. Conflict theory is the idea that society tends to reinforce inequality and give power to the dominant groups; it emphasizes division of society. Conflict theory originated from the ideas of Karl Marx, who believed that capitalism would inevitably produce internal tensions that would lead to its own downfall.
The functionalist perspective views the major societal institution, family, as a group that performs certain tasks that contribute to societies basic needs and helps continue the existence of societal institutions. The families main two functions are primary socialization and personality stabilization. Primary socialization is the process where children learn
Since inheritance, education, and other social capital are usually passed on from generation to generation within a family, wealthy families are able to keep their privileges while families who come from poorer backgrounds are denied the opportunity to have those privileges. Furthermore, when looking at the traditional family, men are usually given more power than women, leading to a patriarchal family. Traditional male responsibilities included being the sole breadwinners while women were expected to stay at home and take care of the children. Traditionally, women were expected to defer to their spouse. For example, throughout much of US History, a husband was legally allowed to force or coerce his wife into sex. It wasn’t until 1993, that marital rape became illegal in all 50 states (Giddens et al., p.