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Get the answer of: Is the Nuclear Family a Universal Form of Family Relationship?
Murdock suggested that the nuclear family is the universal form of family relations and that it performs “distinctive and vital functions—sexual, economic, reproductive and educational”.
He elaborates his thesis further:
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“The nuclear family is a universal human grouping. Either as the sole prevailing form of the family or as the basic unit from which more complex familial forms are compounded, it exists as a distinct and strongly functional group in every human society”.
Murdock’s thesis has been criticized from different points of view. To begin with, it has been pointed out that Murdock’s picture of the family is rather “like the multi-faceted, indispensable Boy Scout knife”.
Since it is multi-functional, it has been considered to be indispensable and hence universal. It is held that in his enthusiasm Murdock failed to identify other alternative ways of getting, at least, some of those functions performed.
Morgan notes in his criticism that Murdock does not answer “to what extent these basic functions are inevitably linked with the institution of the nuclear family”. The evidence for Murdock conclusion about the inevitability and universality of nuclear family is far from conclusive.
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He may have arrived at this conclusion because of the fact that he collected his data from Euro-American societies. It has been pointed out that the cases such as those of the Nayar in India and the Ashanti of Central Ghana tend to disprove his assertion.
In the large Ashanti villages of Central Ghana the children may carry pots of food from their mother’s house to the house of their father. The may eat with their father. Thereafter they may go home to sleep at the house where their mother lives. The mother may visit her husband for the night.
This pattern of divided residence and visiting back and forth seems to exist because the Ashanti traditional social system is based on matrilineal descent for important social purposes, such as inheritance of land, succession to office and political status.
Women often value the tie to their brother as highly as, or higher than, the relationship to their husband, since it is from the brother that their children will’ inherit Because the child’s place in society is mainly determined through its relationship to its mother and her matrilineal kin, the breaking of a marital tie is of little consequence either for the spouses or for the children.
Another factor inducing women to remain in their own homes even after marriage is the very close relationship between mother and children, and particularly between mothers and daughters. This case demonstrates the way in which interests and relationships can cut right across the solidarity of the nuclear family.
And it would be very difficult to demonstrate that the nuclear family is either a normal or a necessary co-residential unit among the Ashanti. The Ashanti concept of family is quite, different from the concept of family with which the people of Europe or America or Asia are familiar.
The most extreme and best known example of the effect of matrilineal descent upon familial relationships was to be found among the Nayar caste of Southern India in the period before the effects of British rule were felt.
Among the Nayar, it appears that the marital relationship was reduced to a merely symbolic level, being contracted around the time that the girl reached puberty and shortly thereafter being ritually broken.
Afterward, the women were allowed to have informal love affairs with men who visited them at night. The households consisted of a group of brothers and their sisters and the sisters’ children, and any children born to the woman of the household became members of the matrilineal joint family. The children were discouraged from developing any strong attachments to either their patter or genitor.
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While it would be impossible to argue that the role of father was completely absent from this social system, it was obviously diminished in favour of the solidarity of the property-owning matrilineal group. It seems likely that many of the functions that are normally performed by fathers in relation to socialisation and personality development were carried out by male members of the matrilineage.
Cases such as these have led some writers, including Radcliffe-Brown, to suggest that the basic structural unit of kinship systems is the unit of mother and children and to separate the nuclear family into a number of paired relationships or dyads, and to see how, in different societies, they fit in relation to each other and to other groups.
This is toward loosening the categories involved in the nuclear-family complex and exploring more fully their independent connections. Even in societies with pronounced patriarchal authority we and that the mother-children unit often forms an independent sub-group, and is given special recognition and marked by close emotional ties among its members.
Talcott Parsons has suggested that the father role is always an “instrumental” one as opposed to the more emotional or “expressive” quality of the mother role.
In tribal societies where kinship determines both social relationships and social roles, the family has to keep in touch with descent groups and “becomes a mechanism for the continuous generation of new kinship ties”.
In more differentiated social systems with an increased division of labour, a literary tradition, and a well-developed class or caste system, such as those of India or China, it is still true that families may be large, multi-functional units—a far cry from a nuclear household.
The absence of a sufficient property base leads the grown-up mature sons to go out of the family and set up independent households.
“Large joint families are found mainly among landowning and merchant groups, where sons have a continuing material interest in the patrimony to reinforce and sustain filial piety. Such large ‘families’ are really lineages or descent groups which constitute perpetual corporations managing a common enterprise”.