Excellent notes on the Marxist perspective on the family, part of the Sociology AS level Family Unit. I find this topic very fascinating and my notes reflect my interest! They're beautifully presented and focus on a range of sociological concepts such as ideological conditioning, pester power and t...
Sociology AS – Family – Marxist Perspective!
Marxist perspectives on the Family:
1. Marxist Feminism:
Marxist feminists believe that capitalism uses the family to oppress women.
1. Women In Margaret Benston’s (1972) Marxist feminist
constitute a study: ‘The Political Economy of Women’s
reserve army Liberation’, she argues that capitalism benefits
of labour. from a large reserve labour force of women ‘to keep
wages down and profits up’.
In their role as secondary breadwinners, married
women provide a source of cheap and easily
exploitable labour.
Linda Ran Lucy Fan.
2. Some
Marxists believe As wives… ‘When wives play their
that that the Margaret Benston argues that women perform a traditional role as takers
nuclear family is lot of unpaid labour within the family (taking care of of shit, they often absorb
a valuable children, cooking, cleaning etc.) which benefits their husband’s legitimate
stabilizing force the capitalist class, because they only have to anger and frustration at
in capitalist pay one person in the family – the male their own powerlessness
societies. This is breadwinner a wage. and oppression. With
because women, Moreover, the woman’s role as a housewife means every worker provided
in performing she sustains the current labour force by attending to with a sponge to soak up
their traditional her husband’s emotional needs for free, and this his possible revolutionary
roles in the keeps him, the man, in good running order to
nuclear families ire, the bosses rest more
perform his role in supplying effective waged labour, thus benefitting capitalism.
as mothers and
Fran Ansley shares a similar view; she sees the emotional support provided by the
housewives,
wife as a safety valve for the frustration produced in the husband by working in a
reproduce
capitalist system. Rather than being turned against the system which produced it,
labour power at
no cost to this frustrated is absorbed by the comforting wife. In this way the system is not
employers. threatened. Thus, the nuclear family can be seen as a valuable stabilizing force in
capitalist societies.
As mothers…
She’s also responsible for nurturing the next generation of workers, thus producing
the next generation of workers for free.
Criticisms of the Marxist Feminist Perspective on the Family:
As David Morgan argues in his criticism of both functionalist and Marxist
approaches, both ‘presuppose a traditional model of the nuclear family
where there is a married couple with children, where the husband is the
breadwinner and where the wife stays at home to deal with housework’.
However, this pattern is becoming less common and so the critique of this type of
family may therefore be less important or less applicable today.
Marxist feminists may therefore exaggerate the harm caused to women by
families and may neglect the effects of non-family relationships (apart from class)
on exploitation within marriage. Thus, for example, they say little about how the
experience of racism might influence
families.
They also tend to portray female
family members as the passive
victims of capitalist and patriarchal
exploitation. They ignore the
possibility that women may have
fought back against such exploitation
and had some success in changing the
nature of family relationships.
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