Nuclear Family And Stability Sociology Essay

The definition of the nuclear family within our society is that we have a family comprising of a wife/mother, husband/father, and their children. The question that we are addressing in this piece of text is whether a nuclear family gives greater stability than other forms of family?

The debate over the universality and necessity of the nuclear family began in the early twentieth century. Pioneer anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1913) stated that the family had to be universal because it filled a biological need-caring and protecting infants and young children. No culture could survive, he asserted unless the birth of children was linked to both the mother and father in legally based parenthood.

Anthropologist George P. Murdock (1949) elaborated on the idea that the nuclear family is both universal and essential : “Whether as the role prevailing form on the family……..or as the basic unit from more complex families form, (the nuclear family) exists as a distinct and strongly functional group in every known society” (p.2.)

Looking at another form of a family unit within our society and evaluating whether a homosexual partnership can give a child/children more stability within a family unit, than a nuclear family. Firstly according to Dr. Laura A. Haynes Psychologist, Tustin California, October 5 2008 she states some say it does not matter who is loving the children as long as they are loved, the need for stability is there. She read a review written by a male homosexual couple seeking a birthmother to give her baby to them to adopt. The heading was “Your Child Will Have Two Loving Dads.” An unspoken consequence was “Your Child Will Be Motherless.” It is hard to imagine the experience of a child who never has a mother or never has a father. Some Psychotherapists who treat children of same sex couples are reporting that the children do long for the gendered parent they do not have.

The argument then adheres too, that a heterosexual couples hold the stronger and more acceptable view within our society to bringing up children in general, and a homosexual couple haven’t the biological gender reform to give a child a stable and coherent upbringing. Children therefore long for the nurturing at a young from their biological mother and would therefore be deprived of their natural growth progression.

A grave concern for the children is the instability of same sex relationships across cultures. In one large study in America and Canada (Jay and Young, 1997) 38 percent of male homosexuals said that the longest relationship they have ever had was less than one year. The average length of longest relationship and the most frequent response for the men was 2 years. The longest relationship for lesbians was on average thirty-eight months. (Jay and Young, 1979, pp. 340, 302).

It seems there folds a great argument within society and societies policies to whether stability can then be held within a homosexual relationship, boarding on the senses for discriminations against the sexes. A nuclear family is acceptable within our society, and holds the confidences towards building a functional acceptance within society as a homosexual couple hold to many discrepancies from the biological family in general.