Functions of the Family

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• sexual
  
  
  • serves for the institutionalization of mating and the channeling of sexual outlets
    
    
    • thus establishes a legal father for a woman's children and a legal mother for a man's children
      
      
• reproductive
  
  
  • includes the nurture and basic enculturation of the young in an atmosphere of intimacy
    
    
    • prepares them to accept statuses of adulthood
      
      
• economic
  Economic function of the family -- Wikipedia
  
  
  • serves as the organization of a complementary division of labor between spouses
    
    
  • allocates to each certain rights in the labor of the other and in such goods or property as they may acquire through their individual or joint efforts
    
    
• educational
  
  
  • provides for the linkage of each spouse and the offspring within the wider network of kinsmen
    
    
    • establishes relationships of descent and affinity
      
      
  • sociological fatherhood is determined to place the responsibility for the child on a specific adult
    
    
  • there must be jural fatherhood to regularize transference of statuses from one generation to the next
    
    
  • a cooperative division of labor makes for greater efficiency and skill in the work that need to be done
    
    
  • each sex can perform may skills equally well, but each sex is likely to develop those skills it uses more often
    
    
  • the basic functions of the family may be performed with varying degrees of effectiveness from culture to culture
    
    
  • the way the details of the functions are carried out can produce remarkably different individual personalities of children and adult