Families Are

Murdock made the claim that the Nuclear Family is a universal feature of all societies in his study entitled "Social Structure". He made this claim following case studies and anthropological work on 250 societies, all of which he found had nuclear family structure in place. The concept of a Universal family is important to Functionalists like Murdock as it add weights to their claim that the nuclear family is biologically natural and the only correct family form.

Murdock sees the nuclear family as being a man and woman, living together with their children, co-operating economically and maintaining a sexual relationship. If we accept this definition of the nuclear family, there is evidence to show that it does not exist everywhere, there are exceptions to Murdock's claims of a universal family. One example is the Matrifocal family, here the family is governed by a female head, helped by other female relatives but with no male partner living in the family home.

The Nayor society of southern India is another example which shows the Nuclear Family is not universal and disproves Murdock's Theory. Here the husband and wife did not live together, there was no life long commitment, the children were not necessarily fathered by the husband and the husband had no obligation to provide for them economically. This system worked for the Nayor society and illustrated the point that different societies can have varied definitions of what the family is. Further examples of non-nuclear families can be seen in Kibbutz and Communes. There is little evidence to suggest that these communal type societies are in any way harmful or less efficient than the nuclear family. Offspring are still provided for and socialised, which for any society must be its main objective. Simply because these are not fulfilled by the dependants immediate kin alone does not mean it is an inferior system.

A further example of the non-nuclear