10) The “dark side” of the Family

One of the main criticisms of the marxist view of the family is that they don’t take into account the “dark side of the family”. There are two main areas of the dark side of the family, child abuse and domestic violence.

Child abuse

The levels of child abuse is hard to measure, however it is expected that 10% of children in the UK suffer some sort of neglect.

There are several different types of child abuse, as the graph to the left shows.

Opposition to functionalists say that this dispels some of their theories because actually the family, rather than being a safe place, is a damaging place for many children.

Domestic violence

It is estimated that 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 6 men will suffer some sort…