Explain and Assess Murdock's Definition of the Family

George Peter Murdock was a researcher in the 1940s and 1950s in the USA and defined the family as characterised by six main factors; common residence (living in the same home), economic cooperation (sharing money or helping one another with work or children etc.), reproduction, at least two adults of the opposite sex maintaining a socially approved sexual relationship and one or more biological or adopted children of the cohabiting adults. Murdock advanced the thesis in Social Structure that the family was a universal social institution found in all societies. His claim was based on his study of two hundred and fifty societies of all kinds - from small hunting communities to industrial societies and believed that the children were the 'corner stone' of the family, and was not a family if there were no children. According to Murdock the nuclear family was the smallest. However, many sociologists of today's society disagree with his view and are able to point out limitations.
This definition, despite excluding many modern day families and being seemingly a very traditional old fashioned approach to the family, is an extremely useful starting point for defining the family. Due to his vast research he cannot be criticized for being ethnocentric, because his studies were world wide and this allowed him to acquire a thorough understanding of the diversity families at the time. His definition is just wide enough to include some of the lesser known families that would still define themselves as one, such as polygamy and extended families (if they had children!), and the most common perception of a family; the nuclear (two parents and children). At the time of his. research, his definition probably fit most group of people that call themselves families reasonably well, except for perhaps the odd exception, however in