... families that could afford to live in this way and then eventually filtered down to the middle-classes and finally became popular amongst most classes in the twentieth century. Functionalists would argue that the Nuclear Family started to become more popular due to the growth of Industrialisation. This led to more families leaving the rural areas and extended families that they originated from and setting up home in cities and towns in order to find work. This view claims that the family ceased to be a unit of production and instead became a modern unit - a time when due to the increase in women's rights and the introduction of the contraceptive pill meant the birth rate would start to decrease rapidly. In the beginning of the twentieth century the role of the average woman and family was very different to that of the later twentieth century, most women would stay at ...

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