Is the nuclear family universal?

Functionalist Murdock suggested an idea of universality of the family as family is the basic and vital institution in all societies. He looked at 250 societies and found four the most significant functions of the family: sexual, economic, reproduction and socialization. These functions are essential and meet needs in all societies and institution who best fits in performing them is family. Murdock defined the family as social group characterized by common residence, consisting of adults both sexes and depended children. We can consider family as being universal since all children in order to have an adequate socialization have to have their parents with them in early stage of life. However if we look at the statistics, since 1930s till 2005 number of divorces increased by almost 130000 ( Social trends, National Statistics Online) and there are many other types of lifestyles appear such as cohabitation, reconstituted families, same sex relationships and etc. Increase in diversity caused by changing in attitudes: people choose their lifestyle according to their priorities and not societies’ expectations and norms (Weeks). Another reason is increased individualization of women and their economic independency ( Beck and Beck – Gernsheim). Expansion of higher education led to changes in priorities of young adults and now people tend to marriage later: age of marriage for men increased from 25 to 32 in 2005 and for women from 23 to 29; but also more people remarry, divorce and choose another type of households ( Social trends, National statistics online).
However, still nuclear family is promoted by politicians and media. For example, Labour policy Supportin Families (1998) suggested different ways of supporting families, all types of families. However Labours also pointed out that preferred type will be nuclear. Media created cereal packet image of the family (Leach) where it was promoting ideal nuclear family. People being influenced by media and politicians start seeing other types of households undesirable or abnormal (Gittins).