I think I understand what you're saying, however:
The kid is, after all, a "kid", and he thinks like a kid. When I was a kid, I admired John Wayne more than I did my father -- for a time. Remember, Joey says to his mom, "I love Shane almost as much a I love pa" (something like that). I believe him.
The only hints at romantic feelings between Shane and Marian are a few looks, a handshake, and a decidedly non-romantic dance. The potential is there -- but that's all. "The kid" says, "and mother wants you. I know she does", not "She loves you". He says this the way a kid would say it, not, imo, the way an adult might say it -- with a romantic or sexual implication.
"Father of the family can't do nothing until Shane comes up ..."
But, he does a great deal before Shane comes up. We learn the history as the story unfolds. As Ryker points out, Starrett holds the settlers' community together and has, obviously, been doing so for some time. He's just not a gunfighter and has a wife who abhores guns entirely. Not at all "afraid to fight bad guys", he stands up against them with an unloaded rifle the day Shane arrives.
Shane is "completely flawless and has no reason to help the family". Shane is a Western transplant of the classical hero in Greek drama -- bound to fight for "justice" as he sees it and doomed to remain, forever, an "outsider". A dramatic device found in other Westerns of the period (Eg., Ethan in The Searchers, Yancy in Cimarron, Donophon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.)
"What is he doing in the film exactly?" He's representing the dichotomy between the values of the "Old West" and those of the "New West" . . . wild, lawless beginnings and the coming of civilization. "Your" (and my) "kinda days are over!", he says. . . And Shane, sadly, knew it all along despite a near desperate attempt to fight the intuition. "You can't break the mold". Shane is very much a part of a boy's imagination . . . and our own.
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