Social World Institutions

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Social World -- Institutions

• Perpetuated agreements surrounding major areas of
  life that are
  
• Reified
• Legitimated

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• Thus we are the creators of the social world and
  the products of the social world
  
• Too much change in social world

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• Limits freedom
• But also
• Increases freedom

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Institutions

• Family
• Education
• Religion
• Economy
• Government

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Family
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What Is a Family?

• Related by blood, marriage, or adoption?
• Live together?
• Economic cooperation?
• Reproduction?

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• Family is a

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Family as an Institution

• Differentiation started with separate religious
  and governmental institutions
  
• Economy and education only recently
  separated.industrial revolution

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Households in the U.S.(Percentage)
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Family Composition U.S. vs. Soc. 134Spring 2007
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Theoretical Perspectives

• Conflict
• Family is means of subservience of women and
  children
  
• Socialist societies attempted to lessen the
  importance of the family to promote equality

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Structural Functionalism

• Family serves the following functions in
  post-industrial social systems

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Symbolic Interactionism

• Socialization begins in the family
• Creates looking glass self
• Key role in development of individual self image,
  world view

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• First months and years of marriage are a time of
  negotiation and institutionalization.
  

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Marriage Patterns

• Arranged or couple selection of mate
• Monogamy or polygamy
• Polygamous marriages
• Group marriage several wives and husbands

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Lineage

• How ancestry and inheritance determined
• Bilineal
• Matrilineal
• Patrilineal

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The Dilemma of Patrilineage

• Pre-marital virginity of wife essential
• Rape is a crime against husband, father

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Dominance Patterns

• Patriarchal
• Increased in frequency with agricultural/industria
  l economies
  
• Matriarchal
• Egalitarian
• More common in hunting gathering and post
  industrial societies
  

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Modern American Families

• Nuclear
• Monogamous?
• Serial monogamy
• Bilineal?
• Egalitarian?

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• Romantic love is basis of marriage
• In the last four decades
• Later age at marriage, especially for women
• Fewer children

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Sex Okay with Short Acquaintances (Percent of
Soc. 134)
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The Activities of Married Women Are Best Confined
to the Home and Family (Percent of Soc. 134)
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Same Sex Couples Should Have the Right to Legal
Marriage (Soc. 134 percentage)
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Contemporary Issues

• Divorce
• U.S. has the highest divorce rate in the world
• The divorce rate is half the marriage rate
• Multiple divorces and multiple remarriages
• Cohort effect

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• Reasons for Increase in Divorce
• Divorce is more socially acceptable
• Relative economic independence of wives

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Who Divorces

• Rates are higher among the less educated, less
  prosperous, less religious
  
• Parental divorce
• Heterogamy

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Divorce and Religion (Barna Group 2004)

• Divorced adults
• Catholics
• Protestants
• Presbyterians
• Pentecostals
• Born again Christians