Family

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Family
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Basic Concepts

• Family
• A social institution found in all societies that
  unites people into cooperative groups to oversee
  the bearing and raising of children
• Kinship
• A social bond, based on blood, marriage, or
  adoption
• Family Unit
• A social group of two or more people, related by
  blood, marriage, or adoption, who usually live
  together
• Families of orientation
• The family you are born into
• Families of procreation
• The family you form in order to have or adopt
  children
• Families of affinity
• People with or without blood ties who feel that
  they belong together and want to define
  themselves as a family

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Family Variations

• Extended family
• Family unit that includes parents and children as
  well as other kin
• Also called consanguine families
• Nuclear family
• Also called conjugal family
• Composed of one or two parents and their children
• The predominant family form

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Marriage Patterns

• Marriage
• Legally sanctioned relationship, usually
  involving economic cooperation, as well as sexual
  activity and childbearing, that people expect to
  be enduring
• Illegitimacy out of wedlock children
• Matrimony the condition of motherhood

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Marriage Patterns

• Endogamy
• Marriage between people of the same social
  category
• Limited opportunities for marriage
• Exogamy
• Marriage between people of different social
  categories can help form alliances
• Marriage partners
• Monogamy marring one other person
• Serial monogamy monogamy divorce remarriage
• Polygamy marrying three or more people
• Polygyny marrying more than one female
• Polyandry marrying more than one male

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Residential Patterns

• PATRILOCALITY
• With or near the husbands family
• MATRILOCALITY
• With or near the wifes family
• NEOLOCALITY
• Setting up house apart from both families

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DESCENT

• How members of a society trace kinship over
  generations
• Importance includes passing on property and
  recognition as a family member
• Three types
• Patrilineal descent tracing kinship through men
• Matrilineal descent tracing kinship through
  women
• Bilateral descent tracing kinship through both
  men and women

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Structural-Functional Analysis of the Family

• The family serves basic functions
• Socialization creating well-integrated members
  of society
• Regulation of sexual activity maintenance of
  kinship order and property rights, incest taboos
• Social placement -- births to married couples are
  preferred in societies
• Material and emotional security home can be a
  haven for people
• Critical evaluation
• Glosses over great diversity of family life, how
  other institutions are taking over its roles
  negative aspects like patriarchy and family
  violence

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Social-Conflict Analysis of the Family

• The family perpetuates social inequality
• Property and inheritance concentrates wealth
  and reproduces class structure
• Patriarchy to know their heirs men must control
  women who still bear the brunt of child rearing
  and housework duties
• Racial ethnic inequality endogamous marriage
  shores up racial hierarchies
• Critical evaluation
• Ignores that families carry out functions not
  easily accomplished by other means

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Micro-Level Analysis of the Family

• Symbolic-Interaction
• Opportunities for sharing activities helps build
  emotional bonds
• Social-Exchange
• Courtship marriage as a negotiation to make the
  best deal on their partner
• Critical evaluation
• Misses the bigger picture, family life is similar
  for people in similar social backgrounds and
  varies in predictable ways

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STAGES OF FAMILY LIFE

• Courtship
• Arranged marriages versus romantic love
• Homogamy marriage between people with same
  social traits
• Settling in
• Ideal vs. Real marriage
• Childrearing
• Industrialization transformed children from
  assets to liabilities
• Later life
• Empty nest
• Sandwich generation spends as many years caring
  for their children as for their aging parents

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Figure 18-1 Percentage of College Students Who
Express a Willingness to Marry without Romantic
Love
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POWER, GENDER, AND MENTAL HEALTHDIFFERENT LEVELS
OF DEPRESSION IN MARRIAGES CANBE IDENTIFIED IN
VARIOUS MARRIAGE TYPES

• Conventional
• Husband employed while wife stays home
• Low to moderate depression for both partners
• Strained conventional
• Wife joins husband in labor force out of
  necessity, and does housework at home
• Moderate depression for wife, but high depression
  for husband who feels like a failure

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POWER, GENDER, AND MENTAL HEALTHDIFFERENT LEVELS
OF DEPRESSION IN MARRIAGES CANBE IDENTIFIED IN
VARIOUS MARRIAGE TYPES

• Strained egalitarian
• Both partners are happy to be working, but wife
  still does most of the housework
• Husband enjoys more family income while wife has
  more depression
• Egalitarian
• Spouses happy to share in all facets of marriage
• Spouses experience lowest levels of depression in
  this form

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DIVORCE

• In the U.S. Nine out of ten persons will marry.
  Four out of these marriages will end in divorce.
  Factors include
• Individualism on the rise
• Romantic love often subsides
• Women are less dependent upon men
• Many of todays marriages are stressful
• Divorce is socially acceptable
• Legally, a divorce is easier to get

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Violence Family

• Against women
• Of 791,000 reported accounts of abuse between
  intimate partners, 85 are against women
• 32 percent of all women murdered are the victims
  of their partners, or ex-partners
• All states have marital rape laws, half have
  stalking laws on the books
• Against children
• 3 million children a year are abused, 1 million
  of these involve serious harm including 1,100
  deaths
• Abusers are as likely to be women as men with no
  simple stereotype

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Alternative Family Forms

• Single parent families
• 28 percent of U.S. Families with children under
  18 have only one parent in the household
• 78 percent of these families are headed by women
• Cohabitation
• 10 percent of all couples, or 5.5 million, only
  50 decide to marry
• Gay and lesbian couples
• Although some European countries accept same-sex
  marriage the U.S. Congress has banned it
• Singlehood
• In 1960 28 of U.S. Women aged 20-24 were single,
  by 2000 the number had risen to 75

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FAMILIES AND PREDICTIONS

• Divorce rates remain high
• More equality between sexes
• Family life will be variable
• All kinds of units will be called families
• Men will continue to play a limited role in child
  rearing
• Many dads will remain absent from household
  scenes
• Economic changes will impact families and reform
  marriage
• Less quality time as work demands more from
  parents
• New reproductive technologies
• Ethical concerns about what can and what should
  be done