Characteristics of Family Life

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Characteristics of Family Life

• 1. A family begins with a ritual between a woman
  and a man, a ceremony that we call marriage, and
  which implies long duration, if not permanence,
  for the relationship.
• 2. The partners have duties and rights of
  parenthood that are also socially recognized and
  defined.
• 3. Husband, wife and children live in a common
  place.
• 4. There are reciprocal economic obligations
  between husband and wifethat is, they both work
  for the family, even though the amount and kind
  of labor or production may be far from equal.
• 5. The family also serves as a means of sexual
  satisfaction for the partners though not
  necessarily as an exclusive one.
• Source Carl Degler At Odds

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Family Configurations

• Nuclear traditional husband, wife children
• Conjugal of relation
• Consanguine of blood
• Extended
• Patriarchal
• Matriarchal

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Colonial Families

• Parental approval and other factors besides
  romantic love played a role in colonial
  marriages.
• Children were not children for very long.
• The fathers place of work was characteristically
  at home, or very nearby.
• Although the husband was considered the head of
  the family and although there was a sexual
  division of labor in terms of kinds of work, the
  sharp division between provider-husband and
  homemaker-wife did not exist.
• The colonial family, far from being a retreat
  from the real world, performed numerous functions
  of what later would be considered a public or
  social nature.
• Source Gill, Glazer and Thernstrom, Our Changing
  Population

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Watershed Events for Families

• Industrialization
• Urbanization
• The Great Depression
• WWII and Baby Boom
• Feminism
• Two-Income Families

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Changes to the Family

• The family changes from a unit of production to a
  unit of consumption.
• Private functions given over to public functions.
• Industrialization takes father out of home.
• Consequences Sole-provider husband and cult of
  domesticity

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Changes to the Family

• Age at first marriage rises and falls
• Mothers leave home for workforce
• Fertility decreases
• Divorce increases

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Age at first marriage rises and falls
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Fertility decreases
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