Social World Institutions

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Social World -- Institutions

• Perpetuated agreements surrounding major areas of
  life that are
• Values, beliefs constructed (organized) in
  support of institutional agreements

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• Human tendency to habituate
• We do them without thinking
• Limits our freedom

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• Habituation at individual level is the same as
  institutionalization at societal level

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• We are the creators of the social world and the
  products of the social world
• Anomie, substance abuse, suicide

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Institutions

• Family
• Education
• Religion
• Economy
• Government

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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 group of
• Family of orientation
• Family of procreation

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Family as an Institution

• For most of human existence, the family performed
  all institutional roles
• Economy and education only recently
  separated.industrial revolution

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

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

• Conflict
• Family is means of subservience of women and
  children
• Communist 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
• Sexual and emotional satisfaction for adults

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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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Composition of Families

• Nuclear
• Blended
• Contemporary pattern, but also
• common historically

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• Extended
• 3 or more generations and related adults besides
  the biological parents of offspring
• Role of land ownership
• More common in metro areas than expected

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Marriage Patterns

• Arranged or couple selection of mate
• Monogamy or polygamy
• Polygamous marriages
• Polygyny
• Polyandry
• Group marriage

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Lineage

• How ancestry and inheritance determined
• Bilineal
• Trace ancestry through mothers and fathers
  families--- inherit from both sides
• Matrilineal
• common practice among cultures that did not
  recognize individual land ownership Navajo,
  Iroquois
• Patrilineal
• became common with individual land ownership
  agriculture

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The Dilemma of Patrilineage

• Wifely fidelity must be guaranteed
• Fertility and sexuality of women must be
  controlled
• Rape is a crime against husband, father

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Dominance Patterns

• Patriarchal
• Most common
• Matriarchal infrequent
• New archeological evidence claims the practice is
  more common than originally presumed
• Egalitarian

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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, average 2 per woman

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Your Attitudes toward Sexual Behavior and Marriage
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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
• 4.2 divorces/1000 people/yr
• Multiple divorces and multiple remarriages

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• Reasons for Increase in Divorce
• We expect more of marriage than people did in
  former times
• Divorce is more socially acceptable
• Divorce is legally easier to obtain

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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 35
• Catholics
• Protestants Presbyterians
• Pentecostals
• Born again Christians