Download Chapter 16 – Marriage and the Family

Chapter 16 – Marriage and the Family
Learning Objectives
 Explain why it is difficult to precisely define the term, "family," and discuss some of
the different ways that family systems can be organized and classified.
 Identify the common cultural themes that run through marriage and the family.
 Explain why the family is universal and list the basic societal needs that it fulfills.
 Contrast the functionalists, conflict, and symbolic interaction perspectives regarding
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marriage and family, as well as provide examples that illustrate each of the
perspectives.
Identify the major elements of the family life cycle and discuss how each of these
elements may be affected by age, education, social class, race-ethnicity, sex, and/or
religion.
Describe the distinctive characteristics of family life in African-American, Latino, AsianAmerican, and Native-American families, and discuss the role that social class and
culture play in affecting these distinctions.
Talk about the characteristics-and concerns-of one-parent, childless, blended, and gay
and lesbian families in the United States.
Identify the general patterns and trends in marriage and family life in the United
States, and discuss how these are reflected in postponement of marriage,
cohabitation, single motherhood, the sandwich generation, divorce, and remarriage.
Talk about the different measures of divorce rates, the adverse effects of divorce on
children, and the factors that most help children adjust to divorce in the United
States.
Explain how divorce affects men and women differently.
Identify the characteristics that most contribute to happy marriages and happy
families.
Describe the "dark side" of family life as it relates to battering, child abuse, marital
rape, and incest.
Talk about future patterns and trends in marriage and family life in the United States.
Chapter Summary
The practices of marriage and family differ around the world. Although every human group
organizes its members in families, how families are organized varies greatly from culture to
culture. Broadly defined, a family consists of two or more people who consider themselves
related by blood, marriage, or adoption. A household, in contrast, consists of people who
occupy the same housing unit.
Every human group establishes norms to govern who can marry whom. Although these norms
vary from culture to culture, all societies use family and marriage to establish patterns of mate
selection, descent, inheritance and authority. Most societies encourage endogamy, the practice
of marrying someone within one's own group. In contrast, norms of exogamy specify that
people must marry outside their group. Western culture uses a bilateral system of descent
which means children are considered as related to both their mother's and father's side of the
family. In a patrilineal system, descent is only traced on the father's side and in a matrilineal
system descent is only traced on the mother's side. In a society that practices these patterns
of descent, the pattern of inheritance would be similar. A social system in which men dominate
women is referred to as patriarchy. Although matriarchy would be a society dominated by
women, there is no historical record of a true matriarchy existing. Family patterns in America
are becoming more egalitarian, or equal, although many of today's customs still reflect a
patriarchal origin.
According to the functionalist perspective, the family is universal because it serves six
essential functions: economic production, socialization of children, care of the sick and aged,
recreation, sexual control, and reproduction. Conflict theorists focus on the inequalities within
the institution of the family and marriage, particularly as they relate to the subservience of
women. Symbolic interactionists examine how the contrasting experiences and perspectives of
men and women are played out in marriage.
The major elements of the family life cycle are love and courtship, marriage, childbirth, child
rearing, and the family in later life. Romantic love, people being sexually attracted to one
another and idealizing the other, plays a significant role in courtship in Western culture. In
Western culture, love is regarded as the only proper basis for marriage. Many Eastern cultures
still practice arranged marriages, usually negotiated by the parents of the bride and groom.
Choices of who marries whom in the United States follow highly predictable social channels of
age, education, social class, race, and religion. In either case, a group's marriage practices
match its values and patterns of social stratification.
Social class plays a significant role in childbirth and child rearing patterns in the United States,
as well as how couples adjust to the arrival of children. Women who graduate from college and
have higher incomes are less likely to give birth than those who do not go to college and are
in the lower paying jobs. Research also shows that first babies arrive sooner for working class
married couples than middle class couples. The early arrival of babies in the working class
marriage often strains the marital relationship. When rearing children, working class parents
are more likely to stress conformity through physical punishment. Middle class parents are
more likely to encourage their children's development of curiosity, self expression, and self
control. In doing so, they rely on the withdrawal of privileges or affection as the primary
means of conditioning.
Although there are some variations in family life between white, African-American, Latino,
Asian-American, and Native-American families, the primary distinction in family life is social
class, not race-ethnicity. Families of the same social class are likely to be similar, regardless of
their racial or ethnic makeup.
One parent, childless, blended, and gay and lesbian families represent some of the different
types of families today. The percentage of U.S. children living with two parents has dropped
from 85% in 1970 to 69% in 2000. The number of married women not giving birth has
doubled over the past twenty years to an average of 19 percent today. Most childless married
couples have made a choice to not have children. Referred to as DINKs (dual income, no kids),
these couples prefer the personal comforts and convenience of not having children. Blended
families, one which has members who were parts of other families previously are also on the
rise. Although gay marriages are illegal in the United States, gay unions are becoming more
public.
Two significant changes in the characteristics of the family are postponement of first
marriages and an increase in cohabitation. Furthermore, with more people living longer, many
middle-aged couples find themselves "sandwiched" between providing for their children's
needs and caring for their aging parents.
Divorce often has adverse effects on children that can carry over into adulthood. Children of
divorced parents who are not made to choose sides, feel loved, live with a parent who is
making a good adjustment, have consistent routines, and grow up in households with
adequate finances to meet the family's needs adjust best to the effects of divorce.
Men and women experience divorce differently. For men, divorce often results in a weakening
of their relationships with their children. For women, it typically means a decline in their
standards of living.
Although the institutions of marriage and the family fulfill universal needs, some marriages
and families are characterized by a "dark side" that includes spouse battering, child abuse,
marital rape, and incest. On the brighter side, in a survey of 351 couple who had been married
15 years or longer, 300 couples in the sample considered themselves as happily married. They
thought of their spouse as their best friend, considered marriage a life-long commitment, and
believed marriage to be sacred. They strongly wanted their marriages to succeed and often
laughed together.
Patterns of marriage and family life in the United States are undergoing a fundamental shift
with trends pointing to further increases in cohabitation, births to single women, age of first
marriage, and married women in the workforce.
Key Terms in Chapter Sixteen
bilateral (system of descent): A system of reckoning descent that counts both the mother’s side
and the father’s side. (p. 451)
blended family: A family whose members were once part of other families. (p. 467)
cohabitation: Unmarried couples living together in a sexual relationship. (p. 469)
egalitarian: Authority more or less equally divided between people or groups, in this instance
between husband and wife. (p. 452)
empty nest: A married couple’s domestic situation after the last child has left home. (p. 461)
endogamy: The practice of marrying within one’s own group. (p. 451)
exogamy: The practice of marrying outside one’s group. (p. 451)
extended family: A nuclear family plus other relatives, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts,
who live together. (p. 450)
family: Two or more people who consider themselves related by blood, marriage, or adoption. (p.
450)
family of orientation: The family in which a person grows up. (p. 450)
family of procreation: The family formed when a couple’s first child is born. (p. 450)
homogamy: The tendency of people with similar characteristics to marry one another. (p. 458)
household: People who occupy the same housing unit. (p. 450)
incest: Sexual relations between specified relatives, such as brothers and sisters or parents and
children. (p. 479)
incest taboo: the rule that prohibits sex and marriage among designated relatives. (p. 451)
machismo: an emphasis on male strength and dominance. (p. 463)
marriage: A group’s approved mating arrangements, usually marked by a ritual of some sort. (p.
450)
matriarchy: Authority vested in females; female control of a society or group. (p. 452)
matrilineal (system of descent): A system of reckoning descent that counts only the mother’s
side.
(p. 451)
nuclear family: A family consisting of a husband, wife, and child(ren). (p. 450)
patriarchy: Authority vested in males; male control of a society or group. (p. 451)
patrilineal (system of descent): A system of reckoning descent that counts only the father’s side.
(p. 451)
polyandry: A form of marriage in which women have more than one husband. (p. 450)
polygyny: A form of marriage in which men have more than one wife. (p. 450)
romantic love: Feelings of erotic attraction accompanied by an idealization of the other. (p. 456)
sandwich generation: people who find themselves sandwiched between two generations,
responsible for both their children and their aging parents. (p. 471)
serial fatherhood: A pattern of parenting in which a father, after divorce, reduces contact with
his own children, serves as a father to the children of the woman he marries or lives with,
then ignores them after moving in with or marrying another woman; this pattern repeats.
(p. 475)
system of descent: How kinship is traced over the generations. (p. 451)
Key People in Chapter Sixteen
Paul Amato and Jacob Cheadle: The first sociologists to study the grandchildren of divorced
parents. (p. 475)
Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz: Interviewing same-sex couples, Blumstein and
Schwartz found that they face the same problems as heterosexual couples. (p. 466)
Urie Bronfenbrenner: Noting that children of divorced parents adjust better if there is a second
adult who can be counted on for support, Bronfenbrenner contends that even though that
person can be a relative or friend, the best “second adult” to help the children adjust is
their father. (p. 474)
Andrew Cherlin: Cherlin suggests that remarriages with children are less likely to succeed than
remarriages without children because norms of interacting with stepparents, stepchildren,
and other step-relatives are not clearly defined. (p. 476)
Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron: Investigating the effects of dangerous situations on men’s
sexual reactions to imagery and their personal interactions with female researchers,
Dutton and Aron found that romantic love begins with sexual attraction. (p. 456)
David Finkelhor and Kersti Yllo: Interviewing fifty victims, they found that marital rape is
most likely to occur during separation or during the breakup of a marriage. (p. 478)
Ann Goetting: Investigating why some women leave abusive relationships, she found four
characteristics common among those who had left relationships. (p. 477)
Arlie Hochschild: Examining the “second shift,” Hochschild identified and described four
strategies of resistance that men use to get out of doing the housework. (p. 454)
William Jankowiak and Edward Fischer: Surveying data on 166 societies around the world,
Jankowiak and Fischer found that romantic love showed up in 88 percent of these groups.
(p. 456)
Melvin Kohn: Studying social class differences in child rearing, Kohn found that working-class
parents are more likely to closely supervise and physically discipline their children, while
middle-class parents are more likely to withdraw privileges or affection than to employ
physical punishment. (p. 460)
Jeanette and Robert Lauer: Interviewing hundreds of couples who had been married fifteen
years or longer, the Lauers found that the “happy marriages” were the ones in which the
spouses thought of one another as best friends; liked each other as people; believed
marriage to be a sacred, long-term commitment; agreed with each other on aims and
goals; found that each had grown more interesting over the years; strongly wanted the
relationship to succeed; and laughed together.
(p. 479)
Diana Russell: Russell found that 14 percent of married women reported that their husbands
raped them. (p. 478)
Nicholas Stinnett: Studying 660 families, Stinnett found that “happy families” tend to spend a lot
of time together, are quick to express appreciation, are committed to promoting one
another’s welfare, do a lot of talking and listening to one another, are religious, and deal
with crises in a positive matter. (p. 479)
Murray Straus: Studying domestic violence, Straus noted that although husbands and wives are
equally likely to initiate a physical confrontation, husbands are far more likely to strike
the more powerful and damaging follow-up blows. (p. 477)
Bob Suzuki: Suzuki identified several distinctive characteristics of Chinese-American and
Japanese-American family life, including humanism, collectivity, self-discipline,
hierarchy, respect for the elderly, moderation, and obligation. To control their children
they use shame and guilt rather than physical punishment. (p. 464)