soci ch. 15 families and intimate relationships
polygamy
marriage to several people at the same time
primary socialization
(functionalist theory)The process by which children learn the cultural norms and expectations for the behavior of the society into which they are born. Primary socialization occurs largely in the family
family
A group of individuals related to one another by blood ties, marriage, or adoption, who form an economic unit, the adult members of which are responsible for the upbringing of children. • All known societies involve some form of the family system, although the nature of family relationships varies widely
kinship
A relation that links individuals through blood ties, marriage, oradoption. Kinship relations are, by definition, part of marriage and family ,but they extend much more broadly
marriage
A socially approved sexual relationship between two individuals. • Marriage historically has involved two persons of opposite sexes, but in the past decade, marriage between same-sex partners was ruled legal in the United States and in a growing number of nations throughout the world
personality stabilization
According to the theory of functionalism, the family plays a crucial role in assisting its adult members emotionally. Marriage between adult men and women is the arrangement through which adult personalities are supported and kept healthy.
monogamy
Marriage to only one person at a time
Polyandry
One female, several males.
polygyny
One male, several females.
nuclear family
a family group consisting of two adults and dependent children
extended family
a family that extends beyond the nuclear family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives, who all live nearby or in one household.
Patrilocal
refers to the pattern in which married couples live with or near the husbands' parents
Matrilocal
refers to the pattern in which married couples live with or near the wives' parents
funcationalist talcott parsons
regarded the nuclear family as best equipped to handle the demands of industrial society.• In this arrangement, he believed the husband adopted the "instrumental" role as breadwinner, whereas the wife assumed the "affective," or emotional support, role in the home.• Parsons's views are now criticized for being inadequate, outdated, and overly focused on the family alone
affective individualism STONE
the belief in romantic attachment as a basis for contracting marriage ties
families of procreation
the families individuals initiate through marriage, cohabitation, or by having children
families of orientation
the families into which individuals are born
family of procreation
the family formed when a couple's first child is born
intimate partner violence
• Abuse of one's spouse or romantic partner is widespread in the United States.• Michael Johnson identified two broad types of IPV: "patriarchal terrorism," which is perpetuated by feelings of power and control, and "common couple violence," which generally relates to a specific incident and is not rooted in power or control.• Sociological studies show that IPV is closely related to structural factors, and it is particularly likely to occur among couples with conflict-heavy relationships.
class-based cultural practices
• Annette Lareau concluded that middle-class parents engage in "concerted cultivation," working hard to cultivate their children's talents through many non school-based activities, as well as continuous linguistic interaction. • Working-class and low-income parents, engage in "accomplishment of natural growth": Talk is brief and instrumental, children learn to be more compliant with adult directives, and they participate in few organized activities outside school.
Asian American families
• Asian American families historically have been characterized by interdependence among members of the extended family. • Family interdependence also helps Asian Americans prosper financially. • Chinese American and Japanese American women have much lower fertility rates than any other racial or ethnic group, due partly to their high levels of educational attainment
back families
• Black Americans are a diverse group, including those who have lived in the United States for generations,as well as more recent migrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. • U.S.-born Black and White families differ dramatically in family structure, due to structural factors, such as economic resources that facilitate marriage and marital stability. • Black people have higher rates of childbearing outside marriage, are less likely ever to marry, and are less likely to marry after having a nonmarital birth. • The contemporary state of U.S.-born Black families has deep historical roots. • One social condition that contributes to high rates of nonmarital childbearing is what William Julius Wilson calls a shortage of "marriageable" Black men
step-parenting
• Certain difficulties arise in stepfamilies.• There is usually a biological parent living elsewhere whose influence over the child or children remains powerful. • Cooperative relations between ex-partners often become strained when one or both remarry or enter a new cohabiting union. • Since most stepchildren belong to two households, the possibilities of clashes of habits and outlooks are considerable
Dating and Courtship
• Choosing one's own life partner based on physical attraction, personality compatibility, and the feeling of having found one's "soulmate" is a very modern and Western phenomenon. • Arranged marriages were the norm in most parts of the world until the eighteenth century and largely disappeared from Western industrialized nations as the values of individualism and personal autonomy flourished. • Arranged unions are still the norm in many parts of the world. • In the United States, the relationship between dating and premarital sex has shifted dramatically over the past century. • In the 1920s and 1930s, premarital sex was frowned upon, so couples progressed very quickly from dating to marriage. • In the 1960s and 1970s, premarital sex became more widely accepted, so dating couples could enjoy sexual relationships without rushing into marriage. • In the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, young people have the option to "hook up" with a sexual partner rather than go on traditional "dates" like dinner and a movie
7 changes in family patterns worldwide
• Clans and other kin groups are declining in influence. • There is a general trend toward the free choice of a spouse or romantic partner .• The rights of women are more widely recognized, with respect both to initiating marriage and to making decisions within families. • Kin marriages are less common.• - Higher levels of sexual freedom are developing in societies that were formerly very restrictive.• Birth rates are declining, meaning that women are giving birth to fewer babies. • There is a general trend toward extending children's rights.
reasons for divorce
• Divorce rates are not a direct indicator of marital unhappiness.• Two reasons divorce became increasingly common in the twentieth century: • Changes in the law made divorce easier. Individuals may now file for a "no-fault"divorce, where one or both parties want the marriage to end without the need topresent evidence that one spouse is at "fault." • Except for a few wealthy people, marriage no longer reflects the desire to perpetuate property and status across generations
divorce and separation
• Divorce rates increased steadily through the latter half of the twentieth century, butthey have leveled off in recent years. • Since 1970, more than 1 million American children per year have been affected by divorce, but most grew up in a blended family environment once their parent remarried. • The financial toll of divorce is much more severe for women than men. • The psychological consequences of divorce are less profound than previously though
symbolic interactionist approaches
• Ernest Burgess described family as "a unity of interacting personalities" in which the behavior or identities of individual family members mutually shaped one another over time. • Willard Waller developed the principle of least interest to show that the partner who is least committed to, or interested in, their romantic relationship has more power and might often exploit that power.• More contemporary work emphasizes the ways that family members continually negotiate, define, and redefine their roles. • Do not take power differentials for granted and do not assume that men have more power than women or that adults have more power than children
stone's 3 phases in the development of family
• Fifteenth to seventeenth century: A type of nuclear family existed that lived in small households but maintained deeply embedded relationships within the community and with kin. • Seventeenth to the eighteenth century: In the upper classes, the nuclear family became a more separate entity with a growing emphasis on marital and parental love. Paternal power increased. • Mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century: Family is defined by close emotional bonds, domestic privacy, and child-rearing. It is marked by affective individualism, courtship, and marriage based on personal choice, and sexual attraction or romantic love.
single-parent households
• In 2018, there were 11 million single-parent households in the United States withchildren under age 18.• More than 80 percent of such families are headed by women .• The socioeconomic status of single-parent households varies greatly.• Single parenthood tends to be a changing state. • Most people do not wish to be single parents, but a growing minority choose tohave a child or children without the support of a partner.
same sex couples
• In June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Defense of marriage Act to be unconstitutional in the landmark Windsor v.United States of America.• On June 26, 2015, the Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that the U.S.Constitution guarantees individuals the right to same-sex marriage
the feminine mystique
• In her book, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan wrote of "the problem with no name"—the isolation and boredom of many suburban American housewives trapped in an endless cycle of child care and housework. • Three particularly important topics in feminist approaches to understanding families are: the division of household labor, unequal power relationships within some families (especially the phenomena of domestic violence and intimate partner violence), and care work
national trends in families world wide
• In many countries, especially Western industrial societies, five additional trends have occurred within the past four decades. • An increase in the number of births that occur outside of marriage. • A liberalization of laws and norms regarding divorce. • An increase in nonmarital cohabitation among romantic partners. • An increasing age at first marriage and first birth. • A growing number of and cultural and legal acceptance for same-sex couples
multiracial families
• Interracial marriage was illegal in the United States until the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia. • In 2015, 17 percent of all U.S. newlyweds had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. • Some studies suggest the stability of interracial marriages varies based on the race and gender of each partner. • Other studies suggest that spouses in intermarriages may be vulnerable to discrimination and micro aggressions because cultural values are slow to change
native American families
• Kinship ties are very important in Native American families, though they may be less prominent for those who live away from reservations. • Native Americans have higher rates of intermarriage than any other racial or ethnic group. • Native American women have a low overall birth rate, but a high percentage of these births occur outside of marriage.
hispanic and latinx origin fmailies
• Persons of Hispanic and Latinx origin vary widely with respect to culture, history, and socioeconomic status. • Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans are three of the largest Hispanic subgroups in the United States. • Mexican American families often live in multigenerational households and have high birth rates. Due to the immigration process, family members from Mexico and other Central American nations often experience separation from one another.• Puerto Ricans do not have an immigration barrier. They are the most economically disadvantaged of all the major Hispanic groups in the United States. • Cuban American families are the most prosperous of all the Hispanic groups but are less prosperous than whites
social class and american families
• Race and class each have distinctive and complicated influences on family behavior.• White people from working-class, poor, often rural backgrounds report strong ideological support for marriage, yet they are more likely than their wealthier peers to get pregnant prior to marriage, marry young, and subsequently divorce. • Middle-class Black families are more likely to live in married-couple households than their working-class and poor peers. • Recent studies have found the single-person household is increasingly popular among black middle-class young adults
divorce and children
• Recent research has found several common effects of divorce on children: • Almost all children experience an initial period of intense emotional upset after their parents separate.• Most resume normal development without serious problems within two years of the separation .• A minority of children experience some long-term problems as a result of the breakup that may persist into adulthood.
contemporary perspectives in the sociology of families
• Since the 1990s, an important body of sociological literature on the family has emerged that draws on feminist perspectives but is not strictly informed by them. • One primary topic is the larger transformations in family forms: The formation and dissolution of families and households and the evolving expectations within personal relationships .• In the years following the recession of the early 2000s, scholars have intensified their focus on shifting gender roles within families
race, ethnicity and american families
• Sociologists have documented differences in family structure based on race. • Previously, these distinctions were attributed to "cultural" differences, but these early studies failed to distinguish race and ethnicity. • Recent scholars focus more on the critical importance of structural factors, recognizing that socioeconomic resources are one of the key factors that contribute to differences in family structure
US marriage tends decrease or delay
• The United States has long had high marriage rates, but recent evidence shows that the age at which Americans marry for the first time has risen sharply in recent decades .• Some possible reasons proposed for this decrease or delay in marriage are: • Increases in cohabitation among younger people. • Increases in postsecondary school enrollment, especially among women. • Modernization and a secular change in attitudes promote individualism and downplay the importance of marriage.
child abuse
• The most common definition of child abuse is serious physical harm with intent to injure. • One national study of married or cohabiting adults indicated that about 3 percent of respondents abused their children .• Researchers estimate that as many as 50 to 60 percent of child deaths from abuse or neglect are not recorded. • Among populations of children of the same race or ethnicity, American Indian or Alaska Native children suffered the highest rate of abuse, while Black children experienced the second-highest rate.
nonmatrital childbearing
• The number of children born outside of a marital union in 2015 was more than six times higher than it was in the 1950s .• Nonmarital childbearing rates peaked in 2008 and have since declined, but they remain high, especially for ethnic minorities
historical perspectives on families
• Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in the United States, the average household size was just 4.75 persons, often including domestic servants. • The current average is 2.5. The smaller size today is largely due to the high proportion of Americans who live alone, especially older widowed women and young professionals who maintain their own homes
Re-partnering
• Today, fully 40 percent of marriages involve at least one previously married person and 20 percent involve two previously married persons.• Men are more likely than women to repartner, and more highly educated, financially secure people are more likely than their less advantaged peers to form new unions
family violence
• Violence within families is perpetuated primarily by men. • The two main categories of family violence are child abuse and intimate partner violence (IPV). • It is difficult to obtain national data about either type of violence because of their sensitive and private nature. • Family violence was particularly acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, when stay-at-home orders trapped many victims at home with their abuser.
being child free
• White women between the ages of 15 and 50 are considerably more likely than black or Hispanic women to be child-free. Asian women are more likely than any other race to be childless. • Women with a college degree or higher are more likely than high school graduates or dropouts to have no children.• Reasons for not having children are often social and psychological rather thanbiological, and being child-free is becoming less stigmatized.
