The Family: Chapter 10

The Resilience of Marriage

"marriage naturalists" and "marriage planners"

Giddens

"self-disclosing intimacy"; relationships based on full disclosure are made much more fragile (mutual disclosure)

Single-Parent Families

United States has the highest single-parent families

Intimate Relationship

a close, personal, and domestic relationship between partners

Cohabitation

a couple sharing a home and a bed without being legally married

Nuclear Family

a family consisting of two married adults and one or more children

Family Household

a household comprising two or more people who occupy a given domicile and are related by blood, marriage, or adoption

Nonfamily Household

a household consisting of a person who lives either alone or with nonrelatives

Individualized Marriage

a marriage characterized by greater freedom for the partner's to develop and express themselves and seek satisfaction

Companionate Marriage

a marriage emphasizing a clear division of labor between a breadwinner and a homemaker and held together by sentiment, friendship, and sexuality

Institutional Marriage

a marriage focused on maintaining the institution of marriage itself

Pure Relationship

a relationship entered into for its own sake or for what each partner can get from it, maintained only as long as each derives enough satisfaction from the other

Companionate Love

a type of love that develops gradually and not necessarily tied to sexual passion but is based on more rational assessments of the one who is loved

Passionate Love

a type of love that develops suddenly and includes strong sexual feelings and idealization of the one who is loved

Simmel

argues that while there is a temptation to reveal all to a partner in an intimate relationship, especially marriage, such revelations would be a big mistake; instead there should be a certain proportion of both openness and secrecy

Anthony Giddens

coined the term pure relationship

Sociologists View on Family

family is a universal social institution central to social life

Netherlands

first country to legalize same sex marriage

Cherlin

focuses on deinstitutionalization of American marriage

Marriage Naturalists

view marriage as the natural expected outcome of a relationship that has endured for a period of time

Deinstitutionalization

weakened social norms especially with regard to the institution of marriage; people question their actions or those of others as they relate to marriage

Gender Inequality

women are more likely to care for children and do repetitive tasks

Eric Klinenberg

wrote "Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone"

Factors in Deinstitutionalization

1. as women enter the workforce, the clear division of labor in the family between homemaker and breadwinner began to break down 2. norms about having children within the context of marriage 3. high and increasing divorce rate between 1960 and the mid 1980s 4. growth in cohabitation 5. same sex marriages flowered

Global Flows

1. entire families can from one part of the globe to another with relative ease 2. individual family members can move to a different part of the world and then bring the rest of the family later 3. individuals can immigrate to create a new family 4. transnational adoptions generally involve the flow of children from less to more developed countries

Reasons for Singletons

1. increasing economic affluence 2. consistent with the growth of individualism 3. rising status of women and their higher levels of education and their higher paying jobs 4. communications revolution 5. mass urbanization has made the active social life of the city more available 6. aging of population and people live longer

Family

A group of people who are related by descent, marriage, or adoption

Gay and Lesbian Families

HIV/AIDS

Marriage

The socially acknowledged, approved, and often legal union of two people allowing them to live together and to have children by birth or adoption

Cenogamy

group marriage

Divorce

has grown more common and more acceptable

Decline of Marriage

in 1960, married couples constituted 71 % and by 2010, only 52% of all American households were married couples

Zygmunt Bauman

love is fleeting and wrote Liquid Love

Monogamy

marriage between one wife and one husband

Polygyny

marriage of a husband to multiple wives

Polyandry

marriage of a wife to multiple husbands

Polygamy

marriage to multiple wives and multiple husbands

Exogamy

marriage to someone with dissimilar characteristics in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, education level, social class, and so on

Endogamy

marriage to someone with similar characteristics in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, education level, social class, and so on

Pure Relationship Existence

more likely outside of such a legal relationship; in younger couples, ends when couple no longer find their relationship satisfying

Marriage Planners

need to deal with a number of practical realities before they can get married

Householder

owns or rents the property as well as maintains it

Most Common Form of Abuse

parental abuse of children and violence by husbands against their wives

Most Common Forms of Child Abuse

parents hitting their child with an object, kicking or biting their child or hitting their child with their fists and physically beating up their child

Marriage as a Carousel

people are likely to marry more than once; rounds of separation and divorce

Levels of Disclosure

tend to be gendered; women are the emotional caretakers

Domestic Violence

the exertion of power over a partner in an intimate relationship through behavior that is intimidating, threatening, harassing, or harmful