Sociology of the Family: Diversity, Institutions, and Stratification

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the sociology of the family, kinship systems, theoretical paradigms, historical shifts, gender, sexuality, and social stratification.

Marriage

A socially approved mating relationship and a universal rite of passage traditionally expected to be stable and enduring.

Globalization

The increasing flow of goods and services, money, migrants, and information across the world.

Offshoring

A corporate practice prominent in the 1980s and 1990s in which United States companies laid off domestic workers and moved operations to developing countries.

Transnational Families

Families whose members reside in different countries, often resulting from international migration where earnings are remitted to support children back home.

Nuclear Family

A family unit consisting of a married couple and their children living together in the same household.

Extended Family

Family members extending beyond the nuclear group living together or sharing close ties.

Social Institution

A primary societal structure—such as the family—that encompasses roles, functions, and rules designed to keep society stable and in order.

Public Family

One or more adults who are jointly caring for dependents (such as children, older adults, the chronically ill, or incapacitated individuals), as well as the dependents themselves.

Private Family

Two or more individuals who maintain an intimate, emotionally close relationship and a durable commitment to each other in the absence of dependency or caregiving.

Voluntary Kinship

Kinship ties formed with nonrelatives who are treated as family through strong bonds, mutual commitment, and the provision of care.

Assigned Kinship

Kinship relationships acquired automatically at birth or through marriage.

Boundary Ambiguity

A state of confusion or difficulty in determining who is inside or outside the family system, often occurring during separation, divorce, remarriage, or cohabitation.

Ecological Theory

A theoretical framework used to examine how families influence and are reciprocally influenced by the nested environments surrounding them.

Microsystem

• family relationships, behaviors, roles

  • child and parents

Mesosystem

The interconnected layer in ecological theory consisting of interactions between an individual's immediate microsystems, such as relationships between parents and schools or peers.

Exosystem

Environmental settings and events that individuals do not experience directly but that still impact them, such as parental workplaces, legal services, or school board decisions.

Macrosystem

The outermost ecological layer comprising overarching cultural beliefs, values, public policies, economic conditions, and societal structures.

Social Exchange Theory

A perspective viewing individuals as rational actors who enter, maintain, or dissolve relationships by weighing the comparative costs and rewards.

Symbolic Interaction Theory

A perspective focusing on how individuals assign shared meanings to symbols, gestures, words, and appearances, thereby shaping roles and social interactions.

Postmodern Perspective

A theoretical approach asserting that contemporary family life is a reflexive process characterized by choice, voluntary kinship, and individual negotiation rather than prescribed roles.

Utilitarian Individualism

A style of life that prioritizes self-reliance, personal achievement, independence, and personal accomplishment.

Expressive Individualism

A style of life that prioritizes emotional satisfaction, personal feelings, passion, and inner self-fulfillment.

Intersectionality

The principle that multiple social identities (such as race, gender, and social class) overlap simultaneously to produce distinct, compounding structures of oppression and inequality.

DeGraffenreid v. General Motors

A legal lawsuit brought by five Black women asserting combined race and gender discrimination, which was dismissed because the court treated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as addressing race or gender separately, not combined.

Lineage

A form of kinship group in which descent and family affiliation are traced through common parent lines.

Kinship Systems

Structural descent networks tracing lineage either through female lines (matrilineal kinship, where descent passes through mothers) or male lines (patrilineal kinship, where descent passes through fathers).

Conjugal Family

A family form centered on a married couple and their dependent children, historically organized under patriarchal authority.

True Womanhood Ideology

A nineteenth-century cultural ideology asserting that women should be pious, pure, submissive to men, and strictly focused on domestic duties within the home.

Compadrazgo

A traditional godparenting relationship in Hispanic communities where a wealthy or influential sponsor provides resources and support to a godchild.

Barrios

Segregated Hispanic and Mexican American neighborhoods formed in response to displacement and Anglo-American expansion, which served as hubs of mutual support and culture.

Bracero Program

A 1942 bilateral agreement between Mexico and the United States that brought Mexican workers into the US to resolve wartime agricultural and railroad labor shortages.

Great Migration

The mass relocation of millions of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities seeking to flee Jim Crow violence and access better economic opportunities.

Redlining

A discriminatory practice of denying mortgages, loans, or services based on racial composition of neighborhoods, driving racial segregation and lasting wealth disparities.

Baby Boom

The period from the late 1940s through the 1950s marked by the highest fertility rates in $150$ years, fueled by postwar economic prosperity and delayed marriages.

Termination and Relocation

Mid-twentieth-century federal policies that terminated recognized tribal status and assistance for $108$ Native American tribes and encouraged reservation residents to move to cities for employment.

Cohabitation

An arrangement where an unmarried couple involved in an emotionally and sexually intimate relationship shares a household.

Two-Spirits

A traditional Indigenous concept present in over $100$ pre-colonial tribes describing an individual possessing both masculine and feminine spirits within their body.

Biosocial Perspective

A theoretical viewpoint stating that gender differences emerge through continuous interactions between biological factors (such as androgens) and the social environment.

Socialization Perspective

A sociological approach explaining that children learn gender-typed behaviors, attitudes, and expectations through social agents such as parents, media, toys, and peer groups.

Interactionist Perspective (Doing Gender)

A perspective proposing that gender is not a static identity but a continuous, dynamic social performance of situated conduct reinforced during daily interactions.

Motherhood Penalty

The innermost layer of the ecological perspective comprising direct, immediate relationships, daily interactions, and roles, such as parent-child dynamics.

Fatherhood Premium

The wage increase and career advantage that married fathers receive relative to childless men in the workforce.

Hegemonic Masculinity

A dominant cultural standard demanding that men exhibit competitiveness, emotional detachment, physical toughness, and assertiveness to reinforce existing gender power hierarchies.

Serial Monogamy

A relationship pattern characterized by an individual participating in a succession of exclusive, monogamous romantic partnerships over time.

Hooking Up

A casual sexual encounter between individuals without any explicit expectation of future romantic commitment or involvement.

Multidimensionality of Sexuality

The principle establishing that human sexuality encompasses three distinct dimensions that do not always align: sexual identity, sexual attraction, and sexual behavior.

Queer Theory

A critical framework established in the 1990s that conceptualizes sexuality and gender as fluid social constructs and rejects fixed binary categories and heteronormative hierarchies.

Heteronormativity

The pervasive societal presumption that heterosexuality is the only normal, natural, and acceptable form of sexuality and relationship arrangement.

Labor Market Polarization

An economic shift driven by globalization and technological changes resulting in job growth concentrated in high-skill and low-skill positions with a hollowed middle tier.

Educational Stratification in Family Income

The widening socioeconomic gap from 1950 to 2000 in median family income, where households headed by college graduates saw substantial earnings gains while those with high school or less stagnated.

Assortative Mating

The sociological tendency for individuals to marry partners who possess similar socioeconomic backgrounds, education levels, values, and lifestyles.

Social Stratification

The structured, institutionalized system of unequal distribution of rewards, resources, and life risks among distinct groups in a society.

Social Class

The hierarchical ordering of individuals and families based on their relative access to economic resources, social prestige, and systemic privilege.

Prestige

The social honor, status, and high regard accorded to an individual, typically connected to their occupational standing or position in society.

Privilege

Unearned structural advantages, opportunities, and benefits conferred by society upon dominant groups that are not readily accessible to others.

Social Class Advantages

Systemic socioeconomic benefits tied to higher class standing, including greater wealth accumulation, career advancement, reduced stress, and increased longevity.

Four-Class Model

A sociological framework categorizing society into upper class, middle class, working class, and lower class to analyze stratification patterns.