Marriage

• 90% of married people

• Love is socially acceptabble motive to give for marriage

  • Motive: reason that causes a person to act; shaped by external expectations and constraints

  • Certain motives are considered acceptable and expected

  • Acceptable motives are used to justify our

• Love is a motive that emphasizes personal choice and freedom.

  • Not a personal feeling; rather, a part of the rules and expectations on marriages

• Romantic love

  • often seen as a myth, yet it is still embraced and continues to persist

  • Helps act within the constraints of marriage

  • Parallels the rules and expectations of marriage

  • In order to marry, individuals must develop certain cultural, psychological, and even

• Jessie Bernard’s “The Future of Marriage” (1972)

  • traditional marriages would coexist with marriages that have;

    • No children

    • More than two spouses

    • Open sexual relationships

    • Open sexual relationships

    • “Free-wheeling” approach

    • “Temporary-permanent” relationships

• Paradox of choice

  • Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice” (2004)

    • more choices lead to dissatisfaction or indecision

    • Therefore, relationships require the need for constant decision-making

    • People are free from social constraints in the modern world because social rules and expectations have weakened

• Sociological Imagination

  • involves understanding that personal experiences are shaped by the time and place within which their experiences occur

  • External social forces shape what people do in their most private relationships

  • Individuals have agency to act, but any action does not emerge purely from within an individual

    • Action: an outcome of the individual’s interaction with the social world

• Uncommon Arrangements

  • Ucommon arrangements: documentation on the creative living and loving arrangements of some couples between 1910-1939

  • a

• Spinster

  • New woman: independent, self-sufficient, and sexual woman pursuing careers

  • Bachelor Girl: woman who lived alone and supported herself by getting an education and career

• The evolving rules annd Expectations

  • Social rules, expectatios and assumptions shift over time but do not disappear

    • Example: Gender roles in marriage

• Following Trends

  • Relationships tend to follow patterns in how people form, maintain, and perceive romantic connections

  • Dating trends change from time to time

    • Ex: what do couples do

• Changes in marriages

  • Delayed marriage & decline of marriage rates

  • Interracial marriages are more common

  • Rise of

    • Cohabitions: arrangements where unmarried couples live together

  • Change over time is not always in a clear direction; not linear

    • Ex: Women and men were older when they married in 1890 than they were in 1950

The Family

Global View of the Family

• Universal Priciples

  • Family as social institution exists in all cultures

  • Family: set of people related by blood, marriage or other agreed-upon relationship, or adoption, who share primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for members of society

Compositio

• Nuclear Family

  • nucleus or core upon which larger family groups are built

• Extended Family

  • Family in which relatives live in same home as parents

• Monogamy

  • Form of marriage in whichone woman and one man are married only to each other

• Serial monogamy

  • When a person has several spouses in his or her lifetime, but only one spous at a time

• Polygamy

  • when

    • Polygyny

Kinship Patterns: To Whom Are We Related?

• Kinship: state of being related to others

  • bilateral descent: both sides of a person’s family are regarded as equally important

  • PatrilineBN

• Authority Patterns: Who rules?

  • Patriarchy: males are expected to dominate in all family decision making

  • Matriarchy: women have greater authority than men

  • Egalitarian family: family in which spouses are regarded as equals

Sociological

Functionalist Perspective

• Family serves six functions for ocoety:

  • reproduction

  • protection

  • socialization

  • regulation of sexual behavior

  • affection and companionship

  • provision of social status

Conflict perspective

• family reflects inequality in wealth and power found within society

• in wife range of societies

Interactionist perspective

• focuses on micro level of family and other intimate relationships

• interested in how individuals interact with each other, whether they are cohabiting partners or longtime married couples

Courtship and Mate Selection

• Internet - latest courtship practice

• Aspects of Mate Selection

  • Endogamy

    • a

  • a

• Incest taboo

  • social norm common to all societies prohibiting sexual relationships between certain

Theories of mates selection

• Theory of Propinquity

• Exchange Theory

• Complementary Needs Theory

• Time and Place Theory

• Filter Theory