Families

Key terms

ᇟ Family – A group connected by blood, sexual relationship, or the law 

ᇟ Kinship – The most basic form of human relationships, defined by blood, affinity (affection), or adoption.

ᇟ Marriage – Socially-sanctioned union that includes rights and responsibilities of the spouses to each other, their children, and the larger society.

ᇟ Adoption – Process of parents voluntarily choosing to have a legal parent-child relationship with a child that is not related by blood.

ᇟ Blended family – Family with a step-parent, step-sibling or half-sibling. 

ᇟ Matrilineal society – Determines kinship, names, property, and titles through the female line.

ᇟ Patrilineal society – Determines kinship, names, property, and titles through the male line.

ᇟ Universal norm – A norm that exist in virtually every society

 ᇟ Incest taboo – Cultural prohibition against sexual relations between people who are related to one another.

ᇟ Longitudinal data–Data gathered at different points in time. 

ᇟ Polygamy – Having multiple spouses at the same time. 

ᇟ Polygyny – One man has multiple wives at the same time. 

ᇟ Polyandry – One woman has multiple husbands at the same time. 

ᇟ Nuclear family – A married couple and their dependent children 

ᇟ May-December relationship – Relationship in which there is a large age gap between partners.

ᇟ Companionate affection – Deep emotional commitment. 

ᇟ Divorce – Legally-recognized termination of a marriage. 

ᇟ No-fault divorce –marriage dissolutions in which neither spouse is required to prove the fault of the other

ᇟ Gray divorce –Divorce over the age of 50 

 ᇟ Social integration – Degree to which people in a community have connections to one another’s daily lives.

ᇟ Thin market – A market where the difficulty of finding potential partners creates a barrier to forming relationships.

ᇟ Hook-up – A sexual encounter without a longstanding commitment. 

ᇟ Double standard for sexual behavior – Women are judged more harshly than men are for the same sexual behavior

ᇟ Cohabitation – Unmarried couples living together. 

ᇟ Cohabitation effect – Phenomenon in which couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to divorce.

ᇟ Relationship inertia – When cohabitation makes marriage seem like an obvious next step rather than a carefully thought-out decision.

ᇟ Wedding industrial complex – Merging of capitalist industries with social and cultural marriage rituals.

ᇟ Commoditized – When a social ritual is turned into a product or service that we purchase. ᇟ Consumer rites – Elaborations of older customs as businesses attempted to create new markets for their goods and services.

ᇟ Heteronormativity – Assumption or attitude that heterosexuality is the normal and natural form of sexuality.

ᇟ Childfree – Term preferred by some individuals who do not have children. 

ᇟ Fertility rate – Births per woman.

ᇟ Breadwinner-homemaker model – One partner (usually the man) worked outside the home to earn money, and another partner (usually the woman) stayed at home to do the housework, child care, and other household labor.

ᇟ Dual-earner arrangement – Both partners have wage-earning jobs outside the home. 

ᇟ Ethnographic research – A type of research based on spending time with people and closely observing their daily interactions.

ᇟ The second shift – The extra amount of household work a woman does when returning home from her wage-earning job.

ᇟ Leisure gap – Differences in leisure time between men and women in a household. 

ᇟ Cognitive labor (aka the mental load) - describes the often invisible intellectual and planning work involved in running a household.

ᇟ Parental leave – Leave for both or either parent(s), depending upon the country. 

ᇟ Maternity leave – Leave for women who have just given birth (or adopted children, in some countries).

ᇟ Paternity leave – Leave for new fathers. 

ᇟ Social democracies – Countries where the government provides a substantial set of social programs to support families.

ᇟ Intimate-partner violence – Physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, and psychological aggression (including coercive acts) by a current or former intimate partner.

ᇟ Public health crisis – Complex health-related problem that affects people over broad geographical areas.

ᇟ Financial abuse – Preventing a person from working or having access to money

ᇟ Entrenched inequality – Inequality deeply ingrained in social, economic, and political institutions.

ᇟ First-generation immigrants – The first generation in a family to move to another country.

ᇟ Second-generation immigrants – The U.S.-born children of immigrant parents. 

ᇟ Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) – Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. 

ᇟ Multi-generational households – Multiple generations live under the same roof. 

ᇟ Sandwich generation – People responsible for the care of both their children and their elderly parents.