3.5

What is a Family?

  • Polygyny

    • Men have more than one wife

  • Polyandry

    • Women have more than one husband

  • Nuclear

    • Husband, wife and children

  • Extended

    • grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins

  • Family usually think of connected by blood, marriage, and adoption. Different than a household, a household is people who occupy the same space.

Cultural Themes

  • selecting a mate, certain themes run through marriage and family. the idea of who marries who

  • Endogamy

    • Specifies that members must marry within their group

    • doesn’t permit interracial marriage

  • Exogamy

    • Specifies that people must marry outside their group

    • is against incest

Descent

  • being able to trace our heritage

  • Bilineal system

    • related to both father and mother

    • inheritance goes to both males and females

  • Patrilineal system

    • only on the father’s side

    • don’t think of children as being related to the mother’s side of the family

    • inheritance only goes to males

  • Matrilineal system

    • Only the mother’s side

    • childern are not related to the father’s relatives

    • inheritance only goes to females

Inheritance

  • the way in which people determine the rights to inheritance

  • there is no right or wrong it whatever type of group the family is

  • historically a patriarchy and men’s dominance throughout history

  • general women takes the men's name in marriage and the children take the man’s last name

Functionalist Perspective

  • Stress that to survive, a society must fulfill basic functions

  • Economic production

    • creation of goods

    • bring in an income

  • Socialization of children

    • how you raise your children

  • Care of the sick and aged

    • taking care of your children

    • and taking care of your parents

    • the “sandwiched” generation

    • taking care of people with a disability

  • Recreation

    • the family having some type of fund

  • Sexual Control

  • Reproduction

  • every human group has adopted some form of the family and carries out these 6 actions

Conflict Perspective

  • spouse, children, etc

  • Conflict is inevitable

    • being in an intimate relationship, sharing things and having a conflict

  • Power has been a source of conflict

    • who has the power: the running of the household, the income, etc

    • much of history the husband have had the power and the wives have resented it

  • Recent survey

    • Wives make more decisions in 43% of households

      • dealing with finance, purchases, what to do on the weekends, what to watch on television, the women usually make these decisions

    • Husband making decisions in 26% of households

    • Couples divide equally in 31% of households

Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

  • Changes in traditional gender orientation

  • Housework and child care

    • usually women’s work in history

    • men haven’t been getting involved in either

    • when women started getting jobs; men started to do much house work and taking care of the child

    • these gender roles have changed and are now both the man and woman’s job

    • husband and wives are spending more time with their child now even with both working out of the home

      • this is because of husbands and wives spend less time on social activities and clubs, less involved in social organizations

      • with both men and women working on housework it takes less time

    • gendered division of labor

      • where the husbands are still taking primary responsibility of income and the wives are still primarily taking responsibility of the house and children but there’s a shift in these gender orientations.

      • Now were seeing greater marital equality

Marriage

  • Social channels of marriage

    • Age

    • Education

    • Social Class

    • Race/ Ethnicity

    • these play a role in who you are going to marry

  • Hoogamy

    • deals with spatial nearness

    • we’ll either fall in love with people who live near us or fall in love with someone from work or school or church

    • neighborhoods, schools, follow on racial and social class lines

    • Tendency of people with similar characteristics to marry one another

Ideal Family Size

  • the number of children that has been considered ideal has changed over the years

  • currently a smaller family is more ideal

  • Religion

    • its not the type of religion

    • Those who attend more often prefer larger families

    • those who attend less prefer smaller families

  • Younger Americans (18-34)

    • Larger Families

    • over 34 want to have smaller families

  • about 1 out 5 (20%) married couples the children are cared for by the father

  • with a single-mother household 10% of the children are cared for by the father

    • grandparents step up to fill the gap

    • single mothers depend more on organized daycare

    • 25% of children today are in daycare

    • daycare- when you are looking for quality care you look for two different factors: staff who have taken course in earlier childhood development and lower ratio of student to staff

Social Class

  • makes a difference in how people raise their children

  • Working class parents

    • Wildflowers that develop naturally

    • Set limits on their children

    • Let them choose their own activities

  • Middle-class parents

    • Garden flowers that need a lot of nurturing

    • Guide children into activities that develop thinking and social skills

  • How children are raised comes down to the type of work the parents do

  • Working class parents

    • Closely supervised

    • Expected to follow explicit rules

    • use physical punishment

  • Middle Class

    • Expected to take more initiative on the job

    • Expect children to develop curiosity and self-expression

    • Withdraw privileges