Chapter 12: Sex, Marriage, and Family
Sexuality and Early Socialization: The Trobriand Islanders
Early Sexual Exploration: Trobriand Islanders begin playing erotic games and imitating adult sexual behaviors around the age of or years old.
Adolescent Dating and experimentation: Around the age of or , youngsters begin dating multiple people and experiment sexually until they find a preferred partner.
Marriage Initiation: Love affairs lead to marriage when a girl stays overnight with her boyfriend (who lives separately from his parents). The couple سپس steps outside together for the entire village to see, which serves as a formal announcement of their intention to marry.
Cultural Shift: Modern Western ideas regarding premarital abstinence have slowly shifted toward the permissive ideas held by the Trobrianders.
Characteristics of Human Sexuality
Continuous Receptivity: Unlike many animals, humans may engage in intercourse whenever they desire. This is comparable to bonobos, who exhibit constant genital swelling.
Conception and Fertility: Females may only become pregnant during ovulation, which occurs approximately once a month. Notably, human fertility is not signaled by visible physical changes.
Pregnancy and Sexual Activity: Humans may continue to have sex while the female is pregnant.
Example: Trobriand men frequently have sex with pregnant mothers as a way to "nurture" their unborn children.
Homosexual Behavior: Same-sex behavior is common in humans and is also observed in bonobo populations.
Example: Adult Trobriand men engage in oral sex with young boys. This practice is culturally intended to protect the boys from becoming homosexuals in their adulthood.
Societal Restrictions: Sexual activity occurring outside of marriage is often restricted, sometimes through violent means:
Muslim Societies: Adulterers are usually put to death.
Early Christians: Adulterers were stoned.
Benefit of Restriction: One positive outcome of restricted sexual activity is the limitation of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).
Marriage: Definitions and Rights
Definition: Marriage is a culturally sanctioned union between two or more people that establishes specific rights between the married individuals, their children, and their in-laws.
Established Rights: These typically include rights regarding:
Sexual access.
Labor and physical property.
Child-rearing responsibilities.
Exchange and social status.
Case Study: The Nayar of Southwest India
Social Structure: The Nayar are a landowning warrior caste characterized by sexual permissiveness.
Ritual Husbands: When a young girl reaches the age of her first menstruation, she must join a "ritual husband" for a temporary union. This establishes her status as a woman ready for sex and motherhood.
Visiting Husbands: Later, a Nayar woman enters sexual relationships with "visiting husbands" chosen by her family.
The man must provide her with gifts three times per year until the relationship ends.
A woman may have multiple visiting husbands simultaneously.
Parenthood and Support: When a woman becomes pregnant, one of the visiting husbands (who might not be the biological father) must acknowledge the child and provide gifts.
This man may take an interest in the child but has no further obligations.
The primary support and education of the child are provided by the mother and her brothers.
Kinship and Global Marriage Rules
Consanguineal Kin: Individuals who are biologically related (blood relatives). Nayar families live exclusively with consanguineal kin.
Affinal Kin: Individuals related through marriage.
Incest Taboo: The prohibition of sexual contact between certain close relatives. While the specific taboos vary cross-culturally, humans generally have an "instinctive" repulsion toward incest.
Exceptions: Ancient Incas and Egyptians practiced marriage between half-brothers and half-sisters to maintain "ancestral god status" within the family.
Common Prohibitions: Laws against marrying parents, siblings, in-laws, or cousins exist in many cultures.
Endogamy: Marriage within a specific group or category (e.g., laws prohibiting marriage beyond first cousins).
Exogamy: Marriage outside of a specific group. Claude Lévi-Strauss observed that exogamy widens social networks and reduces conflict between different groups.
Mating vs. Marriage:
Mating: Occurs in all animals; secured by personal effort and mutual consent.
Marriage: A cultural right recognized by social, political, and ideological factors that regulate reproductive rights and obligations.
Forms of Marriage
Monogamy: Both partners have exactly spouse.
Serial Monogamy: Common in North America and Europe due to high divorce rates; an individual marries a series of partners one after another.
Polygamy: One individual has multiple spouses simultaneously.
Polygyny: One man married to multiple women.
Requirements: The man must be wealthy enough to support multiple wives and children.
Context: Found in traditional food-producing or pastoral nomadic societies (e.g., sub-Saharan Africa and Southwest Asia) where women provide labor.
Demographics: Often found in war-torn societies where females outnumber males.
Customs: includes Levirate (a widow marries her deceased husband's brother to maintain social security and family rights) and Sororate (a man marries his deceased wife's sister).
Polyandry: One woman married to multiple men.
Occurrence: Found in fewer than a dozen societies, including the Eskimos, Marquesan Islanders of Polynesia, and Tibetans.
Fraternal Polyandry: In Tibet, this prevents male lineage land from being subdivided repeatedly over generations.
Advantages: Keeps population growth down (decreasing resource pressure) and provides multiple men for labor-intensive mixed economies (farming, herding, trading).
Group Marriage (Co-marriage): Several men and women have mutual sexual access, facilitating mutual aid and support.
Fictive Marriage: Marriage by proxy to symbols of someone not physically present to establish the status of a spouse or heirs.
Nuer (Africa): Women marry men who died without heirs; the deceased's brother acts as a stand-in.
Roman Catholic Nuns: Practice "ghost marriage" to Jesus Christ.
Legal Proxies: Colorado and Texas allow proxy marriage if a spouse is in prison, at war, or in a foreign country. Double-proxy marriage occurs when both spouses are absent from the ceremony.
Spouse Choice and Arrangement
Purpose: Marriage transfers rights (property, children, sex) between families.
Arranged Marriages: Utilized for economic and political advantage or to protect traditional values.
Cousin Marriage Types:
Parallel Cousin: Child of a father's brother or a mother's sister.
Patrilateral parallel cousin: Man marries his father's brother's daughter (found in ancient Arabs, Israelites, and Greeks).
Cross Cousin: Child of a mother's brother or a father's sister.
Matrilateral cross-cousin: Man marries his mother's brother's daughter (found among Aborigines and in South India).
Same-Sex Marriage and Social Arguments
The Nandi Tribe (Western Kenya): Allows women who have borne no sons to marry women who can have children. This provides male heirs for the "female husband's" husband's lineage.
A brother of the "female husband's" husband typically conceives the children with the new wife.
The "female husband" adopts male roles and duties and must give up sex entirely.
Refuting Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage:
Argument: Marriage has always been between a man and woman. Counter: False; societies like the Nandi have long-standing same-sex marriage traditions.
Argument: Same-sex unions are unnatural. Counter: False; cross-cultural and animal studies show same-sex attraction is natural.
Argument: Marriage is only for producing children. Counter: False; same-sex partners can use adoption or medical technology to raise children.
Economic Exchanges in Marriage
Bride-price (Bride-wealth): Money or goods paid by the groom's family to the bride's family. Common in patrilineal societies to compensate for the loss of the woman's labor. It must be refunded if the marriage fails.
Bride-service: A period of time where the groom works for the bride's family after the marriage.
Dowry: Payment of a woman's inheritance to her or her husband at the time of marriage. It ensures her future well-being (even after the husband's death), protects against desertion, and reflects economic status in competing for wealthy husbands.
Divorce Practices
Gusii (Western Kenya): Grounds for divorce include sterility and incompetence.
Aboriginal peoples (Northern Canada): Divorce is not permitted once children are born.
Hopi: A woman signifies divorce by placing her husband's belongings outside the home if he fails to meet her expectations.
Family and Household Units
Definitions:
Family: Two or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption.
Household: The basic residential unit organized for economic production, consumption, inheritance, shelter, and child-rearing.
Family Structures:
Conjugal Family: Established through marriage.
Consanguineal Family: Blood relatives consisting of related women, their brothers, and the women's offspring (e.g., Nayar tribe, Tory Islanders of Ireland).
Nuclear Family: One or two parents plus offspring. This unit is common in industrial/capitalist societies due to mobility (seeking jobs/money).
Represented of US households in .
Extended Family: Two or more closely related nuclear families clustered together.
Nontraditional Family: Includes single-parent households.
Represented of US households in .
Single mothers are times more common than single fathers.
Approximately of all US births occur outside of marriage.
One-person Household: Represented of US households in .
Blended Family: A married couple raising children from previous marriages.
Residence Patterns
Patrilocal: The couple lives in the husband's father's residence. Common in male-dominated, polygynous, and war-prone societies relying on animal husbandry or intensive agriculture. Usually involves bride-price.
Matrilocal: The couple lives in the wife's mother's residence. Common in horticultural societies where women dominate subsistence and there is no central government. (e.g., Hopi men farm, but women control land and harvest).
Ambilocal: The couple chooses between matrilocal or patrilocal based on where resources are currently available.
Neolocal: The couple establishes their own independent household away from both sets of families.