Notes to Families and Relationships

I. FAMILIES IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

A. Families

• Our notions about marriage and the family have changed in the past 50 years.
• US census says a ‘Family’ is a Group of 2 or more persons, related by blood, marriage, or adoption.
• Canada defines Family as ‘Household’=caregiving, NOT blood
• Definitions vary depending on subjective experience.
• Beginning to include same-sex relationships
• Courts now look at level of emotional and financial commitment and interdependence
• Families have changed a lot during the last century

• Defining FAMILY: 
• Often live together
• form economic unit
• care for young
• consider identity to be a attached to the group
• sexual expression
• parent/child relationship

        1.  changes within last fifty years

• First, changes include marriage at a later age (late 20’s)_
• Fewer people choosing to never-marry (7-10%)
• More cohabitating before marriage (60%)
• More people rearing children outside of marital context
• Only 17% of families fit the traditional model of male as primary breadwinner and female as ‘housewife’.
• Family is just changing, not declining!!!

1.  family relationship values

• Value of marriage versus single and no kids. 
• Stigma of single, no kids, etc. is changing
• But now more women working and have careers,
• many women left role of full-time mother to join job market

2.  sexual values

• No sex outside of marriage
• No kids outside of marriage
• No cohabitating outside of marriage
• Virginity expected when married
• And now virginity is no longer expected.

3.  homogamous mating

• Race, ethnicity, religion, social class
• Now it’s more by choice, more freedom, but still we conform.

4.  cultural silence on intimate relationships

• Not appropriate subject before,
• but now it’s in our face all over the place (TV, talk shows, magazines)

5.  divorce

• Stay together for kids, ‘till death do us part, stigma,
• And now we tend to value seeking personal happiness.

6.  familism versus individualism

• Needs of children were focus
• Mom stayed home to care for them
• Now children seen more as adults, free to pursue their own interests
• Day Care

7.  homosexuality

• Culturally hidden
• Increasingly an open phenomenon (definitions of family include same-sex partners)
• legal status now

B. Family structure and characteristics

1. preindustrial societies

• Kinship:  In preindustrial societies, the primary form of social organization is through kinship ties:
• A social network of people based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption.
• Cooperate to acquire the basic necessities of life:
• food, shelter, transfer of property, goods produced and distributed, power is allocated
• All of the stuff that we as a society do

2. industrialized societies

1.  Family no longer self-sufficient work unit (employers controlled)

2.  Children became economic liabilities rather than assets (Child labor laws, mandatory education.)

3.  Families moved to crowded cities away from farm to cities with factories where the jobs were.

4.  Gender roles changed:

• dual-income families
• men provided economic role, women emotional/ domestic role
• Needs of family replaced by individualism: focus on self-fulfillment

In Sum…

• Other social institutions took over the functions previously held by the kinship network:
• Political systems now provide structures of social control and authority
• Economic systems are responsible for the production and distribution of goods and services.

• Thus, families here have fewer and more specialized functions:
• Regulating sexual activity
• Socializing children
• Providing affection and companionship for family members.
• Economic support
• Provision of social status (ascribed, like race/ethnicity, social class, religious affiliation)
• class-related opportunities include access to quality health care, higher education, and a safe place to live.

3. three types of families

• Family of origin (of orientation): Born or reared here, early socialization happens here, primary group affects our self-concept
• Family of procreation: Family you will create with your partner and children, birth or adoption
• Families We choose:  Intimate relationships with other adults, and maybe their kids, leaves rooms for nontraditional family forms.

4. also extended and nuclear families

• Extended family: your nuclear family plus other relatives (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins)
• nuclear family: (origin or procreation)

=You, parents, siblings / you, your spouse, your children

--One-parent families are generally referred to as binuclear families, or single-parent families if only one parent is involved with kid’s life.

• Binuclear families may change to blended families when parents remarry
• Blended families are like The Brady Bunch, when both partners marry after divorce and both bring kids from previous marriages into the new marriage.

C. Marriage patterns

1. marriage

• Marriage: A legally recognized and or socially approved arrangement between 2 individuals that carried certain rights and obligations and usually sexual activity
• binding 2 people (man and woman) together for the reproduction, care (physical and emotional), and socialization of offspring.
• It’s a Contract between heterosexual couple and the state in which they reside that regulates their economic and social relationship.

2. monogamy: it’s the law

• A marriage between two partners
• In relationships it means Sex with one partner
• Most people report that fidelity is important and that they would end a relationship with partner if unfaithful.

3. polygamy

• More than two spouses
• Occurs in societies/subcultures whose norms sanction multiple partners.

                       a.  polygyny: (‘j’)

• one guy, 2 plus women
• Illegal practice often involving some religious fundamentalist groups in New Mexico, Utah (LDS Mormon Church)

--In Utah alone, estimated 30,00-100,00 polygynysts (‘j’)

• Some Islamic societies, Africa and parts of Asia
• Have to be wealthy to afford many women in other societies

                       b.  polyandry:

• One woman, up to five men.
• The Buddhist Tibetans
• Very rare, Keep pop. down, economic reasons (family can only afford one wife for all sons.)

D. Endogamy and exogamy

• Endogamy : Cultural norms that encourage the practice of marrying within one’s own group:
• social class, race, ethnicity, educational level, religion
• Homogamy refers to the individual’s tendency

• Exogamy:  The practice of marrying outside one’s own social group or category
• If you marry an ‘outsider’ your family/friends/church may be upset
• But we expect people to marry outside their gender (same-sex taboos)
• And outside their family (Incest taboos)

II. PERSPECTIVES ON FAMILIES

A. The sociology of the family

• Subdiscipline of sociology that attempts to describe and explain patterns of family life and variations in family structure.

B. Functionalist perspective

• Looks at the functions the family provides at the macro level

1. maintains stability of society and well­-

being of individuals

• Roles are important here (gender roles, for example).
• Socialization
• Emotional support

• Durkheim says that marriage is a microcosmic replica of the larger society
• Division of labor important here ‘cause contributes to a greater efficiency, no matter where, even in families, although he admits it limits people…
• Parsons says (review from gender chapter) that husband provides instrumental role and wife expressive role

• Functions of the family (discussed above)

C. Conflict and feminist perspectives

1. Primary source of inequality

• Conflict over values, goals, and access to resources and power.
• Families in capitalist economies are like the work environment of a factory:
• Women dominated by men in the home like workers are by capitalists and managers in factories
• Child-bearing and care for family members does contribute to capitalism but also reinforce the subordination of women through unpaid and often devalued labor
• Exploitation of the lower classes by the upper classes contributes to family problems

• Some conflict theorists (feminists) focus on patriarchy rather than class (men’s domination over women)
• Traditionally, power and authority in families have been held by the eldest male: 
• Patriarchal family (versus matriarchal)
• May give men freedom to abuse women and children
• Egalitarian family structure is where both partners share power equally
• More common now that women are working (money equals power
• Also these couples report greater marital happiness

D. Interactionist perspectives

• Looks at how the family influences the individual’s self-concept and identity:

1. family roles

• Roles of husbands, wives, children as they play out their parts
• Looks at what people think, say and do

2. “shared reality”

• Bring separate identities to the relationship but over time they construct a shared reality as a couple.
• The development is a continuous process
• takes place in the family and in any group in which the couple participates together.
• Divorce reverses this process, gradually develop separate realities

3. effects of gender

• Women and men experience marriage differently
• Women report less satisfaction in marriage
• Often due to second shift, unequal distribution of labor around the home.

III. DEVELOPING INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

A. Gender roles and love expression

• Public sphere of work, men’s work, emphasized self-reliance and independence.
• Private sphere of the home, women’s sphere, emphasized the giving of services, the exchange of gifts, and love

• Thus love and emotions became the domain of women
• And work and rationality the domain of men
• Thus, Men and women may not share the same perception about romantic love:
• Women tend to express their feelings verbally
• Men through nonverbal action

B. Cohabitation and domestic partnerships

• A couple who live together without being legally married
• A lot less stigma nowadays
• under age 45
• married before
• employed couples rather than college student
• don’t want to lose benefits contingent upon not remarrying

• Domestic Partnership:  household partnerships in which unmarried couple lives together in a committed, sexually intimate relationship and is granted the same rights and benefits as those accorded to married heterosexual couples
• Health insurance, life insurance
• Depends on the state (about 13 states have some sort of legislation…)

C. Marriage

• Cultural expectation to marry and have children
• But more acceptance for different family forms now

1. homogamy

• The pattern of individuals marrying those who have similar characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, religious background, age, education, social class.
• But personality factors also play a role

D. Housework

• Over 50% of all marriages in the US are dual-earner marriages where both spouses are in the labor force
• Around 62% of all wives and mothers are in the labor force at any given time
• Around 92% of all wives and mothers will be employed outside the home at some point during their marriage
• Women with children 14-17 years old are most likely to be in the labor force

1. women’s second shift

• The domestic work that employed women perform at home after they complete their work day on the job
• Both men and women over-report what they do around the home, but it’s estimated that wives do about 70% of all household tasks:
• Cook, clean, shop, take care of children, manage household routines, stuff that needs to be done each day at specific times without fail.

2. men’s domestic jobs

• If families see husband as primary breadwinner he may be less likely to help out around the  house
• Spend less time doing the tasks that he does do
• periodic, unstructured tasks
• Couples with more egalitarian gender attitudes tend to share more equally in domestic tasks.
• Women report a big increase in satisfaction when husband helps out just a little bit more around the house.

E. Parenting

• Fertility and choices:
• Advances in birth control techniques have given people power to decide if to have kids, when, how many, spacing,
• Also fertility is linked to women’s perceptions about opportunities available to them

• Pronatalist bias: assumes that having children is the norm and can be taken for granted
• Those that don’t have kids feel they must justify their decision

• Adoption:  a legal process through which the rights and duties of parenting are transferred from a biological and/or legal parents to a new legal parent or parents.
• new birth certificate issued
• no future contact with biological parents
• Oregon’s law
• Florida’s ban on gay adoptions (even with kid who was raised by these men for 12 years!).

• Estimated that around 56% of births each year are unintended
• usually result of failure to use contraceptives or using some that don’t work…
• Hard to plan…

• Teenage pregnancies:  declined recently, although not as much as for older married women
• Problem ‘cause have less education, less skills, possess few economic and social supports other than their relatives, high likelihood of living in poverty, likely to have a second child within three years.

• Increase in single-parent families (due to divorce and births outside of marriage)
• Poverty issues, especially for women

• Two-parent households aren’t necessarily better (fighting, abuse, etc.)

• Remaining Single:  Availability of sex outside of marriage, excitement of single lifestyle, freedom.

• But most are just postponing marriage (economic and educational opportunities, for example).

• People still report that marriage is a value to them.

IV. PROBLEMS IN FAMILIES

A. Family violence

1. spouse abuse and culture

• Souse abuse refers not only to people who are married but also to those who are cohabiting or involved in serious relationship or who live apart, separated from spouse
• Family violence is hard to measure

• Cultural Factors:  1) acceptance, 2) media, 3) gender inequality 4)property
• There is an acceptance of violence in our society as a legitimate means of enforcing compliance and solving conflicts at interpersonal, familial, national, and international levels.
• Must link violence in the family to cultural factors:

• 1) acceptance of corporal punishment as well (a lot of people report that they do it and had it done to them)
• Result:  Children display more antisocial behavior, are more violent, and have an increased incidence of depression as adults
• Against the law in Sweden since 1979.
• 2) violence in the media (article)
• 3) gender inequality
• Traditional gender roles teach men to be aggressive, and that they are superior to women
• Traditional female roles have also taught women to be submissive to their male partners’ control
• Because violence is so clearly associated with masculinity in American culture, Violence is a social practice that enables males to express masculine identities
• 4) view of women and children as property.
• A married woman was considered the property of her man prior to the 19^th century

2.  elder abuse

• Elder abuse refers to neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse, social abuse, financial exploitation/legal abuse, and/or medical abuse of people age 65 or older
• Most likely a family member who abuses them, sons followed by daughters.

a. ageism: Prejudice and discrimination against people on the basis of age, says older people are worth less, inferior to the young.  May help explain elder abuse.

B. Divorce

• The legal process of dissolving a marriage that allows former spouses to remarry if they so choose.
• Most people in contemporary society divorce on the grounds of 'Irreconcilable differences' = no blame
• Changes in social institutions (like religion and family) make it easier to get a divorce now

• No-fault divorce now (mainly because easier to get):
• No fault divorce laws make it easier to get a divorce
• Church is also more lenient, see marriage as secular and not religious, increasingly

1. stats may be misleading

• About 2.4 million marriages take place each year in the US
• And about 1.2 million divorces each year
• but misleading comparison ‘cause those divorces didn’t necessarily come from those same marriages
• Also people often get married and divorced several times
• The likelihood of divorce goes up with each subsequent marriage

2. causes and consequences of divorce

• CAUSES:
• Marriage at an early age
• a short acquaintanceship before marriage
• disapproval of the marriage by relatives and friends
• limited economic resources and low wages
• a high school education or less
• parents who are divorced or who have an unhappy marriage
• the presence of children at the beginning of the marriage

• CONSEQUENCES:
• Economic and emotional impacts on the family members
• An estimated 60% of divorcing couples have one or more children
• mom will likely have custody, although this is changing
• One common consequence for women is increased poverty upon divorce
• In-law issues and child visitation
• Divorce can be a good thing, too.

C. Remarriage

• Most divorcees remarry.
• Divorced marry the divorced
• More men remarry and sooner
• The older a woman is at the time of her divorce, the less likely she is to remarry
• Women who have not graduated from HS and who have young kids tend to remarry quickly
• In contrast to women with college degree without kids

V. FAMILY ISSUES IN THE TWENTY­FIRST

CENTURY

A. variations in the definition of ‘family’ keep

the debate alive