Marriage and Family

For this conversation, make sure to watch the video of Stephanie Coontz, “Love and Marriage in Historical Context.” Coontz is is probably the best known sociologist and historian when it comes to the social institution of marriage and the family. For your post, provide a response/reaction to the issues raised in the video program, and integrate some of what you learned from reading Chapter 14 in our e-textbook.

Chapter 14 Outline: Marriage and Family

14.1 What is Marriage? What is Family?

• Marriage: legalized social contract between two people, usually associated with sexual relationship and implying long-term relationship

• Family: a socially recognized group—blood, marriage, cohabitation, adoption—that forms an emotional connection and serves as economic unit within society; marriage and family is arguably the most important social institution

• Family of orientation: family into which a person is born or is raised

• Family of procreation: family that is formed through marriage (and children)

A. Challenges Families Face

• The definition of family has broadened in recent decades to include non-traditional family forms, including LGBT families

• Emergence of gay marriage as legal institution has not been accepted as broadly on cultural level; social conservatives tend to be anti-gay marriage

B. Marriage Patterns

• Cohabitation: unmarried couple living together

• Polygamy: marriage to more than one person at a time; polygyny=one man with multiple wives; polyandry (rare)=one woman with multiple husbands

• Bigamy: act of entering into a marriage while still married to another person; this is illegal (felony) in most of the U.S.

C. Residency and Lines of Descent

• Bilateral descent: tracing kinship through both maternal and paternal ancestors; about 60% of societies use this

• Kinship: refers to traceable ancestry, based on blood, marriage or adoption

• Unilateral descent: tracing kinship through one parent only; three types:

• patrilineal=father’s line only (China and India)

• matrilineal=mother’s line only (Crow and Cherokee, Native American)

• ambilineal=either father’s or mother’s, depending on situation (Southeast Asia)

• Patrilocal residence: wife lives with or near husband’s family of orientation

• Matrilocal residence: husband lives with or near wife’s family of orientation

D. Stages of Family Life

• Family life cycle: set of predictable stages and patterns families experience (see Table 14.1 on page 312)

• Family life course: like the family life cycle approach, this approach to understanding common family life experiences; however, instead of presuming that these experiences follow a set of consecutive stages, this analysis accounts for the more diverse family forms and experiences that are more common today

14.2 Variations in Family Life

• Nuclear family: most common form is married parents with children, although divorce has led to single parent nuclear families (two generations); this family form is the dominant form within modern, industrialized societies

A. Single Parents

• Extended family: includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, in addition to parents and children (three generations); this family form was (and is) the dominant form within agricultural societies

• 27% of children live with single parent, with 85-90% of those living with mother; practice of grandparents playing parenting role is increasing

B. Cohabitation

• Numbers are increasing rapidly; about 7.5 million in U.S. are cohabitating

• Reasons for cohabitation: 1) save on living costs; 2) trial marriage; 3) decreasing social stigma; 4) children of divorce so lack confidence in marriage

C. Same-Sex Couples

• About 600,000 same-sex couples in U.S.; increasing numbers due to higher social acceptance of LGBT community and willingness to report

• Same-sex parenting as good as opposite-sex parenting

D. Staying Single; increasing numbers of adults choosing to remain single

E. Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family

• Functionalism: Functions of the social institution of marriage and family: 1) regulates sexual behavior by providing socially legitimate outlet for adults; 2) reproduction: having kids, which ensures continuation of society; 3) raising of children, with parents serving as primary agent of socialization; 4) family represents primary economic unit of society

• Conflict theory: power correlated with person who controls revenue (salary, income); unpaid labor within home tends to be devalued so uneven division of labor regarding household chores is often source of tension

• Symbolic interactionism: focus on the symbols and meanings that we use, and that have changed over time, with respect to marriage and family, e.g., broader definition of what “family” constitutes; what it means to be a “good husband/wife” or “good father/mother” is up for interpretation and negotiation

14.3 Challenges Families Face

A. Divorce and Remarriage

• Divorce rates increased in 1960s and 1970s, peaked in 1980; more recently, rates have dropped to 1970 levels

• Factors: financial stress, children, young age at marriage
• Later age at first marriage and higher education associated with lower divorce

• Children of Divorce and Remarriage: in low-conflict homes, children have more negative effects from divorce; only in high-conflict homes, do children benefit from divorce; stepfamilies often contribute to more interpersonal conflict; older children tend to navigate divorce better than younger kids

B. Violence and Abuse

• Domestic Violence: intimate partner violence: violence between spouses or partners within cohabitating or sexual relationships (includes same-sex partners)

• Child Abuse: in 2010, 5.9 million children affected; infants most likely age group of children affected; shaken baby syndrome=group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or causing impact to an infant’s head