 Institution: maintains patterns of privilege and inequity and is connected to other societal institutions, including the economy, political system, religion, and education  Experience: fulfills basic human needs and provides first experiences of love, relationship, power, and conflict

 Determine family descent (patrilineal, matrilineal, bilateral, or unilateral)  Determine distribution of wealth  Govern norms about the meaning of marriage (including number of partners) › Monogamy: one wife and one husband › Polygamy: multiple spouses › Cenogamy: group marriage › Polygyny: multiple wives › Polyandry: multiple husbands

 Nuclear (now < 25% of all families)  Extended  Single-parent  Blended  Lesbian/gay domestic partners  Other cohabitating couples with children  Multi-generational

 13% increase in cohabitation couples (2010 Census)  72% increase in unmarried-partner households over past ten years  Only 2/3 of nation’s children live with two married parents  Median age for marriage 28 for men, 26 for women  40-50% of marriages end in divorce

 There are 99.6 million unmarried Americans over age 18, representing nearly 44% of the adult population  In 2010, unmarried households were 45% of all U.S. households  Over half of the unmarried population aged 18 and older are female. For every 100 unmarried women there are 88 unmarried men Source: US Census Bureau, America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2010

 More than half of Americans today are, have been, or will be in stepfamily situations  Proportion of households with one person living alone is now over 25%  Approximately 25% of all families with children are headed by single females (28% live in poverty compared to 5% of married families)

 Gay marriage is legal in six states and the District of Columbia (still pending in CA)  Domestic partnerships or civil unions are recognized in a number of states  Twenty-nine states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, while 12 others have laws against it  In February 2011, President Obama directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996

 Families are shaped by their relationship to systems of inequality  Households headed by women have approximately half the income and less than 1/3 the assets of other US households and are three times as likely to be at or below poverty level  Poverty rate for single mothers is twice as high as for single fathers (US Census)

 Access to resources that allows certain members to define the reality of other members (mostly distributed by age and gender)  While “traditional” marriage and family relationships are being challenged today, sexism and masculine privilege still exist in many interpersonal family relationships

 Head-complement  Junior partner/senior partner  Equal partners

 Women are expected to want to be mothers (it’s supposed to come naturally)  Women are expected to take the primary responsibility for nurturing children

 bell hooks – “Revolutionary Parenting” “Men will not share equally in parenting until they are taught, ideally from childhood on, that fatherhood has the same meaning and significance as motherhood. As long as women or society as a whole see the mother/child relationship as unique…responsibility for child care and child rearing will continue to be primarily women’s work” 1984