1. FAMILY

2. What is a FAMILY? Family is… THE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL STRUCTURE!
A Social Structure:
Regularities in social life…
Family, school, government, etc.
A Cultural Universal
Found in every society around the world

3. PRIMARY GROUPS Family is the First Primary Group
Traits
Small
Personal orientation
Enduring
Primary relationships
First group experienced in life
Irreplaceable
Security
Assistance of all kinds
Emotional to financial

4. BASIC CONCEPTS
Family
A social institution that unites people into cooperative groups to oversee the bearing and raising of children
Kinship
A social bond, based on blood (ancestry), marriage, or adoption
Family Unit
A social group of two or more people, related by blood, marriage, or adoption, who live together

5. TYPES OF FAMILIES Families of orientation The family you are born into
Families of procreation
The family you form in order to have or adopt children
Families of affinity
People with or without blood ties who feel that they belong together and want to define themselves as a family

6. FAMILIES Nuclear family
Composed of one or two parents and their children
The predominant family form
Extended family
Family that includes parents and children as well as other kin

7. Share of U.S. Households that the Census Bureau Classifies as Families, 1950 and Families were a smaller share of all U.S. households in 2004 compared to What is the cause of the trend shown in this graph?

8. MARRIAGE
Marriage
Legally sanctioned relationship, usually involving economic cooperation, as well as sexual activity and childbearing, that people expect to be enduring
Matrimony: the “condition of motherhood”
Cohabitate: live together before marriage
Illegitimacy: out of wedlock children
According to the US Census Bureau, families are only people living together who are linked by “blood, marriage, or adoption”

9. MARRIAGE PATTERNS Endogamy Exogamy Marriage partners
Marriage between people of the same social category
Limited opportunities for marriage
Exogamy
Marriage between people of different social categories can help form alliances
Marriage partners
Monogamy: marrying one other person
Serial monogamy: monogamous marriage, divorce, & remarriage
Polygamy: marrying more than one person
Polygyny: marrying more than one female
Polyandry: marrying more than one male

10. Marital Form in Global Perspective Monogamy is the only legal form of marriage throughout the Western Hemisphere and in much of the rest of the world. In most African nations and in Southern Asia, however, polygamy is permitted by law. In many cases, this practice reflects the historic influence of Islam, a religion that allows a man to have up to four wives. Even so, most marriages in these countries are monogamous, primarily for financial reasons. Source: Peters Atlas of the World (1990).

11. Family Authority Patriarchal Matriarchal Egalitarian
Father maintains the most authority and power over family affairs
Matriarchal
Mother maintains the most authority and power over family affairs
Egalitarian
Both parents share in the authority and power over family affairs

12. DESCENT How members of a society trace kinship over generations
Importance includes passing on property and recognition as a family member (Last Name)
Three types:
Patrilineal descent –tracing kinship through men
Matrilineal descent – tracing kinship through women
Bilateral descent – tracing kinship through both men and women

13. RESIDENTIAL PATTERNS Patrilocality With or near the father’s family
Matrilocality
With or near the mother’s family
Neolocality
Living apart from both families

14. STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONAL Approach
The family serves basic functions
Socialization – families help create well-integrated members of society
Regulation of family activity – maintenance of kinship order and property rights, as well as mores: incest taboos
Social placement – families help maintain social organization
Material and emotional security – family offers physical protection, emotional support, and financial assistance
Critical evaluation
Glosses over great diversity of family life in the US, ignores how other institutions meet some of the same needs, overlooks negative aspects of family

15. SOCIAL-CONFLICT Approach
The family perpetuates social inequality:
Property and inheritance – concentrates wealth and reproduces class structure in each new generation
Patriarchy – feminists link family to patriarchy. To know their heirs, men must control their wife. While women still bear the brunt of child rearing and housework duties
Racial & ethnic inequality – Most marry others like themselves. Endogamous marriage supports racial and ethnic hierarchies
Critical evaluation
Ignores that families carry out functions not easily accomplished by other means

16. SYMBOLIC INTERACTION Approach
On a personal level:
The reality of each family is constructed by members and their interactions
Individuals shape how they experience family life
Parents relationship with children changes over time… Authoritative to Cooperative

17. How families form in traditional and industrialized societies…
STAGES OF FAMILY LIFE
How families form in traditional and industrialized societies…

18. Stages of Relationships
First comes love………..Courtship
Then comes marriage…Settling In
Then comes Vicki
with a baby carriage……..Child Rearing
Lastly……………………...Later Life

19. Courtship Arranged marriages: Romantic love:
Alliances between extended families of similar social standing and usually involve an exchange of wealth and favors
Traditional societies: Romantic love has little to do with marriage; individuals are less personally compatible as they culturally compatible
Romantic love:
Affection and passion for another person
Industrialized societies: Erodes the importance of extended families and weakens traditions
Homogamy: marriage between people with same social traits (even in “modern” cultures)

20. Settling in Ideal Marriage “Happily Ever After”
For women, marriage is the key to happiness
Fall in love with people as we want them to be
“Honeymoon”
Cheating is wrong
Real Marriage
Relationships take work
As times change women seek careers before marriage and family
Do not fall in with someone for who they really are
Feelings change
21% men unfaithful
13% women unfaithful

21. Childrearing
Industrialization transformed children from assets to liabilities
Preindustrial societies: children were born for child labor and help around house financially
Industrialization: children are dependent on parents
$200,000 to raise 1 child through college graduation in USA

22. Who’s Minding the Kids? Working mothers report that a majority of their young children receive care in the home.

23. Later life Empty nest Sandwich generation
Parents miss their children when they have grown up and moved on
Sandwich generation
“Baby Boomers” who will spend as many years caring for their children as for their aging parents
Will this be a continuing trend?

24. Divorce Rate for the United States, Over the long term, the U.S. divorce rate has gone up. Since about 1980, however, the trend has been downward. Source: Munson & Sutton (2005).

25. Payment of Child Support after Divorce In half of all cases of court-ordered child support, the full payment is never received. Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2003).

26. DIVORCE
In the U.S. nine out of ten persons will marry. Four out of these marriages will end in divorce. Factors include:
Individualism on the rise
Romantic love often ends
Women are less dependent upon men
Many of today’s marriages are stressful
Divorce is socially acceptable
Legally, a divorce is easier to get

27. REMARRIAGE
Four out of five people who divorce remarry, most within five years.
Remarriage often creates blended families, composed of children and some combination of biological parents and stepparents.
Although blended families require that members adjust to their new circumstances, they offer both young and old the change to relax rigid family roles.

28. U.S. FAMILIES Families differ based on the following concepts:
Social Class
Ethnicity and Race
WASP or White Ethnic Families
American Indian Families
Latino Families
African American Families
Asian American Families
Ethnically and Racially Mixed Marriages
Gender

29. Family Form in the United States, 2004 All racial and ethnic categories show variations in family form. Source: U.S. Census Bureau (2005).

30. ALTERNATE FAMILY FORMS
One-parent families
28 percent of U.S. Families with children under 18 have only one parent in the household
75 percent of these families are headed by women
Singlehood
In % of U.S. Women aged were single, by 2003 the number had risen to 75%

31. Alternate Marriage Forms
Cohabitation and Common Law marriage
Couples that live together in a monogamous relationship
Cohabitation means the couple intends on getting married in the future
54% percent of all couples live together before marriage
50% of those couples decide to marry
Common Law means the couple has lived together for a significant amount of time and act as a married couple would act
the state they live in views them as a married couple (without a marriage license)
Same Sex Couples
The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 it is unconstitutional for states to ban same-sex marriage in the United States

32. New Reproductive Technologies
1978, “test-tube baby”
In vitro fertilization, is where doctors unite a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm “in glass” rather than in a woman’s body.
What are the ethics of new reproductive technologies?

33. FAMILIES AND PREDICTIONS
Divorce rates remain high
More equality between sexes
Family life will be variable
All kinds of “units” will be called families
Men will continue to play a limited role in child rearing
Many dads will remain absent from household scenes
Families are becoming a weaker social institution
Economic changes impact families and reform marriage
Less quality time as work demands more from parents
More families have neolocality
New reproductive technologies
Ethical concerns about what can and what should be done

34. FAMILY VIOLENCE Against women Against children
Of 791,000 reported accounts of abuse between intimate partners, 85% are against women
32 percent of all women murdered are the victims of their partners, or ex-partners
All states have marital rape laws, half have “stalking laws” on the books
Against children
3 million children a year are abused, 1 million of these involve serious harm including 1,100 deaths
Abusers are as likely to be women as men with no simple stereotype