Read Chapter 12 The Family and Household Diversity, in the Schaefer textbook o Specifically, review information under the heading Aspects of Mate Selection

Week 4 DB

General Discussion Board (DB) Expectations 

 

1. Post 1 is your initial response to the prompt based on what you learned from the assigned material. Initial posts must contain appropriate APA formatted in-text citations and reference(s) to the assigned material

Discussion Boards (DB) are one of the most important learning activities in our class. They are the classroom discussions of the online environment. Please put time, thought, and effort into your posts. Also, remember to respect the views of others even if you disagree. There is a professional way to express opposing views. Let's take the opportunity to make our discussions a meaningful learning experience! 

Tips for Success: Read the chapters for the week first. Keep your book next to you while you're developing your responses, so you can refer to it as needed.

Romantic Partnering Norms in the US

 

 

Reminders

· Each post must be 200+ words and include a Word Count (WC) at the end of your post, before your reference(s).

Required Sources

· Read  Chapter 12  The Family and Household Diversity,  in the Schaefer textbook

· Specifically, review information under the heading Aspects of Mate Selection

· No outside sources, please

 

Assignment

Post 1:  What Did You Learn? 

 

· Paragraph 1:  Following the rules of endogamy and exogamy for the U.S., people with what characteristics would be selected for you (think in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic status, etc.)? (Make sure youy have a solid understanding of exogamy and endogamy); and

· Paragraph 2: If you were talking to a friend about what type of people you are interested in partnering with, what characteristics would be you prefer in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, socioeconomic status, etc.?

 

APA Formatting Resources

Make sure to include APA formatted in-text citations and references to assigned materials. For a refresher on APA, check out these resources:

,

CHAPTER

12

THE FAMILY AND HOUSEHOLD DIVERSITY

CHAPTER OUTLINE

GLOBAL VIEW OF THE FAMILY

Composition: What Is the Family?

Kinship Patterns: To Whom Are We Related?

Authority Patterns: Who Rules?

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FAMILY

Functionalist Perspective

Conflict Perspective

Interactionist Perspective

Feminist Perspective

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY

Courtship and Mate Selection

Variations in Family Life and Intimate Relationships

Child-Rearing Patterns

DIVORCE

Statistical Trends in Divorce

Factors Associated With Divorce

Impact of Divorce on Children

LESBIAN AND GAY RELATIONSHIPS

DIVERSE LIFESTYLES

Cohabitation

Remaining Single

Marriage Without Children

SOCIAL POLICY AND THE FAMILY: FAMILY LEAVE WORLDWIDE

Boxes

Our Wired World: Love Is in the Air and on the Web

Sociology in the Global Community: Arranged and Hybrid Marriage

Research Today: Challenges to LGBTQ Adoption

	LEARNING OBJECTIVES			WHAT’S NEW IN CHAPTER 12
· Describe the different family types across cultures. · Describe the significance of kinship patterns. · Explain the three ways in which power is distributed within families. · Analyze the family using the functionalist, conflict, interactionist, and feminist perspectives. · Describe the variations in marital patterns and family life. · Describe various child-rearing patterns in family life. · Analyze the trends and factors associated with divorce. · Analyze the impact of diverse lifestyles on the social institution of the family. · Analyze policy concerning family leave through a sociological lens.		· Chapter-opening photo showing large family reunion. · Enhanced coverage of interactionist perspective on stepparenting and online dating, with updates to Our Wired World box, “Love in the Air and on the Web.” · Expanded discussion of couples in which the female partner earns more than the male. · Discussion of tendency to marry later in life. · Sociology in the Global Community box, “Arranged and Hybrid Marriage,” with figure. · Figure 12-4, “Grandparents Who Support Grandchildren, 2018.” · Expanded discussion of married people living apart and dual-income couples. · Research Today: Challenges to LGBTQ Adoption. · Updated and expanded discussion of cohabitation. · Expanded discussion of remaining single and childlessness. · Updated figures “Living Arrangements of Adults Age 18 and Over, 1967 and 2019,” “Median Age at First Marriage in Nine Countries,” “Rise of Single-Parent Families in the United States, 1970–2019,” and “Trends in Marriage and Divorce in the United States, 1920–2017.”

CHAPTER SUMMARY

A family can be defined as a set of people related by blood, marriage, or some other agreed-upon relationship, or adoption, who share the primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for members of society. In the United States, however, family has traditionally been viewed in a narrower set of terms: as a married couple and their unmarried children living together. Sociologists refer to this traditional family arrangement as a nuclear family. Most Americans view the nuclear family as the ideal family configuration. By contrast, an extended family is a family in which relatives (e.g., grandparents, aunts, uncles) live in the same home as parents and their children.

Most Americans equate monogamy with marriage, but in the United States, it is common for individuals to marry, divorce, and then remarry. This pattern has led to the term serial monogamy. There are other forms of marriage, as well. Polygamy involves the marriage of one person to multiple spouses. Polygyny, the most common type of polygamy, involves one husband who is married to multiple wives. Polyandry, which is less common, involves one wife who is married to multiple husbands.

The state of being related to others is called kinship. The United States follows the pattern of bilateral descent, which means that both sides of a person’s family are regarded as equally important. Patrilineal descent indicates that only the father’s relatives are important in determining property, inheritance, and emotional ties. Conversely, in societies that favor matrilineal descent, only the mother’s relatives are significant. Authority patterns within families are often related to kinship descent. If a society expects males to dominate in all the family decision making, it is termed a patriarchy. By contrast, in a matriarchy, women have greater authority than men. Within the egalitarian family, spouses are regarded as equals; however, wives may hold authority in some spheres and husbands in others.

The major sociological perspectives hold varying views on family. Functionalists focus on the ways in which family gratifies the needs of its members and contributes to the stability of society in providing reproduction, protection, socialization, regulation of sexual behavior, affection and companionship, and social status. To the extent that many of these “functions” have been taken over by outside institutions, the family as an institution is weakened. In contrast, conflict theorists view family as a reflection of the inequality in wealth and power found within the larger society. Both feminist theorists and conflict theorists contend that family has traditionally legitimized and perpetuated male dominance. In essence, the family is viewed as an economic unit that contributes to societal injustice. Women and children are subordinate members of the family and may be subjected to a number of injustices, economic or otherwise.

Feminist theorists also stress the need to rethink the notion that families in which no adult male is present are automatically a cause for concern or even dysfunctional. Feminists who take the interactionist perspective stress the need to investigate neglected topics in family studies, such as dual-income households in which wives earn more than their husbands. Finally, interactionists focus on the microlevel of family and other intimate relationships. They are interested in how individuals, whether cohabitating or married, interact with one another, and in the role of the stepparent in families where a single parent has remarried.

Mate selection is influenced by distinctive cultural norms and values. Endogamy specifies that people are expected to marry within their own racial, ethnic, or religious group. Conversely, exogamy requires mate selection outside certain groups, usually outside one’s own family or certain kinfolk. The incest taboo prohibits sexual relationships between certain culturally specified relatives. Homogamy refers to the conscious or unconscious process of selecting a mate with similar characteristics to one’s own.

In the United States, love is important in the courtship process and is considered a rationale for marriage. Helping the courtship process are online dating sites and mobile dating apps. Second, only to friends, the internet is the second most popular source of romantic partners. Compared to real-world dating, online dating services offer users more ways for them to manage their self-presentations so significant impression management–the altering of the presentation of the self in order to create distinctive appearances and satisfy particular audiences–is common. Sociologists have observed that members of groups with a thin or limited market for romantic partners are more likely to go online. During the coronavirus pandemic, more people actively moved all of their messaging online due to shelter-in-place orders. Regardless of the circumstances, online platforms make finding partners easier when schedules, distance, or other barriers intrude.

In many other parts of the world, economic considerations often take precedent over love relationships, and arranged marriages may be engineered by parents or religious authorities. An arranged marriage is a marriage in which others (often the parents) choose a person’s marital partner. A hybrid marriage is a marriage in which the son or daughter may identify the prospective spouse, but the marriage is contingent on the parents approving that choice.

Within the United States, social class, race, and ethnicity create variations in family life. Social class differences can result in very different constructions of social life. Upper-class families tend to focus on lineage and extended family, while lower-class families often have only one parent at home and are preoccupied with paying the bills. The subordinate status of racial and ethnic minorities also profoundly affects family life in the United States. The African American family suffers from many negative and inaccurate stereotypes. African Americans and Native Americans both draw on family ties to cushion many of the hardships they face. Mexican Americans have traditionally placed proximity to their extended families above other needs and desires. Mexican American men have been described as exhibiting a sense of virility, personal worth, and pride in their maleness that is called machismo. Mexican Americans are also described as being more familistic than many other subcultures. The term familism ( or familismo ) refers to pride in the extended family, expressed through the maintenance of close ties and strong obligations to kinfolk outside the immediate family.

Caring for children is a universal function of the family, yet the ways in which this care is assigned to

family members vary significantly. Parenthood is one of the most important social roles in the United

States. In some homes, a full nest includes grandchildren. About 9% of white children, 17%

of Black children, and 14% of Hispanic children live with at least one grandparent. In

about a third of these homes, no parent is present to assume responsibility for the youngsters. Negative

workplace attitudes about having a family can make it difficult to find care for children when both

parents need to work full time or need a more flexible schedule than a traditional one. But even when

family leave plans exist, companies seem to stigmatize the use of these policies beyond the very

limited assistance given to new mothers, especially in the United States. Feminist scholars contend that

this results from a flexibility stigma. Flexibility stigma refers to the devaluation of workers who seek

or who are presumed to need flexible work arrangements.

Adoption is the transfer of the legal rights, responsibilities, and privileges of parenthood to a new legal parent or parents. Functionalists suggest that governments should have a strong interest in promoting adoption. Adopting a child is an enormous adjustment for new parents, especially when the child comes from another culture

The expectation that a family consists of a wage-earning husband with a wife who stays at home has largely given way to the dual-income household. The rise of the dual-income model is partly contingent on economic need, the increasing desire on the part of both men and women to pursue careers, and the increasing acceptance of egalitarian marriage. The diminishing of the “unwed mother” stigma has contributed to more single-parent families. In 2016, a single parent headed about 20% of white families with children under 18, 30% of Hispanic families with children, and 59% of African American families with children. Although 84% of single parents in the United States are mothers, the number of households headed by single fathers more than quadrupled from 1980 to 2013. Rising rates of divorce and remarriage have led to a noticeable increase in stepfamily relationships. The nature of these blended families has social significance for both adults and children. Stepparents can play valuable and unique roles in stepchildren’s lives, but they do not guarantee an improvement.

In the United States, families commit both to marriage and to self-expression and personal growth. The tension between these commitments can undermine a marriage. Divorce statistics, however, are difficult to interpret. In many countries, divorce began to increase in the late 1960s, but since the late 1980s, it has declined. Importantly, social acceptance of divorce has been growing worldwide. In the United States, this can be attributed to several factors: more liberal divorce laws, families having fewer children, increased family incomes, and greater opportunities for women. The impact of divorce on children appears mixed, but postdivorce custodial arrangements and court-ordered child support payments are issues that create many new challenges.

The lifestyles of lesbians and gay men are varied. Some live alone or with roommates, others in long-term monogamous relationships. Same-sex marriage has been legalized in several U.S. states, and in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Constitution guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, nationwide. With marriage legalized, same-sex divorce has also emerged, complicated by issues of jurisdiction for couples who married before the 2015 Supreme Court decision. Other significant barriers remain for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people, but progress continues to be made.

One of the most dramatic trends in recent years has been the tremendous increase in male–female couples who choose to live together without marrying. The practice of cohabitation is increasing. About half of all currently married couples in the United States lived together before marriage, and the number of households headed by unmarried opposite-sex couples, many with children, has been rising steadily. Cohabitation is very common in Europe, where government policies often make few legal distinctions between married and unmarried couples or households. Although more and more people are postponing entry into marriage, fewer than 4% of women and men in the United States are likely to remain single throughout their lives. There has, however, been a modest increase in childlessness in the United States. About 16%–17% of women will now complete their childbearing years without having borne any children, compared to 10% in 1980. Increasingly, this is a choice, as more and more people regard themselves as child-free rather than childless.

LECTURE OUTLINE

Introduction

• Excerpt from The Accordion Family: Boomerang Kids, Anxious Parents, and the Private Toll of Global Competition by Katherine S. Newman.

• A family is defined as a set of people related by blood, marriage, adoption, or some other agreed-upon relationship who share the primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for any dependent members.

I. Global View of the Family

A. Composition: What Is the Family?

• The nuclear family consists of a married couple and their unmarried children living together. The number of nuclear families has steadily decreased over the past 50 years. By 2016, only 29% of U.S. households fit this model.

• An extended family is a family in which relatives—such as grandparents, aunts, uncles—live in the same home as parents and their children.

• Extended families provide greater emotional and financial support.

• Monogamy is a form of marriage in which an individual only has one partner.

• Serial monogamy refers to a person who may have several spouses in their lifetime, but only one at a time.

• There are two types of polygamy. Polygyny refers to the marriage of a man to more than one woman at the same time; polyandry refers to a woman with more than one husband at the same time. Around the world, polygyny is much more common than polyandry.

B. Kinship Patterns: To Whom Are We Related?

• The state of being related to others is called kinship.

• Kinship is culturally learned and follows a system of descent.

• In bilateral descent, both sides of a person’s family are regarded as equal.

• In patrilineal descent, only the father’s relatives are important in terms of property, inheritance, and emotional ties.

• In matrilineal descent, only the mother’s relatives are significant.

C. Authority Patterns: Who Rules?

• In a patriarchal family, males are expected to dominate all family decision making.

• In patriarchal families (and societies), men may find divorce easier than women, particularly in terms of economic outcomes.

• Women have greater authority than men in matriarchies, which are very rare.

• In an egalitarian family, authority is shared between spouses. Egalitarian families are becoming more common in the United States.

II. Sociological Perspectives on the Family

• Friedrich Engels (1884) described family as the ultimate source of social inequality.

A. Functionalist Perspective

• Families gratify the needs of members and contribute to the stability of society.

• William F. Ogburn outlined six paramount functions of family: (1) reproduction, (2) protection, (3) socialization, (4) regulation of sexual behavior, (5) affection and companionship, and (6) providing social status.

• Some functions have been shifted to outside groups. Example: education and recreation

B. Conflict Perspective

• Family is a reflection of inequality in wealth and power, perpetuated by male dominance.

• Family is viewed as an economic unit that contributes to social injustice.

• Children inherit the class status of their parents.

C. Interactionist Perspective

• Interactionists’ microlevel analysis focuses on how individuals interact within the family and other intimate relationships.

• Example: father/children interaction as it relates to behavioral problems; studies related to behavior of stepfamilies

D. Feminist Perspective

• Research on gender roles in childcare and household chores has been extensive. Example: Arlie Hochschild

• Feminist theorists have urged others to rethink the notion that families with no adult male are automatically the cause for concern.

• Other areas of research include that of single women, single-parent households, and lesbian couples. Feminists who take the interactionist perspective stress the need to investigate neglected topics in family studies, such as dual-income households in which the woman earns more than her husband.

III. Marriage and Family

• Over 95% of all men and women in the United States will marry at least once.

A. Courtship and Mate Selection

• Internet romance via matchmaking services has taken on a much larger role in mate selection in recent years.

• Traditional courtship rituals are still dominant in places like Uzbekistan, where a female will be socialized to anticipate marriage to a man she only meets once.

• The process is taking longer than in the past; many people are delaying their entrance into marriage, and cohabitation is increasingly likely.

1. Aspects of Mate Selection

• Endogamy specifies that people are expected to marry within their own racial, ethnic, or religious group. It is intended to reinforce group cohesiveness.

• Exogamy requires mate selection outside certain groups—usually one’s own family or certain kinfolk.

• Incest taboos prohibit sexual relationships between culturally specified relatives. In the United States, this means we must marry outside the nuclear family.

• Although it has increased in the United States, interracial and interethnic marriages are still the exception.

• Homogamy is the conscious or unconscious tendency to choose a mate with similar personalities and cultural interests. Example: Some observe the “like marries like” rule; however, others observe the rule that “opposites attract.” Mate selection is unpredictable.

2. The Love Relationship

• In the United States, love is important in courtship as a rationale for marriage.

• Love is not universal for marriage in all cultures.

• Arranged marriages are the basis for mate selection in many cultures and in some subcultures within the United States.

B. Variations in Family Life and Intimate Relationships

1. Social Class Differences

• Upper-class families emphasize lineage of family position.

• Lower-class families struggle to pay bills and survive.

• Middle-class families are more permissive than lower-class families, which have tended to be more authoritative; however, these differences have recently narrowed.

• Among the college-educated, both spouses tend to delay marriage, and divorce rates are relatively low among college-educated people when compared to noncollege-educated couples.

• Women play a significant economic role in poor families. Example: In 2016, 27% of all families headed by women with no husband present were below the poverty line. The poverty rate for married couples was only 5%.

2. Racial and Ethnic Differences

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