Intimacy, Courtship, and the Case of Polygamy in Canada Flashcards
How much has the median age of marriage for men and women increased?
Men –> increased 6 years to 31.1 since 1970 to 2008
women –> increased 6.5 years to 29.1 years old from 1970 to 2008
What is Courtship-proper?
meeting someone with intent that you will marry and have children
What resulted in major change to courtship practices (i.e. rise of dating culture)?
increased private time and space –> from the invention of the automobile in 1920s, to the internet; youth are finding more areas to be private
How was courtship practices changed?
it has been delayed with it being less about kin (building a family, with connections and power) to being just romantic love
Which group of individuals display the most number of people participating in cybersex?
middle aged women and gay men
this was thought to be due to the anonomyousness that comes with doing sexual things online
How often does a hook up occur in an average college student?
only hook up once a semester and 2/3 of it involves non-sexual intercourse
What is the double standard that comes with Sexual scripts and courtship?
the double standard is that women who don’t have sex are seen as being prudish and women who have sex are seen as sluts; yet men are seen as ‘players’ if they have sex
also theres a binary for consent as well with women being ‘gate keepers’ (preventing sex from happening and trying to stay pure) and men being ‘gate crashers’ (doing everything they can to have sex)
what are 3 reasons why cohabitation rates are 20% higher in Quebec than Ontario and higher compared to other areas of Canada?
- The Quiet Revolution (60s and 70s) –> secularize Quebec and remove power from capital church and turn them into secular institutions which changed the way the church had power over people to get married
- Lack of protestantism –> Lacked the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ view, and lacked secondary mechanism to encourage marriage (via the church)
- Stronger presence of feminism –> women were demanding more access at home and workplace which eroded marriage institutions
What are three arguments made against the research done to show that children in married two parent families tend to have better “educational, social, cognitive, and behavioural outcomes”?
- differences between two parent families w/ biological children vs. other types of families like stepfamilies etc.. are modest
- there are a vast number of mitigating factors like SES, financial success, happiness (people who want to get married usually have financial success and are happier;)
- Lesbian couples have even better outcomes
What are 4 forms of polygamous (plural) relationships?
- polyamory –> one person; many intimate partners
- polygamy –> multiple married spouses
- Polyandry –> many husbands, one wife (rare)
- Polygyny –> the most common, one husband and many wives
How was polygamy brought about in Mormon churches?
The original Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890
but the The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is a sector that broke out of the Mormon Church just to practice polygamy in 1929 in Colorado Springs, AZ
Warren Jeffs (current leader) is in jail
More sects from FLDS broke out to practice polygamy including the sector ran by Winston Blackmore in Bountiful, BC
What was Stephen Kent’s seven reasons for upholding anti-polygamy laws?
- girls, young women, and pregnancy-related problems; lack of medical attention
- incest –> incest increases with family size
- Infant deaths, genetic defects and graveyards
- arranged marriages (often between underage females and old men)
- displaced young men - “lost boys”
- welfare fraud and dependence on the state (to support their wives and kids) very costly
- polygamy as a threat to the democratic state
