Lecture 20 Flashcards
How is the family defined?
Socially conditioned rules for thinking
about family relationships
What is the family?
Kinship Systems
How are relatives different in each culture?
The rights and responsibilities
associated with different types of
relatives differ from place to place
- How do we define which relative we are close to? Do I skip aunts wedding for 5th cousins?
Central issues in every culture (family)?
Who can we marry ? Whom we owe
respect ?
What Is the Family defined as?
Families are groups of people related by birth, affinity or cohabitation.
● Definitions of what constitutes a family have changed over time.
● Family household generally refers to a group of people who share a relationship by blood, marriage or legal adoption
living together.
What do Kinship
Matrilineal/Patrilineal Societies determine?
Several generations living in the same arrangment, are they from moms side or dads side
What is the Nuclear Family?
Monogamy
● All of the eggs in one basket
● Financial relations, intimacy, sexuality, child-rearing
● Very intense relations between two generations (parent - child)
How are family structures changing over time?
● Families in Canada are going through significant changes
● These changes reflect changing norms and expectations surrounding the family, marriage, and children.
What is Deinstitutionalization of Marriage?
rules and norms around marriage are changing, and people are more critical of marriage’s role in society
Explain the five main ways marriage is becoming deinstitutionalized?
- Fewer people are getting married, choosing instead to remain single or cohabitate
- role individuals in couples play in modern society are increasingly questioned.
● We no longer assume men are the breadwinners and women stay at home. - Norms surrounding children are changing.
● In the past having children in a marriage was the only acceptable route to parenting.
● Today, many people are single parents and many unmarried couples have children - Rise in divorce rates .
● Individuals are choosing to leave bad marriages if necessary (also less religious pressure) - Diversity in forms of marriage are rising.
● There has been a rise in marriage between couples of different ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds (+ gay marriage)
What is the trend with marriage?
More common law and lone parent families
What is the trend in divorce rates?
Spike after no fault divorce, gradual falling now
What is divorce?
divorce is a legal process that ends a marriage. Therefore, divorce statistics do not cover the separations of married couples nor the dissolutions of common-law couples.
● Most married couples separate before filing for divorce, and some separated couples may never legally divorce
What are the Two key societal changes have contributed to the general decrease in the divorce rate observed
over the last three decades?
- Aging of the married population
- Lowered tendency to divorce among younger married adults in particular.
Why are younger people less likely to divorce?
A growing selectivity of marriage.
- Since less ppl marry, those who do might come from groups that value long lasting marriage
What are changes in marriage associated with?
larger societal changes.
● The rise in women’s rights has greatly impacted marriage as it has led to rising rates of university enrolment, graduation
and participation in the labour market.
● These changes are, in turn, related to lower levels of marriage, later age at first child, and a higher divorce rates.
How does level of religiosity effect the family?
Religions are generally strong supporters of a traditional view of marriage and child-rearing.
● As religion’s influence in Canada declined, the country experienced higher rates of cohabitation without marriage, more children raised by unmarried parents, and a rise in divorce rates.
What does Murdock (1949) say about family?
Family = Universal Unit
What are the 4 functions of family?
- Economic-resources
● Male works in exchange to wages, females do domestic work - Regulation of sexual activities
● Healthy sexual relations within marriage - Education – primary socialization
● What are acceptable behaviours, languages, values, modelling gender behaviour - Reproduction – producing next generations of society
● Families “cement” heterosexuality as a norm that is vital for reproduction
According to Sex role theory, what is the role of the family?
men and women biologically suited to fill different functions and roles within the family and these are reinforced through gendered socialization
● Man - economic support and discipline in the householder.
● Women – expressive roles, nurturing and emphatic.
● Two central functions of families that cannot be filled by any other institutions (Primary socialization & Stabilization of adult personalities)
What is The warmth bath theory?
Emotional security – worries are expressed and addressed in home and at the public sphere you are 100% present and productive.
● Playing with children to express your own infantility
Men do work in public, and come home to relax with wife catering to u
What is the Conflict Approach to the family?
Families reinforce social inequality
● Parents shape opportunities available to their children
● Hierarchies within families
● Family dynamics have been a major source of gender inequality
● Most child abuse occurs within the family.
● Legally recognized marriages are granted special privileges
● Ex. Taxation, custody, surnames, heritage, adoption, fertility treatments
How do Parents shape opportunities available to their children? (Lareau)
Working and Middle class
- Middle-class parents
-Concerted cultivation
-Sense of entitlement in institutional Setting - Working class parents
- Accomplishment of natural growth- Mistrust and discomfort in institutional
settings
- Mistrust and discomfort in institutional
What does Kim TallBear say about colonization of the family?
Monogamy and family structure was needed for Indigenous people to get land
- State, Church, Science are central agents
● Forced marriage and monogamy
● Targeted non-binary people
● Native (similarly to black) women were targeted for hyper-sexuality and
promiscuity
Why does Kim TallBear say the Heterosexual couple is fetishised?
Hording love and sex (All in one relationship)
Heterosexual couple is not sustainable
● The idea of “Broken family”
Care as a base for family
What is the main theme of Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas (2011) Promises I can keep : why poor women put motherhood before marriage?
Poor women seen as “undeserving” of children
What is The Moynihan Report?
Civil liberty is not enough to improve the situation of the African Americans (their families are broken)
● Links racial inequality and poverty to African American family structure
● Absent fathers and women-headed households are leading for child poverty and many social problems
What is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act?
Ends federal welfare benefits for poor
people
● Sanctions federal funds for marriage
promotion
- Care for citizens should happen in the family (not by the state)
Why was marriage promoted as a way to reduce spending on welfare?
Idea: More ppl in good marriages = less spent on welfare (allow state cuts)
Marriage helps states to stabilize social reproduction
● Placing many activities into the private sphere
● Female spouse responsibility
Women who abuse pubic funds should marry the fathers of their
children
What is the general view on poor women with children?
poor women should not have children they cannot support;
And that poor ppl don’t wanna marry
Out-of-Wedlock birth seen as personal failure
What is the view of poor mothers on children?
● Marriage – luxury
● Children - a necessity, the chief source of identity and meaning
(FEMINIST APPROACHES)
What is Liberal Feminism?
Importance of policies – female paid employment
Second-wave based
Importance on reform courts, work, gov’t)
Family = Positive (just need to be legally secured)
(FEMINIST APPROACHES)
What is Marxist Feminist Critique?
How does capitalism shape the family unit
● Exploitative relations of capitalism -> Men are exploited for resources outside home
● ‘Unpaid Housework’ -> Reproducing next gen of workers
(FEMINIST APPROACHES)
What are Radical Feminist approach?
Society is patriarchal: all social institutions are systematically structured to maintain male power over women.
Traditional family is essentially patriarchal and a key institution in female subordination
Male dominance in decision making
Public-Private Divide: Physical violence against women is hidden and sanctioned in the private sphere of home
Family: Abusive (physical, psychological, and sexual)
According to the Marxist Feminist Critique, how are women part of the reserved army of labour?
Women work when economy booms and return to home when economy contracts or when men are unavailable like in times of war
Theoretical perspectives on the institution of the family
Individualization Thesis
Anthony Giddens
changing patterns in family life :decline in marriage, rise in cohabitation, divorce, rise of re-constituted families
- Focus on “the one”
- In order to “be complete” you need more then just a functional family
What is Risk Society? (on families)
Risk translates into our views about relationships
● Emotional risks lead to alternative approaches to life-long nuclear family
Marriage depends on emotional needs and not breadwinning or domestic care
