Marriages and Families: Changes, Choices, and Constraints Seventh Edition

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Marriages and FamiliesChanges, Choices, and
ConstraintsSeventh Edition Nijole V.
Benokraitis Chapter One The Changing Family
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What Is a Family?

• Families are more fluid than they were in the
  past.
• Many changes in the family reflect adaptations to
  larger societal transformations.
• As a country, we continue to cling to a number of
  myths about the families of past generations.

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What Is a Family?

• The meaning of family changes over time and
  contexts and cultures.
• There is no standard universal definition of a
  family it exists in many forms and arrangements
  are often complex.

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What Is a Family?

• For the purposes of this class, a family is an
  intimate group of two or more people who
• Live together in a committed relationship.
• Care for one another and any children.
• Share activities and close emotional ties.

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What Happensin the Future?

• Definitions of the family may become even more
  complex in the future. For some, family includes
  fictive kin who are accepted as part of the
  family group but have no blood ties.
• Because of the recent rise in single parenthood,
  fictive kin have become more important in our
  overall view of the family.

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Family Functions

• No matter the culture, family provides certain
  functions for society and for its own members.
• Family forms vary across cultures and even within
  cultures.
• Globally, family provides five very basic and
  important functions.

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Five Functions of the Family

• 1. Regulation of sexual activity
• 2. Procreation and socialization
• 3. Economic security
• 4. Emotional support
• 5. Social class placement

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Regulation of Sexual Activity

• The family provides norms for sexual activity
  including the incest taboo.
• The incest taboo forbids people who are too
  closely related by blood from having sexual
  activity and producing childrenchildren from
  these unions can have an increased risk of birth
  defects.
• Families also prevent doubts about the legitimacy
  of children and property rights in some cultures.

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Procreation and Socialization

• Procreation is an essential function of the
  family because it ensures that society will
  continue.
• Through socialization, children learn the rules
  and customs of their culture and the first place
  they are socialized is in the family.

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Economic Security

• The family is an important economic unit that
  provides financial security and stability.
• Families provide for their own physical survival.
• There are several family forms where one or both
  parents work outside the home, but more and more
  in our society it is becoming imperative that
  both parents work at full-time jobs to support
  their family.

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Emotional Support

• Emotional support is probably one of the most
  important aspects of family. Charles Horton
  Cooley proposed the concept of primary groups and
  said that family is the main primary group in
  every society.
• Our families are our emotional steadfast and
  enduring anchor throughout our lives.

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Social Class Placement

• A social class is a category of people who have a
  similar standing or rank in society.
• We are all born into a specific social class
  based on things like our parents income,
  education, job, attitudes, and values.
• Social class affects many aspects of family life.

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What Is Marriage?

• Marriage is a socially approved mating
  relationship that people expect to be stable and
  enduring. Some form of marriage is practiced in
  every society, although there are many forms.

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What Is Marriage?

• Ceremonial marriage is one in which the couple
  follows procedures specified by the state or
  other jurisdiction. It is like a legal contract.

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What Is Marriage?

• Common-law marriages are ones in which people
  establish a relationship and consider themselves
  husband and wife, however, they have never
  performed a ceremony to solidify their
  commitment.
• Generally there are three requirements for
  common-law marriages
• They must live together.
• They must present themselves as husband and wife.
• They can have no future plans to marrythey
  consider themselves married already.

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Endogamy and Exogamy

• Endogamy requires people to marry or have sexual
  relations within a certain group. These might
  include racial or ethnic groups or clans or
  tribes.
• Exogamy permits marriage outside of ones own
  group. For example in the United States, 24
  states prohibit marriage between first cousins.
• Even when there are no laws regarding who we
  can marry, societal norms and traditions often
  guide who we marry.

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Nuclear and Extended Families

• Western societies tend to have nuclear families
  that are made up of married parents and their
  biological or adopted children.
• In much of the rest of the world, however,
  extended families are much more common, where
  parents and children and other kin such as aunts,
  uncles, and cousins all live under the same roof.

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Nuclear and Extended Families

• Extended families, however, are becoming more
  common in industrialized countries as
  single-parent families become more common and
  need more support.
• Because the rates of unmarried people who are
  living together are high, nuclear families
  comprise only 23 of all U.S. families, down from
  40 in 1970.

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Where Do Families Live?

• In a patrilocal residential pattern, the newly
  married couple lives with the husbands family.
• In a matrilocal residential pattern, the couple
  lives with the wifes family.
• In a neolocal residential pattern, the couple
  sets up its own household.
• Often residential patterns reflect who has
  authority in the family.

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Monogamy and Polygamy

• In monogamy, one person is married exclusively to
  one other person.
• In the United States, because divorce and
  remarriage rates are high, serial monogamy is
  practiced. We are married to only one person at
  a time, but in at least half of marriages, we are
  married to more than one person over our
  lifetime.

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Monogamy and Polygamy
Polygamy is when a man or a woman has two or more
spouses. Over 1,000 cultures worldwide allow
some form of polygamy. Polygyny Polyandry
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The Family and Society

• Families are largely influenced by the society
  they live in and the societal changes going on
  around them.
• Because much of the worlds population lives in
  developing countries, many of the worlds
  children live in extended families.
• By contrast, in the U.S. (by 2007) one in four
  children lives in a mother-only home.

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The Family and Society

• Many people are concerned about the demise of the
  nuclear family. However, many social scientists
  contend that seeing the nuclear family as the
  only natural kind of family ignores other types
  of families, such as gay and lesbian families.

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Diversity of Family Life

• Clearly, there are many family forms throughout
  the world and we cannot measure any one type
  against another type.
• We sometimes think of idealized families as
  what we would call nuclear families but these
  expectations are changing as well.

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Myths about Families

• Myths about families can be functional and
  dysfunctional. Myths are dysfunctional when they
  have negative consequences that disrupt a family.
• Myths can be perpetuated by the mass media and we
  can try to live up to these idealized standards
  of family behavior and function.

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Myths Abound

• There are several types of myths about families
  in our society
• Myths about what is naturalfor instance is it
  natural to grow up and get married and have a
  family?
• Myths about the self sufficient familymost
  families need some support at one time or another
  during their lifetime.

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Myths Abound

• Myths about the family as a loving refugeof
  course one of the main functions of families is
  to provide emotional support, but family also
  tends to be the most violent social system in our
  society.
• Myths about the perfect marriage or the perfect
  familyoften our expectations about marriage and
  the reality we face when we get married clash.

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Three Opposing Views

• The family is deteriorating
• This view of the family says that divorce,
  economic decline, and the decline of two-parent
  intact families have hurt the institution of
  family.

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Three Opposing Views
The family is changing This view looks at the
changes in family life as just that, changes.
Proponents of this view say that families are
indeed changing, but adapting, to a new economic
environment in which it is necessary for both
parents to work outside the home.
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Three Opposing Views
The family is stronger than ever This views the
family as much more loving than it was in the
past. Because people are living longer, more
generations are getting to know one another and
becoming stronger family units.
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Trends in Changing Families

• The family is changing due to demographic
  transformations. The racial and ethnic
  composition of families and economic
  transformations all play a role in these changes.

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Demographic Changes

• U.S. birthrates have declined in recent years.
• The average age of the population has risen from
  17 in the mid-1800s to 37 in 2007!
• Both of these phenomenon have changed society and
  the way families live.

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Other Changes

• Other changes that have impacted families in the
  last 50 years are
• Changes in family and non-family households (see
  following slide)
• Singles and cohabiting couples (see next slide)
• Marriage-Divorce-Remarriage (see next slide)
• Employed mothers (see next slide)
• One-parent families (see next slide)
• Older people (see next slide)

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Racial and Ethnic Diversity

• Ethnic families are booming. Americas
  multicultural umbrella includes about 150
  distinct ethnic or racial groups. By 2025, only
  58 of the population will be white.
• Because of huge waves of immigrations, one in
  five people are either foreign born or
  first-generation U.S. citizens.
• Ethnic families speak many languages, thus making
  the U.S. more multilingual.

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Why Are Families Changing?

• Micro-level influences on the family
• There are many influences on the family at the
  micro-level. Decisions family members make
  affect everyone in the family unit, however, we
  must not blame all change on personal choice.
  There are many macro-level influences over which
  the family or the individual has no control.

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Macro-Level Influences

• Economic Forces
• In the later part of the 20th century, many
  manufacturers moved their factories overseas to
  save money, thus unemployment rates went up,
  especially for low-skilled jobs.

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Macro-Level Influences

• Technological Innovations
• We live longer. Medical technology allows us to
  live full lives, however, poverty becomes an
  issue for many elderly.
• Other technological changes like email, the
  Internet, instant messaging, texting, and cell
  phones have helped and hurt our families and
  their ties to each other and to outside
  resources.

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Other Macro-Level Influences

• The mass media, including television and video
  games, have had a huge impact on our overall
  culture. Popular culture which includes
  television, the Internet, pop music, magazines,
  radio, advertising, sports, hobbies, fads,
  fashion, etc., is especially influential in
  informing and misinforming us about family and
  culture.

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Other Macro-Level Influences

• Social Movements
• Over the years, a number of social movements have
  changed family life, including the civil rights
  movement, the gay rights movement, and most
  recently a marriage movement.
• All of these social movements have had a huge
  impact on our families and our larger society.

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A Global Family Perspective

• Understanding other cultures is essential to
  understanding ourselves and our place in the
  world. It is important to know and to understand
  the plights of underdeveloped countries and how
  these affect our own country, and how our country
  and its policies affect other countries.
• Understanding other cultures gives us a less
  ethnocentric view of the world and challenges us
  to put ourselves in someone elses shoes.

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Families Are Transforming

• Whether we want to believe it or not, families
  are transforming, not destroying themselves.
• In the end, people create families that met their
  needs for love and security.
• Now more than ever there are expanded choices
  about family and family forms!