Chapter 12

1. Chapter 12 Sex, Marriage, and Family

2. Chapter Outline • Control of Sexual Relations • Forms of Marriage • Choice of Spouse • Marriage and Economic Exchange • Divorce • Family and Household • Residence Patterns • Marriage, Family, and Household in Our Globalized and Technologized World

3. Marriage • A culturally sanctioned union between two or more people that establishes certain rights and obligations between the people, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws. • Such marriage rights and obligations often include, but are not limited to, sex, labor, property, child rearing, exchange, and status.

4. Incest Taboo • Like marriage, the incest taboo is found in all cultures. • The incest taboo is the absolute forbiddance of sexual contact between certain close relatives. • The scope and details of the taboo vary across cultures and time, but almost all societies past and present strongly forbid sexual relations between parents and children and between siblings.

5. Explanations for the Incest Taboo • Ensures that children and parents, who are constantly in close contact, do not regard one another as sexual objects. • Preserves the stability of the family, which is essential to social order. • Sexual relations between members other than the husband and wife would introduce competition and destroy family harmony.

6. Endogamy and Exogamy • Endogamy is marrying within a group of individuals. • Exogamy is marrying outside a group. • If the group is limited to the immediate family, almost all societies can be said to prohibit endogamy and practice exogamy. • Societies that practice exogamy at one level may practice endogamy at another.

7. Marriage and Mating • All animals, including humans, mate—some for life and some not, some with a single individual and some with several. • Mates are secured through individual effort, as opposed to marriage, which is a culturally recognized right. • Only marriage is backed by social, political, and ideological factors that regulate sexual relations, reproductive rights, and obligations.

8. Monogamy • The taking of a single spouse. • This is the most common form of marriage, primarily for economic reasons. • Serial monogamy, in which a man or woman marries a series of partners, has become common among Europeans and North Americans.

9. Polygamy • When one individual has multiple spouses. • Two forms: • polyandry – marriage of a woman to two or more men at the same time; a form of polygamy. • polygyny – marriage of a man to two or more women at the same time; a form of polygamy.

10. Polygyny in the United States INSERT PHOTO P. 233

11. Group Marriage • Group marriage in which several men and women have sexual access to one another, occurs rarely. • Among Eskimos in northern Alaska, sexual relations between unrelated individuals implied ties of mutual aid and support. • To create or strengthen ties, a man could lend his wife to another man for temporary sexual relationships.

12. Cousin Marriage • While cousin marriage is prohibited in some societies, certain cousins are the preferred marriage partners in others. • A parallel cousin is the child of a father’s brother or a mother’s sister. • A cross cousin is the child of a mother’s brother or a father’s sister.

13. Kinship Diagram INSERT FIGURE 12.1 P. 237

14. Same-Sex Marriage • Same-sex marriages exist in some societies. • Woman–woman marriages, as practiced in some African cultures, provide a socially approved way to deal with problems for which heterosexual marriages offer no satisfactory solution. • In recent years, Belgium, Canada, Spain, and the Netherlands have legalized same-sex marriage.

15. Three Common Arguments Against Same Sex Unions • “Marriage has always been between males and females.” • Yet same-sex marriages have been documented in a number of societies. • “They legitimize gays and lesbians, whose sexual orientations have been widely regarded as unnatural.” • Neither cross-cultural studies nor studies of other animal species suggest that homosexual behavior is unnatural. • “The function of marriage is to produce children.” • But marriage involves economic, political, and legal considerations.

16. Marriage and Economic Exchange • In many human societies, marriages are formalized by an economic exchange. • Bride-price (also called bridewealth) is the payment of money or other valuables from the groom’s to the bride’s kin. • Bride service occurs when the groom is expected to work for a period for the bride’s family. • A dowry is the payment of a woman’s inheritance at the time of marriage to her or her husband.

17. Divorce • Divorce rates have become so high in Western industrial and postindustrial societies that many worry about the future of traditional and familiar forms of marriage and the family. • Though divorce was next to impossible in Western societies between 1000 and 1800, few marriages lasted more than 10 or 20 years due to high mortality rates.

18. Family and Household • Dependence on group living for survival is a basic human characteristic, and gender plays at least some role in the division of labor. • The presence of adults of both sexes in a residential group provides children with models from whom they can learn the gender-appropriate roles defined in that society.

19. Family • A family is defined as two or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. • The family may take many forms, ranging from a single parent with one or more children, to a married couple or polygamous spouses with offspring, to several generations of parents and their children. • A conjugal family is a family established through marriage. • A consanguineal family is a family of “blood relations,” consisting of related women, their brothers, and the women’s offspring.

20. Household • A family is distinct from a household, which is the basic residential unit where economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are carried out. • In the vast majority of human societies, most households are made up of families or parts of families, but there are many other household arrangements.

21. The Nuclear Family • The smallest domestic unit. • Consists of one or two parents and dependent offspring, which may include a stepparent, stepsiblings, and adopted children. • The extended family consists of several closely related nuclear families living and often working together in a single household.

22. The Extended Family • Two or more closely related nuclear families clustered together into a large domestic group. • This is traditionally found in horticultural, agricultural, and pastoral societies. • Because members of the younger generation bring their husbands or wives to live in the family, extended families have continuity through time.

23. Nontraditional Families and Non- Family Households • In the U.S., 1/3 of all households consist of nontraditional families: • Cohabitation households are comprised of unmarried couples. • Cohabitation break-up often leads to the creation of single-parent households.

24. Residence Patterns • Three common residence patterns are: • Patrilocal – in which a married couple lives in the husband’s father’s family. • Matrilocal – in which a married couple lives living in the wife’s mother’s family. • Neolocal – living in a locality apart from the husband’s or wife’s relations.

25. Cultural Changes to Marriage, Family, and Households • New forms of family are emerging today because of new social arrangements and new technologies: • Blended families consist of a married couple raising children from previous unions. • New reproductive technologies (NRTs), such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, have led to children having relationships with both biological and adoptive parents.