Exploring the Family Ecology Perspective

1. Chapter 3, Exploring the Family Key Terms

2. Family Ecology PerspectiveExplores how a family influences and is influenced by the environments that surround it. • natural physical-biological environmentThe unaltered natural world: climate, soil, plants, animals, etc.

3. human-built environmentThe environment that develops when nature is altered by human action. • social-cultural environmentEntirely a human creation, consists of cultural values, cultural products like language and law, and social and economic systems.

4. family policyAll the procedures, regulations, attitudes, and goals of government that affect families. • Family Development PerspectiveEmphasizes the family itself as its unit of analysis, based on the idea that the family changes in predictable ways over time.

5. Structure-Functional PerspectiveSees the family as a social institution that performs certain essential functions for society. • social institutionsPatterned and predictable ways of thinking and behaving-beliefs, values, attitudes, and norms.

6. monogamySexually exclusive union of one woman and one man. • polygamyNon exclusive union with multiple partners.

7. polygynyOne man with multiple wives. • polyandryMultiple husbands for one wife.

8. vertically extended familyFamily members from three or more generations. • horizontally extended familyFamily members from the same generation or other related lines such as uncles, brothers, sisters, and aunts.

9. cross-cultural researchersResearchers who compare cultures around the world. • individualistic societiesSocieties where the main concern is with one’s own interests and those of one’s immediate family.

10. collectivist societySociety where people identify with and conform to the expectations of their relatives or clan. • interactionist perspectiveLooks within families at internal family dynamics.

11. self-conceptThe basic feelings people have about themselves, their abilities, and their worth. • identityA sense of inner sameness developed by individuals throughout their lives.

12. Exchange TheoryFocuses on how individual’s various personal resources affect their formation of and continuation of relationships and their relative positions in families and groups. • Family Systems TheoryThe family is a whole that is more than the sum of the parts.

13. feminist perspectiveCentral focus is on gender issues and how male dominance in family and society is oppressive to women. • conflict perspectiveCalls attention to unequal power within groups or larger societies.

14. biosocial perspectiveArgues that human’s evolutionary biology affects much of human behavior and many family-related behaviors. • inclusive fitnessSurvival of one’s genes.

15. agreement realityWhat members of a society agree to be true. • heterosexismThe tendency to see heterosexual or straight families as the standards.

16. cultural equivalent approachEmphasizes the features that minority families have in common with mainstream white families. • cultural deviant approachViews the qualities that distinguish minority families from mainstream families as negative or pathological.

17. cultural variant approachCalls for making culturally and contextually relevant interpretations of minority family lives. • kin scripts frameworkIncludes three culturally relevant family concepts: kin-work, kin-time, and kin-scription.

18. naturalistic observationResearcher lives with a family or social group and spends extensive time carefully recording their activities, conversations, gestures and other aspects of everyday life. • case studiesCompilations by psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage counselors, and social workers who counsel people with marital and family problems.

19. longitudinal studiesStudies that provide long-term information about individuals or groups, as research conducts follow up investigations for several years after the study.