True/ False: the Nuclear-family System Is Sometimes Called Affinal Kinship.

Family and Union: A Cultural Construct and a Social Invention

More than 1 hundred years of cross-cultural research has revealed the varied forms humans accept invented for "partnering"—living in households, raising children, establishing long-term relationships, transmitting valuables to offspring, and other social behaviors associated with "family unit." In one case once more, the universality and evolutionary origins of the U.South. form of the homo family unit is more fiction than fact, a projection of our cultural model of family and gender roles onto the past and onto the unabridged human species.

Families exist in all societies and they are part of what makes us man. Yet, societies around the world demonstrate tremendous variation in cultural understandings of family and wedlock. Ideas about how people are related to each other, what kind of marriage would be ideal, when people should take children, who should care for children, and many other family related matters differ cross-culturally. While the function of families is to fulfill basic human needs such every bit providing for children, defining parental roles, regulating sexuality, and passing property and knowledge between generations, in that location are many variations or patterns of family life that can meet these needs. This chapter introduces some of the more common patterns of family life found effectually the world.

RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITIES, STATUSES, AND ROLES IN FAMILIES

Some of the primeval research in cultural anthropology explored differences in ideas virtually family. Lewis Henry Morgan, a lawyer who also conducted early anthropological studies of Native American cultures, documented the words used to describe family members in the Iroquois language.^[1] In the volume Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Man Family (1871), he explained that words used to depict family members, such as "mother" or "cousin," were important because they indicated the rights and responsibilities associated with particular family members both within households and the larger customs. This can exist seen in the labels we have for family members—titles like father or aunt—that describe how a person fits into a family likewise as the obligations he or she has to others.

The concepts of status and role are useful for thinking about the behaviors that are expected of individuals who occupy various positions in the family. The terms were first used by anthropologist Ralph Linton and they have since been widely incorporated into social scientific discipline terminology.^[2] For anthropologists, a status is whatever culturally-designated position a person occupies in a particular setting. Within the setting of a family, many statuses can be such as "male parent," "mother," "maternal grandparent," and "younger brother." Of course, cultures may ascertain the statuses involved in a family differently. Role is the set of behaviors expected of an private who occupies a detail status. A person who has the status of "mother," for example, would by and large have the role of caring for her children.

Roles, similar statuses, are cultural ideals or expectations and there will be variation in how individuals meet these expectations. Statuses and roles besides change within cultures over time. In the not-so-afar past in the United States, the roles associated with the status of "mother" in a typical Euro-American eye-income family included caring for children and keeping a firm; they probably did not include working for wages exterior the home. It was rare for fathers to engage in regular, day-to-twenty-four hour period housekeeping or childcare roles, though they sometimes "helped out," to use the jargon of the time. Today, it is much more than common for a father to be an equal partner in caring for children or a house or to sometimes take a principal function in child and firm care as a "stay at home begetter" or as a "unmarried father." The concepts of status and role help u.s.a. think almost cultural ideals and what the majority within a cultural group tends to practise. They likewise help us describe and document civilisation change. With respect to family and marriage, these concepts help united states of america compare family systems across cultures.

KINSHIP AND DESCENT

Kinship is the word used to describe culturally recognized ties between members of a family unit. Kinship includes the terms, or social statuses, used to define family members and the roles or expected behaviors family associated with these statuses. Kinship encompasses relationships formed through blood connections (consanguineal), such every bit those created betwixt parents and children, also every bit relationships created through matrimony ties (affinal), such as in-laws (see Effigy 1). Kinship tin can also include "called kin," who have no formal blood or marriage ties, but consider themselves to be family. Adoptive parents, for instance, are culturally recognized as parents to the children they raise even though they are not related by claret.

Figure one: These immature Maasai women from Western Tanzania are affinal kin, who share responsibilities for childcare. Maasai men often take multiple wives who share domestic responsibilities. Photo used with permission of Laura Tubelle de González.

While at that place is quite a bit of variation in families cross-culturally, information technology is as well true that many families can be categorized into broad types based on what anthropologists call a kinship arrangement. The kinship system refers to the pattern of culturally recognized relationships betwixt family members. Some cultures create kinship through only a single parental line or "side" of the family. For instance, families in many parts of the world are defined by patrilineal descent: the paternal line of the family unit, or fathers and their children. In other societies, matrilineal descent defines membership in the kinship grouping through the maternal line of relationships between mothers and their children. Both kinds of kinship are considered unilineal because they involve descent through only i line or side of the family. It is important to keep in listen that systems of descent define culturally recognized "kin," merely these rules do not restrict relationships or emotional bonds between people. Mothers in patrilineal societies have close and loving relationships with their children fifty-fifty though they are not members of the same patrilineage.^[3] In the Usa, for instance, last names traditionally follow a blueprint of patrilineal descent: children receive last names from their fathers. This does not mean that the bonds between mothers and children are reduced. Bilateral descent is some other way of creating kinship. Bilateral descent ways that families are divers by descent from both the father and the mother'south sides of the family. In bilateral descent, which is common in the U.s.a., children recognize both their mother's and begetter's family members every bit relatives.

The descent groups that are created by these kinship systems provide members with a sense of identity and social support. Kinship groups may also control economic resources and dictate decisions nearly where people can live, who they can ally, and what happens to their holding after death.

The two kinship diagrams beneath show how the descent group changes in unilineal kinship systems like a patrilineal system (father'southward line) or a matrilineal system (female parent's line). The roles of the family members in relationship to i another are likewise likely to be different considering descent is based on lineage : descent from a common ancestor. In a patrilineal system, children are always members of their father's lineage group (Figure 1). In a matrilineal organisation, children are e'er members of their female parent's lineage grouping (Effigy two). In both cases, individuals remain a part of their nascency lineage throughout their lives, even after marriage. Typically, people must marry someone exterior their ain lineage. In figures 1 and two, the shaded symbols represent people who are in the aforementioned lineage. The unshaded symbols represent people who accept married into the lineage.

In general, bilateral kinship is more than focused on individuals rather than a unmarried lineage of ancestors as seen in unlineal descent. Each person in a bilateral system has a slightly different group of relatives. For example, my brother'southward relatives through marriage (his in-laws) are included in his kinship grouping, just are not included in mine. His wife's siblings and children are also included in his group, but not in mine. If nosotros were in a patrilineal or matrilineal arrangement, my brother and I would largely share the same group of relatives.

Figure 2: This kinship chart shows a patrilineal household with Ego in the father's lineage.

Matrilineages and patrilineages are non just mirror images of each other. They create groups that carry somewhat differently. Reverse to some popular ideas, matrilineages are not matriarchal . The terms "matriarchy" and "patriarchy" refer to the power construction in a society. In a patriarchal guild, men have more than potency and the ability to make more than decisions than do women. A male parent may have the correct to brand certain decisions for his wife or wives, and for his children, or any other dependents. In matrilineal societies, men ordinarily still have greater power, but women may be discipline more to the power of their brothers or uncles (relatives through their mother'south side of the family) rather than their fathers.

Among the matrilineal Hopi, for example, a mothers' blood brother is more probable to be a figure of authority than a male parent. The mother's brothers have of import roles in the lives of their sisters' children. These roles include ceremonial obligations and the responsibility to teach the skills that are associated with men and men'south activities. Men are the keepers of important ritual cognition so while women are respected, men are still likely to hold more authorization.

Figure 3: The kinship chart shows a matrilineal household with Ego in mother's lineage.

Some anthropologists have suggested that marriages are less stable in matrilineal societies than in patrilineal ones, but this varies also. Amidst the matrilineal Iroquois, for example, women endemic the longhouses. Men moved into their wives' family houses at marriage. If a woman wanted to divorce her husband, she could simply put his property exterior. In that society, however, men and women also spent significant fourth dimension apart. Men were hunters and warriors, often away from the home. Women were the farmers and tended to the home. This, as much as matrilineality, could take contributed to less formality or disapproval of divorce. There was no concern most the partitioning of holding. The longhouse belonged to the mother'southward family, and children belonged to their female parent's association. Men would ever accept a home with their sisters and mother, in their own matrilineal longhouse.^[four]

Kinship charts can be useful when doing field research and peculiarly helpful when documenting changes in families over time. Charts make it piece of cake to document changes that occurred in a relatively short time, sometimes linked to urbanization, such as changes in family size, in prevalence of divorce, and in increased numbers of single adults. These patterns had emerged in the surveys and interviews I conducted, but they jumped off the pages when I reviewed the kinship charts. Creating kinship charts was a very helpful technique in my field inquiry. I also used them as small gifts for the people who helped with my research and they were very much appreciated.

TYPES OF MARRIAGES AND FAMILIES

In a bones biological sense, women give nascency and the minimal family unit in virtually, though not all societies, is female parent and child. Cultures elaborate that basic human relationship and build on it to create units that are culturally considered cardinal to social life. Families grow through the nascency or adoption of children and through new developed relationships often recognized as marriage. In our own social club, it is only culturally acceptable to be married to one spouse at a time though we may practise what is sometimes chosen serial monogamy , or, marriage to a succession of spouses one subsequently the other. This is reinforced by religious systems, and more chiefly in U.Due south. society, by law. Plural marriages are non immune; they are illegal although they do exist because they are encouraged nether some religions or ideologies. In the U.s., couples are legally allowed to divorce and remarry, only not all religions cultural groups support this exercise.

When anthropologists talk of family structures, we distinguish among several standard family types any of which can be the typical or preferred family unit of measurement in a civilisation. Offset is the nuclear family unit : parents who are in a culturally-recognized relationship, such as marriage, along with their pocket-size or dependent children. This family type is also known as a bridal family unit. A not-conjugal nuclear family might exist a single parent with dependent children, because of the death of 1 spouse or divorce or because a spousal relationship never occurred. Adjacent is the extended family : a family unit of at least three-generations sharing a household. A stem family is a version of an extended family that includes an older couple and one of their adult children with a spouse (or spouses) and children. In situations where ane child in a family is designated to inherit, it is more than probable that only the inheriting kid volition remain with the parents when he or she becomes an adult and marries. While this is often an oldest male, it is sometimes a different child. In Burma or Myanmar for case, the youngest daughter was considered the ideal caretaker of elderly parents, and was generally designated to inherit.^[five] The other children will "marry out" or detect other means to support themselves.

A articulation family is a very large extended family that includes multiple generations. Adult children of i gender, oftentimes the males, remain in the household with their spouses and children and they take collective rights to family property. Unmarried adult children of both genders may likewise remain in the family unit group. For instance, a household could include a ready of grandparents, all of their adult sons with their wives and children, and unmarried adult daughters. A joint family in rare cases could have dozens of people, such as the traditional zadruga of Republic of croatia, discussed in greater detail below.

Polygamous families are based on plural marriages in which there are multiple wives or, in rarer cases, multiple husbands. These families may live in nuclear or extended family households and they may or may non be close to each other spatially (run across discussion of households below). The terms step family or blended family are used to depict families that develop when adults who accept been widowed or divorced marry again and bring children from previous partnerships together. These families are common in many countries with high divorce rates. A wonderful fictional example was The Brady Bunch of 1970s goggle box.

Who Can You Marry?

Cultural expectations ascertain appropriate potential marriage partners. Cultural rules emphasizing the demand to marry within a cultural grouping are known every bit endogamy . People are sometimes expected to ally inside religious communities, to marry someone who is ethnically or racially similar or who comes from a similar economic or educational groundwork. These are endogamous marriages: marriages inside a grouping. Cultural expectations for marriage outside a particular group are called exogamy . Many cultures require that individuals ally only outside their own kinship groups, for case. In the United States laws preclude marriage between close relatives such as start cousins. There was a time in the non so distant past, even so, when it was culturally preferred for Europeans, and Euro-Americans to marry beginning cousins. Royalty and aristocrats were known to betroth their children to relatives, often cousins. Charles Darwin, who was British, married his first cousin Emma. This was oftentimes done to continue property and wealth in the family unit.

In some societies, even so, a cousin might exist a preferred matrimony partner. In some Center Eastern societies, patrilateral cousin spousal relationship —marrying a male or female cousin on your male parent's side—is preferred. Some cultures prohibit marriage with a cousin who is in your lineage merely, adopt that you marry a cousin who is non in your lineage. For example, if you alive in a society that traces kinship patrilineally, cousins from your father'due south brothers or sisters would be forbidden as union partners, but cousins from your female parent's brothers or sisters might be considered splendid marriage partners.

Bundled marriages were typical in many cultures effectually the earth in the past including in the U.s.. Marriages are arranged by families for many reasons: because the families take something in common, for financial reasons, to match people with others from the "right" social, economic or religious group, and for many other reasons. In Bharat today, some people practice a kind of modified arranged wedlock exercise that allows the potential spouses to meet and spend fourth dimension together before agreeing to a lucifer. The meeting may take place through a mutual friend, a family member, customs matchmaker, or even a Marriage Meet fifty-fifty in which members of the same community (degree) are invited to gather (see Figure 5). Although bundled marriages however be in urban cities such as Mumbai, love matches are increasingly mutual. In general, as long as the social requirements are met, love matches may be accepted by the families involved.

Figure four: This advertisement for "Marriage Meet" in Bombay, India welcomes "boys" and "girls" from the community to participate in a Marriage Meet, in which young people can mingle with and get to know potential spouses in a fun atmosphere. Photo used with permission of Laura Tubelle de González.

Polygamy refers to any marriage in which at that place are multiple partners. At that place are two kinds of polygamy: polygyny and polyandry. Polygyny refers to marriages in which there is one husband and multiple wives. In some societies that practice polygyny, the preference is for sororal polygyny , or the marriage of one man to several sisters. In such cases, it is sometimes believed that sisters volition become along better as co-wives. Polyandry describes marriages with one wife and multiple husbands. As with polygyny, fraternal polyandry is common and involves the marriage of a woman to a group of brothers.

In some cultures, if a man'southward wife dies, particularly if he has no children, or has young children, it is thought to exist best for him to marry one of his deceased wife'south sisters. A sister, it is believed, is a reasonable substitution for the lost married woman and likely a more than loving mother to whatever children left behind. This practise might also forestall the need to return property exchanged at marriage, such as dowry (payments made to the groom's family unit before marriage), or bridewealth (payments fabricated to the bride'south family unit earlier wedlock). The do of a man marrying the sister of his deceased wife is called sororate marriage. In the example of a husband'south death, some societies adopt that a woman marry one of her husband'southward brothers, and in some cases this might exist preferred fifty-fifty if he already has a wife. This practice is chosen levirate union. This latter practice is described in the Sometime Testament.^[vi]

Families, Households and Domestic Groups

A family can exist defined every bit the smallest group of individuals who encounter themselves as connected to one another. They are usually role of larger kinship groups, but with whom they may not interact on a daily ground. Families tend to reside together and share economic opportunities and other rights and responsibilities. Family rights and responsibilities are a significant part of understanding families and how they work. In the U.s., for example, minor children have a right to exist supported materially by their parents or other legal guardians. Parents have a responsibility to support and nurture their children. Spouses have a correct to mutual support from each other and property acquired during a wedlock is considered "common holding" in many U.Southward. states unless specified otherwise by a pre-nuptial agreement. Some family unit responsibilities are cultural and non legal. Many such responsibilities are reinforced by religious or other ideological notions.

Family members who reside together are called households . A household may include larger kinship groups who think of themselves as separate but related families. Households may also include non-family or kin members, or could even consist exclusively of not-related people who retrieve of themselves every bit family. Many studies of families cross-culturally have focused on household groups because it is households that are the location for many of the twenty-four hours-to-day activities of a society. Households are important social units in whatsoever community

Sometimes families or households are spread beyond several residential units but think of themselves equally a single group for many purposes. In Croatia, considering of urban housing constraints, some extended family unit households operate across one or more residential spaces. An older couple and their married children might alive in apartments near each other and cooperate on childcare and cooking as a single household unit. Domestic grouping is another term that can be used to describe a household. Domestic groups can describe any group of people who reside together and share activities pertaining to domestic life including merely not express to childcare, elder care, cooking and economic support, even if they might not depict themselves as "family."

Households may include nuclear families, extended families, joint extended families, or even combinations of families that share a residence and other property as well as rights and responsibilities. In certain regions of Croatia big agronomical households were incredibly numerous. I carried out enquiry in a region known as Slavonia, which from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries was was near the edge of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. Families in portions of this region were referred to as zadruzi (plural) or a zadruga (singular). They sometimes numbered upwards to 100 members, all related through blood and marriage. But these households were much more than than a nuclear or even a joint extended family. They were more than like small towns with specialists within the household group who did things such as shoe horses or sew together. These very large households supported a armed services civilisation where men between sixteen and threescore years old had to be ready for war machine service.^[7] A Croatian anthropologist in the 1800s reported that i family was and so big that an elderly woman died and this was not noticed for three days! The local authorities in this case forced the family to split up, separating their property and residing in smaller numbers.^[eight]

Marriage Exchanges: Dowry and Bridewealth

In many societies, marriages are affirmed with an substitution of holding. This is usually the case in places where families take a mitt in arranging a marriage. A property exchange recognizes the challenges faced by a family that loses a member and by a family that takes on a new member. These practices too reflect unlike notions virtually the value of the new family fellow member.

Dowry payments are known from U.Southward. and Western European history. A dowry is a gift given past a bride's family unit to either the helpmate or to the groom'southward family at the time of the marriage. In societies that practice dowry, families oft spend many years accumulating the gift. In some villages in the former Yugoslavia, the dowry was meant to provide for a adult female if she became a widow. The dowry was her share of her family'due south holding and reflected the tradition that land was unremarkably inherited by a woman's brothers. The dowry might include coins, ofttimes woven together in a kind of apron and worn on her wedding solar day. This form of dowry too represented a statement of wealth, prestige or high status for both families; her family'southward power to give this kind of wealth, and the prestige of the family who was acquiring a desirable new bride. Her dowry besides could include linens and other useful items to be used during her years every bit a wife. In more than recent times, dowries have get extravagant, including things like refrigerators, cars, and houses.

A dowry can also represent the college status of the groom's family and its ability to demand a payment for taking on the economic responsibleness of a immature wife. This was of thinking near dowry is more than typical of societies in which women are less valued than men. A practiced dowry enables a woman's family to ally into a better family. In parts of India, a dowry could sometimes be so large that it would be paid in installments. Helpmate burnings, killing a bride, could happen if her family did not continue to make the agreed upon payments (though at that place may be other reasons for this awful crime in individual cases). This of course is illegal, but does sometimes occur.^[ix]

Historically, dowry was near common in agricultural societies. Land was the most valuable commodity and normally land stayed in the hands of men. Women who did not marry were sometimes seen as a brunt on their ain families because they were non perceived as making an economic contribution and they represented another mouth to feed. A dowry was important for a woman to have with her into a spousal relationship because the groom's family unit had the upper economic hand. It helped ease the tension of her arrival in the household, especially if the dowry was substantial.

Bridewealth , by dissimilarity, often represents a higher value placed on women and their ability to piece of work and produce children. Bridewealth is an exchange of valuables given from a human'south family to the family unit of his new wife. Bridewealth is common in pastoralist societies in which people brand their living past raising domesticated animals. The Masaai are example of one such group. A cattle-herding culture located in Kenya and Tanzania, the Maasai pay bridewealth based on the desirability of the woman. Culturally defined attributes such as her age, dazzler, virginity, and her ability to work contribute to a woman's value. The economic value placed on women does not mean that women in such societies necessarily take much freedom, but it does sometimes requite them some leverage in their new domestic situations. In rare cases, there might be simultaneous exchanges of dowry and bridewealth. In such cases, often the bridewealth gift was more of a token than a substantial economic contribution.

Aforementioned-Sexual practice Union

In the United States, Canada also as other countries, 2 individuals of the same sexual practice may be legally married, but in these countries as well every bit other places, same-sex couples accept been creating households and families for centuries, long earlier legal recognition. Aforementioned-sexual activity marriages are documented, for instance, in the history of Native American groups from the Great Plains. On the Plains, men who preferred to wearing apparel and have on the roles of women were allowed to ally other men. It was causeless that if one partner gathered institute food and prepared food, the other partner should have a complementary role similar hunting. Androgynous individuals, males who preferred female roles or dress, and females who took on male roles, were non condemned but regarded as "two-spirits," a characterization that had positive connotations.

Two-spirits were considered to embody a 3rd gender combining elements of both male and female. The central to the two-spirit gender identity was beliefs: what individuals did in their communities.^[10]If aperson who was born with a male person biological sexual practice felt his identity and chosen lifestyle best matched the social role recognized as female, he could motility into a third gender two-spirit category. Today, Native American groups set up their own laws regarding same-sex marriage. Many recognize two-spirit individuals, and accept marriage of a ii-spirit person to a person of the same biological sex. Although some nations still do not allow same-sexual practice marriage betwixt tribal members, one of the largest tribal nations, the Cherokee legalized same-sex activity marriages in 2016.

Adoption

Adoption is another way that people grade family ties. In the United States, commonly information technology is infants or minor children who are adopted by a not-parental family member like a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or an older sibling, or by a non-family member. This is usually done when a biological parent is unable or unwilling to raise a kid. The decision to give up a child through adoption is a complicated i, and one that parents practise non make easily.

In other societies, adoption is viewed differently. In some Pacific Island societies, children who are adopted are considered fortunate considering they take 2 sets of parents; children are non given for adoption because a parent is unwilling or unable to care for them, merely rather to award the adoptive parents. Martha Ward described a immature woman in Pohnpei, Micronesia, who had a child for her grandmother, to keep her company in her older years. In another case she described a child who went to dinner at a relative'due south business firm and stayed for a number of years in a kind of adoptive situation. In such cases, children retain relationships with biological and adoptive family members, and may even move fluidly between them.^[xi]

Family: Biology and Culture

What is natural about the family? Like gender and sexuality, there is a biological component. In that location is a biological female parent and a biological father, although the mother plays a significantly larger and longer role from the time of conception through the end of baby's dependence. In the past, conception usually required sexual intercourse, simply that is no longer the case thanks to sperm banks, which have fabricated the embodied male person potentially obsolete, biologically speaking. There is also a biological relationship between parents and offspring—again, more obvious in the case of the mother since the babe develops in and emerges from her trunk. Even so, Deoxyribonucleic acid and genes are real and influence the traits and potentialities of the adjacent generation.

Beyond those biological "realities," culture and guild seem to have over, edifice on—or ignoring—biology. We all know there are biological fathers who may be unaware of or non concerned about their biological offspring and non involved in their care and biological mothers who, after giving birth, surrender their children through adoption or to other family unit members. In recent decades, engineering science has allowed women to act every bit "surrogate mothers," using their bodies as carriers for implanted fertilized eggs of couples who wish to take a kid. On the other paw, we all probably know of first-class parents who are not the children's biological mothers and fathers, and "legal" parenthood through adoption can take more than-profound parenting consequences for children than biological parenthood.

When we think of good (or bad) parents, or of someone as a actually "good mother," equally an "fantabulous father," as ii "wonderful mothers," nosotros are not talking biological science. We usually are thinking of a fix of cultural and behavioral expectations, and being an adoptive rather than a biological parent isn't really the upshot. Clearly, then, parenthood, mother-father relationships, and other kinship relationships (with siblings, grandparents, and uncles-aunts) are non only rooted in biology but are also social roles, legal relationships, meanings and expectations constructed past human cultures in specific social and historical contexts. This is not to deny the importance of kinship; it is fundamental, particularly in pocket-sized-scale pre-industrial societies. Just kinship is as much near culture equally it is about biology. Biology, in a sense, is only the showtime—and may not be necessary.

Spousal relationship besides is not "natural." Information technology is a cultural invention that involves various meanings and functions in different cultural contexts. We all know that it is not necessary to be married to take sex activity or to have children. Indeed, in the United states, a growing number of women who give birth are not married, and the percent of unmarried women giving birth is higher in many northwestern European countries such as Sweden. ^[12] Cross-culturally, spousal relationship seems to be primarily well-nigh societal regulation of relationships —a social contract between two individuals and, often, their families, that specifies rights and obligations of married individuals and of the offspring that married women produce. Some anthropologists have argued that marriage IS primarily about children and "descent"—who will "own" children. ^[thirteen] To whom will they belong? With what rights, obligations, social statuses, admission to resources, grouping identities, and all the other assets—and liabilities—that exist inside a lodge? Children have historically been essential for family survival—for literal reproduction and for social reproduction.

Think, for a moment, most our taken-for-granted assumptions about to whom children belong. ^[14] Conspicuously, children emerge from a woman's trunk and, indeed, after approximately nine months, it is her torso that has nurtured and "grown" this child. Just who "owns" that kid legally—to whom information technology "belongs" and the beliefs associated with how it was conceived and almost who played a part in its conception—is not a biological given. Non in homo societies. One fascinating puzzle in homo evolution is how females lost command over their sexuality and their offspring! Why practise so many, though non all, cultural theories of procreation consider women'due south role as pocket-size, if not irrelevant—not as the "seed," for instance, but only equally a "carrier" of the male seed she volition eventually "evangelize" to its "owner"? Thus, having a child biologically is not equivalent to social "ownership." Marriage, cross-culturally, deals with social ownership of offspring. What conditions must be met? What exchanges must occur, particularly between families or kinship groups, for that offspring to exist theirs, his, hers—for it to be a legitimate "heir"?

Marriage is, then, a "contract," usually betwixt families, even if unwritten. Throughout nearly of human history, kinship groups and, later, religious institutions have regulated wedlock. Virtually major religions today have formal laws and marriage "contracts," even in societies with "civil" matrimony codes. In some countries, like India, there is a divide matrimony code for each major religion in addition to a secular, civil marriage code. Who children "belong to" is rarely solely nearly biology, and when biological science is involved, it is biology shaped by society and culture. The notion of an "illegitimate" child in the Us has non been about biological science merely about "legitimacy," that is, whether the child was the result of a legally recognized relationship that entitled offspring to sure rights, including inheritance.

From this perspective, what nosotros call back of as a "normal" or "natural" family in the United States is really a culturally and historically specific, legally codified set of relationships between 2 individuals and, to some extent, their families. Cross-culturally, the U.S. (and "traditional" British-Euro-American) nuclear family is quite unusual and singular. Married couples in the United States "ideally" establish a separate household, a nuclear-family-based household, rather than living with one spouse's parents and forming a larger multi-generational household, often referred to as an "extended" family, which is the about common form of family structure. In addition, U.S. marriages are monogamous—legally, one may accept just ane husband or wife at a time. Just a majority of societies that have been studied by anthropologists accept allowed polygamy (multiple spouses). Polygyny (1 married man, multiple wives) is near mutual but polyandry (one wife, multiple husbands) also occurs; occasionally marriages involve multiple husbands and multiple wives. Separate spouses, peculiarly wives, oftentimes accept their ain dwelling space, ordinarily shared with their children, but ordinarily live in i compound, with their husbands' parents and his relatives. Beyond cultures, then, near households tend to be versions of extended-family unit-based groups.

These two contrasts alone lead to families in the United States that are smaller and focused more on the husband-wife (or spousal) and parent-child relationships; other relatives are more afar, literally and often conceptually. They are too more "independent"—or, some would say, more dependent on a smaller set of relationships to fulfill family responsibilities for work, child care, finances, emotional companionship, and even sexual obligations. Other things being equal, the death or loss of a spouse in a "traditional" U.S. family has a bigger impact than such a loss in an extended family household (see Text Box 1). On the other paw, nuclear families own and control their incomes and other assets, different many extended families in which those are jointly held. This ownership and control of resources can requite couples and wives in nuclear families greater freedom.

In that location are other cross-cultural variations in family, spousal relationship and kinship: in expectations for spouses and children, exchanges between families, inheritance rules, union rituals, platonic ages and characteristics of spouses, atmospheric condition for dissolving a spousal relationship and remarriage afterwards a spouse's death, attitudes almost premarital, extra-marital, and marital sexuality, and so forth. How "descent" is calculated is a social-cultural process that carves out a smaller "group" of "kin" from all of the potential relatives in which individuals have rights (eastward.one thousand., to property, aid, political representation) and obligations (economic, social). Often there are explicit norms nigh who one should and should not ally, including which relatives. Marriage between people we call "cousins" is common cantankerous-culturally. These variations in the definition of marriage and family reflect what human cultures practise with the biological "facts of life," creating many different kinds of marriage, family unit, and kinship systems.

Some other major contrast between the U.S. and many other cultures is that our married man-wife relationship is based on free choice and "romantic love." Marriages are bundled by the couple and reverberate their desires rather than the desires of larger societal groups. Of class, even in the United States, that has never been entirely the case. Informal prohibitions, often imposed past families, have shaped (and continue to shape) private choices, such as marrying exterior one's religion, racial/ethnic group, and socio-economical class or within ane'southward gender. Some religions explicitly foreclose marrying someone from another religion. But U.S. formal government prohibitions take also existed, such as laws against inter-racial matrimony, which were just declared unconstitutional in 1967 (Loving 5. Virginia).

These and so-called anti-miscegenation laws, directed mainly at European-American and African-Americans, were designed to preserve the race-based organization of social stratification in the United States. ^[15] They did non bear on both genders as merely reflected the intersection of gender with class and racial inequality. During slavery, most inter-racial sex activity was initiated past Euro-American males. It was not uncommon for male person slave owners to have illicit, often forced sexual relations with female slaves. The laws were created so that children of slave women inherited their mother'southward racial and slave status, thereby also calculation to the slave property of the "father."

Euro-American women'due south relationships with African-American men, though far less frequent and usually voluntary, posed special problems. Offspring would inherit the mother's "gratuitous" status and increase the costless African-American population or possibly stop up "passing" equally "White." Social and legal weapons were used to forestall such relationships. Euro-American women, especially poorer women, who were involved sexually with African-American men were stereotyped every bit prostitutes, sexually depraved, and outcasts. Laws were passed that fined them for such beliefs or required them to work every bit indentured servants for the kid'south father's slave owner; other laws prohibited cohabitation between a "White" and someone of African descent.

Post-slavery anti-miscegenation laws tried to preserve the "colour line" biologically by outlawing mating and to maintain the legal "purity" and status of Euro-American lineages past outlawing inter-racial marriage. In reality, of course, inter-racial mating connected, but inter-racial offspring did non have the rights of "legitimate" children. By the 1920s, some states, like Virginia, had outlawed "Whites" from marrying anyone who had a "single drop" of African blood. Past 1924, 38 states had outlawed Black-White marriages, and equally late as the 1950s, inter-racial matrimony bans existed in about half of the states and had been extended to Native Americans, Mexicans, "East Indians," Malays, and other groups designated "non White." ^[16]

Overall, stratified inegalitarian societies tend to take the strictest controls over marriage. Such command is specially common when some groups are considered inherently superior to others, exist it racially, castes, or "royal" blood. Patriarchal societies closely regulate and restrict premarital sexual contacts of women, especially college-status women. One part of marriage in these societies is to reproduce the existing social construction, partially by insuring that marriages and any offspring resulting from them will maintain and potentially increase the social standing of the families involved. Elite, dominant groups accept the most to lose in terms of status and wealth, including inheritances. "Royalty" in Britain, for instance, traditionally are not supposed to marry "commoners" so as to ensure that the regal "blood," titles, and other privileges remain in the "regal" family.

Cross-culturally, fifty-fifty in minor-calibration societies that are relatively egalitarian such as the San and the Trobriand Islanders studied by Annette Weiner, marriage is rarely a purely individual selection left to the wishes—and whims of, or "electricity" between—the two spouses. ^[17] This is not to say that spouses never have input or prior contact; they may know each other and even accept grown up together. In most societies, however, a marriage usually has profound social consequences and is far too important to exist "only" an private selection. Since marriages affect families and kin economically, socially, and politically, family unit members (especially elders) play a major role in arranging marriages along lines consistent with their own goals and using their own criteria. Families sometimes arrange their children'southward marriages when the children are quite immature. In Nuosu communities of southwest Prc, some families held formal engagement ceremonies for babies to, ideally, cement a good cross-cousin partnership, though no marital relationship would occur until much later on. ^[18] There also tin be conventional categories of relatives who are supposed to marry each other then young girls might know that their future husbands volition be particular cousins, and the girls might play or interact with them at family unit functions as children. ^[19]

This does not mean that romantic love is purely a recent or U.S. and European phenomenon. Romantic dearest is widespread even in cultures that have strong views on arranging marriages. Traditional cultures in India, both Hindu and Muslim, are filled with "love stories" expressed in songs, paintings, and famous temple sculptures. One of the most beautiful buildings in the world, the Taj Mahal, is a monument to Shah Jahan'due south love for his wife. Where young girls' marriages are arranged, oftentimes to older men (every bit among the Maasai), we know that those girls, in one case married, sometimes take "lovers" well-nigh whom they sing "dearest songs" and with whom they engage in sexual relations.^[20] Truly, romantic dear, sex, and matrimony can exist independently.

Nevertheless, cross-culturally and historically, marriages based on costless selection and romantic love are relatively unusual and recent. Clearly, young people all over the world are attracted to the idea, which is "romanticized" in Bollywood films, popular music, poesy, and other forms of gimmicky popular civilization. No wonder and so many families—and conservative social and religious groups—are concerned, if not terrified, of losing control over young people's mating and marriage behavior (see, for example, the splendid PBS documentary The Earth earlier Her). ^[21] A social revolution is truly underway and we haven't even gotten to same-sex sex activity and same-sex marriage.

What Tin Nosotros Acquire from the Na? Shattering Ideas about Family and  Relationships

By Tami Blumenfield

We have certain expectations well-nigh the trajectories of relationships and family life in the United States—young people see, fall in love, buy a diamond, and and then ally. To some extent, this specific view of family is changing every bit same-sex relationships and no-longer-new reproductive technologies aggrandize our views of what family tin and cannot be. Still, quite often, we think about family in a rigid, heteronormative context, assuming that everyone wants the same thing.

What if nosotros think about family in an entirely different way? In fact, many people already do. In 2014, 10 percent of American adults lived in cohabitating relationships. Meanwhile, 51 percent were married in land-endorsed relationships, and that per centum has been dropping fast. ^[22] Those numbers may audio familiar as part of politicians' "focus on the family," decrying the number of children born to single parents and bemoaning the weakening of an establishment they concord honey (even though their colleagues are frequently exposed in the news for sexual indiscretions).

Information technology is true that adults with limited resource face challenges raising children when they have limited access to affordable, high-quality kid care. They struggle when living wage jobs migrate to other countries or other states where workers earn less. In an economic system that encourages concentration of resources in a tiny fraction of the population, it is no wonder that they struggle. Merely is the institution of union really to blame? The number of cohabitating unmarried individuals is high in many parts of Europe as well, but with better support structures in identify, parents fare much amend. They enjoy parental go out policies that mandate their jobs be held for them upon return from leave. They besides benefit from strong educational systems and state-subsidized child intendance, and their children enjoy amend outcomes than ours.

Critics see the "focus on the family" by U.S. politicians as a convenient political trick that turns attention abroad from crucial policy issues and refocuses it on the plight of the institution of union and the fate of the nation'due south children. Few people can easily dismiss these concerns, even if they do not reverberate their ain lived realities. And likewise, the family model trumpeted by politicians as lost is only i form of family that is not universal fifty-fifty in the United States, much less among all human being groups, as sociologist Stephanie Coontz assuredly argued in books including The Way We Never Were (1992) and The Mode We Really Are (1997). In fact, the "focus on family" ignores the diverse ways peoples on this continent accept organized their relationships. For Hopi, a Native American group living in what is today the southwestern U.s., for case, it is their mother'south kin rather than their husbands' from whom they draw support. The Navajo, Kiowa, and Iroquois Native American cultures all organize their family unit units and accommodate their relationships differently.

Figure v: Na grandmother with her maternal grandchildren. They live in the aforementioned household, along with the grandmother's adult sons and her daughter, the children'south female parent. Photograph by Tami Blumenfield, 2002.

Na people living in the foothills of the Himalayas have many means to structure family relationships. One relationship structure looks like what we might expect in a place where people brand their living from the land and raise livestock to sustain themselves. Young adults marry, and brides sometimes moves into the husband's childhood home and live with his parents. They have children, who live with them, and they work together. A 2d Na family structure looks much less familiar: young adults live in large, extended family households with several generations and course romantic relationships with someone from some other household. When they are ready, the young man seeks permission to spend the night in the young woman'southward room. If both parties desire, their relationship can evolve into a long-term one, but they do not ally and practice not live together in the aforementioned household. When a child is conceived, or before if the couple chooses, their relationship moves from a secretive 1 to one about which others know. Even then, the young man rarely spends daylight hours with his partner. Instead, he returns to his own family unit's home to help with farming and other work there. The country is non involved in their relationship, and their money is not pooled either, though presents change hands. If either partner becomes disenchanted with the other, the relationship need not persist. Their children remain in the mother's home, nurtured by adults who honey them deeply—not but by their mothers merely also past their grandmothers, maternal aunts, maternal uncles, and often older cousins too. They savor everyday life with an extended family (Effigy five). The tertiary Na family unit construction mixes the preceding ii systems. Someone joins a larger household equally a spouse. Perhaps the family lacked plenty women or men to manage the household and farming tasks adequately or the couple faced pressure from the government to marry.

As an anthropologist who has done fieldwork in Na communities since 2001, I tin adjure to the loving and nurturing families their system encourages. Information technology protects adults as well equally children. Women who are suffering in a human relationship can end it with express consequences for their children, who exercise not need to relocate to a new business firm and adapt to a new lifestyle. Lawyers demand non become involved, equally they often must in divorce cases elsewhere in the world. A homo who cannot afford to build a new firm for his family—a significant pressure for people in many areas of Cathay that prevents young men from marrying or delays their marriages—can still bask a relationship or can choose, instead, to devote himself to his role as an uncle. Women and men who do not feel the urge to pursue romantic lives are protected in this organization likewise; they can contribute to their natal families without having to worry that no ane will look out for them as they age.

Like any system equanimous of real people, Na systems are non perfect, and neither are the people who stand for them. In the final few decades, people have flocked to Lugu Lake hoping to catch a glimpse of this unusual society, and many tourists and tour guides have mistakenly taken Na flexibility in relationships as signifying a land of coincidental sex with no recognition of paternity. These are highly problematic assumptions that offend my Na acquaintances deeply. Na people accept fathers and know who they are, and they often enjoy close relationships despite living apart. In fact, fathers are deeply involved in children's lives and often participate in everyday child-rearing activities. Of course, as in other parts of the world, some fathers participate more than than others. Fathers and their nascence families also accept responsibility for contributing to schoolhouse expenses and make other financial contributions as circumstances permit. Clearly, this is not a community in which men practise not fulfill responsibilities equally fathers. Information technology is ane in which the responsibilities and how they are fulfilled varies markedly from those of fathers living in other places and cultures.

Though problems exist in Na communities and their relationship patterns are already irresolute and transforming them, it is encouraging that so many people can alive satisfied lives in this flexible system. The Na shatter our expectations about how families and relationships should exist organized. They also inspire us to ask whether nosotros can, and should, accommodate role of their ethos into our own society. ^[23]

For more data, come across the TEDx FurmanU presentation by Tami Blumenfield.

FAMILIES AND CULTURE CHANGE

Families are adaptive groups that aid address common societal concerns related to child-rearing, sexual relationships between adults, and gender roles within the household. While in that location are norms and ethics, expectations and understandings regarding families in all cultures, in that location are also always situations that represent variations on that norm. Sometimes these are areas where we begin to see culture alter. In the United States in the 1960s, young people began to alive together openly outside of spousal relationship as couples. Those relationships were often socially disapproved, simply today it is much more socially acceptable and common for people to live together prior to marriage or even instead of marriage. Often the couple will likewise have children earlier they determine to marry. An ideological variation that began nearly sixty years ago has led to a widespread culture alter in attitudes toward marriage.

In the Croatian Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1980s, shortly after the death of long-time leader Josip Broz "Tito," it was all the same expected that a immature couple would live with a husband'south family at matrimony. At that time, I was engaged in fieldwork that focused on social change. The socialist authorities had implemented legislation and social programs to support women moving out of traditional roles, condign educated and productive members of the workforce, and participating in the professional form. There was country-funded daycare and liberal legislation regarding birth control and abortion among other efforts to improve or change the traditional roles of women.

In reality, however, matrimony and parenthood were all the same highly valued. Couples oftentimes married at a young age and women tended to still be responsible for all housework. Women themselves valued keeping a clean house, cooking homemade food from scratch without using prepared foods, and caring for their families. Most young wives and mothers lived with their husbands' families. Traditionally, mothers of sons gained ability and respect in the family from their married son and girl-in-law. In the past this relationship was sometimes described as a hard one, with a girl-in-police having little say in family and household life. Some of that seemed to persist in the 1980s. Women living with mothers-in-law did not accept a great deal of liberty of pick and had to prove themselves at domicile, leaving less fourth dimension to recollect most progressing in didactics or work.^[24]

In an urban surroundings, however, housing was in short supply. If a family had two sons and ane was already married and still living with his natal family unit, the 2d son might live with the married woman's family at spousal relationship if that family had the infinite. In these situations, which were not considered ideal but still were in the range of acceptable alternatives, immature married women establish themselves living with their ain mothers rather than a mother-in-law. A mother tended to brand life easier for her own daughter rather than insisting that she do quite so much household work. Mothers and daughters were more often like shooting fish in a barrel partners in a household. The mother-in-constabulary of a young human being tended not to make his life difficult, but rather to regard him fondly. Women who lived with their own families after marriage were more likely to be able to go on their education, take promotions at work, make more than of the opportunities that were provided under socialism.

In Croatia, authorities engineered policies alone did not produce changes in family patterns or gender roles. It was a variety of factors, including economic pressures and housing shortages, which combined to create an environment in which families changed. It became increasingly common for couples to live with the wife's family and eventually to live on their own. Today in Croatia, women have a slap-up deal of freedom of option, are likely to live solitary with their husbands or, like in the United states of america, Canada, and European countries, to alive with a partner outside of union. Alter occurs in family life when social and cultural conditions likewise modify.

CONCLUSION

The institutions of the family unit and marriage are found in all societies and are part of cultural understandings of the way the world should work. In all cultures at that place are variations that are acceptable as well as situations in which people cannot quite meet the platonic. How people construct families varies profoundly from one society to some other, merely there are patterns across cultures that are linked to economic science, faith, and other cultural and environmental factors. The study of families and marriage is an important part of anthropology because family and household groups play a key role in defining relationships between people and making gild function. While there is zippo in biology that dictates that a family unit group be organized in a particular fashion, our cultural expectations leads to ideas about families that seem "natural" to u.s.. As cultures change over time, ideas about family also adapt to new circumstances.

Word QUESTIONS

1. Why is it important for anthropologists to understand the kinship, descent, and family relationships that exist in the cultures they study? In what ways can family relationships structure the lives of individuals?

2. Status and office define the position of people within the family as well as the behaviors they are expected to perform. What are some of the statuses and roles found in families in your customs? How accept these inverse over time?

3. In this affiliate, Gilliland describes several different patterns of family organization including nuclear families, extended families, and articulation families. While pocket-size nuclear families are common in the United States, larger families are mutual in many other societies. What practise yous think are some of the applied effects of both small and large families on everyday life?

GLOSSARY

Bilateral descent: descent is recognized through both the father and the mother'south sides of the family.

Bridewealth: payments made to the bride'due south family by the groom's family before marriage.

Clan: a group of people who have a general notion of common descent that is not attached to a specific biological ancestor.

Descent groups: relationships that provide members with a sense of identity and social support based on ties of shared ancestry.

Domestic group: a term that tin can exist used to draw a group of people who alive together even if members exercise not consider themselves to be family.

Dowry: payments made to the groom'due south family past the bride's family unit before union.

Endogamy: a term describing expectations that individuals must ally within a particular group.

Exogamy: a term describing expectations that individuals must marry outside a particular grouping.

Extended family: a family unit of at least three-generations sharing a household.

Family: the smallest grouping of individuals who see themselves as connected to i another. Family of orientation: the family in which an individual is raised.

Family of procreation: a new household formed for the purpose of conceiving and raising children.

Household: family members who reside together.

Joint family unit: a very large extended family that includes multiple generations.

Kinship: term used to describe culturally recognized ties between members of a family, the social statuses used to define family members, and the expected behaviors associated with these statuses.

Kinship diagrams: charts used past anthropologists to visually represent relationships between members of a kinship group.

Kinship arrangement: the blueprint of culturally recognized relationships between family unit members.

Kinship terminology: the terms used in a language to describe relatives.

Levirate: the exercise of a woman marrying 1 of her deceased husband'due south brothers.

Lineage: term used to describe any form of descent from a common antecedent.

Matriarchal: a society in which women have authority to make decisions.

Matrilineal descent: a kinship group created through the maternal line (mothers and their children).

Nuclear family: a parent or parents who are in a culturally-recognized relationship, such every bit matrimony, forth with pocket-size or dependent children.

Patrilateral cousin marriage: the practice of marrying a male or female cousin on the father'southward side of the family unit.

Patrilineal descent: a kinship group created through the paternal line (fathers and their children).

Polygamous: families based on plural marriages in which there are multiple wives or, in rarer cases, multiple husbands.

Polyandry: marriages with one married woman and multiple husbands.

Polygyny: marriages in which there is 1 husband and multiple wives.

Part: the fix of behaviors expected of an individual who occupies a particular status.

Serial monogamy: spousal relationship to a succession of spouses i after the other.

Sororate matrimony: the practise of a man marrying the sister of his deceased wife.

Status: any culturally-designated position a person occupies in a particular setting.

Stalk family: a version of an extended family that includes an older couple and one of their adult children with a spouse (or spouses) and children.

Unilineal: descent is recognized through only one line or side of the family.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Yard. Gilliland, Ph.D. (likewise published as Mary K. Gilliland Olsen) earned a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, with Honors in Anthropology; and K.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from the University of California, San Diego. Her primary research took place in the former Yugoslavia (1982–4, 1990–1), Republic of croatia (1993, 1995, 1996–7) and with displaced Bosnians, Croats and Serbs in the U.s. (2001–3). In Croatia, Mary Kay was affiliated with the Filozofski Fakultet in Zagreb, the Ethnographic Museum in Slavonski Brod (Republic of croatia/Yugoslavia), and with the Establish for Anthropological Research (Zagreb, Croatia both pre- and post-independence). Continuing affiliation as member of Editorial Board for the Collegium Antropologicum: The Journal of the Establish for Anthropological Research, and named a Lifetime Fellow member of the Croatian Anthropological Society. Mary Kay has besides collaborated in projects in Asia, including People'due south Republic of Cathay (primarily Xinjiang, Western China), Mongolia and Vietnam. Her areas of research involvement and publication include culture and social change, gender and ethnic identity, family, marriage and intergenerational relationships. Primarily a "teaching anthropologist," Mary Kay was full-time faculty and Department Chair at Pima Customs College in Tucson, Arizona from 1989–2006. She maintains an ongoing human relationship as Associate Offshoot Professor of Anthropology at the Academy of Arizona. She has taught at San Diego Mesa College, University of California, San Diego and the University of Zagreb. Since 2006 she has held a variety of administrative positions including Academic Dean, Vice President of Instruction and is currently Vice President of Bookish Diplomacy at Central Arizona College.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-esc-culturalanthropology/chapter/family_and_marriage/

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