Family

• Varies greatly from culture to culture
• Generally, family consists of two or more people who consider themselves related by blood, marriage, or adoption
• Polygyny – more than one wife
• Polyandry – more than one husband (rarer)
• Nuclear – a husband, wife, and children who live together
• Extended – nuclear plus other relatives who live together
• Family of orientation – the family in which an individual grows up in
• Family of procreation – the family formed when the couple have their first child
• Marriage – refers to a group’s approved mating arrangement and is usually marked by a ritual

Common Patterns (across varying cultures)

• Marriage and family establish patterns of mate selection
• Endogamy (marriage inside the group) and exogamy (marriage outside the group)
• All societies have a system of descent (way to trace kinship over generations)
• Determines rights of inheritance; bilateral (property is passed onto males and females), patrilineal (to males), and matrilineal (to females)
• Patriarchy (men dominate) vs. matriarchy (women dominate; no historical records of a true matriarchy)

Marriage and Family in Theoretical Perspective

• Functional
• Examines how family is related to other parts of society; how it contributes to society
• Fulfills 6 needs:  economic production, socialization of children, care of the sick and age, recreation, sexual control, and reproduction
• Incest as taboo; helps family avoid role confusion, ensures that people will look outside the family for marriage partners
• Exogamy forges alliance between tribes and groups; exogamy extends a bride and groom’s social networks
• Conflict
• Focus on equalities within the institution, especially the subservience of women
• Struggle over housework (limited resources of time, energy, and leisure); husband resist housework and wives usually end up doing it
• Husband often see housework as 50/50; women are 8 times more likely to feel the division of housework is unfair
• “Second Shift”; wives you work 8 hour days for wages aver 11 hours more child care and housework each week than husbands
• Four “strategies of resistance” to housework by males; 1) waiting it out, 2) playing dumb, 3) needs reduction (I don’t need anything approach), and 4) substitute offerings (express appreciation/taking out to dinner)
• Symbolic Interactionist
• Focus on the contrasting experience between men and women play out in marriage
• Closer the earnings the more fairer the relationship; laid off husbands to less work, and husband you earn less do the least housework
• Gender roles

Family Life Cycle in U.S.

• Love typically proceeds marriage (was not always the case)
• Romantic love begins with sexual attraction; label of love is later applied
• Homogamy – tendency of people who have similar characteristic to marry one another (age, education, social class, race, and religion)
• People typically marry close to them and who they interact with (neighbors, school, church, volunteering, activities, etc)
• 94% of marriages in the U.S. occur within their race
• Complications of a baby (martial satisfaction generally decreases); social class influences how couple adjust to children (higher classes usually wait a little longer)
• 3 out of 5 mothers work (married couples and single mothers: 1 in 3 are cared for at home); main differences is in the father (if married, 1 in 4 children is cared for by their father when the mother is at work if, 1 in 14 for single women); grandparents will often step in
• 1 in 6 preschool children of working mothers are in daycare (most daycare centers lack stimulating learning activities)
• Upper middle class and higher are beginning to use nannies (conflict results from different discipline styles and attachment to nanny)
• Working-class parents stress outward conformity and are more likely to closely supervise and physically discipline
• Middle class parents favor self-expression and self-control
• Birth order (1^st born get discipline and more attention)
• When last child leaves, parents must deal with “empty nest”; women’s satisfaction usually increases and many couple grow closer
• Children stay with parents longer (42% of all 24 to 29 year olds are still living with parents)
• Women live longer and must grieve and adjust to living alone

Diversity in U.S. Families

• No such thing as American family; social class plays a bigger role than ethnicity (you can read in book)
• One-parent families as a general concern (85% live with both parents in 1970; 69% today)
• One-parent families on the rise because 1) divorce, and 2) increase in single parent births
• Most one-parent families are headed by women and are generally poor
• Single-parent children are more likely to drop out of school, get arrested, have emotional problems, and get divorced (females children are more likely to get parent in teen years)
• 19% of married couples never have children, more education generally equals less children (freedom, change jobs, and spontaneity)
• Number of women with no children is increasing; many childless
• Homosexual marriage and civil unions

Divorce and Remarriage

• Divorce is difficult to measure (1.9% divorce rate or as high as 50%)
• Each year 1 million children learn that their parents are getting a divorce
• Children experience more psychiatric problems, become juvenile delinquents, less likely to finish school or attend college
• Children do slightly better if they are raised by the same sex parent
• More likely to have more problems if their was a high degree of conflict or are forced to choose a parent
• Do better if they have a “support parent (relative, friend, in-law, etc)
• Less likely to have contact with their parents and are more likely to get divorced
• More likely to do better if mother enters a stable relationship after the divorce
• Serial fathers – pattern of parenting in which a divorce reduces contact with a father’s children
• 1 in 6 children live apart from the father (most fathers stop seeing the child)
• Women are more likely feel a “new chance” is given to them, spouse that initiates divorce usually gets over it faster
• Many divorced people maintain contact because of child
• Financial hardships are more likely to be felt by females (Standard of living usually drops by 1/3)
• Most divorce people remarry, men are more likely to remarry
• Women typically marry men that have the same educational level as them
• Divorce rate is same of married people without children is about the same as that of first marriages (if a new child is produced, then divorce rate goes up)

Trends in Families

• Two significant changes (postponement of first marriages and increased cohabitation)
• Average first time bride and groom has increased by 6-9 years
• Postponement of cohabitation (adults living together in a sexual relationship without being married) has not risen
• Cohabitation is 8 times more likely today than in 1970
• There have been a sharp increase in births to single women is most industrialized (not sure if this is the cause) countries
• Grandparents raising their grandchildren is on the increase
• Reason for skipped generation families include parents being unable of taking care of their children to the death of parents, ill, homeless, addicted to drugs or in prison
• Sandwich generation – typically people between 40-55 who find themselves taking care of their children and parents

Two Sides of Family Life

• Dark side of marriage (spouse battering, child abuse, marital rape, and incest
• Equally likely to attack each other, women is more likely to be hurt
• A lot of men feel it is ok to be controlling to a women (raised that way or raised in the context of masculinity)
• 3 million children report child abuse or neglect, about 850,000 cases are substantiated
• Marital rape is more common than first though (1/3 to ½ of women who seek domestic violence shelter)
• Incest is more likely to occur in families that are socially isolated
• Most people who are married report they are very happy
• Important variables (marriage is sacred, wanting relationship to succeed, spending a lot of time together, expressing appreciation, do a lot of talking and listen, and deal with a crisis in a positive manner.

Education

• Early societies had no institution called education
• All societies have some form of acculturation or transmission of culture from one generation to the next
• As surplus grows in primitive societies so does a institution of education
• First forms of a more formal education system began with the children of wealthy people
• During the dark ages education all but disappeared, but was revitalized with industrialization
• Industrial societies need workers who can read and write
• After the American Revolution, the founders understood the importance of education
• American education system was chaotic and hodgepodge, mandatory education laws began in 1918

Functional Approach and Education

• Examine the manifest and latent functions of education
• Manifest functions
• Transmission of knowledge and culture and values from one generation to the next (individualism, competition, and patriotism)
• Teaches knowledge skills
• Certification of learning/A credential society (employers use diplomas and degrees to determine eligible workers even if the diplomas or degrees are irreverent to the work); this is a result of our large society, employers can get to know everyone potential worker
• Social integration of the different parts of society (creation of a national identity)
• Gatekeeping/social placement (process by which education opens and closes doors of economic opportunity); tracks and sorts students into different programs based upon merit
• Education has expanded into some areas usually reserved for families (childcare, sex education, and birth control)
• Latent functions
• Matchmaking, social networking, and stabilizing employment (keeps millions of people out of employment)

Conflict Approach and Education

• Education reproduces the social class structure
• Hidden curriculum (unwritten rules of behavior and attitudes such as authority and conformity to cultural norms)
• Training students from lower and middle class to become a dependable, docile, subordinate workers (preparing children to take similar positions as their children)
• Use of IQ tests that reproduce social class (IQ tests are culturally biased)
• Use of local property taxes (More money goes to richer schools)
• Reinforces divisions of race and ethnicity (African Americans and Latinos are less likely to complete school)

Symbolic Interaction Perspective and Education

• Focus on face-to-face interactions inside the classroom
• Examples
• How expectations of teachers profoundly affect students
• How cliques among students from, how classroom seating is linked to grades
• How teachers interact with boys and girls, how classrooms are divided into tracks
• Effects of labels (bad grades, good grades, good and bad students)
• Classroom size

Problems in Schools Today

• Low achievement
• Grade inflation (test scores going up but students are learning less); declining standards
• Social promotion (pass children to the next grade even though they have not mastered the material); declining standards
• Functional illiteracy
• Violence in schools