Cross-cultural Studies of Family Roles and Structures Demonstrate That Family Forms Are

15.i The Family in Cantankerous-Cultural and Historical Perspectives

Learning Objectives

1. Draw the different family arrangements that have existed throughout history.
2. Understand how the family has changed in the United States since the colonial period.
3. Draw why the typical family in the U.s. during the 1950s was historically singular.

A family is a group of two or more people who are related past blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another. Defined in this way, the family unit is universal or virtually universal: some form of the family has existed in every guild, or almost every order, that we know about (Starbuck, 2010). Notwithstanding information technology is also true that many types of families have existed, and the cantankerous-cultural and historical record indicates that these different forms of the family can all "piece of work": they provide practical and emotional support for their members and they socialize their children.

Types of Families and Family Arrangements

It is important to keep this concluding statement in listen, considering Americans until recently thought of only one blazon of family when they thought of the family at all, and that is the nuclear family: a married heterosexual couple and their immature children living by themselves nether one roof. The nuclear family has existed in most societies with which scholars are familiar, and several of the other family types we will discuss stem from a nuclear family. Extended families, for case, which consist of parents, their children, and other relatives, take a nuclear family at their cadre and were quite common in the preindustrial societies studied by George Murdock (Murdock & White, 1969) that make up the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (encounter Figure xv.one "Types of Families in Preindustrial Societies").

Figure 15.1 Types of Families in Preindustrial Societies

The nuclear family that was then popular on television shows during the 1950s remains common today simply is certainly less mutual than during that decade.

Source: Information from Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

Similarly, many one-parent families begin as (two-parent) nuclear families that dissolve upon divorce/separation or, more rarely, the decease of one of the parents. In recent decades, one-parent families have become more common in the United States because of divorce and births out of wedlock, simply they were actually very common throughout virtually of human history because many spouses died early in life and because many babies were born out of matrimony. We return to this theme shortly.

When Americans think of the family unit, they too recollect of a monogamous family. Monogamy refers to a marriage in which one human and one woman are married only to each other. That is certainly the most common type of wedlock in the United States and other Western societies, but in some societies polygamy—the union of one person to two or more than people at a time—is more common. In the societies where polygamy has prevailed, it has been much more common for i man to accept many wives (polygyny) than for one woman to have many husbands (polyandry).

The selection of spouses also differs across societies but also to some degree within societies. The United states of america and many other societies primarily practice endogamy, in which union occurs inside ane's own social category or social group: people ally others of the same race, same religion, same social grade, and and so forth. Endogamy helps reinforce the social status of the 2 people marrying and to pass it on to whatever children they may have. Consciously or not, people tend to select spouses and mates (boyfriends or girlfriends) who resemble them not just in race, social class, and other aspects of their social backgrounds simply too in advent. As Chapter one "Sociology and the Sociological Perspective" pointed out, bonny people marry bonny people, ordinary-looking people marry ordinary-looking people, and those of us in between marry other in-betweeners. This tendency to choose and marry mates who resemble u.s.a. in all of these ways is called homogamy.

Some societies and individuals within societies practice exogamy, in which spousal relationship occurs across social categories or social groups. Historically exogamy has helped strengthen alliances among villages or even whole nations, when we think of the royalty of Europe, just it can also lead to difficulties. Sometimes these difficulties are humorous, and some of filmdom'due south best romantic comedies involve romances between people of very different backgrounds. As Shakespeare's great tragedy Romeo and Juliet reminds us, however, sometimes exogamous romances and marriages can provoke hostility amid friends and relatives of the couple and even amidst complete strangers. Racial intermarriages, for example, are exogamous marriages, and in the U.s. they frequently continue to evoke strong feelings and were even illegal in some states until a 1967 Supreme Courtroom decision (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1) overturned laws prohibiting them.

Families besides differ in how they trace their descent and in how children inherit wealth from their parents. Bilateral descent prevails in the United states and many other Western societies: we consider ourselves related to people on both parents' sides of the family, and our parents laissez passer along their wealth, meager or ample, to their children. In some societies, though, descent and inheritance are patrilineal (children are thought to be related simply to their male parent's relatives, and wealth is passed down only to sons), while in others they are matrilineal (children are idea to be related only to their female parent'southward relatives, and wealth is passed downwardly only to daughters).

Another way in which families differ is in their patterns of authority. In patriarchal families, fathers are the major potency figure in the family unit (just as in patriarchal societies men have ability over women; see Chapter 11 "Gender and Gender Inequality"). Patriarchal families and societies accept been very mutual. In matriarchal families, mothers are the family's major authority effigy. Although this blazon of family exists on an individual basis, no known club has had matriarchal families every bit its principal family blazon. In egalitarian families, fathers and mothers share authority as. Although this type of family has go more common in the United States and other Western societies, patriarchal families are nevertheless more mutual.

The Family Earlier Industrialization

Now that we are familiar with the basic types of family structures and patterns, let's have a quick look at the cantankerous-cultural and historical evolution of the family. We will start with the family in preindustrial times, drawing on research by anthropologists and other scholars, and and then move on to the development of the family unit in Western societies.

People in hunting-and-gathering societies probably lived in small groups equanimous of two or iii nuclear families. These groupings helped ensure that enough food would exist found for anybody to swallow. While men tended to hunt and women tended to gather food and take care of the children, both sexes' activities were considered adequately equally important for a family unit's survival. In horticultural and pastoral societies, food was more than abundant, and families' wealth depended on the size of their herds. Because men were more involved than women in herding, they caused more than authorization in the family, and the family unit became more patriarchal than previously (Quale, 1992). Still, every bit Affiliate 13 "Work and the Economy" indicated, the family continued to exist the primary economic unit of measurement of society until industrialization.

Societies Without Nuclear Families

Although many preindustrial societies featured nuclear families, a few societies studied past anthropologists have not had them. I of these was the Nayar in southwestern India, who lacked marriage and the nuclear family. A adult female would accept several sexual partners during her lifetime, but whatever human with whom she had children had no responsibilities toward them. Despite the absence of a begetter, this type of family arrangement seems to have worked well for the Nayar (Fuller, 1976). Nuclear families are also generally absent amid many people in the West Indies. When a woman and man accept a child, the mother takes care of the child almost entirely; the male parent provides for the household but commonly lives elsewhere. Equally with the Nayar, this fatherless organization seems to have worked well in the parts of the Due west Indies where it is practiced (Smith, 1996).

A more than contemporary setting in which the nuclear family is largely absent is the Israeli kibbutz, a cooperative agricultural community where all holding is collectively owned. In the early years of the kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz), married couples worked for the whole kibbutz and non just for themselves. Kibbutz members would eat together and not as carve up families. Children lived in dormitories from infancy on and were raised by nurses and teachers, although they were able to spend a off-white corporeality of time with their birth parents. The children in a particular kibbutz grew up thinking of each other equally siblings and thus tended to autumn in love with people from outside the kibbutz (Garber-Talmon, 1972). Although the traditional family has assumed more importance in kibbutz life in recent years, extended families continue to be very important, with different generations of a detail family having daily contact (Lavee, Katz, & Ben-Dror, 2004).

These examples do non invalidate the fact that nuclear families are nigh universal and of import for several reasons we explore before long. Only they practise indicate that the functions of the nuclear family unit can exist achieved through other family arrangements. If that is truthful, perhaps the oft-cited concern over the "breakdown" of the 1950s-way nuclear family in modernistic America is at least somewhat undeserved. Every bit indicated by the examples only given, children tin can and practise thrive without 2 parents. To say this is meant neither to extol divorce, births out of marriage, and fatherless families nor to minimize the issues they may involve. Rather, it is meant merely to signal that the nuclear family is not the but feasible form of family organisation (Eshleman & Bulcroft, 2010).

In fact, although nuclear families remain the norm in most societies, in practice they are something of a historical rarity: many spouses used to die by their mid-40s, and many babies were born out of wedlock. In medieval Europe, for case, people died early from illness, malnutrition, and other bug. One effect of early on mortality was that many children could expect to outlast at to the lowest degree one of their parents and thus essentially were raised in one-parent families or in stepfamilies (Gottlieb, 1993).

The Family in the American Colonial Menses

Moving quite a bit forward in history, different family types abounded in the colonial period in what after became the United States, and the nuclear family was by no means the only type. Nomadic Native American groups had relatively pocket-sized nuclear families, while nonnomadic groups had larger extended families; in either type of society, though, "a much larger network of marital alliances and kin obligations [meant that]…no single family was forced to go information technology alone" (Coontz, 1995, p. eleven). Nuclear families among African Americans slaves were very hard to achieve, and slaves adjusted by developing extended families, adopting orphans, and taking in other people not related by claret or marriage. Many European parents of colonial children died because average life expectancy was only 45 years. The one-third to i-half of children who outlived at least i of their parents lived in stepfamilies or with just their surviving parent. Mothers were so busy working the land and doing other tasks that they devoted relatively trivial fourth dimension to child care, which instead was entrusted to older children or servants.

American Families During and After Industrialization

During industrialization, people began to motion into cities to be virtually factories. A new division of labor emerged in many families: men worked in factories and elsewhere exterior the home, while many women stayed at dwelling house to take care of children and do housework, including the production of clothing, bread, and other necessities, for which they were paid nix (Gottlieb, 1993). For this reason, men's incomes increased their patriarchal concord over their families. In some families, however, women connected to work outside the home. Economic necessity dictated this: because families now had to purchase much of their food and other products instead of producing them themselves, the standard of living actually declined for many families.

But fifty-fifty when women did work exterior the home, men out-earned them considering of discriminatory pay scales and brought more than coin into the family unit, once more reinforcing their patriarchal agree. Over fourth dimension, moreover, piece of work outside the home came to be seen primarily as men'south work, and keeping business firm and raising children came to be seen primarily as women'south work. Equally Coontz (1997, pp. 55–56) summarizes this evolution,

The resulting identification of masculinity with economical activities and femininity with nurturing care, now frequently seen every bit the "natural" mode of organizing the nuclear family, was in fact a historical production of this 19th-century transition from an agricultural household economy to an industrial wage economy.

This marital sectionalisation of labor began to change during the early 20th century. Many women entered the workforce in the 1920s because of a growing number of office jobs, and the Great Depression of the 1930s led even more women to work outside the home. During the 1940s, a shortage of men in shipyards, factories, and other workplaces because of Globe War Two led to a national call for women to join the labor strength to support the state of war effort and the national economy. They did and then in large numbers, and many connected to work after the war ended. But equally men came home from Europe and Nihon, books, magazines, and newspapers exhorted women to have babies, and babies they did have: people got married at younger ages and the birth rate soared, resulting in the now famous babe blast generation. Meanwhile, divorce rates dropped. The national economy thrived equally auto and other factory jobs multiplied, and many families for the first fourth dimension could dream of owning their own homes. Suburbs sprang up, and many families moved to them. Many families during the 1950s did indeed fit the Leave It to Beaver model of the breadwinner-homemaker suburban nuclear family. Following the Depression of the 1930s and the war of the 1940s, the 1950s seemed an well-nigh idyllic decade.

The Women in Military Service for America Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery honors the service of women in the U.Southward. military. During World State of war II, many women served in the war machine, and many other women joined the labor force to support the war attempt and the national economic system.

Wally Gobetz – Virginia – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Even so, less than threescore% of American children during the 1950s lived in breadwinner-homemaker nuclear families. Moreover, many lived in poverty, as the poverty rate then was almost twice as high as it is today. Teenage pregnancy rates were about twice equally high as today, even if almost pregnant teens were already married or decided to go married because of the pregnancy. Although not publicized back then, alcoholism and violence in families were mutual. Historians take found that many women in this era were unhappy with their homemaker roles, Mrs. Cleaver (Beaver's female parent) to the contrary, suffering from what Betty Friedan (1963) famously chosen the "feminine mystique."

In the 1970s, the economy finally worsened. Home prices and college tuition soared much faster than family incomes, and women began to enter the labor force as much out of economic necessity as out of simple desire for fulfillment. Every bit Chapter 13 "Piece of work and the Economic system" noted, more than 60% of married women with children under 6 years of age are at present in the labor forcefulness, compared to less than xix% in 1960. Working mothers are no longer a rarity.

In sum, the cross-cultural and historical record shows that many types of families and family arrangements have existed. Two themes relevant to contemporary life emerge from our review of this record. First, although nuclear families and extended families with a nuclear cadre have dominated social life, many children throughout history have non lived in nuclear families considering of the death of a parent, divorce, or birth out of wedlock. The few societies that have not featured nuclear families seem to have succeeded in socializing their children and in accomplishing the other functions that nuclear families serve. In the United states of america, the nuclear family has historically been the norm, but, again, many children have been raised in stepfamilies or by one parent.

Second, the nuclear family unit model popularized in the 1950s, in which the male was the breadwinner and the female the homemaker, must exist considered a bleep in U.South. history rather than a long-term model. At to the lowest degree upwards to the beginning of industrialization and, for many families, after industrialization, women also as men worked to sustain the family. Breadwinner-homemaker families did increase during the 1950s and have decreased since, but their advent during that decade was more than of a historical abnormality than a historical norm. Equally Coontz (1995, p. xi) summarized the U.South. historical tape, "American families always have been diverse, and the male breadwinner-female homemaker, nuclear ideal that near people associate with 'the' traditional family has predominated for merely a small portion of our history." Commenting specifically on the 1950s, sociologist Arlene Skolnick (1991, pp. 51–52) similarly observed, "Far from being the last era of family normality from which current trends are a deviation, it is the family patterns of the 1950s that are deviant."

Primal Takeaways

• Although the nuclear family has been very common, several types of family arrangements take existed throughout time and from culture to culture.
• Industrialization changed the family in several ways. In item, it increased the ability that men held within their families because of the earnings they brought home from their jobs.
• The male breadwinner–female homemaker family model popularized in the 1950s must be considered a temporary blip in U.South. history rather than a long-term model.

For Your Review

1. Write a cursory essay in which you describe the advantages and disadvantages of the 1950s-blazon nuclear family unit in which the father works exterior the domicile and the mother stays at dwelling house.
2. The text discusses changes in the family that accompanied economic development over the centuries. How do these changes reinforce the idea that the family is a social institution?

References

Coontz, South. (1997). The style we actually are: Coming to terms with America's changing families. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Coontz, S. (1995, Summer). The way we weren't: The myth and reality of the "traditional" family. National Forum: The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, xi–xiv.

Eshleman, J. R., & Bulcroft, R. A. (2010). The family (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Friedan, B. (1963). The feminine mystique. New York, NY: Westward. W. Norton.

Fuller, C. J. (1976). The Nayars today. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Printing.

Garber-Talmon, Y. (1972). Family unit and community in the kibbutz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Academy Press.

Gottlieb, B. (1993). The family in the Western world from the Black Death to the industrial age. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Lavee, Y., Katz, R., & Ben-Dror, T. (2004). Parent-child relationships in childhood and machismo and their effect on marital quality: A comparison of children who remained in close proximity to their parents and those who moved away. Union & Family Review, 36(iii/4), 95–113.

Murdock, One thousand. P., & White, D. R. (1969). Standard cross-cultural sample. Ethnology, 8, 329–369.

Quale, Chiliad. R. (1992). Families in context: A world history of population. New York, NY: Greenwood Press.

Skolnick, A. (1991). Embattled paradise: The American family in an age of dubiety. New York, NY: Bones Books.

Smith, R. T. (1996). The matrifocal family: Power, pluralism and politics. New York, NY: Routledge.

Starbuck, G. H. (2010). Families in context (2d ed.). Bedrock, CO: Epitome.

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Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/15-1-the-family-in-cross-cultural-and-historical-perspectives/

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