INSTITUTIONS
 
CHAPTER 13 - FAMILY
 
DEF: A SOCIAL INSTITUTION is an organized pattern of beliefs
and behaviors centered on basic social needs (book).
 
They give us highly regulated, ritualized, and organized
practices and create established orders made up of
rule-bound and standardized behavior patterns such as
heterosexuality (eg, Chrys Ingraham), gender control (B. Zaitzow)
etc.
 
Four basic institutions:
 
   1.  Family
   2.  Religion
   3.  Government/politics
   4.  The Economy
   5.  Education
 
DEF:  Family is a set of persons related by blood, marriage, or
SOME OTHER agreed-upon relationship, who share PRIMARY
responsibility for reproducing and/or caring for its members.
 
Courthsip, Marriage and family---
 
All societies have some way of reproducing.
 
All societies also have some taboos on ways of *not* reproducing
(eg, incest taboo).
 
CULTURAL UNIVERSALS are things found EVERYWHERE.
 
 -- A PRIMARY GROUP--
 
Different types of families:
   A. Extended
   B. NUCLEAR
 
Families do the following:
   1. Division of labor
      a. child rearing
      b. support system (internal)
      c. support system (external)
      d. Reproduce society (explain)
 
   2. Sexual regualations
      a. Monogamy
      b. Serial monogamy
      c.  Polygamy (several spouses)
          (historically most-common)
          1) Polygyny--multiple wives at once
          2) Polyandry (multiple husbands)
 
      d. Power
         1) Matriarchy
         2) Patriarchy
         3) Egalitarian
      e) Socialization
         1) gender roles 2) violence
         3) problem solving, 4) values,
         5)culture, etc
HOW DO FAMILIES START:
 
A. Courtship:  Ritual "games":
   a) Language
   b)initiating, cues, etc
   c) Dating behavior
   d) living together
 
B. Mate Selection
   1) EXOGAMY--outside the group
   2) Endogamy--within the group
   3) Homogamy--marrying those "like" us
 
C. Love/Lust
 
D. Miscellaneous variables:
   1. Class--
   2. Race
   3. Ethnicity
 
HOW DO FAMILIES END?
 
1. Death (traumatic--more for men)
 
2. "Fatalistic" -- love/lust goes
 
3. Divorce--Most common
   a) in 1981, 50% of marriages
      ended in divorce
   b) key period: 3-5 years
 (note: in 1970, only 33% ended in divorce)
   Book notes difficulty of interpreting stats - divorce often
   calculated as pct of all divorces in a single year (regardless
   when couples were married) and number of new marriages in that
   same year.
   Note: Looking at divorces per 100 marriages performed gives
    us different view: About 1/2 in '99 compares to 33 pct in
    1970. Note that other ways of calculating show that
    divorce rate was stable between 1920-65, then tripled between
    1965-75, and has since been stable, even declining since '85.
 
 
4. Single fathers more common---"good"
   in that they become more "people" oriented
 
5.  Who is likely to divorce?--
 
     (young; married less than two years)
 
ALTERNATIVES TO MARRIAGE
 
  1. Remaining Single
     for advantages/disadvantages
     (tie to women---better for them)
 
  2. Cohabitation
  3. Communes (kibbutz, etc)

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