Chapter 11 - Understanding Institutions: Family

Question 1

Family

Answer 1

A group of people who take responsibility for meeting one another’s needs.

Whom we consider family, the basis for our bonds, and the needs families meet, however, change over time in response to the social environment.

Question 2

Nuclear family

Answer 2

Parents and their children

Question 3

Family: own. According to the U.S. Census Bureau,

Answer 3

A family consists of a householder and one or more other people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage or adoption

Bureau uses this definition because it assigns every person in the United States to one household to avoid counting people more than once.

Question 4

Institutionalized

Answer 4

Encoded in laws, policies, and widely accepted practises

Question 5

1996 Defense of Marriage Act

Answer 5

Signed by President Clinton

DOMA defined marriage as between one man and one woman

Allowed states not to recognize same-sex marriages

Question 6

Obergefell v. Hodges

Answer 6

Overturned DOMA in 2015.

the Supreme Court ruled states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and recognize same-sex marriages from other states. The shift to gender-neutral marriage is the most recent in a long line of legal and moral contests over who should and should not be considered family.

Question 7

Loving v. Virginia

Answer 7

1967, overturned bans on interracial marriages

Question 8

Turner v. Safley

Answer 8

1987 upheld the right for inmates to marry

Question 9

Marriage

Answer 9

A social construct which varies over time and place

Question 10

Early families

Answer 10

hunting and gathering groups developed marriage and kinship systems as a way to forge bonds and encourage cooperation with one another.

With the development of settled agriculture about 11,000 years ago, and later as European cultural influences spread, groups became more concerned about owning land, controlling surplus goods, and maintaining their social status.

Question 11

Preindustrial U.S Families

Answer 11

Native Americans - kindship groups administered justice and organized recourse gathered by the group to be shared.

Europeans in the colonial US there was a “family economy.” Families created the goods they consumed (Cherlin 1983), such as food and clothing, rather than buying them at a supermarket or retail store. In a time of short life spans, families also provided ways of passing along land and status to the next generation and forging connections to others. Although there was much religious diversity within the American colonies, most fell under the Calvinist Protestant umbrella, which emphasized individualism, the importance of marriage, and male headship of families.

Question 12

Coverture

Answer 12

the legal doctrine in which wives’ standing was subsumed into their husbands’. Only men could own property and sign contracts

Question 13

Slavery and Families

Answer 13

Families were of central importance to slaves, who established and maintained kinship ties, even as slave owners intervened in them. Slaves could not enter legally binding contracts, and slave owners could allow or disrupt informal marriages at their whim. The sale of children and other loved ones regularly ripped apart families

whether a child was free or a slave depended on whether his or her mother was free or a slave.

Question 14

Industrial US Families

Answer 14

site of reproduction, whereby people create and raise members of the next generation.

Families increasingly moved off farms and into cities where they worked, outside the home, in factories

Question 15

Mid-1800s - Women

Answer 15

activists for women’s rights gained victories, new laws allowed married women to own property, take legal action, and gain custody of children following divorce

Question 16

The 1900s and Emotion-Based US Families

Answer 16

Emotion-based marriage dominated the 1900s. New technologies, such as the automobile and later the birth control pill, brought couples freedom to date outside of the home and experience sexuality for the sake of intimacy and enjoyment without fear of pregnancy.

Question 17

Family wage

Answer 17

Post WWII economic boom allowed many men (particularly white men un unions) to earn enough to support an entire family permitting wives to remain at home.

Americans idealized
the traditional 1950s nuclear family with a breadwinning husband and homemaking wife

Question 18

1960s and 1970s

Answer 18

were times of social upheaval and rapid change. The feminist, civil rights, and sexual revolution movements drove ideological change, affirming the values, rights, and independence of women, people of color, and gay and lesbian individuals. A wave of civil rights legislation prohibited workplace and housing discrimination on the basis of sex and race, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was created to ensure fair hiring practices. Policies, like affirmative action programs, were enacted to help more Americans of color gain a foothold in the middle class.

U.S. economy deindustrialized, destroying the family wage and pushing many more women into the paid workforce.

Question 19

Stalled revolution

Answer 19

Couples waited to marry until they were older, and rates of premarital sex increased.

Divorce rates also rose

revolution. Women expected men to more fully share household responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning, while men valued the traditional family in which women were responsible for private life.

Question 20

Structural Functionalism: The Family

Answer 20

Concerned with how institutions create stability

Emphasizes how families serve as a socialization agent that allows society to move, with little disruption, from one generation to the next.

Functionalists also focus on the structure of families and which types of family arrangements provide the most stability, especially for children.

Argue that families are important because they regulate sexual behavior, legitimize childbirth, and establish a division of labor.

Support nuclear families

Question 21

Conflict Perpective: The Family

Answer 21

understanding families as a site of inequality. Conflict theorists emphasize two things in family research. First, social inequalities affect family life. For example, poor families and families of color have less access to affordable housing, creating strain on family life.

realities. Second, family life is an arena for acting out inequalities, particularly gender inequality. Conflict research also notes that marriage is declining around the globe, not just in the United States.

is part of a larger global transition toward gender equality”

Question 22

Feminist Perspective

Answer 22

illustrate how families tend to create and reinforce gender inequality. Feminists view families as a “gender factory”

They argue that family relationships are inherently gendered because we expect individuals to learn and act out gendered expectations around caring for others and breadwinning through family life. Many families provide girls and boys with gendered toys that teach girls (through dolls, dress-up, playhouses, etc.) to care take and boys (through sports, weapons, superheroes, etc.) to dominate.

Gender attitudes have grown increasingly egalitarian with successive generations,

Despite all the social changes of the past 150 years, economic pressures, lagging social policies, traditional gender ideologies, and racial discrimination still influence families and promote gender inequality.

Question 23

Intersectionality

Answer 23

conflict perspective that pushes sociologists to look at multiple forms of inequality, such as sexuality and class and gender, at the same time

Question 24

Social Exchange Theory

Answer 24

Presume that they make decisions by weighing the benefits and costs of various actions and then pick the action or arrangement that brings the biggest reward

Social exchange theorists note that when contemplating divorce, each marriage partner analyzes the rewards of his or her current arrangement in relation to (1) other marriages and (2) other relationship types. If he or she views either one to be more rewarding than his or her current relationship, marriage satisfaction decreases and motivation for separation increases.

Question 25

The Norm of Reciprocity

Answer 25

the expectation that we give and take with others in relatively equal ways, to help explain how we think and feel about our relationships.

The norm of reciprocity is evident when someone does something nice for you and you feel compelled to repay him or her in a relatively commensurate way.

In relationships, the norm of reciprocity dictates that partners support each other in relatively equal ways, even if the type of support is different, to maintain relationship happiness.

Question 26

Violence and Victimization

Answer 26

When someone in a family hurts or controls someone else, takes on many different forms: sexual abuse, financial abuse, emotional mistreatment, and physical violence.

Question 27

Divorce Rate

Answer 27

are at a forty-year low; they have decreased by 26 percent since 1980

Remains common

Research on divorce and relationship dissolution shows that couples with fewer resources are more at risk for divorcing than others. Marrying young, growing up in a divorced family, being poor, and losing a job, for example, are key risk factors for divorce

Education especially brings stability to family life because it opens up resources and opportunities to couples: more secure jobs with benefits, financial resources to deal with life challenges, neighborhoods with quality schools and little violence, and social ties with other well-educated people who can help navigate life’s difficulties.

Question 28

The second shift

Answer 28

Women’s housework at the end of the day

Question 29

Family and Medical Leave Act

Answer 29

Passed in 1993 entities eligible workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave and applies only in workplaces with fifty or more employees

Question 30

Paid family leave programs

Answer 30

California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia have created their own state-based paid family leave programs to help fill the gap (Noguchi 2019). Still, however, family life policies in the United States lag far behind other Global North nations