Definining households + universal family Flashcards
(6 cards)
Define a household
An inhabited residence. It may be a person living alone or a group together. Families are households but households might not be families
How does Murdock define the family
‘A social group characterised by a common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction’
Is the family universal? - YES - Murdock
Murdock looked at 250 societies ranging from hunter gatherers to large industrial societies. He found a,though they were diverse each contained of a basic nucleus of a husband and wife and children. Therefore the nuclear family is a universal social grouping.
He did see some extensions of this nucleus through extended families and also polygamy such as polygyny being common in parts of Africa
Is the family universal? - NO - Gough
Bough said the family did not exist in some cultures and used the Nayar to prove this. She said they were not a family in any sense as it was not a lifelong union, husbands and wives had no economic obligations to each other and there was no single sexually approved relationship.
In the Nayar tribe in Southern India, girls were ritually married before puberty but did not have to live with their husbands or have any contact with him
Is the family universal? - NO - Turnbull
Similar ideas to Gough and studied the Ik tribe. He noticed a complete disregard for family bonds which even lead to the death of children and the elderly by starvation. Children by age 3 were sometimes permanently expelled from the household. No adults looked after the children and they have to teach each other the basics of survival
Solutions to defining the family
Chela says defining the family is so problematic there are a number of solutions we are left with
- the family is impossible to define so abandon the idea
- all families are essentially extensions or reductions of nuclear families
- ask people what they think families are (personal life perspective)
