Chapter 12 - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Chapter 12

Marriage and Alternative Family Arrangements

• The Nature of Family Life
• Defining Marriage
• The Transformation of the Family
• Family Diversity
• The Future: Bright or Dismal?

• The marriage rate has fallen more than 40%.
• When men and women marry today they are on average 4 years older than in 1970.
• The number of single-parent households has more than doubled.
• The proportion of those who have not married by age 35 has tripled for both men and women.

• Women are nearly twice as likely to be divorced as in 1970.
• The divorce rate has increased by nearly 40%.
• Unmarried-couple households have increased nearly fivefold.
• Half of all children are expected to spend some part of their childhood in a single-parent home.

• Patterning reproduction
• Organizing production and consumption
• Socializing children
• Providing care and protection
• Providing social status

• Most of the important decisions in the life of the family should be made by the man of the house.
• Strongly agree
• Agree somewhat
• Unsure
• Disagree somewhat
• Strongly disagree

• The nuclear family is the most basic family form and is made up of a married couple and their biological or adopted children.
• The nuclear family is found in all societies, and it is from this form that all other (composite) family forms are derived.

• Polygamous families are nuclear families linked together by multiple marriage bonds, with one central married to several spouses.
• The family is polygynous when the central person is male and the multiple spouses are female.
• The family is polyandrous when the central person is female and the multiple spouses are male.

• In extended families, along with married parents and their offspring, there may be the parents’ parents, siblings of the parents, the siblings’ spouses and children, and in-laws.
• All the members of the extended family live in one house or in homes close to one another, forming one cooperative unit.

• Marriage, an institution found in all societies, is the socially recognized, legitimized, and supported union of individuals of opposite sexes.

• Rules of endogamyLimit the social categories from within which one can choose a marriage partner.
• Rules of exogamyRequire an individual to marry someone outside his or her culturally defined group.

• How marriage differs from other unions:
• Takes place in a public manner.
• Includes sexual intercourse as an explicit element of the relationship.
• Provides the essential condition for legitimizing offspring.
• Is intended to be a stable and enduring relationship.

• The government should recognize homosexual marriages under the law with the same privileges as heterosexual marriages.
• Strongly agree
• Agree somewhat
• Unsure
• Disagree somewhat
• Strongly disagree

• Child-centered family.
• Marriage based on romantic love.
• Increased equality for women.
• Decreased links with extended families or kinship networks.
• Increased geographical and social mobility.
• Clear separation between work and leisure.

• Most scholars agree that the Industrial Revolution had a strong impact on the family.
• Industrialism demands that workers be geographically mobile so that a workforce is available wherever new industries are built.
• Industrialism requires a certain degree of social mobility.
• The modern nuclear family allows for inheritance and descent through both sides of the family.

• Between 1990 and 2000, percentage of married couples with children fell from 26% to 24%.
• Proportion of families headed by married couples fell from 76% in 1990 to 72% in 2000.
• Since the 1950s, traditional families have become increasingly rare.

• Increased dramatically in the past 20 years and is having a significant impact on the family.
• In 1988, fewer than one in five married Americans said they lived with their spouse before marriage.

• 30% of adults who were abused as children are abusive to their own children.
• 22% of American women report having been physically abused by their spouses or companions.
• 1 in 5 of these women report that the abuse took place in the previous year.

• The likelihood of a first marriage ending in divorce is 60% for people with some college education.
• Those who have a college degree have nearly a 40% chance of divorce and are the least divorce-prone.
• Approximately 53% of women who have gone on to graduate school will divorce.

• The strength of the American family is declining.
• Strongly agree
• Agree somewhat
• Unsure
• Disagree somewhat
• Strongly disagree

• One of the reasons there is more divorce today than in the past is because people live longer and there is more time to get divorced.
• False. Even though people live longer, they also marry later than in the past.
• Living together before marriage increases your chance of divorce.
• True.

• An unmarried woman is more likely to experienced domestic violence than a married woman.
• True.
• Now that people are more likely to divorce, those that stay married are happier than when people stayed married because of the stigma against divorce.
• False.Studies show that the general level of marital satisfaction has not increased.

• Second marriages are more successful than first marriages because people learn from their mistakes.
• False. The divorce rate for second marriages is higher than for first marriages.
• If your parents divorced your chances of divorcing are increased.
• True.

• Women are more likely than men to be the ones who initiate a divorce.
• True.
• Teenage marriages are fairly successful if they can get through the first year.
• False.Marrying in your teens increase the likelihood of divorce two to three times over that of couples in their twenties and older.

• The United States has the highest incidence of stepfamilies in the world.
• 17% of married couple households involve a stepparent.
• 54% of divorced women and 62% of men divorced men remarry within five years.

• Compared to men who marry earlier these men are more likely to:
• Worry about the risks of divorce.
• Not want children.
• Believe women cannot be trusted to tell the truth about past relationships.
• Think single men have better sex lives than married men.
• Believe marriage will reduce their personal freedom.

• In 2000, 61.5% of American men and nearly 58% of American women over the age of 18 were married.
• In 1970, only 10.5% of the women and 19.1% of the men between the ages of 25 and 39 had never been married.
• In 2003, 40.3% of women and 54.6% of men that age had never been married.

• In 1960, nearly 1/3 of all single mothers with children under 18 were widows.
• In the 1970s, most single mothers were divorced or separated.
• By 1980, only 11% of single mothers were widowed and two-thirds were divorced or separated.
• By 2000, 40% of single mothers had never been married.

• 5% of gay and 22% of lesbian families include children.
• Many of these children were part of a mother-father family and continued to live with a parent who transitioned to same-sex relationships.
• 17% of gays and 29% of lesbians had previously been in a heterosexual marriage.