Chapter 1

1. Chapter 1 The Meaning of Marriage and the FamilyKey Terms

2. Affiliated kinUnrelated individuals who feel and are treated as if they were relatives. • FamilyFamily may be defined as one or more adults related by blood, marriage, or affiliation who cooperate economically, who may share a common dwelling, and who may rear children.

3. HouseholdA household consists of one or more people—everyone living in a housing unit makes up a household. • ClanA group of related families, is regarded as the fundamental family unit.

4. Nuclear familyA family consisting of mother, father, and children. • Traditional familyA mostly middle-class version of the nuclear family in which women’s primary roles are wife and mother and men’s primary roles are husband and breadwinner.

5. MarriageA legally recognized union between two people, generally a man and a woman, in which they are united sexually, cooperate economically, and may give birth to, adopt, or rear children.

6. Monogamy The practice of having only one spouse at one time. • PolygamyThe practice of having more than one wife or husband.

7. Modified Polygamy or Serial MonogamyA practice in which one person may have several spouses over his or her lifetime although no more than one at any given time.

8. PolygynyHaving two or more wives. • PolyandryHaving two or more husbands.

9. SocializationShaping individual behavior to conform to cultural or social norms.

10. Family of procreationThe common term for the family we form through marriage and childbearing. • Family of cohabitationThe family we form through living or cohabiting with another person, whether we are married or unmarried.

11. Family of orientationThe family in which we grow up, the family that orients us to the world. The family of orientation may change over time if the marital status of our parents changes. • Extended family Consists not only of the cohabiting couple and their children but also of other relatives, especially in-laws, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.

12. Kinship systemsThe social organization of the family. It is based on the reciprocal rights and obligations of the different family members, such as those between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and mothers-in-law and sons-in-law. • Conjugal relationshipFamily relationships created through marriage.(The word conjugal is derived from the Latin conjungere, meaning“to join together.”)

13. Consanguineous relationship Relationships created through biological (blood) ties—that is, through birth. • Spirit marriageA marriage arranged by two families whose son and daughter died unmarried.

14. ConservativesTo conservatives, cultural values have shifted away from individual self-sacrifice toward self fulfillment. This shift in values is seen as an important factor in changes in family life that occurred in the last three or four decades of the twentieth century. Conservatives recommend social policies to reverse or reduce the extent of such changes.

15. LiberalsLiberals tend to believe that the changes in family patterns are just that—changes, not signs of familial decline. The liberal position also portrays these changing family patterns as products of and adaptations to wider social and economic changes rather than a shift in cultural values.

16. CentristsShare aspects of both conservative and liberal positions. Like conservatives, they believe some familial changes have had negative consequences. Like liberals they identify wider social changes as major determinants of the changes in family life, but they assert greater emphasis than liberals do on the importance of cultural values.