Marriage

• Family of orientation


  The nuclear family in which one is born and grows up
• Family of procreation


  The nuclear family established when one marries and has children
• In most societies, relations with nuclear family members (parents, siblings, and children) take precedence over relations with other kin
• Nuclear family organization is very widespread but not universal, and its significance in society differs greatly from one place to another
• In a few societies, such as the classic Nayar case, nuclear families are rare or nonexistent
• In some societies, the nuclear family plays no special role in social life, and other social units, such as extended families and descent groups, can assume many of the functions otherwise associated with the nuclear family
• Zadruga (extended family in Bosnia)


  • Headed by a senior man and his wife
  • Includes their married sons and their wives and children, as well as unmarried sons and daughters
  • Possessions are freely shared by zadruga members
  • Social interaction is more usual among its women, its men, or its children than between spouses, or between parents and children
  • When the zadruga is particularly large, its members eat at three successive settings: for men, women, and children, respectively
  • Traditionally, all children over 12 sleep together in boys' or girls' rooms
  • When a woman wants to visit another village, she asks permission from the male zadruga head, not her husband
  • Any adult in the household can discipline a child
  • When a marriage breaks up, children under 7 go with the mother, older children can choose between their parents
• Ethnographers quickly recognize social divisions—groups—within any society they study
• Kin groups


  • Nuclear family
  • Extended family
  • Descent group
• Descent groups typically are spread out among several villages, so that all their members do not reside together; only some of them do—those who live in a given village</b>
• Descent groups tend to be found in societies with economies based on horticulture, pastoralism, or agriculture
• descent group A group based on belief in shared ancestry
• Zadruga


  • Headed by the brother of the widow's deceased husband
  • Where the widow's 5 children over 7 were left
• Nayars (or Nair)


  • Large and powerful caste on the Malabar Coast of southern India
  • Traditional kinship system was matrilineal (descent traced only through females)
• Tarawad


  Matrilineal extended family compound of the Nayars
• Tarawad


  • Residential complex with several buildings, its own temple, granary, water well, orchards, gardens, and landholdings
  • Headed by a senior woman, assisted by her brother
  • Housed children, siblings, her sisters' children, and other matrikin—matrilineal relatives
• Nayar marriage


  A kind of coming-of-age ritual, where a young woman would go through a marriage ceremony with a man, after which they might spend a few days together at her tarawad, then the man would return to his own tarawad
• Nayar men belonged to a warrior class, who left home regularly for military expeditions, returning permanently to their tarawad on retirement
• Nayar women could have multiple sexual partners
• Children became members of the mother's tarawad; they were not considered to be relatives of their biological father
• Child care was the responsibility of the tarawad
• Nayar society reproduced itself biologically without the nuclear family
• Industrialism and geographic mobility

  • Works to fragment kinship groups larger than the nuclear family
  • As people move, often for economic reasons, they are separated from their parents and other kin
• Only about 2 percent of the U.S. population now works in farming, relatively few Americans are tied to the land—to a family farm or estate
• Neolocality


  The pattern of postmarital residence, in which married couples establish a new place of residence away from their parents
• For middle-class North Americans, neolocality is both a cultural preference and a statistical norm
• Differences in kinship between middle-class and poorer North Americans

  • Association between poverty and single-parent households
  • Higher incidence of expanded family households among less well-off Americans
• Expanded family household


  Includes a group of relatives other than, or in addition to, a married couple and their children
• Types of expanded family households

  • Extended family household (3+ generations)
  • Collateral household (siblings and their spouses/children)
  • Matrifocal household (headed by a woman, includes other adult relatives and children)
• Reason for higher proportion of expanded family households among poorer Americans

  Adaptation to poverty - unable to survive economically as independent nuclear family units, relatives band together and pool resources
• Nuclear family accounts for less than one-fifth of American households
• Other domestic arrangements now outnumber the "traditional" American household more than five to one
• Women increasingly join men in the cash workforce


  Removes them from their family of orientation, makes it economically feasible to delay/forgo marriage
• Median age at first marriage for American women increased from 21 years in 1970 to 27 years in 2015
• Median age at first marriage for American men increased from 23 years in 1970 to 29 years in 2015
• More than a third (35%) of American men and 30% of American women had never married as of 2015
• Number of divorced Americans increased sixfold from 1970 to 2015, from 4.3 million to 26 million
• Ratio of divorces to marriages in the US doubled between 1960 and 1980, hovered around 50% between 1980 and 2000, and has since stabilized and declined to 46% in 2014
• Growth of single-parent families has outstripped population growth, tripling from fewer than 4 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2015
• Most single-parent families (83%) are single-mother families