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Sociology: A Brief Introduction 14e

Richard T. Schaefer

Copyright 2022 © McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
 Because learning changes everything. ®

Instructor: Dr. Tôn Nữ Ngọc Hân (Ph.D)

Center for Public Administration
International University (VNU-HCMC)

Chapter 12
The Family and Household Diversity

Copyright 2022 © McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
 Inside

Global View of the Family

Sociological Perspectives on the Family
Marriage and Family
Divorce
Lesbian and Gay Relationships
Diverse Lifestyles
Social Policy and the Family: Family Leave Worldwide

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 A Look Ahead

Family: a set of people related by blood, marriage, or some

other agreed-on relationship, or adoption, who share the
primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for
members of society.
What are families in different parts of the world like?
How do people select their mates?
When a marriage fails, how does the divorce affect the
children?
What are the alternatives to the nuclear family and how
prevalent are they?

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 Global View of the Family

“Family” is often inadequate to describe some arrangements,

including cohabitating partners, same-sex marriages, and
single-parent households.
Many variations in the family are seen from culture to culture.
Family as a social institution exists in all cultures.
Certain general principles concerning composition, kinship
patterns, and authority patterns are universal.

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 Composition: What Is the Family 1

Nuclear family: a married couple and their unmarried

children living together.
• Less than a quarter of the family households in the United
States fit the model of the married heterosexual couple with their
own children.
• The number of single-parent households has increased.
Extended family: a family in which relatives live in the same
home as parents and their children.
• Crises put less stress on family members, as more are present
to provide assistance and support.
• The extended family also constitutes a larger economic unit than
a nuclear family.

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 FIGURE 12-1 LIVING ARRANGEMENTS OF ADULTS AGE 18 AND
OVER, 1967 AND 2019
Note: “All others” includes adults who live with a parent, roommate, sibling, foster child, or grandchild.

Access the text alternative to slide image

© McGraw Hill LLC Sources: Bureau of the Census, 2017d:Figure AD-3a.; American Community Survey, 2019a: B09021. 7
 Composition: What Is the Family 2

Monogamy: a form of marriage in which an individual only

has one partner.
Serial monogamy: a person may have several spouses in a
lifetime, but only one spouse at a time.
Polygamy: a form of marriage where an individual has
several husbands or wives simultaneously.
• Declined during the 20th century.
• In at least 32 countries, 5 percent of all women are in
polygamous marriages.

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 Composition: What Is the Family 3

There are two basic types of polygamy.

Polygyny: the marriage of a man to more than one woman
at the same time.
• Wives are often sisters, who are expected to hold similar values
and have experience sharing a household.
• In these societies, relatively few men have several wives.
Polyandry: a woman may have more than one husband at
the same time.
• Exceedingly rare.

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 Kinship Patterns: To Whom Are We
Related?
Kinship: the state of being related to others.
• Culturally learned and not totally determined by biology or
marital ties.
• Adoption creates a legal kinship tie.
• Kinship ties frequently create obligations and responsibilities.
The principle of descent assigns people to kinship groups
according to their relationship to a mother or father.
• Bilateral descent: both sides of a person’s family are regarded
as equally important.
• Patrilineal descent: only the father’s relatives are important in
terms of property, inheritance, and emotional ties.
• Matrilineal descent: only the mother’s relatives are significant.

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 Authority Patterns: Who Rules?

Societies vary in the way power is distributed within the

family.
• Patriarchy: males are expected to dominate in all family
decision making.
• Matriarchy: women have greater authority than men.
• Egalitarian family: family in which spouses are regarded as
equals.
Many sociologists feel the egalitarian family is replacing the
patriarchal family in the United States as the social norm.

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 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Do we really need the family?

Conflict theorists have argued the family contributes to
societal injustice, denies women opportunities, and limits
certain freedoms.
Functionalists focus on the ways in which the family gratifies
the needs of its members and contributes to social stability.
Interactionists focus on the face-to-face relationships in the
family.
Feminists examine the role of the mother and wife, especially
in the absence of an adult male.

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 Functionalist Perspective

The family serves six functions for society:

• Reproduction.
• Protection.
• Socialization.
• Regulation of sexual behavior.
• Affection and companionship.
• Provision of social status.
Families have traditionally filled other functions that are today
fulfilled by social institutions.
• Providing religious training.
• Education.
• Recreational outlets.

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 Conflict Perspective 1

Family is seen as a reflection of the inequality in wealth and

power found in the larger society.
• Family has traditionally legitimized and perpetuated male
dominance.
• Historically, wives and children were viewed as property.
• The first wave of contemporary feminism challenged this status.
Male dominance over the family has not disappeared.
• The number of fathers at home with their children has nearly
doubled since 1989.
• However, the number of fathers who do not live with the family is
also increasing.

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 Conflict Perspective 2

Many husbands (and some wives) reinforce their power over

spouses and children through domestic violence.
Family is an economic unit that contributes to social injustice.
• Family is the basis for transferring power, property, and privilege
from one generation to the next.
• Children inherit the social and economic status of their parents
and therefore the family helps to maintain societal inequality.

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 Interactionist Perspective

Interactionists focus on the micro level of family and other

intimate relationships.
They are interested in how individuals interact with each
other, whether they are cohabiting partners or longtime
married couples.
One increasing area of study is the nature of relationships
between stepparents and stepchildren.
• Stepparents play a wide variety of social roles.

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 Feminist Perspective

Feminist sociologists have taken a strong interest in the

family as a social institution.
• Close look at how women’s work outside home impacts child
care and housework duties.
• Urge social scientists and agencies to rethink the notion that
families in which no adult male is present are automatically a
cause for concern.
• Researchers have focused on the resiliency of single-mother
households.
Feminists who take the interactionist perspective stress the
need to study neglected topics, such as dual-income
households where the wife earns more.

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 TABLE 12-1 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FAMILY

Theoretical Perspective Emphasis

Functionalist The family as a contributor to social stability;
Roles of family members
Conflict The family as a perpetuator of inequality;
Transmission of poverty or wealth across
generations
Interactionist Relationships among family members
Feminist The family as a perpetuator of gender roles;
Female-headed households

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 Our Wired World

12-1 Love Is in the Air and on the Web:

• Impression management—the altering of the presentation of
the self in order to create distinctive appearances and satisfy
particular audiences—is common in online dating.
• Have you ever gone out with a person you met online? If so, did
the person resemble his or her online presentation? In what
ways?
• Which method of locating other singles do you think would be
more useful, going to an online dating site or using an app to
locate singles near you? Explain.

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 Marriage and Family

Over 94 percent of all men and women in the United States

marry at least once during their lifetimes.
• Despite a high rate of divorce, there are indications of a
miniboom in marriages.
Social institutions and distinctive cultural norms and values
play an important role in romance and mate selection.
One unmistakable trend in mate selection is that the process
is taking longer today than in the past.

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 FIGURE 12-2 MEDIAN AGE AT
FIRST MARRIAGE
Note: Data for marriages 2017–2019.

Access the text alternative to slide image

© McGraw Hill LLC Sources: Buchholz, 2019; Bureau of the Census, 2019a; Eurostat, 2020; Kopf, 2020. Flags: admin_design/Shutterstock 21
 Courtship and Mate Selection 1

Aspects of mate selection:

Endogamy: specifies groups within which a spouse must be
found and prohibits marriage with members of other groups.
• Intended to reinforce the cohesiveness of the group.
Exogamy: requires mate selection outside certain groups,
usually one’s family or certain kinfolk.
• Incest taboo: a social norm common to all societies prohibiting
sexual relationships between certain culturally specified
relatives.
Homogamy: the conscious or unconscious tendency to
select a mate with characteristics similar to one’s own.

© McGraw Hill LLC 22

 Courtship and Mate Selection 2

The love relationship:

Parents in the United States tend to value love highly as a
rationale for marriage.
• Encourage children to develop intimate relationships based on
love and affection.
• Popular culture (books, movies, songs, etc.) reinforces the
theme of love.
The coupling of love and marriage is not a cultural universal.
• Many cultures give priority in mate selection to other factors.

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 Sociology in the Global Community 1

12-2 Arranged and Hybrid Marriages:

• Arranged marriage: occurs when other people (often the
parents) choose a person’s marital partner.
• In an arranged marriage, the two people typically do not even
know each other, much less have any mutual romantic interest.
• Hybrid marriage: the son or daughter may identify the
prospective spouse, but the marriage is contingent on the
parent’s approval of that choice.

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 Sociology in the Global Community 2

12-2 Arranged and Hybrid Marriages:

• Describe some of the differences between cultures that practice
arranged marriage versus cultures that practice romantic
marriage. How do their views of the importance of the individual
versus the family differ?
• Imagine that your parents and/or a matchmaker are going to
arrange a marriage for you. What kind of mate will they select?
Will your chances of having a successful marriage be better or
worse than if you selected your own mate?

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 Variations in Family Life and Intimate
Relationships 1

Social class differences:

The U.S. upper class emphasizes lineage and maintenance
of the family’s position.
• Concerned about proper training for children.
Lower-class families are more likely to have only one parent
at home, and children typically assume adult responsibilities.
• Concerned about paying bills and the crises of poverty.
Among the college-educated, both spouses are delaying
marriage, and divorce rates are relatively low.
Less privileged families tend to hang on to adult children for
their labor and income.

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 Variations in Family Life and Intimate
Relationships 2

Racial and ethnic differences:

The subordinate status of racial and ethnic minorities in the
United States profoundly affects their family lives.
• Lower incomes make creating and maintaining successful
marital unions more difficult.
• Immigration policies have complicated the successful relocation
of intact families from Asia and Latin America.
Although no father is present in a significantly higher
proportion of Black families, Black single mothers often
belong to stable kin networks.
• Black family life has emphasized deep religious commitment
and high aspirations for achievement.

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 Variations in Family Life and Intimate
Relationships 3

Native Americans draw on family ties to cushion many of the

hardships they face.
• Teenage parenthood not always regarded as a crisis.
• Traditionally, couples reside with the wife’s family after marriage.
Mexican Americans are described as more familistic than
many other subcultures.
• Familism: pride in extended family expressed through the
maintenance of close ties and strong obligations to kinfolk.
• Machismo: sense of virility, personal worth, and pride in one’s
maleness.

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 FIGURE 12-3 RISE OF SINGLE-PARENT FAMILIES IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1970–2019
Note: Families are groups with children under 18. Early data for Asian Americans are for 1980. White
data are for non-Hispanic whites. Not included are unrelated people living together with no children
present. All data exclude children who live with neither parent.

© McGraw Hill LLC Sources: Bureau of the Census 2008a:56; 2019f: Table C3. 29
 Child-Rearing Patterns 1

Caring for children is a universal function of the family.

• The ways in which societies assign this function to family
members differ.
Today, fewer than one in five children lives in a household
with a father present and working, a mother present, and no
other step or custodial children present.

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 Child-Rearing Patterns 2

Parenthood and grandparenthood:

Four factors complicate the transition to adulthood and the
role of socialization:
• Little anticipatory socialization for caregiver role.
• Limited learning during pregnancy.
• Abrupt transition to parenthood.
• Lack of clear and helpful guidelines for successful parenthood.
About 10 percent of all children live with a grandparent.
• In over 15 percent of these households, no parent is present, so
a grandparent is truly raising the child.

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 FIGURE 12-4 GRANDPARENTS WHO SUPPORT GRANDCHILDREN,
2018
Note: Coresident refers to grandparents and grandchildren living in the same household.

Access the text alternative to slide image

© McGraw Hill LLC Source: Bureau of the Census 2019g. Hand: Jamie Grill/Getty Images 32
 Child-Rearing Patterns 3

Adoption:
Adoption: the transfer of legal rights, responsibilities, and
privileges of parenthood to a new legal parent or parents.
• Every year, about 125,000 children are adopted.
• Functionalist perspective: government has a strong interest in
encouraging adoption because it offers a stable family
environment.
• Interactionist perspective: adoption may require a child to adjust
to very different family environment and parental approach to
child rearing.
Adopting a child is a big adjustment, particularly when the
child comes from another culture.

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 Child-Rearing Patterns 4

Dual-income families:
Among couples with children under 18, 93 percent of the
men and 71 percent of the women were in the labor force in
2018.
Factors in the increase in the number of dual-income
couples:
• Economic need.
• Desire by both members of the couple to pursue their careers.
Commuter marriages have risen.
• Today the woman’s job is often the one that creates the
separation.

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 Child-Rearing Patterns 5

Single-parent families:
Single-parent families: only one parent is present to care
for the children.
• In 2019, a single parent headed about 19 percent of white
families with children, 29 percent of Hispanic families, and 53
percent of Black families.
Although life in a single-parent family can be stressful, it is
not inevitably more difficult.
• Interactionists observe that for low-income teenage women, a
child may provide a sense of motivation and purpose.

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 Child-Rearing Patterns 6

Stepfamilies:
Rising rates of divorce and remarriage have increased the
number of stepfamily relationships.
The nature of blended families has social significance for
adults and children.
Children may not be better off than children of divorced,
single-parent households.
Children raised in families with stepmothers are less likely to
have health care, education, and money spent on their food.

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 Divorce

In the United States, the pattern of family life includes

commitments both to marriage and to self-expression and
personal growth.
The tension between those commitments can undermine a
marriage.
In some nations, such as Italy, the culture strongly supports
marriage and discourages divorce.
In others, such as Sweden, people treat marriage the same
way as cohabitation.
• Both are just as lasting.

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 Statistical Trends in Divorce 1

Divorce statistics are difficult to interpret.

• The media report that one out of every two marriages ends in
divorce—a figure based on a comparison of the number of
divorces in a year with the number of marriages.
• About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s were still
together as of late 2014.
• Those who married between 2000 and 2010 are showing an
even greater tendency to stay together.
The divorce rate has declined since the late 1980s.
• Couples wait longer to marry.
• Married people tend to be better educated and have higher
incomes.

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 FIGURE 12-5 TRENDS IN MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1920–2017

Access the text alternative to slide image

© McGraw Hill LLC Sources: Bureau of the Census 1975:64; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2012b, 2017. 39
 Statistical Trends in Divorce 2

About 40 percent of all marriages are remarriages.

Women are less likely than men to remarry.
• Many retain custody of their children, which complicates a new
relationship.
New kin networks can be particularly complex if children are
involved or if an ex-spouse remarries.

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 Factors Associated with Divorce

Perhaps the most important factor in the overall increase in

divorce over the past hundred years has been a greater
social acceptance of divorce worldwide.
Contributing factors to this acceptance in the United States:
• More liberal divorce laws.
• Divorce presenting a more practical option in newly formed
families, which today tend to have fewer children.
• A general increase in family incomes and greater availability of
legal aid.
• Greater opportunities for women, with more and more wives
becoming less dependent on their husbands.

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 Impact of Divorce on Children

A national study that tracked 6,332 children before and after

divorce found their behavior did not suffer.
Other studies have shown greater unhappiness among
children who live amidst parental conflict than among those
whose parents are divorced.
Only about 53 percent of court-ordered child support is paid.
The proportion of custodial mothers in poverty is 32 percent,
which is about twice as many as custodial fathers in poverty.

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 Lesbian and Gay Relationships 1

Some lesbians and gay men live alone or with roommates;

others in long-term, monogamous relationships.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution
guarantees the right to same-sex marriage, nationwide.
The new reality of same-sex divorce has been complicated
by jurisdictional issues.
• Before their marriages were legal nationwide, many couples
traveled to where they could be married, then returned home.

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 Lesbian and Gay Relationships 2

In addition to marriage equality, the last few years have seen

dramatic changes in legal discrimination against lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.
• Significant barriers remain, especially in family law and publicly
expressed prejudicial attitudes.
Queer theorists point to the relative lack of high-quality
research on LGBTQ households.
• They argue for more attention to people of color, the working
class, the poor, and immigrants in the LGBTQ community.

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 Research Today

12-3 Challenges to LGBTQ Adoption:

• In 2019, the Trump administration moved to allow agencies to
deny adoption services on faith-based grounds.
• Should agencies be allowed to deny adoption placements to
LGBTQ couples or individuals on the basis of religious beliefs?
Why or why not?
• From a child’s point of view, compare the experience of adoption
by a same-sex family to that of adoption by an opposite-sex
family. What might be the advantages and disadvantages of
each? What might be the challenges?

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 Diverse Lifestyles

Marriage is no longer the presumed route from adolescence

to adulthood.
Instead, marriage is just one of several paths to maturity.
People are postponing marriage until later in life.
More couples, including same-sex couples, are deciding to
form partnerships without marriage.

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 Cohabitation

Among adults ages 18 to 44, 59 percent have lived with an

unmarried partner at some point in their lives.
Couples who are cohabitating or married give similar
reasons for their relationships.
• Love and companionship.
• Women are more likely to say that wanting to have children
someday was a major reason to move in with a partner.
• Since 1970, the number of unmarried couples with children has
increased 12-fold.

© McGraw Hill LLC 47

 Remaining Single

As of 2019, there were more than 36 million people living

alone, or over 28 percent of all American household.
• Represents an enormous change.
• Both a deliberate choice and because marriage is no longer
sought automatically as a step toward adulthood.
Reasons why people may decide not to marry:
• Do not want to limit sexual intimacy.
• Desire not to be highly dependent on someone.

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 Marriage without Children

There has been a modest increase in childlessness in the

United States and other industrial countries.
• About 16 to 22 percent of women will complete their
childbearing years without having children.
More and more couples today choose not to have children
and regard themselves as child-free rather than childless.
• Having children is expensive.
Childless couples are beginning to question current
workplace practices that give flexibility to employees with
children and may not extend the same to childless
employees.

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 Social Policy and the Family: Family Leave
Worldwide 1

Looking at the Issue:

• In 2010, the United States became the only industrialized nation
that does not mandate paid family leave.
• Employers are not even required to grant unpaid leave.
• The International Labor Organization found that the United
States is only one of two countries that provides no cash
benefits for women during maternity leave.

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 Social Policy and the Family: Family Leave
Worldwide 2

Applying Sociology:
• Functionalists say that family leave is important as a means of
facilitating the parent–child interaction crucial to socialization.
• Interactionists look at family leave policies’ impact on everyday
relations at work and at home.
• Conflict theorists note the inherent class bias in family leave
policy, which benefits a relatively small number of relatively
affluent workers.
• Even when family leave plans exist, companies seem to
stigmatize the use of these policies.
• Feminist scholars content this results from a flexibility stigma:
the devaluation of workers who see or are presumed to need
flexible work arrangements.

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 Social Policy and the Family: Family Leave
Worldwide 3

Initiating Policy:
• The Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) entitled some
employees to unpaid, job-protected leave.
• Some private corporations have adopted family friendly-policies.
• In 2015, Facebook announced employees would receive 4
months of paid maternal and paternal leave.
• Parental leave enjoys wide public support, but debate continues
over what should be covered and who should pay for it.

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 FIGURE 12-6 PAID PARENTAL
LEAVE
Note: Data for 2018 compiled in 2020. The economic costs of the coronavirus pandemic have pressured
some governments to reduce parental leave benefits, and the United States still does not require any
such benefits.
Access the text alternative to slide image

© McGraw Hill LLC Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2020b. Flags: admin_design/Shutterstock 53
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 HOW MODERN FAMILIES
INCREASE
SOCIAL INEQUALITY
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSmAYUnZyxE
Produced by The Economist
(20 minutes)

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