1. CHAPTER 16: MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
SOCI 100: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
Fall 2012
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker

2. CHAPTER OUTLINE What is family and what is marriage?
Cultural themes about families and marriage
How do sociological theories explain families?
Practices of family life

3. WHAT IS A FAMILY?
A social institution that unites individuals into cooperative groups that oversee the bearing and raising of children

4. WHAT IS A FAMILY?
Family unit: a social group of two or more people, related by blood, marriage or adoption Household: people who live together Kinship: a social bond based on blood Affinity: social bonds based on marriage

5. WHAT IS MARRIAGE?
Socially approved mating arrangements, whose beginning is usually marked by a ritual (a wedding) A marriage often (but not always) involves economic cooperation, sexual activity and childbearing between two people.

6. CULTURAL THEMES ABOUT MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Mate selection
Endogamy
Exogamy
Incest taboo
Number of spouses
Monogamy
Polygamy
Polygyny
Polyandry

7. CULTURAL THEMES... Patrilineage Matrilineage
Systems of descent
Patrilineage
Matrilineage
Bilineal system of descent
Authority structure within a marriage/family
Patriarchy
Living arrangements
Patrilocal residence
Matrilocal residence
Neolocal residence

8. Mate selectION Arranged marriages
Marriages based on the individual choice of two people  love match
New methods of mate selection?

9. FACTS ABOUT TURKEY
Average marriage age: 1935 Men: 23, women: : Men: 27, women: 23 Source: Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, 2008

10. FACTS ABOUT TURKEY
Who decided on the marriage? (2003 figures) Families: 54.8 % Self: 40.5 % Abduction/elopement: 4.6 % Kinship relations between spouses: Kin: 21.7 % Non-kin: 78.3 % Source: Turkish Demographic and Health Survey, 2003

11. FACTS ABOUT TURKEY
Households in Istanbul (2008): 70.3 % nuclear families 16.6 singles and single parent families 13 % extended families (1980) 75 % nuclear families 15 % extended families 10 % singles and single parent families Source: Yavuz and Yeşilçaylı, 2012

12. HOW DID FAMILIES EVOLVE HISTORICALLY?
Nuclear family: parent and children Extended family: three generations living together

13. EXPLAINING FAMILIES
Functionalist approach: Families have important social functions. Conflict and feminist approaches: Families reproduce gender and economic inequalities in society.

14. Functions of the family
1- Socialization
2- Regulation of sexual activity
All societies have some notion of an incest taboo.
The incest taboo
minimizes sexual competition within a family by delimiting legitimate sexuality to spouses.
forges alliances between different families by dictating marriages outside the family.

15. Functions of the family
3– Family facilitates the “social placement” of children. 4- Material and emotional security

16. Conflict approach
1– The institution of family emerged out of the need to identify heirs, so that men could transfer property to their sons (Friedrich Engels) 2– Men control the sexuality and labor of women in the patriarchal family (socialist feminists). 3– As long as people marry others like themselves, racial and ethnic hierarchies in a society will remain the same. 4- Men benefit from patriarchal families where they have more power, and women do most of the house and care work.

17. Practices of Family Life: CARE
A key practice in family life is “care”:
caring for: looking after children and parents: this is a form of work
caring about: love and affection
Most care work is done by women.

18. PRACTICES of FAMILY LIFE: Violence
Families are not always “havens” from the dangers of the outside world. They can also contain violence. Family violence: emotional, physical or sexual abuse of one family member by another.

19. NEW PRACTICES
Families of affinity (families of choice): People with or without blood ties who feel they belong together and wish to define themselves as a family.  Definition of family is related to moral and political choices.

20. NEW PractICES
Cohabitation: sharing of a household by an unmarried couple.
Gay marriage
Gay parenting
More people are choosing to live by themselves.