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Click on each question to check your answer.
1. What is a family and how is it differently defined?
Answer: Families are defined as groups of people related by birth, affinity, or cohabitation but there are many different types of families. A nuclear family, for example, is defined as two adults living with one or more children. An extended family, on the other hand, moves beyond this definition and consists of more than two generations living in the same household.
2. What are the five main ways marriage is becoming deinstitutionalized?
Answer: Andrew Cherlin believes the deinstitutionalization of marriage, or the questions of marriage in society and the changing norms and rules surrounding it, occurs in five ways. The first way is through the increase in cohabitation, which is when same-sex and opposite-sex couples live together without being married. The second way marriage is becoming deinstitutionalized is through the change in the roles individuals in couples play out in society. Whereas in the past, women were expected to play the stay-at-home role while men the breadwinner role, now it appears increasingly likely that both individuals in the coupling must be breadwinners in order to survive. The third way is related to the changing norms around having children where it is now socially acceptable to have children outside of marriage. The fourth way marriage has become deinstitutionalized is through the rise of divorce rates in society, perhaps reflecting changing values around the idea of “till death do us part.” Getting divorced carries less of a stigma in modern society and hence people are choosing divorce and happiness over marriage and unhappiness. Finally, the fifth way marriage has been deinstitutionalized is through the rise in diversity of forms of marriage. Couples are more diverse than ever before.
3. What are the major stages in the evolution of marriage?
Answer: The first major stage of marriage according to social scientists was associated with alliance building and is referred to as institutional marriages. In this stage marriages were meant to forge ties between families, communities, and groups in society in general. Such marriages are in the best interests of society, not the individuals. The second stage refers to the companionate marriage, a type of marriage with a clear division of labour between breadwinner and homemaker. Husband and wife are expected to be companions with each other in this stage. The third stage is individualized marriage, which is defined as a marriage in which the focus is on each spouse’s satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment.
4. What is the difference between a monogamous and a polygamous marriage?
Answer: The difference between the two is that a monogamous marriage is when each partner only relates to their spouse; there are no other individuals who are a part of their marriage. Polygamy, on the other hand, refers to a marriage in which there may be multiple spouses at the same time.
5. How do conflict theorists and structural functionalist theorists explain families?
Answer: Starting with Talcott Parsons, structural functionalists have theorized the functionality families create for human societies. To functionalists, families play reproductive, socializing, support, and regulatory roles, although Parsons believed families were also functional because they made use of women and men in what Parsons believed was women’s natural expressive role and what he believed was men’s instrumental role. Conflict theorists contradicted this idea on the grounds that functionalist theorists explained the family from a far too harmonious position. Families are filled with conflict, potentially violence, and it was the unequal distribution of power among family members that led to conflict within families. Far from harmonious, under certain conditions families are instead sites of conflict.