Marriage and Family PDF

# Marriage and Family After this initial meeting, the girl and boy may not see each other again before the wedding day, depending on what their parents allow. The bride-viewing approach is much less common today than it was in the past. From the perspective of a person raised in an independence-tr...

# Marriage and Family After this initial meeting, the girl and boy may not see each other again before the wedding day, depending on what their parents allow. The bride-viewing approach is much less common today than it was in the past. From the perspective of a person raised in an independence-training culture, one might wonder how it's possible for modern, educated young men and women to accept a marriage arranged by their parents. There are a number of reasons that the system is still desirable. First, the dependence-training model used in India creates a highly interdependent family unit, with the clear responsibility of parents to find a match for their children. Second, the bride-viewing model is no longer used formally in most cases. Everyone involved wants what’s best for the young couple, including their happiness. Therefore, both boys and girls are now allowed to “veto” potential candidates. Third, contemporary arranged marriage in Mumbai allows some dating, letting the young couple get to know one another. Finally, young people know clearly what their family’s expectations are for their future marriage partners and have internalized these guidelines. In her fieldwork, Serena Nanda (2000) found this is because Indian girls trust their parents to make good decisions for their future. In interviews, several girls told me about having romantic feelings for their future husbands when they first met. They say, “We had a spark between us” or “I knew he was the one.” Identifying romantic feelings makes girls feel that their match will be special, something that is connected to the importance of social media and Bollywood movies. Therefore, even though arrangements happen, girls are still seeking an emotional connection. Today, it is less likely for a marriage to be strictly arranged with no sense of individual needs being met. It is also not very likely for a marriage to be strictly self-initiated and self-managed by the couple. A hybrid set of practices exists in which urban middle-class girls in Mumbai negotiate the traditional social expectations of Indian joint families and the modern tensions of urban life with its focus on self-fulfillment and female empowerment (González, 2013). # Kinship All human groups face certain issues: how to regulate sexual activity, raise children, and divide the labor necessary for subsistence. Kinship, or family relations, provides a structure for doing so. Since all societies recognize kin, every society has rules linked to family and household organization. Some of these rules might include who a person can marry, the roles of spouses, and the responsibilities of in-laws. Dividing labor along gender lines is one way to ensure labor is distributed. Another way is through family descent groups, or lineages, in which each side of the family has different responsibilities. Although kinship implies the relatedness of people through blood or marriage, there are forms of kinship that extend beyond these boundaries. The practice of adoption brings individuals who are not biologically related into a kinship relation. Adoptive families (and their variants such as step-, foster, or surrogate families) generally experience the same social norms and expectations as biologically related families, although sometimes the laws governing different types of families are different. Fictive kinship is the term sometimes used to refer to a constructed "family" of unrelated individuals who have family-like bonds. Referring to one another as “brothers” or “sisters," they might be members of an urban gang, a fraternity or sorority, or a group of soldiers who served together. Members of these groups often have a bond based on common experiences or values and rely on each other for social support, resources, and protection. Relationships built upon mutual caring and attachment may be called nurture kinship, such as between a mentor and mentee, in which one party plays the primarily nurturing role. Both fictive and nurture kinship may exist in the relationship created by the compadrazgo system in Mexico, in which parents choose a set of godparents (compadres and comadres) to help support their child’s financial needs. Compadres are also expected to care for children should their parents unexpectedly pass away. Some compadres provide little more than financial support, while others are deeply involved in many stages of the child’s life. Close relationships within LGBTQ+ communities also offer the kinds of care provided by a close-knit family. Queer kinship is a term used to refer to these supportive relationships based on shared experience and values, which sometimes must be maintained under challenging external circumstances. A person in the LGBTQ+ community may refer to their chosen family as the people they feel safe with and who provide care for them. In India, hijras (people of a third gender who take on a feminine gender expression) will adopt family roles and names upon joining a community, such as “aunty,” “sister,” or “mother” (Nanda, 1999). These roles help define the relationship they have with one another. Nicolazzo et al. (2017) discuss how these kinds of kinship-based alliances can help trans (transgender) students succeed in the college environment. Their findings indicate that queer kinship provides important support in three domains of college life for trans students: affective (emotional), virtual (online), and material (locations and organizations) where they can feel safe and build resilience strategies. Finding a sense of family in these three domains helps not only with mental health but also with student retention and success. # Kinship Descent Groups A descent group is a group of people who trace their descent from a particular ancestor. Descent groups form connections from parents to children, tracing their lineage through their father, mother, or both parents. Dividing the extended family in this way allows different rights and responsibilities to be assigned to different family members. Certain members of the descent group might act as godparents to newborn children or be responsible for harvesting crops when they ripen. A descent group may share a real ancestor or a mythological ancestor, called a totem. In some societies, descent is reckoned along one family line. This form of descent is called unilineal. There are two types of unilineal descent. Patrilineal descent is traced through the father’s bloodline. Matrilineal descent is traced through the mother’s. Only one lineage is responsible for the continuation of the family’s name and possessions, such as landholdings or other inherited items. One lineage may be responsible for giving certain gifts, hosting celebrations, or assistance during rites of passage. Societies with unilineal descent encode differences in social roles with different terms for the same relations on either side of the family, such as father’s brother and mother’s brother. For instance, in Farsi, the official language of Iran, khaleh refers to one’s mother’s sister, and ammeh refers to one’s father’s sister. Some languages in which respect is given to the eldest members of the family, such as Cantonese, use different terms for those who are older than one’s parent and those who are younger. Both lineages have clearly defined, but different, roles and expectations that the different terminology identifies. The languages listed in Table 7.2 are just a few of the many that use different terms to refer to people on different sides of the family. Some societies trace their genealogy through both the mother’s and father’s lines, called bilateral descent. The English language underscores this equality: English uses the same term to refer to the same relatives on a child’s mother’s side and on a child’s father’s side (aunts, uncles, or grandparents). These kinship terms represent generally equal expectations of both the father’s and mother’s families. # Table 7.2: Talking about Families | Language | Aunt (Maternal) | Aunt (Paternal) | |---|---|---| | Arabic | Khalto | Amto | | Farsi | Khaleh | Ammeh | | Hindi-Jain | Mosi | Bua | | Mandarin | Yí | Gu | | Cantonese | Yihma (if older than mother) Yì (if younger than mother) | Gumà (if older than father) Gujè (if younger than father) | | Urdu | Badi Khaala (if older than mother) Choti Khaala (if younger than mother) | Badi P’hupoo (if older than mother) Choti P’hupoo (if younger than mother) | Anthropologists have long been intrigued by the topic of kinship and descent, since family relationships lie at the foundation of social organization. Indeed, much early ethnographic fieldwork focused on constructing accurate kinship charts in order to understand the kin-related reasons for social patterns, such as house placement, food distribution, alliances, marriage rules, and taboos. For instance, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (1984) relates that Yanömami men cannot live near their mother-in-law, making household placement important in the village. In addition, Yanömami people are encouraged to marry their cross-cousins (the child of a parent’s opposite-sex sibling, such as the mother’s brother), but are forbidden from marrying their parallel cousins (the child of a parent’s same-sex sibling, such as the mother’s sister). Deciphering the kinship of traditional societies has allowed anthropologists to understand many related social patterns. # Summary As you read in this chapter, the institutions of marriage and family structure a great deal of social life in human societies. Mirroring the learning objectives stated in the chapter opening, the key points are: - Many different marriage patterns and family types can contribute to stable societies, including those built on monogamy, polygamy, and same-sex partnerships. - Throughout most of human existence, people have lived in extended family groups for the many benefits this structure provides. With the increase in industrial societies, nuclear families became the norm, due to the need to move for work and changing family expectations. - Because marriage is considered to be a joining of two families in most societies, rules exist to regulate marriage practices, compensation, and the responsibilities of descent. - Although marriage among people in modern Western societies tends to be self-initiated, many societies in the world still practice arranged marriage. Kinship can take many forms, including relationships among people who share experiences and a social or emotional bond. - Families may trace the rights and responsibilities of their lineage through one or both parent’s lines of descent.