you've probably heard people say that
blood is thicker than water that's
supposed to mean that family
relationships blood are stronger than
all other relationships which I guess
are the water but what do you think is
that true can friends be considered your
family or do you only think of your
parents or siblings as family members
and how strong are familial
relationships do they come with
obligations that you don't have for
other people let's try to tell the blood
from the water here and figure out what
makes a family of family
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you probably have your own idea of what
makes a family but here's how
sociologists define it families are
groups of people who are related by
genetics marriage or choice and who
share material emotional and economic
resources so the family isn't a formal
organization like a government or a
church instead it's a social institution
that's because the members of a family
are held together by the commonly shared
goal of the well-being and mutual
support of its members and they organize
people and power based on positions of
social status within the family like
mother or daughter family often goes
hand in hand with kinship a social bond
based on common ancestry marriage or
adoption these are the relationships
that are most commonly thought of as
family parents and kids spouses siblings
aunts and uncles and some of these
relationships are born into the
biological children of parents for
example but other family relationships
are created through legal bonds like
marriage or adoption and it's also
important to recognize that for many
people family is a matter of choice
marriage is the most prominent example
of this choosing to get married as two
people coming together to say to each
other and the world that they choose to
be a family another family by choice is
when close friends are also considered
family a practice called fictive kin
these family friends are incorporated
into the larger family interacting daily
living together having their kids grow
up together calling the friend uncle
Joey wait that's just the plot of full
house but fictive kin isn't a fictional
concept these found families consist of
people who have chosen to care for each
other share resources and share their
lives together this can make a family
bond as strong as any based on ancestry
or law now no matter what type it is the
family that you grow up in is known as
your family of orientation because it
Orient's you to the world and teaches
you how families work and the family
that you create on your own as an adult
is known as a family of procreation a
common type of family of procreation is
a nuclear family a unit made up of two
parents and biological or adopted
children consider this a contrast to
another two common types of families
single-parent families and extended
families a single-parent family is
exactly what it sounds like
one parent raising children both nuclear
and single parent families are also
sometimes referred to as immediate
family parents and siblings extended
family is everyone
your family who isn't a parent or
sibling grandparents uncles cousins
great aunts third cousins twice removed
in the United States most people live
with their immediate family though they
may live nearby or regularly visit
members of their extended family and in
many cultures including the u.s.
families most often formed around
marriages marriage is a legally
recognized relationship usually
involving economic social emotional and
sexual bonds I know that's not a very
romantic way to describe marriage but
marriage isn't always based on love and
romance the idea of marrying for love
alone is actually fairly new sure people
have always fallen in love but you
didn't need to be in love to get married
instead more practical concerns like
creating tighter bonds between families
or finding economic security have
historically been more common reasons
cultural norms that are sometimes
enshrined into laws also limit romantic
love by marking some people as
acceptable spouses or not some norms
promote endogamy or marriage between
people of the same social category
essentially like marries like for
example college-educated Americans are
more likely to marry other
college-educated Americans and people
are more likely to marry others of the
same race though that pattern is slowly
changing interracial marriage is an
example of exogamy or marriage between
people of different social categories
another example of exogamy is marrying
up or a person of a low socioeconomic
status marry someone of a higher
socioeconomic status traditionally women
are more likely to use marriage to move
up the socio-economic ladder than men
partially due to broader patterns of
gender and equality that limit other
opportunities for improving their status
and forms of marriage can vary across
time and across cultures in modern-day
high-income countries marriage is by law
only between two people a practice known
as monogamy polygamy or marriage between
two or more spouses is legally
recognized in the majority of African
countries and in some South Asian
countries marriage practices are deeply
tied to the economic and social
structures of society for example the
most common form of polygamy is polygyny
or the marriage of one man to two or
more women but in societies with low
male-to-female ratios polyandry or the
marriage of one woman to two or more men
can also occur in countries where
polygamy isn't legally recognized the
term bigamy is used to refer to going
through the legal processes of marrying
while still married to another person
now marriage is the main way that
individuals move from their family of
orientation into a fam
procreation and with marriage comes
decisions about how to fit your new
family into your existing separate
families let's go to the thought-bubble
to look at how marriage practices have
varied across societies say a man and a
woman get married where should they live
if we're in a pre-industrial society the
couple will most likely move to live
with or near the husband's family a
practice known as Patra locality in a
study of 1153 cultures cultural
anthropologist David Levinson estimated
that about 70 percent have a patrilocal
residence pattern this was most common
for societies with frequent warfare
where families wanted to keep sons
around as a form of protection but in
some pre-industrial societies our newly
married couple will practice mattre
locality where they live with or near
the wife's family many Native American
tribes particularly those in the
southwestern United States such as the
Hopi and Zuni
have historically been mattre local with
newly married couples settling into the
clan of the wife in these societies
women generally own the home and
resources of the family these tribes are
also matrilineal meaning that they trace
descent through the mother's family tree
most societies however are patrilineal
meaning that they trace kinship through
the father this means that all in harens
land wealth titles passes from father to
son we see patterns like this even in
relatively recent times until the mid
19th century all land inherited by women
in the US was solely owned by her
husband encouraging inheritance patterns
at preference sons and it was only in
the last decade that Britain changed its
line of succession to allow the monarchy
to be passed on to the first foreign
child regardless of sex
thanks thought-bubble so that's how a
residential choice and family
inheritance worked in the past but what
about nowadays industrialization has
resulted in huge job growth in city
centers which has stoked greater
migration from hometowns to big cities
as such many married couples have been
more likely to be living apart from both
sets of parents a practice known as neo
locality while patrilineal traditions
like passing on the father's last name
to children persist most families in
industrial societies trace descent
through both men and women this
continues to be true in most high-income
countries anny locality is most common
among the highly educated and households
where both spouses are working because
cities are where most of the jobs are
even if modern day Americans live far
from their parents it's impossible to
escape the impact that families play in
molding us both on an individual and
level family is yet another social
institution that we can use the three
schools of sociological thought to
examine structural functionalists
emphasized the role that families play
in socializing children so they can
function in society while of course also
giving them emotional and material
support but the other role of family in
a structural functionalist framework is
the regulation of sexual activity which
again I know sounds super romantic what
I mean is that our societal norms about
who can marry whom generally tells us
something about what we hold to be
acceptable or taboo sexual behavior for
example incest is taboo in most cultures
this norm exists partially because
reproduction among close relatives
increases the likelihood of genetic
inbreeding these taboos mean that people
must find their partners outside their
family creating social ties across
families within a community
in contrast social conflict theory
particularly feminist theory focuses on
the ways in which traditional notions
about family perpetuates social
inequality some of these inequalities
might be obvious based on what we've
talked about already like patrilineal
lines of descent that make it impossible
for women to hold wealth or gain power
there's also the negative side of family
as a form of sexual regulation we might
think it's a good thing that family
status ties prevent incest but
historically this sexual regulation has
also meant that married women have been
seen as the sexual and economic property
of their husbands I've mentioned already
that in the 19th century women's
inheritance and earnings legally
belonged to their husband but for a more
recent example look at how the law
treats women's control over their own
body within marriage marital rape was
not made illegal in all states in the
u.s. until 1993 social conflict theory
also points out the ways in which
marriage entrenches social advantages
and disadvantages because most people
marry those who are similar to
themselves inequalities across class and
race lines are often enhanced and
further entrenched by marriage
oftentimes and agamous marriage occurs
because of social norms and preferences
but it also stems from laws that
regulate who can marry whom
anti-miscegenation laws which outlawed
interracial marriage were not ruled
unconstitutional until 1967 in the aptly
named Supreme Court case loving versus
Virginia finally through the lens of
symbolic interactionist theories we can
see families in terms of the daily
interactions of family life family
status has come with their own
expectations of behavior the stereotypes
of mother as nurturer and father as
breadwinner
how people think about themselves and
others as good or bad fathers and
mothers social exchange theory argues
that relationships are a form of
exchange between people attempts to gain
benefits from their interaction while
avoiding the costs if the costs outweigh
the benefits the marriage ends of course
much of what we've discussed today has
looked at marriage under a
heteronormative lens and many of these
theories don't hold up as well when
definitions of marriage and family are
broadened to cover the wide spectrum of
family types that we see today so next
week we'll talk about what families look
like in the here-and-now and how society
shapes these family forms but today we
learned about how sociology defines
family and the different terms used to
describe specific types of family we
discussed marriage in different
societies as well as marital residential
patterns and patterns of descent finally
we ended with the discussion of three
schools of thought on the societal role
of marriage and family crash course
sociology is filmed in the doctor Cheryl
C Kinney studio in Missoula Montana and
it's made with the help of all of these
nice people our animation team is
thought cafe and crash course is made
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