Kinship, Marriage and the household

Kinship by blood
What is the Family? – the basic social institution and the primary group in the society. Families vary from culture to
culture. Murdock(1949:1) defines FAMILY as a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation,
and reproduction.
Burgess and Locke(1963:2) defines family as a group of persons united by ties of marriage, blood or adoption,
constituting a single household, interacting and communicating with each other.

Descent and Marriage

Kinship refers to the web of social relationships that form an essential part of the lives of most humans in most societies.
Descent refers to the origin or background of a person in terms of nationality.
A descent group is a social group whose member have common ancestry.

A descent group is a social group whose members have a common ancestry:

Unilineal society is one in which the descent of an individual is reckoned either from the mother’s or the father’s line of
descent.
Matrilineal descent individuals belong to their mother’s descent group.
Patrilineal descent individuals belong to their father’s descent group.

Kinship by Marriage
Marriage an institution consisting of a cluster of mores and folkways, of attitudes, ideas, and ideals of social definitions
and legal restrictions.

Forms of Marriage
Monogamy allows or permits a man to take only one spouse at a time. It has advantage and emotional tensions.
Polygamy is a form of plural marriage and can assume three forms:
1.Polygyny is a marriage of one man to two or more women at the same time.
2.Polyandry is the marriage of woman to two or more men at the same time.
3.Group marriage

Selection of Marriage Partners

Two types of norms regarding the selection of marriage partners:
1.Endogamy refers to the norm which dictates that one should marry within one’s clan or ethnic group.
2.Exogamy prescribes that one can marry outside one’s clan or ethnic group.

Anthropological and sociological publications classify the

Forms of the family and kinship organization in many ways, namely:

Based on Internal Organization or Membership (Family classified as nuclear and extended)

Nuclear Family is the smallest unit responsible for the preservation of the value system of society.
Extended family is composed of two or more nuclear families, economically and socially related to each other.

Based on Descent (types of families based on descent are the following:

Patrilineal descent which affiliates a person with a group of relatives through his or her father (the relationship of the child
with the mother’s kin is excellent, but when the child find it is necessary to ask for any support, the child turns to his or her
father’s kin.)
Matrilineal descent which affiliates a person with a group of relatives related through his or her mother.
Bilateral descent which affiliates person with a group of relatives related through either his or her parents.

Based on Residence (the basis of this classification is the preferred rule of residence. With whom does the newly
married couple stay?
Patrilocal residence requires that the newly married couple live with or near the domicile of the parents of the bridegroom.
Matrilocal residence requires that the newly married couple live with or near the domicile of the parents of the bride.
Bilocal residence gives the couple a choice of staying with either the groom’s parents or the bride’s parents, depending on
factors like the relative wealth of the families or their status, the wishes of the parents, or certain personal preferences of
the bride and the groom.
Neolocal residence permits the newly married couple to reside independently of the parents of either groom or bride.
Avunculocal residence prescribes that the newly married couple reside with or near the maternal uncle of the groom. (very
rare)

Based on Authority (where is authority vested- in the family or in kinship group? Based on who wields authority,
families are classified into the following types:
The patriarchal family is one in which the authority is vested in the eldest male in the family, often the father.
The matriarchal family is one in which the authority is vested in the mother or the mother’s kin. This type is found in few
societies.
The egalitarian family is one in which both the husband and the wife exercise a more or less equal amount or degree of
authority.
The matricentric family this type of authority is usually found in places where the father commutes and is out for the
greater part of the day.