Family and Marriage


What is Family?
Family is considered to be one of the oldest institutions of the society.
Sociologists have traditionally viewed the family as a social group whose members are related by ancestry, marriage, or adoption and live together, cooperate economically, and care for the young. (Murdock, 1949)


 When we think of a family, we picture it as a more or less durable association of husband and wife with or without children or of a man or woman alone with children. (“Marriage and the Family”-Ogburn & Nimcoff).


 The family is a group defined by a sex relationship sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for the procreation and upbringing of children. (“Society: Its Structure and change”-MacIver & Page)


 The family represents the unit of social order. Within it people are trained for larger social life. Not only are they schooled in the art of producing wealth and trained in right of property, but is in the home that the beginning of all forms of culture appear. (“Out line of sociology”-Gillin & Blackmer)

 “A group of people who love and care for each other”-(Seligmann, 1990).
American people picked the legalistic definition for “family” who thinks, ‘a group of people who related by blood, marriage and or adoption’

What are the functions of a family in earlier societies?
Family functions vary widely. In most traditional societies, pre-industrial societies, the family performs four central functions.
• The regulation of sexual activity
• Reproduction
• Socialization of children
• Providing for the physical needs of both young and old members, including food, shelter, protection and health care.

Major characteristics of family:

1. Universality
2. Emotional basis
3. Formative influence
4. Limited size
5. Nuclear position in the social structure
6. Responsibility of the members
7. Social regulation
8. Its permanent and temporary nature

(N.B. Please go through the books to understand the elaboration of the above characteristics of the family).

Forms/Types of the family:
I. According to the degree of power/authority:
a. Patriarchal family
b. Matriarchal family
c. Egalitarian family –when power and authority are equally distributed between husband and wife.
II. According to post marital place of residence:
a. Patrilocal family
b. Matrilocal family
c. Neolocal family

III. According to size of descent and property inheritance:
a. Patrilineal
b. Matrilineal
c. Bilineal- under the bilineal arrangement, both sides of an individual’s family are equally important.

IV. According to size of family:

a. Nuclear family
b. Joint family
c. Extended family

V. According to the number of spouses:
a. Monogamous family
b. Polygynous family
c. Polyandrous family
d. Family based on group marriage

VI. According to principles of the selection of marriages:
a. Exogamous family
b. Endogamous family

Functions of Family:
i. Biological functions
ii. Psychological functions
iii. Educational functions
iv. Economic functions
v. Maintenance functions
vi. Political functions
vii. Religious functions
viii. Socialization functions
ix. Recreational functions








The functionalist perspective of family
Functionalist theorists stress that if a society is to survive and operate with some measure of effectiveness, it must guarantee that certain essential tasks are performed. The performance of these tasks-or functions- cannot be left to chance. Although families show a great deal of variation throughout the world, it seeks to identify a number of recurrent functions families typically perform.
a) Reproduction
b) Socialization
c) Care, protection and emotional support
d) Assignment of status
e) Regulation of sexual behavior

The conflict perspective of family:

Conflict theorists view the family, like all institutions, as a reflection of the inequality of the larger society in terms of wealth and power. Many conflict theorists have seen the family as a social arrangement benefiting some people more than others.

Friedrich Engels (1884/1902) viewed the family as a class miniature, with one class (men) oppressing another class (women). He contended that marriage was the first form of class antagonism in which the well-being of one group derived from the misery and repression of another group. The motivation for sexual domination was the economic exploitation of a women’s labor.
Sociologist Randall Collins (1975, 1988a) said that historically men have been the “sexual aggressors” and women the sexual prizes for men”. He traces male dominance to the greater strength, size and aggressive ness of men. Women have been victimized by their smaller size and their vulnerability as child bearers.
Psychologist Sigmund Freud and Sociologist Georg Simmel also advanced a conflict approach that intimate relationships inevitably involve antagonism as well as love.
More recently, sociologist Jetse Sprey (1979) have developed these ideas and suggest that conflict is a part of all systems and interactions, including the family and marital interactions.
They see family members as confronting for two conflicting demands: to compete with one another for autonomy, authority, privilege, simultaneously to share one another’s fate in order to survive and even flourish.

The interactionist perspective of family:
Symbolic interactionists emphasize that human beings create, use, and communicate with symbols. They interact through role taking, a process of reading the symbols used by others and attributing meaning to them. When human beings enter interactive situations, people define the situation by defining the expectations that will hold for themselves and others. They then organize their own behavior in terms of these understandings.

One way in which families reinforce or rejuvenate their bonds is through the symbolic mechanism of rituals. Indeed, it seems that when families preserve their rituals, their children fare better emotionally, even when the family faces other disruptive problems like alcoholism.
The symbolic interactionsist perspective draws our attention to the complex interconnections that bind people within relationships. We encounter individuals as active beings who evolve, negotiate, and rework the social fabric that constitutes the mosaic of family life.

In sum, functionalist theorists focus on the structural properties and functions of family systems. Conflict theorists portray the family as a system of perpetual “give and take” and conflict regulation. And symbolic interactionists see the family as a dynamic entity through which people continually fashion ongoing relationships and construct a group existence.


Marriage:

The fact that the parties to a marriage must be members of two different kin groups has crucial implications for the structuring of the family.
“Marriage refers to socially approved sexual union between two or more individuals that is undertaken with some idea of permanence”. (Sociology The Core-James W. Vander Janden)
“Marriage is a socially approved arrangement, usually between a male and a female that involves an economic and a sexual relationship”. (Farely, John.E-1990)

Malinowski defines
“Marriage can not be licensing of sexual intercourse but rather as the licensing of parenthood”

I. Monogamy-One husband and one wife
II. Polygyny-One husband and more than one wives
III. Polyandry-Two or more husbands and one wife
IV. Group marriage-Two or more husbands and two or more wives
V. Endogamy & Exogamy: Endogamy is the requirement that marriage occur within a group, under these circumstances, people must marry within their class, race, ethnic group, or religion. Exogamy is the requirement that marriage occur outside a group. Under these circumstances, people must marry outside their kin group, be it heir immediate nuclear family, clan, or tribe.
VI. Cousin marriage: Parallel cousin marriage and Cross cousin marriage
VII. Hypergamy &Hyprogamy
VIII. Homogamy & Heterogamy
IX. Romantic marriage & Arranged marriage
N.B. The following part was written in one chapter of my Ph.D thesis, the respondents were all women and from Laxmipur district, Bangladesh, information collected in 1999-2000

MARRIAGE PATTERN IN BANGLADESH:
Islam, the predominant religion of Bangladesh, attaches great importance to the family by strengthening the ties bonding its members and safeguarding it against undermining influences. Hence, marriage is an important religious duty and an important social institution. Consequently, marriage has been almost universal in Bangladesh and procreation occurs almost totally within marriage. In Bangladesh, there is ample evidence to suggest that the trend towards later marriage is less dramatic. Age at marriage in this country is the lowest among all South Asian Countries: this is a geographical area that lags a behind others in Asia. Childhood marriage was very common in Bangladesh before the Muslin Family law ordinance of 1961, which prohibited early marriage and fixed the minimum age at marriage for females at 16 years and for males at 21 years. Early marriage arose from cultural influences that took a dim view of woman who waited to get married after her first menarche. This custom is not limited to Bangladesh only in South Asia. This has been responsible for many social problems in this region including higher fertility rates. In 1984, the Bangladesh government, through an order, fixed the legal age at marriage 18 years for females and 21 for males. However, this law is hardly known in the rural areas or observed strictly to produce any significant impact in demographic behavior.
Except a few rare cases, marriages are arranged at the family level by parents or guardians through marriage brokers (Ghatoks or Raibors) or near relatives. Marriage ensures an agreement between guardians and more interestingly, some times the dissolution of marriage is also decided by the guardians. Mehr (Dower) has been an indispensable practice in Muslim marriage contracts for untold generations. In contemporary, Bangladesh Mehr is the sum of money the groom agrees to pay the bride either at the time of marriage or in the future, but rarely is the money paid. This study suggests (shown in table 3.1) that parents are responsible for 94 percent of the marriages; another 4 percent are conduct by very close, mainly in the absence of parents. Only is a few cases (1.56%) in the urban areas, the decision about marriage is taken by the person herself.
Table 3.1
Percentage distribution of the respondents age at marriage, decision maker of marriage and continuation of education after marriage
Age at marriage Rural Urban Total
Age – Years
< 10 4.86% (12) 2.74% (2) 4.38% (14)
10-14 41.30% (102) 35.62% (26) 40% (128)
15-19 47.36% (117) 57.53% (42) 49.69%(159)
20- 24 5.67% (14) 4.11% (3) 5.31% (17)
> 25 .81% (2) 0 .62% (2)
Total 100% (247) 100% (73) 100% (320)
Decision maker of marriage
1. Parents 95.14% (235) 90.41% (66) 94.06% (301)
2. Herself 0 6.85% (5) 1.56% (5)
3. Nearest Relatives 4.86 % (12) 2.74% (2) 4.38% (14)
Total 100 % (247) 100% (73) 100% (320)
Continuation of education after marriage
Continued 2.43% (6) 6.85% (5) 3.44% (11)
Discontinued 97.5% (241) 93.15% (68) 96.56% (309)
Total 100% (247) 100% (73) 100% (320)
The patterns duration and the dissolution of marriage do not remain constant for specific societies overtime. Through socio- economic development, these factors change, although the changes do not occur with equal intensity in all societies at equal level of socio- economic development. When the cultural and traditional norms and values of a society are strong the changes are gradual.
Bangladesh society exhibits a gradual rise in age at first marriage. All the national level surveys support this argument. Moreover, Chittagong divisions maintain a higher age at marriage in comparison with others. The highest mean age at marriage (15.6) has been observed in Chittagong division. Rahaman found that a large proportion of the population in Chittagong division lives by tribal belts. Among tribals the age at marriage is found to be at least four years later (19.8 years) than the national average. Rahman observed, this is due to the higher educational level of the tribal women, where almost 71 percent of the study areas people are literate.
In my study area, it was found (See table 3.1) that 40 percent women got married within the age of 10-14 and another 50 percent got married at the age of 15-19, cumulatively 94 percent women were married by the age of 19. This is almost similar to the data from Bangladesh fertility survey 1989, (National Level) where among married females aged below 50 years, about 96 percent had been married, when they were below age 20 and only 4 percent were married at 20 years of age and above.
BDHS 1993-94 and BDHS 1996-97 both show that overall, about 60% of Bangladesh women were married by the time they were 15years of age. The median age at marriage for these two surveys was 14.4 years for the former and 14 years for the later. BDHS 1996-97 shows large differentials in marriage behavior patterns, between urban women and their rural counterparts, with an overall difference of two years i.e., 16 vs. 14 respecting, in the median age at marriage among women aged 20-49. This study also reveals that the median age for marriage is 15 years in all levels for both urban and rural and for 20-49 year old respondents. This is median age at marriage is one year higher than the national level but has no regional difference. The mean age at marriage available (shown in Table 3.2) from this study area exhibits early marriage patterns. The mean age at marriage is 14.73 years (14.65 rural vs. 15.2 urban). When 12 women, who were married for the second time are excluded, the mean age at marriage for the rural area come down to 14.53 years. Urban areas show higher age at marriage but not much higher. The respondents who are between 20-29 year of current age show a higher age at marriage. The highest age at marriage is between age group 35-39 years, i.e., those who were born 5-9 years before the liberation war of 1971. Probably due to the turbulent years encountered by the population in those times, parents were compelled to marry off their daughters later.