SOCA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Sex Selection, Conspicuous Consumption, Nuclear Family
Document Summary
Governments generally encourage heterosexual marriage and childbearing because they provide citizens, taxpayers, voters, consumers, and workers. Census family: heterosexual or homosexual couple with or without biological or adopted children, or a sole parent with children. Baker: a modified extended family does not share a dwelling, but shares resources. All our kin: aid to families with dependent children makes presence of men, in conditions of unstable employment, irrational. Family is based on a network of female relatives who share resources. The traditional nuclear family is composed of: a father-provider, a mother-homemaker, at least one natural or adopted child. Parsons: economically efficient, because the man is normally the highest-wage earner. It would be economically irrational of him to spend potential working time on unpaid household and child care. Foraging societies: children belong to a tribe/clan (not to individual parents); collective responsibility for children. Astronaut/transnational families (e. g. hong kong and vancouver)
