Lecture: Marriage, Family, and Households
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 10
Opening
Picture a couple three weeks after their wedding. They're still sleeping on an air mattress in a friend's living room, because they haven't decided where to live. One partner's parents have a spare bedroom. The other partner's family lives two towns away and keeps saying there's room. An apartment of their own would cost 1,400 dollars a month. So where should they go?
You'll meet that question in many places. A nursing or social-work student will one day ask who lives in a client's home and who helps care for them. A business student may work with a family-run firm where the in-laws matter as much as the owners. And plenty of people have sat at a kitchen table deciding with a partner where to live after a wedding.
Here's where we are. Week 3 taught field notes and the genealogical method. Week 6 showed that a gift carries obligations: to give, to receive, and to give back. Week 9 gave you kinship diagrams, kin-type notation, and patrilineal and matrilineal descent, all worked on the course's illustrative kinship set of 21 positions. So a question has been waiting. Each person belongs to a descent group. What happens when two people from two groups marry?
Here's the plan. I'll start with what marriage is, in a definition that works across societies. Then we'll look at whom a person may marry, what passes between the families, and how many spouses a marriage can join. We'll work out where a new couple lives, and we'll keep descent and residence apart. We'll compare household forms. And we'll finish at the course's illustrative farmers' market, reading the family-run stall's households. Next, in Week 11, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, the course asks how cultures organize gender.
1. What marriage is
Think about the last wedding you went to or watched online. There were guests, a ceremony, and probably a party. The guests weren't only there to watch. They were there to see the marriage happen and to recognize it.
Anthropologists need a definition that works in many societies, not only the one they grew up in. Here it is. Marriage is a socially recognized union that creates rights and obligations between the partners and between their families. How a society defines it differs across societies and over time.
Here are the three parts. "Socially recognized" means other people accept the union. "Rights and obligations" means the partners, and their families, now owe each other things. And "differs across societies and over time" means no single society's version is the pattern for all the others.
Let's test it on the wedding in the course's rites-of-passage set, which is made up for this course. Who recognizes it? The ceremony and vows happen before witnesses, and the couple is presented as a married couple at the reception. What does it create between the partners? New duties of support as spouses. And what does it create between the families? Each family gains in-laws, kin connected by marriage, and the two families now owe each other things too. In Week 13 you'll read the same wedding again as a ritual with phases. For now, read it as a marriage.
Pause and try this. By the course's definition, does a marriage create obligations only between the two partners?
Look again at who the definition names.
Here's the answer. No. It creates rights and obligations between the partners and between their families as well.
Here's the wrong turn to avoid. Students often think a marriage concerns only the two partners. That's tempting, because so many weddings celebrate a love story. But when you read a marriage, list what changes for each family, not only for the couple.
2. Whom a person may marry
Picture a club that tells its members not to date each other, because a breakup would split the club. Now picture a small town where most people marry someone from the same town. One group sends its members outward. The other keeps them close.
Anthropologists name both patterns. Exogamy is a rule to marry outside one's own group, such as one's lineage or clan. Endogamy is a rule or preference to marry within one's own group, such as one's community or faith.
Notice that both words name a group. Before you can call a marriage exogamous or endogamous, you have to say which group you mean.
Let's try it on the kinship set. Suppose the society were patrilineal, the way you supposed in Week 9. Ego's father would belong to ego's patrilineage of 8 people: father's father, father, father's brother, father's sister, ego, ego's brother, ego's sister, and the father's brother's son. Ego's mother isn't on that list. She'd belong to her own father's patrilineage. So the marriage of ego's father and mother joins two patrilineages, as a rule of lineage exogamy would require.
Pause and try this. Ego's father and ego's mother belong to two different patrilineages. Does their marriage fit lineage exogamy or lineage endogamy?
Ask whether each partner married inside or outside their own lineage.
Here's the answer. Lineage exogamy. Each of them married someone from outside their own patrilineage.
The wrong turn here is reading exogamy as marrying a stranger from far away. Exogamy means outside a named group, and the person could live next door. So always ask, "Outside which group?" or "Within which group?"
3. What passes between the families
Think about who pays for a wedding in a family you know. In some families the bride's parents pay. In others both sides split it. Who gives what, and to whom, says something about the marriage.
Anthropologists call these transfers marriage exchanges: the goods or work that pass between two families when a marriage is made. The course teaches three. Bridewealth is goods passed from the groom's kin to the bride's kin, recognizing the transfer of rights to her labor and to her children's membership and binding the two families. It is not the purchase of a wife. Bride service is work the groom does for the bride's family for a time. And dowry is goods passed from the bride's family when she marries, often to the couple or to the groom's family.
Let's follow the goods for ego's parents in the kinship set. Ego's father is the groom, and ego's mother is the bride. With bridewealth, goods would pass from the father's kin to the mother's kin. With bride service, the father would work for the mother's family for a time. With dowry, goods would pass from the mother's family, often to the couple or to the father's family. Bridewealth flows toward the bride's kin. Dowry flows from the bride's family. Bride service pays in work.
Now set this beside Week 6. A gift carries three obligations: to give, to receive, and to give back. A marriage exchange works the same way. Once one family gives and the other receives, the two families are bound, and the tie lasts long after the wedding day. The course's exchange set even keeps a wedding gift registry as a borderline case. Is it a gift that obliges the couple to thank and return goodwill, or a shopping list the guests buy from? Each side has a strong case, so it stays a discussion, never a quiz answer.
Pause and try this. Goods pass from the bride's family to the new couple when they marry. Which marriage exchange is that?
Ask who gives and who receives.
Here's the answer. Dowry. The goods come from the bride's family, which is the opposite direction from bridewealth.
Two wrong turns live here. Bridewealth isn't buying a wife. It recognizes a transfer of rights and binds two families. And bridewealth and dowry aren't the same payment, because they flow in opposite directions.
4. How many spouses
Many of us grow up with one picture of marriage: two spouses and one household. It's common, but it isn't the only form.
Here are the terms. Monogamy is marriage to one spouse at a time. Polygamy is marriage to more than one spouse at a time, covering both polygyny and polyandry. Polygyny is a form of polygamy in which one husband has several wives at the same time. Polyandry is a form of polygamy in which one wife has several husbands at the same time.
Picture three made-up marriages. In the first, one wife and one husband: that's monogamy. In the second, one husband and two wives: that's polygamy, in the form of polygyny. In the third, one wife and two husbands: that's polygamy too, in the form of polyandry. So two of the three are polygamy, and they're different forms of it.
The course describes these forms and compares them. It never ranks them. An anthropologist first reads each form in the terms of the people who practice it, and only then sets it beside other forms. That's cultural relativism as a method, which you met in Week 2.
Pause and try this. A marriage joins one wife and two husbands. Is it polygamy, and if so, which form?
Count the spouses on each side.
Here's the answer. Yes, it's polygamy, and the form is polyandry, because one wife has several husbands.
The wrong turn is thinking polygamy means only polygyny. Polygyny is the form people hear about most, but polygamy covers both.
5. Where the couple lives
Go back to the couple on the air mattress. Their choice has a name, and the options they weighed match a short list of rules societies have used.
A postmarital residence rule is a rule or expectation about where a newly married couple lives. The course teaches five. Under patrilocal residence, a married couple lives near the husband's father's kin. Under matrilocal residence, it lives near the wife's mother's kin. Under avunculocal residence, it lives near the husband's mother's brother. Under neolocal residence, it sets up a new home apart from both partners' kin. And under bilocal residence, it may live near either partner's kin.
Let's place ego's parents under each rule. Patrilocal puts them near ego's father's father and father's mother. Matrilocal puts them near the mother's mother's kin, which in the set means her mother and father. Avunculocal puts them near the father's mother's brother. In the code that's FMB, and he isn't one of the 21 positions in the set, so you'd have to add him to the diagram. Neolocal gives them a new home apart from both sets of grandparents. Bilocal lets them live with either side.
Now keep two questions apart. Descent is who you're related to. Residence is where you live. Under patrilocal residence, ego's mother would live near her husband's parents. But under patrilineal descent she'd still belong to her own father's patrilineage, while ego and ego's brother and sister belong to their father's. She lives among her husband's kin without joining their descent group.
Pause and try this. Under neolocal residence, does ego's father leave his patrilineage when he moves into a new home?
Ask whether moving changes who you're related to.
Here's the answer. No. Neolocal residence changes where he lives, not his descent, so he still belongs to his patrilineage.
The wrong turn here is using descent and residence as synonyms, as if living with a family made you a member of its descent group. Ask "related through whom?" and "living where?" as two separate questions. And remember the rules are a classroom model. Real communities mix them.
6. Household forms
Think about the people you've lived with. Maybe you grew up with two parents, then a grandparent moved in, and now you share an apartment with friends. Each was a household, and its shape changed as your life did.
A household is the people who live together and share daily life, such as meals, space, and costs, whether or not they're kin. Household forms include nuclear, extended, single-parent, multigenerational, and blended households, and they change with the economy, migration, and the life course.
Here are the forms in one breath each. The nuclear family is a couple and their children treated as one family unit. An extended household adds relatives beyond a couple and their children, such as a married child's spouse. A single-parent household is one parent living with their children. A multigenerational household has three or more generations of a family under one roof. And a blended household joins a couple with children from either partner's earlier relationships.
Picture a house where a grandmother who needs daily care lives with her son, his wife, and their two teenagers. Her son drives her to appointments, his wife manages her medicines, and the teenagers sit with her after school. That's five people across three generations, a multigenerational household, and an extended one too. Now picture four roommates who split the rent and take turns buying groceries. They share meals, space, and costs, so they're a household. None of them is related by birth or marriage, so they're a household but not a family.
Pause and try this. Four roommates share rent, groceries, and a kitchen. Are they a household, a family, or both?
Check the definition: does it require kin?
Here's the answer. A household, but not a family. A household shares daily life whether or not its members are kin, and none of the roommates is related.
The wrong turn is thinking the nuclear family is the universal or original form. Household forms vary across societies and change over a lifetime. A household that's nuclear when the children are small may become multigenerational when a grandparent moves in.
7. The family stall's households
Now walk back into the course's illustrative farmers' market of 24 stalls. Field-note entry 10, at 9:25 in the morning, records the older woman at the family-run stall saying the farm "came from my husband's side" and that her son's family lives on it now. Week 9 drew this family with roles, not names. This week, ask where each couple lives.
Start with the couples. The founding grower and her late husband are 1 couple in the first generation. The son and his wife, and the daughter and her husband, are 2 couples in the second. That's 3 married couples across the first two generations.
Now the second generation's homes. The son and his wife moved onto the family farm after they married. In the model's terms, that's patrilocal. The daughter and her husband live in town. That's neolocal. So 1 couple plus 1 couple makes 2 couples, and the patrilocal share is half, 50 percent.
Pause and try this. The son's wife lives on her husband's family's farm. Does that make her consanguineal kin to the founding grower?
Ask whether residence changes the kind of tie.
Here's the answer. No. She's affinal kin, connected by marriage, not by birth. Where she lives doesn't change that.
Here's the reading in plain words. In the kinship set, one marriage joins two descent groups and can follow any of five residence rules. At the family-run stall, two siblings born into the same family followed two different rules after they married. So where a couple lives is a separate question from who they're related to.
And here's the limitation. "Patrilocal" and "neolocal" are the model's terms, not the family's own words. Like the couple on the air mattress, each couple made a choice, and the notes record only where they ended up, not why. A fieldworker would need the family's own account, gathered with consent.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Marriage is a socially recognized union that creates rights and obligations between the partners and between their families. Exogamy and endogamy always name a group, outside it or within it. Bridewealth flows toward the bride's kin, dowry flows from the bride's family, and bride service pays in work, and none of them is buying a spouse. Polygamy covers both polygyny and polyandry. Five residence rules say where a couple lives, and descent says who they're related to. Households take many forms and change with the economy, migration, and the life course. And at the market's family stall, two siblings' marriages followed two different rules.
Next in this module, read Chapter 10 if you haven't yet, then open the slide deck and the Readings & Resources page, work through the lecture tutorial and the practice set, and take the quiz. Next week, Week 11, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, asks how cultures organize gender, including who moves at marriage and who does which work.
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