Week 12 — Family & Marriage

Why this matters

A social worker planning home visits and a city planner counting how many people live alone both meet this week's ideas.

In plain language

Almost everyone grows up inside some kind of family, but families do not all look alike. This week asks what a family is (a group a society recognizes as kin, linked by birth, marriage, partnership, or adoption) and why its shape changes from one culture and one generation to the next. You will sort the main patterns of marriage, from one spouse at a time to more than one. You will read the family through the three perspectives you already know. Then you will learn the difference between a household (everyone living in one home) and a family, and read real Census Bureau figures on how American households have changed over fifty years.

• Already covered: Weeks 1 to 11 built the perspectives, the four data questions, the self, inequality, race, and gender.
• This week: what a family is, marriage patterns, three lenses on the family, and household versus family.
• How they connect: Week 11's "doing gender" moves into the home, and Week 2's four questions read the household figures.
• Where we're going next: Week 13, Social Institutions: Education & Religion.

Focus

Who counts as family, how is a household different, and what do fifty years of household change show?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] tell a family of orientation from one of procreation
• [ ] sort monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, endogamy, and exogamy
• [ ] tell a household from a family the Census Bureau's way
• [ ] read the 1975 and 2025 household figures four ways

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 12 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Sociology in Action Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain why the drop in married-couple households from 66% to 47% is a share of homes, not a count of families.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if you get stuck.

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