(no subject)

Something that comes up over and over in arguments about gay marriage and related topics is a notion that the heterosexual, romantic, and child-bearing nuclear family is somehow better than any other family structure. (For instance, this seems to be the core reason Flash Fiction Online turned down an ad for an LGBTQ-themed issue of Crossed Genres.)

To my somewhat-informed knowledge of history and anthropology, though, this notion fails on its presupposition that this nuclear family is the norm and has been since time immemorial. (One could make an argument for that family structure that didn't make that presupposition, but I have yet to see someone attempt it.) It's not. The dominant culture in the USA post-WWII does have a norm in favor of that family structure, but if you go back much further in time, or broaden your horizons much at all, all sorts of other structures turn up to compete with it. Extended families. Multiple wives and multiple husbands (the latter is rare but not at all unheard of). Arranged marriage for property reasons, with neither romance nor childbearing expected. Female-female marriage, again for property reasons. Cross-generational homosexual relations as rites of passage. Moieties, exogamy, hearth-sharing.

I can rattle off a list, but I would like to be able to cite serious research about the prevalence of these various institutions and their variations across time, culture, and class. O my readers: where does one begin?