(no subject)

[zwol]

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?

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I can rattle off lists too, but not serious reasearch. Sorry.

However, I'd point out that other than "extended family" what you're talking about is largely official institutions. I think a lot of what you're looking for will also be found in more unofficial groupings. For instance, I can't think of any recent female-female actual marriages (or if they happen, they're in cultures I don't know) but I can tell you that after losing husbands to war and flu, my great-grandmother and her sister moved in together and raised their children as one famliy. Not a marriage, and they wouldn't have called it or viewed it as such, but clearly a partnership with two women heading the household.

Similarly they wouldn't have seen it as multiple wives, but in Wilkie Collins' The Women in White at the end the book finishes with a family of three adults plus one child, and the man clearly views *both* women as partners in different ways whereas the women have an (unacknowledged!) romantic relationship. In Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl there is a glimpse of two female partners who are staying together when one marries a man.

People build their own relationships to suit, but they don't always formalize them.

[(Anonymous)]

In India, the extended family was the norm (and still is outside the westernised and urbanized areas). There is still a legal tax entity called the Hindu Undivided Family, which consists of relatives by blood and marriage in a single household, with a 'karta' as the head of it.

Polygamy was legal in India until around 1950 or so. Unlike Islam, it did not restrict the number of wives a man could have. Polyandry continues to exist in some parts of India.

Monogamy in nuclear families was actually an aberration. I can't think why anyone would believe that two frazzled adults raising children is ideal, when an extended family provides a whole group of adult carers. If you think of a family as a mechanism for raising kids, caring for the elderly and ill, and providing stability, a nuclear family is a poor substitute. Obviously it can be less than ideal for those adults who have to curb their aspirations and deal with lack of privacy, but as a social construct, it's a lot more resilient than nuclear families.

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

I know Wikipedia has a varied reputation for reliability, but their article on Marriage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage) seems quite extensive and there are lots of interesting-looking references.

(Here via shweta_narayan, by the way.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I'm also here via shweta_narayan: pleased to meet you. I'm Kari.
I'm a mediaeval European historian by training, and I have some background in anthropology, too. As you say, the nuclear family is a relatively modern invention, and a pattern of men having multiple wives -- sometimes serially, but often simultaneously -- was widespread. These women might have been described as concubines, but in a number of places, their children were able to inherit from their father regardless (at least until ideas of a sanctified form of marriage took hold, which occurred at different times in different places. So in 12th century England, men might have concubines but only children of a marriage could inherit; meanwhile in Wales and Ireland and some parts of Scandinavia the older system was still in place). The classic study on marriage patterns is old -- Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage, but its a useful introduction to the field. There's also a study of same-sex relationships in the middle ages in Europe by John Boswell The Marriage of Likeness. The latter is controversial in places -- it isn't always clear whether the relationships involved any sexual contact or feeling -- but it's very interesting. For my sort of period and field (I mainly study Celts and Vikings) the material is spread over various academic books and articles on women and kinship -- notable works by Thomas Charles Edwards (Early Irish Kinship), Judith Jesch (on Viking women), Lisa Bitel (on women in Ireland) and Dafydd Jenkins (The Welsh law of Women).

[elisaana.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you're overthinking this. As with most political issues, it has to do with the frame of reference Americans are most familiar with: either you're in the normative nuclear family, or you're in a "broken home" with one parent. I have heard about many sociological studies that show that two-parent families raise kids more successfully than one-parent families, but very little credible research has been done that takes into account the genders of the parents--i.e., two mommies might be just as good parents according to this research as a heterosexual romantic couple.

Also, I'd question how relevant structures that we don't see in America are to the American gay marriage debate. Outside of perhaps Utah and a few free-thinking coastal cities, very few Americans seem to entertain the proposition of a family structure norm based on a romantic relationship of more than two adults. Unless they're bringing it up as a bogeyman. These sort of cultural norms change very slowly and are highly path dependent; even if India has supported a broad variety of family structures, it's unlikely any will get transplanted here unless the underlying American culture and economy support them and perhaps a big shift triggers it (severer downturn? sudden gender imbalance? revolution?). Gay marriage, on the other hand, has developed organically here over time, as culture has become more tolerant and because the two-person structure generally fits the other family models that already dominate.

Finally, there's a long tradition in western political philosophy of linking moral and family structure to the overall health of the state. A lot of it is pure bunk and propaganda (e.g. the man is king of his house as a reflection of the king being in charge of all), but I do find something compelling to the idea that the way that citizens are reared--families, values, schooling--shapes tomorrow's country. Again, sociology has taken up the task of describing how family structure affects outcomes, with political philosophers opining about how this could or should happen.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how you can overthink somebody's misrepresentation of history to support political purposes. The family model being upheld in the letter is not just "two parents are good" but "two parents are good and contraception is bad and modern". That overlooks quite a lot of documented history, particularly in Europe, of people's practicing family-limitation methods for all it was worth as soon as they were available, which includes the 1800s.

" I have heard about many sociological studies that show that two-parent families raise kids more successfully than one-parent families," And there are quite a few, less-reported, sociological studies that say it varies depending on the health of the two-parent family. There are also many studies that show that when a couple divorces and the children stay with the wife (still the default), the economic lifestyle of the children plummets. That can have a lot to do with "success".

[elisaana.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm overly eager to shift the discussion to the political and social from the anthropological and sociological. :) In the gay marriage debate I was focused on, it seems like contraception doesn't come up because there's no risk of accidental pregnancy. Also, I was most focused on families with children, because of all the justifications for the government interfering in people's family structures, child welfare is one of the most potentially compelling arguments, if there is evidence for it.

(You're right that a lot of the modern American "family values" movement condemns contraception. Debating that does not seem at all fruitful to me, because its entire basis is faith-based moral reasoning to argue with there; no one seems to be arguing that the state needs more babies or anything along those lines.)

I'd believe those studies you point out, which say that unhealthy two-parent families can be destructive to kids and that the economic support kids get is key to successful outcomes. If they have any political ramifications, it should probably be to make divorce easier across the country, especially in abusive situations, and to provide supplementary income support for families with children.

I'm trying to think whether the studies speak directly to gay marriage. On the economic side, formal gay marriage means collectible child support in the event that the parents do split up, giving the children a better economic lifestyle. On the family health question, I'm sure that people on different sides of the debate would be eager to cast gay parents as generally being healthy or unhealthy two-parent families, probably ignoring the details of how those studies have measured family health.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm overly eager to shift the discussion to the political and social from the anthropological and sociological. :)

It really needs to be a political and social discussion -- but in this particular case an accurate answer to a lie would have to have historical/sociological roots.

I don't think there's any suggestion here that we should focus on this question to the detriment of the main fight :)