SOCI-1015EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Zach Wahls, Nuclear Family, Endogamy
•SOCI-1015
•Chapter 10
•Feb 6, 2018
•Family
•Videos: TED I don’t want children (RT) (first five minutes) Christen Reighter
• Zach Wahls family
•Introduction
•Families exist in many forms
•Successful families vs. bad families?
•What is the purpose of a family?
•Provide emotional support for family members
•Take care of elders
•Raise children
•Family is Diverse
•Nuclear family: lone-parent or parents & children
•Extended family: parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins
•Simple households: unrelated adults with or without children
•Complex households: two or more adults who are related but not married to each other and
hence could reasonably be expected to live separately
•Married or cohabitating
•Examining some of those changes in Canada:
•Marriage rate/Cohabitation rate
•Crude marriage rate (CMR): the number of marriages per 1000 people in a population
•Marriage rates are going down
•Common law unions are going up
•1976 – 0.7% of all couples were in common-law unions
•2011 – 20% of all couples were in common-law unions
•Marital status
•47.8% married
•25.3% single
•11.4% common-law
•6.2% widowed
•6.5% divorced
•2.8% separated
•Provincial variations
•(see textbook 10.2)
•Quebec is an outlier- a lot of common-law households
•Age at First Marriage
•(textbook 10.3)
•Divorces – dissolving of family
•1968 Divorce Act (makes divorce easier)
•Divorce rate went up from 54.8 to 124.5 per 100 000 marriages in 1 year
•1985 Divorce Act (“no fault” divorce)
•1987 Divorce rates went up to 363.75 per 100 000
•2002 down to 223.7 per 100 000
•When do women have children?
•Women at 35+ giving birth for the first time
•1987: 4%