CAS SO 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 32: Mosuo, Motherhood Penalty, Nuclear Family
27 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SO100
Apr. 18th, 2018
Breadwinner husband + homemaker wife = the “traditional” nuclear family
How did this happen?
- Shift from foraging to agriculture
o Humans become more sedentary, smarter with tools, and accumulate more surplus
o Age becomes an economic and political institution for obtaining resources among
smaller family units
o Marriage becomes a strategy for kin groups to increase wealth and power
- Modern family emerges with modern industrialized states
o Industrialization and wage labor
o Separation of public and private
o Urbanization
o Dispersal of kinship networks
o Modern states codify domestic realm as feminine; the world of work is masculine
marriage:
- A social institution that usually determines rights and obligations connected to sexuality,
gender, children’s status, in-law relationships, economic obligations, status and property
of the couple and inheritance
- A social invention that exists in every society (with the exception of one that we know of)
o Mosuo of Southern China
nuclear family:
- Household in which a married couple or single parent lives with their own or adopted
children
extended family:
- Kin and other caregivers in addition to parents and children live in the same household or
have close relationships
A time of exceptional economic expansion
- In the 1950s, real wages grew more each year than the entire ten years of the 1980s
combined
- New normal: share of mothers who are breadwinners or co-breadwinners working
mothers
- BUT slow change in state and workplace policies, and in traditional gendered family
dynamics
The workplace does not keep up
- Flexible work arrangements
o Flextime, WFH, job shares
- 78% of employees fear that they would be perceived as less committed by their
supervisors if they utilized flexible work arrangements
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Breadwinner husband + homemaker wife = the traditional nuclear family. Modern family emerges with modern industrialized states: industrialization and wage labor, separation of public and private, urbanization, dispersal of kinship networks, modern states codify domestic realm as feminine; the world of work is masculine. A social institution that usually determines rights and obligations connected to sexuality, gender, children"s status, in-law relationships, economic obligations, status and property of the couple and inheritance. A social invention that exists in every society (with the exception of one that we know of: mosuo of southern china. Household in which a married couple or single parent lives with their own or adopted children. Kin and other caregivers in addition to parents and children live in the same household or have close relationships. In the 1950s, real wages grew more each year than the entire ten years of the 1980s combined. New normal: share of mothers who are breadwinners or co-breadwinners working mothers.
