SOCL 4401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Infant Mortality, Nuclear Family
Document Summary
Families are groups of related people, bound by connections that are biological, legal, or emotional. The personal family- people to whom we feel related and who we expect to define us as members of their family as well. The legal family- a group of individuals related by birth, marriage, or adoption. The family as an institutional arena- a social space in which relations between people in common positions are governed by accepted rules of interaction. The family is the institutional arena where people practice, childbearing and socialization, and caring work. Institutions entail distinct social practices- eg. intimacy, support, socialization. Institutions have social positions characterized by norms that both facilitate and constrain behavior of its members. Institutions are important to their members, and their rules and expectations become internalized as important identities and parts of selves. Institutions are inconsistent, contradictory, and rife with conflict. Individuals must adapt to institutions but they remake them at the same time.
