Marriage: Cultural Aspects
France - Transformations Of The Family In France, The Contemporary Family: Less Statutory And More Relational, Conclusion
In France, during the 1960s and 1970s, the family was thought of in terms of its crisis, decline, or rupture. Some even spoke of its death. The rapid changes brought on by the strong economic, social, and cultural movements of the era explain this phenomenon. Yet the family was ever-present and continued to play a major role in society, as numerous works of the time emphasized (Rémy 1967; R…
French Canadian Families - The Quebec Family And Marriage, The Family And Reproduction, Children's New Family Environment
French Canadian families populate every province and territory in Canada; however, the trends and history of these families are most clearly delineated in Quebec. Like other families in the Western world, the Quebec family has experienced profound transformations since the beginning of the twentieth century. Until this period, the Quebec family had been marked by the historical circumstances of th…
Basque Families - Family Size, Gender Roles, Daily Life, Language In The Family, Families And Political Prisoners
Any discussion of the Basque family must begin by acknowledging that Basque families can and do exist outside the Basque country. They differ even within the Basque country because sociological and political definitions are framed by the influence of two different states, Spain and France. The region known as the Basque country comprises an area of a hundred square miles (about the size of the sta…
Rural Families - Defining Rurality, Changes In Rural Life, Poverty And Economic Struggle, Changes In Gender Roles
The concept of rural families is, at best, a slippery one. This is because both aspects—family and rural—are today continuously being redefined. Further, in taking an international perspective, how family is defined varies regionally and from nation to nation. How family and rurality are defined differs depending on the theoretical context as well. For example, feminist thinkers have…
Bedouin-Arab Families - Marriage And Divorce, Family Dynamics In Bedouin-arab Society, Interpersonal Dynamics, The Impact Of Societal Change
The word Bedouin is the Western version of the Arabic word badawiyin, which means "inhabitants of the desert," the badia. Technically, the term refers only to the camel-herding tribes of desert dwellers, but it has been applied in English to all nomadic Arabs (Kay 1978). The Bedouin-Arab presence extends to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and elsewhere in the Mid…
Russia - The Demographic Crisis, The Family In Soviet Times, Post-soviet Legal Codes Affecting The Family
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has been followed by years of economic, political, and cultural tumult with serious repercussions for individuals and families. As the country struggles to privatize industries and services, jobs have been lost, workers have gone unpaid, inflation has skyrocketed, crime rates have multiplied, and people have discovered that attitudes and skills that garnere…
Togo - Traditional Features Of Marriage And Family, Factors In Change Of Family Life, Contemporary Marriage And Family Patterns
In Togo, a West African nation that lies between Ghana and Benin, the term family is broadly defined. A family is more than a husband, a wife, and children. Blood relatives of both spouses are considered part of the family, and the extended family embraces all relatives, living or dead. There is a strong cultural belief that ancestors, also called the living dead, are spiritually in contact with t…
Gay Parents - Gay Relationships And Legal Matters, Gay Fathers As A Distinct Group, Becoming Parents And Negotiating Parenthood
Research has consistently demonstrated that heterosexual adults retain consistently and overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward lesbians and gay males. Heterosexual adults commonly view this negativity as acceptable despite political rhetoric lauding the contributions and multiple perspectives of an increasingly diverse citizenry (Kite and Whitley 1996). The stigma, prejudice, and discrimination …
Scandinavia - Marriage, Living Apart Together, Divorce
The Scandinavian peninsula is made up of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Sometimes these countries are linked with the Nordic countries—traditionally including Finland and Iceland—and in the late twentieth century these countries were sometimes linked with the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as England and Scotland. This entry will examine marriage and fam…
Brazil - A Historical Perspective On Family Life, Aspects Of The Contemporary Family, Perspectives Of The Future
Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, with 170 million inhabitants distributed throughout twenty-six states and the Federal District. The official language is Portuguese. When the Portugueses arrived in 1500, there were between two and five million Indians living in the territory. They spoke around one thousand different languages (UnB revista 2001). As frequently happens with those wh…
Turkey - Geography And Demographics, Family Life And Structure, Issues Related To Family Life, Changes In Family Life
The family is both the strongest social institution in Turkey and the foundation that supports the twin pillars of tradition and adaptation. The durability of marital unions, coupled with pressures for mutual commitment and obligation, contribute to this family stability. In 2001, for example, Turkey experienced a serious economic crisis, but despite severe levels of unemployment, rampant inflatio…
Egypt - Defining Family In Egypt, Gender And Family, Marriage And Family, The Marriage Negotiation, The Islamic Marriage Contract
For most contemporary Egyptians, the family remains the central and most important institution in their everyday lives. Few individuals live independently from their immediate family or kin, and single-person households are almost unheard of. Individuals of all classes constantly articulate and defend the importance of family within the community and the nation. Issues relating to family relations…
Germany - The Rise Of The "bourgeois Family": The German Family In The Early Twentieth Century, From Institution To Choice: Family Change In West Germany Since The 1970s
In modern Western society, family formation is based on (regularly strong) personal emotions, such as romantic love. Moreover, given that family life is practically a synonym for private life, families are the primordial social contexts of privacy and intimacy, as well as of love and solidarity. Nevertheless, although each family operates in that essentially private manner as an intimate social gr…
Iran - Marriage, Endogamy And Polygamy, Arranged Marriages, Temporary Marriage (sigheh), The Family, Premarital Sex And Extramarital Relationships
Iran (also known as Persia) is a Middle Eastern country in Southwest Asia. The country's official name became the Islamic Republic of Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979, which abolished the monarchy of the Pahlavi dynasty and established a theocratic republic regime. The population of Iran is approaching 66 million (49% female), with 40 percent being younger than fifteen years of age…
United States - Childbearing
The first family system in America was that of the native peoples. This was actually a kinship system rather than a family system, for despite the wide variety of marital, sexual, and genealogical customs found in several hundred different cultures, most early Native-American groups subsumed the nuclear family and even the lineage in a much larger network of kin and marital alliances. Kinship rule…
Canada - Defining Families, Trends In Marriage, Cohabitation Versus Marriage, Divorce, Variations On The Dominant Pattern
Families in Canada—more so than in Britain, France, or even the Americas—are characterized by enormous diversity, especially regional and ethnic diversity. Canada has historically been a society of immigrants and of regions. First, the Aboriginal, or native people, arrived from Asia about ten thousand years ago. They organized into complex national groups with their own distinct cult…
Ghana - Family Structure, Family Formation, And Family Life, Marriage, Family Formation, And Childbearing
With a population of over eighteen million people, Ghana is the second largest country in West Africa. Since the 1960s, Ghana's population has been growing at an annual rate of about 2 to 3 percent (GSS 2000). This increase is a reflection of high birth rates at a time of declining mortality. One consequence of previous decades of high fertility of Ghanaians is that the country's pop…
Canada First Nations Families
To discuss First Nations families in Canada is to simultaneously learn about a core concept of indigenous social organization and to come to terms with the legacy of several centuries of colonialism. The common sense notion of family—a social unit comprised of husband and wife/parent(s) and child—is full of cultural connotations that render it ineffective as a way of understanding Fi…
Senegal - Entry Into Union, Endogamy, Polygamy, Impact Of Westernization
Marriage patterns in contemporary Senegal derive from Islamic, Western, and local traditions. This situation, which has prevailed for centuries, results from secular borrowings from the Arab world and European colonizers. Senegal embraced Islam more than a thousand years ago, mainly through early contacts with traders from Northern Africa. The trans-Saharan trade did not survive French colonizatio…
Caribbean Families - Family Structure, Extended Family, Mate Selection And Marriage, Role Of Religion, Parent-child Relationships
The Caribbean, with a population of about 50 million, consists of a series of countries stretching from the Bahamian Islands and Cuba in the north, to Belize in the west, to Guyana on the coast of South America (Barrow 1996). The region can be divided by language with some of the countries speaking Spanish (e.g., Puerto Rico), some French (e.g., Martinique), some Dutch (e.g., Curacao), and others …
Israel - Factors Affecting The Israeli Family, Family Patterns, Public Support For Families
Compared to other industrialized countries, Israel is a familistic society. The country's small size permits relatives to live in close geographic proximity and have frequent personal contact. Holidays and life-cycle events are generally celebrated through ceremonies and customs that bring family members together. Intrafamilial involvement and assistance (from baby sitting through major fin…
Vietnam - Gender Equity And The Marriage And Family Law Of 1959, The 1986 Law On Marriage, Parental Responsibility, And Divorce
In both ancient and modern Vietnam, the family is considered the foundation of society. Grounded in Confucianism, the traditional patriarchal family was viewed as the basic social institution in which the welfare of the extended family outweighed the individual interests of any member. For Ho Chi Minh, the nation's revolutionary hero, the security of the state was rooted in the stability of…
Ethnic Variation/Ethnicity - Origins And Importance Of Ethnicity, African Families, Asian Families, Latino Families, Middle Eastern Families
Ethnicity has been defined as a family's common ancestry through which identity develops as a result of evolved shared values and customs (McGoldrick, Giordano, and Pearce 1996). The definitions of ethnicity, or the more functional term, ethnic group, consist of individuals and families who are members of international, national, religious, cultural, and racial groups that do not belong to …
Italy - Marriage And Children, Education And Gender Roles, Young People Living In The Parental Family
As in other southern European countries, in Italy, new family structures are coming into being more slowly and in a smaller measure than in northern European countries and North America. These new structures include such patterns as cohabitation, extramarital births, single parenthood, and one-person households. These countries are examples of the so-called Mediterranean model (Laslett 1983). At t…
Catholicism - The Beginnings Of A Social Concern For Families, Catholic Teachings On Marriage And Family Life, Catholic Teachings On Human Sexuality
The Catholic Church traces its origins directly to the person and life of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any historical presentation of family life as it relates to the Catholic Church must go back two thousand years to the very dawn of Christianity. Scholars of this early period point to a major role played by the family in the life and expansion of Christianity. During the first three centuries of its…
Japan - Mating And Marriage, Gender Roles, Masculinity And Men's Suicide, Decreasing Number Of Children - Leave for Working Parents, Conclusion
The concept of the modern family—one in which biological parents give birth to, love, and nurture children—was introduced in Japan in the early twentieth century, after the nation opened itself up to international diplomacy under Emperor Meiji in 1868. A nationwide registration system was established at the end of the nineteenth century under the Meiji government. Until that time, pe…
Greece - Demographic Trends, Definition Of Family, Role Of The Child, The Elderly And The Family
Greece, the birthplace of Western civilization, has a long history. Philosophy and the humanities have flourished there for more than 2,500 years. Greece is situated at the southeastern end of the European continent and has an area of 132 square kilometers. Now a modern state, it has, according to the 2001 census, approximately 11 million inhabitants. It is a member of the European Union (EU). The…
Greenland - Importance of Kinship
Kalaallit Nunaat, the Greenlanders' Land, is separated from the eastern Canadian Arctic on the west by Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and Nares Strait, and from Iceland, on the east, by Denmark Strait. Through the ages, peoples from the northern parts of North America, Scandinavia, and Europe have migrated to Greenland, while others, most notably Scottish, English, and Dutch whalers, have freque…
Yoruba Families - Yoruba Culture And The Meaning Of Marriage, Steps That Lead To Marriage, Oja Ale, Co-wife And Sibling Rivalry
The 22 million Yoruba who live in southwestern Nigeria are one of the four major sociolinguistic groups of contemporary Nigeria. The others are the Igbo to the east, and the Hausa and Fulani to the north. Subgroups of the Yoruba in Nigeria include the Awori, the Ijesha, the Oyo, the Ife, the Egba, the Egbado, the Ketu, the Ijebu, the Ondo, the Ekiti, the Yagba, and the Igbomina. These subgroups ha…
Kenya - The Concept Of Marriage And Family, The Extended Family, The Nonextended Family, Polygyny - Conclusion
The population of Kenya includes forty-two traditional ethnic groups (CBS 1994), which can be broadly divided into three groups: the Bantu, Nilotes, and Cushites. These three categories of ethnic groups are spread all over the country, and no particular group can be tied to one region. The regional boundaries do little to separate the similarity of customs and beliefs possessed by each group, owin…
Peru - Family Representation, Consequences, Explanations, Conclusion
Peru has a population of 26 million people, of whom 72 percent are concentrated in urban areas. Poverty is a major characteristic, with half of the population (48% in 2000) living in poverty. Even this striking statistic hides the extreme situations, especially in the mountains and rural areas of the Andes Mountains. According to 2000 data, 37 percent of people in urban areas live under the povert…
The Philippines
Like other social formations of traditional Asia and Europe, Filipino society has, in the post-Cold War era, moved from being a predominantly agricultural society to a modern one. Economic transformations have brought new social changes as the concept of the traditional family continues to be reinvented and transformed. Globalization has created international employment opportunities for migrant w…
Korea - Traditional Korean Families, Contemporary Korean Families, Women's Labor Force Participation, Conclusion
and Japan have invaded the country often. The twentieth century also brought Korea tremendous upheaval, such as the Japanese occupation (1910–1945), the Korean War (1950–1953), the partition of the country (1953–present), and the foreign-exchange crisis in 1997. Korea and the Korean family are both in a period of transition. The concept of the contemporary Korean family dates …
Hispanic-American Families - The Hispanics/latinos And Group Definition, Hispanic/latino Families: Demographic And Social Indices
As with any large group, the 7.6 million Hispanic/Latino/Spanish families in the United States comprise a socially diverse population. Thus an analysis of Latino/a group composition and diversity challenges the tendency to use stereotypes. The U.S. Bureau of the Census notes, for example, that Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race—including Asian, Native American, European, African, or Middl…
Portugal
Lying at the far southwestern corner of Europe, with 10 million inhabitants and one-fifth of the Iberian Peninsula's space, Portugal is diminutive in terms of population and territory, and comparatively homogeneous in ethnic terms. Yet it remains noteworthy for the variability of its social life, and no less so in marriage and the family than in other social domains. Analysts of marriage pr…
Latin America - Familism, Machismo, Street Children, Family Violence, Conclusion
It is not possible to make accurate generalizations about an area as large and diverse as Latin America. There are many different kinds of Latin Americans. This overview provides some background on family life in the Hispanic world, drawing mainly on the research done in a few key countries such as Mexico and Colombia, and with special focus on how the struggle for economic survival affects that l…
Latvia - Legislation Affecting Families, Partner Relationships, Family
Latvia is situated at the ancient waterway from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea via lands inhabited by Eastern Slavs. Because of its location, the territory has, since the twelfth century, been conquered repeatedly—by German crusaders, Russians, Poles, and Swedes. The principal inhabitants of the region—the Balts, one of the ancient Indo-European tribes, and Livs—were oppresse…
Lesbian Parents - Parenting Types And Legal Concerns, Research On Children's Adjustment
An increasing number of lesbians are choosing to become parents. Estimates of the number of gay and lesbian parents in the United States alone range from two to eight million, with the number of children of these parents estimated at four to fourteen million (Patterson 1995). Although more research exists on lesbian families than on gay male families, the lack of cross-cultural research is notable…
Afghanistan - Historical Background, Continuity And Change In Traditional Afghani Family, The Afghani Family In The Early Twenty-first Century
Afghanistan lies in Central Asia between Iran on the west, Pakistan on the east and south, and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan on the north side. The Afghani population in the early twenty-first century is estimated at about 22 million people living in Afghanistan and as refugees in Iran and Pakistan. There are more than forty ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Pushtuns are the largest ethnic …
Slovakia - Marriage, Selection Of Partners, Termination Of Marriage, Changes In The Family, Standard Of Living - Family Contacts and Relations
Marriage and family have always been considered fundamental social values among the Slovak population. Nearly 90 percent of all inhabitants consider the family to be the most important value in their lives (European Values Study 1999/2000). This feeling was formed under the strong influence of Christianity (according to the last census in 2001, 69% of all inhabitants are Roman Catholic). Approxima…
Hungary - Marriage, Cohabitation, Divorce, Fertility, Attitudes
Early marriages, a relatively small proportion of single men and women, and a high level of fertility have historically characterized the Hungarian population. The family has traditionally played an important role in Hungarian society. The sociological and demographic analyses carried out during the 1990s have shown that the family is more important for people than other areas of life (e.g., work,…
Malaysia - Marriage and Family Formation Patterns
Since the 1960s changes in population patterns and the economy have significantly affected Malaysian families. Over those four decades, economic development, modernization, and rural-urban migration together altered family ties and contributed to a more fragmented family structure. There was a corresponding steady and noticeable decline in the average size of the family in Malaysia over the same p…
Hutterite Families - Kinship Structure, The House Child, Kindergarten, School, Adolescence, Marriage, Fertility, Later Life
The Hutterites are an Anabaptist group, along with the Amish and the Mennonites. Jacob Hutter founded the religion in central Europe in the middle 1500s. The official name of the religion is the Hutterian Brethren. Today, they total about 45,000 members living in more than 400 colonies. They are the oldest family communal group in the Western world, but they consider the community to be more impor…
American-Indian Families - General Points Of Interest, Boarding Schools, Family Life Today, American-indian Child Welfare
American Indians are the indigenous peoples of the United States. According to archeological estimates, bronze-skinned women and men from northern Asia had been exploring and settling the Americas for 10,000 to 50,000 years. By the fifteenth century, descendants of these women and men from northern Asia had spread southward to populate both continents (Nabokov 1999). When Christopher Columbus arri…
Czech Republic - Marriage, Family, Future Trends, Research On The Family And Demographic Trends In The Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country measuring 78,866 square kilometers, lying in the central part of Europe. It was established in 1993 after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Czech Republic has 10.2 million inhabitants, 94.2 percent of which are Czech by nationality. The country's borders neighbor Germany, Poland, Austria, and Slovakia. The Czech Republi…
Mennonite) Anabaptists (Amish - Amish Community And Family Life, Stages Of Amish Family Life, Mennonite Families
The Amish and Mennonites stem from the Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth-century Reformation. Members of the Anabaptist movement insisted that church membership involve a fully informed adult decision, hence many of them requested a second baptism that symbolically superceded their infant baptism. As a result of this practice their opponents called them rebaptizers or Anabaptists. The first adu…
South Africa - Family Life In Black Communities, Family Life In Asian Communities, Family Life In Colored Families
South Africa, with its 40 million residents, is a multicultural society with eleven official languages. Although most residents (76.7%) speak an indigenous African language (Xhosa 23.4%; Zulu 29.9%; and Sepedi 12%), English is the language that most people understand (Statistics South Africa 1996). Family life must thus also be seen against the background of cultural diversity and extreme socioeco…
India - Caste System, Family Life And Family Values, Mate Selection And Marriage, Dowry System, Status Of Single And Divorced Persons In India
India is a secular and pluralistic society characterized by tremendous cultural and ethnic diversity. It is made up of twenty-eight states and seven union territories. There are eighteen different languages and more than 300 dialects spoken by the Indian people. Indians practice many religions. Hinduism is the dominant religion in India, but through the centuries Indians have learned to coexist wi…
Argentina - What Is Meant By Family? Proposed Definition, Main Transformations In Argentine Society In The Second Half Of The Twentieth Century
Argentine families are a heterogeneous result of the many changes that have had an impact on their structures and dynamics. These changes have taken place both in Argentina and other Latin American and Caribbean countries in the last few decades. The socioeconomic crisis that has affected Latin America since the 1970s aroused a growing interest in the study of its impact on family structures and d…
Indonesia - Marriage And Parenthood, Family And Gender, Inheritance
The Republic of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, has 203 million people living on nearly 1,000 permanently settled islands. Java and Madura hold about 60 percent of the nation's population. Some 200–300 ethnic groups with their own languages and cultures inhabit the nation, some numbering in the millions, some in the thousands. The national motto, Unity in D…
Asian-American Families - Varied Immigration Histories, Family Structures And Gender Roles, Religion And Cultural Values, Regional And Generational Differences
Asian Americans in the United States are a heterogeneous group of many ethnicities, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Asian (East) Indians, and Southeast Asians. They are neither a single identity group nor a monolithic culture; therefore it is more accurate to speak of Asian-American cultures (Zia 2000). Early Asian groups were voluntary immigrants, but after the Vietnam War, Southea…
Switzerland - Households And Families, Attitudes, Conclusion
Switzerland is a highly segmented society. Marital behavior, divorce, and fertility have varied significantly by language regions and religious denomination. In addition, regional differences in family law and social policies, which are strong due to the far-reaching autonomy of the cantons (administrative and geographic units analogous to states or provinces), have played an important role in thi…