Deck 10: Marriage and the Family

Question 1

Children of a Nandi female-female marriage will name __________ as their father.

A) the woman who has the role of husband
B) their biological father
C) the woman who has the role of wife
D) their maternal uncle

Answer 1

the woman who has the role of husband

Question 2

Some polygynous societies try to reduce competition by practicing sororal polygyny, which is when the co-wives are __________.

A) sisters
B) good friends
C) of similar temperament
D) of very different ages

Answer 2

sisters

Question 3

Same-sex marriages are __________.

A) not typical in any known society
B) prohibited in all societies
C) fairly common in some societies
D) the norm in a few societies

Answer 3

not typical in any known society

Question 4

In what modern nation might you still find the practice of dowry?

A) Italy
B) England
C) Germany
D) Spain

Question 5

Why do anthropologists hold that families are universal?

A) All societies have parent-child groups.
B) The nuclear family is the ideal in all cultures.
C) All known societies have laws protecting families.
D) Children are revered in all cultures.

Question 6

Societies that practice dowry tend to be those in which __________.

A) women contribute little to primary subsistence
B) men may be married to more than one woman at a time
C) there is a shortage of desirable husbands
D) there is little social stratification

Question 7

Bride price occurs all over the world but is particularly common in __________.

A) Africa
B) East Asia
C) Europe D_ South America

Question 8

In which society did people not marry, but rather lived their whole lives in a residential group made up of maternal kin?

A) Na
B) Subanun
C) Kwakiutl
D) Hadza

Question 9

Why are young people's attitudes toward marriage now changing among the Na of China?

A) Young people face social pressure in schools.
B) Government initiatives are effectively changing the practice of sese.
C) There is a lack of marriageable women.
D) Economic hardship is forcing young people into Western-style marriages.

Question 10

Of the following forms of marriage, the rarest is __________.

A) polyandry
B) monogamy
C) the levirate
D) polygyny

Question 11

To whom are the goods first transferred in an indirect dowry?

A) the bride's father
B) the groom's father
C) the groom
D) the chief

Question 12

In the United States, what proportion of women under the age of 45 report living together while unmarried?

A) more than half
B) one-quarter
C) one-third
D) one in 10

Question 13

In which societies are ceremonial expressions of aggression a common part of the marriage ritual?

A) societies where the two sets of kin are actual or potential rivals
B) communities where women have very low social status
C) cultures that have been engaged in warfare for many years
D) groups in which pastoralism and territoriality are common

Question 14

In many Western countries there has been a dramatic increase recently in the percentage of one-parent families. What factor is correlated with an increase in single-parent households?

A) male unemployment
B) female age at first birth
C) male health
D) female education

Question 15

Which of the following is the most common economic marriage transaction cross-culturally?

A) bride price
B) bride service
C) indirect dowry
D) gift exchange

Question 16

What is a common element in ceremonies marking the onset of marriage?

A) feasting
B) fortune-telling
C) meditation
D) isolation

Question 17

What was the most common motivation for adoption among Samoans during Melvin Ember's fieldwork?

A) A child's natural family needed help to feed and care for him/her.
B) Families who adopted children benefit from social programs.
C) Natural disasters such as hurricanes killed many young children.
D) New family members were needed to perform all of the necessary chores.

Question 18

In which group were incestuous marriages permitted?

A) the ancient Egyptian royal families
B) the Nuer of East Africa
C) the Nambikwara Indians of Brazil
D) the Brahmin caste of India

Question 19

Societies that practice bride exchange tend to __________.

A) depend on a relatively high contribution of women to primary subsistence
B) have a high level of social stratification and a low status for women
C) arrange marriages as lifelong contracts between rival kin groups
D) require a long period of bride service before the marriage takes place

Question 20

In what situation did Azande warriors traditionally take on "boy-wives"?

A) when they could not afford wives
B) if no suitable women were available
C) when the warriors were away in battle
D) any time the women were menstruating and sexually unavailable

Question 21

Among the Chukchee, the custom of levirate is __________.

A) seen as more of an obligation than a right
B) considered a privilege offered only to highly esteemed men
C) the most common form of marriage
D) a dying tradition, with only a few such marriages each year

Question 22

What example from the Japanese in the 1950s and 1960s could be employed to relieve some of the financial pressure on Social Security in the United States?

A) extended family living
B) having more children
C) accumulating more wealth in one's lifetime
D) private investment of Social Security funds

Question 23

Most societies __________.

A) disapprove of marriages between first cousins
B) encourage marriages between parallel cousins
C) encourage marriages between first cousins
D) encourage marriages between cross-cousins

Question 24

While they say they would prefer a "love marriage," why do many South Asian immigrants in the United States and the United Kingdom ultimately have an arranged marriage?

A) They prefer to meet and marry someone of their own religious or ethnic background.
B) Many parents threaten to disown their children if they refuse an arranged marriage.
C) Arranged marriages allow them to maintain their citizenship in their home countries.
D) The economic outcomes of arranged marriages are much higher than in love marriages.

Question 25

What is the prevailing family type in over half of all societies known to anthropologists?

A) extended family
B) independent family
C) nuclear family
D) solitary family

Question 26

The childhood-familiarity theory also implies that first-cousin marriages should be prohibited in __________.

A) societies in which cousins grow up together in the same community
B) all societies
C) societies in which cousins live in distant villages
D) only those societies with a very small reproductive pool

Question 27

In what type of societies are extended-family households found most frequently?

A) sedentary agricultural economies
B) post-industrial Western societies
C) semi-nomadic herding cultures
D) traveling food collector bands

Question 28

The U.S. custom of the bride's family paying for the wedding is most similar to which type of marital exchange?

A) dowry
B) bride service
C) bride price
D) gift exchange

Question 29

Which of the following explanations for the universality of marriage has the most support from the ethnographic record and comparative animal studies?

A) postpartum requirements
B) prolonged infant dependency
C) sexual competition
D) gender division of labor

Question 30

A long postpartum sex taboo is most likely to occur in societies __________.

A) where people depend on crops that are low in protein
B) with a high proportion of monogamous marriages
C) where there are more males than females
D) that practice polyandrous marriage

Question 31

In which of the following societies would polygyny be least likely to occur?

A) a society with a balanced sex ratio
B) a culture with a long postpartum sex taboo
C) a population suffering from a high male mortality rate in warfare
D) a society with more women than men

Question 32

Which of the following societies is most likely to practice bride service?

A) Native American foragers
B) African agriculturalists
C) Asian horticulturalists
D) European industrialists

Question 33

Which theory suggests that the incest taboo was created to ensure that individuals would marry members of other families, thereby creating ties that held communities together?

A) White and Lévi-Strauss's cooperation theory
B) Westermarck's childhood-familiarity theory
C) Malinowski's family-disruption theory
D) Freud's psychoanalytic theory

Question 34

Couples raised together as children following the Chinese tradition of "daughter-in-law raised from childhood" are __________.

A) more likely to get divorced
B) more likely to have many children
C) less likely to seek extramarital sexual relationships
D) less likely to exchange dowry or bride price

Question 35

The custom of allowing a man to marry more than one woman is __________.

A) found in most of the societies known to anthropology
B) found in only a small minority of the world's societies
C) unlikely to engender jealousy among co-wives
D) strictly forbidden in Muslim society

Question 36

Which of the following is an example of an exogamous marriage tradition?

A) marrying outside of a particular kin group
B) marrying a member of your own caste
C) marrying someone from within the village
D) marrying with the intent to produce a male heir

Question 37

One study compared the health of children born of familial incest with children of the same mother born of nonincestuous unions and found that __________.

A) the incestuous group had much higher rates of genetic abnormalities than the nonincestuous group
B) both groups of children had high rates of genetic abnormalities
C) the nonincestuous group had much higher rates of genetic abnormalities than the incestuous group
D) neither group of children had high rates of genetic abnormalities

Question 38

A single mother and her son, living together, would be an example of a(n) __________ family.

A) independent
B) extended
C) nuclear
D) solitary

Question 39

Caste societies typically have __________ marriages.

A) endogamous
B) exogamous
C) cross-cousin
D) incestuous

Question 40

Many societies around the world, including the Chippewa, regard cross-cousins as suitable marriage partners. In these cultures, whom would you be allowed to marry?

A) your father's sister's child
B) your father's brother's child
C) your mother's sister's child
D) your mother's daughter's child

Question 41

Why does sexual competition appear to be higher among humans than other primates?

A) Unlike most other primates, human females are sexually receptive throughout the year.
B) Humans are more likely than other primates to live in multi-male, multi-female social groups.
C) Humans are particularly aggressive primates and more likely to compete through physical means.
D) There is a lower female to male ratio in human communities than in most other primate groups.

Question 42

How has the tradition of arranged marriage changed in recent years?

A) Marriages are still arranged by families, but couples have more say in the pairing.
B) Arranged marriages are now big business and performed mostly by professional matchmakers.
C) Marriages are only arranged when very large dowries are involved.
D) Arranged marriage is now illegal in nearly all countries.

Question 43

Relate the concept of the extended family to the different forms of marriage discussed in the chapter (monogamy, polygyny, and polyandry). What might an extended family look like in each of these marital systems?

Question 44

What two major factors do all forms of marriage consider?

A) sexual and economic
B) economic and land-ownership
C) economic and kinship
D) sexual and kinship

Question 45

The incest taboo is possibly the closest thing anthropologists have found to a true "cultural universal," because some form of the taboo exists in all known societies. Why is this so important to people cross-culturally? Explain the various theories for the existence of a worldwide incest taboo.

Question 46

The fact that people who are brought up together on the same kibbutz are uninterested in each other as marriage partners, even when the marriages are favored by their parents, supports which theory of the incest taboo?

A) the childhood-familiarity theory
B) the cooperation theory
C) the family-disruption theory
D) Freud's Oedipal theory

Question 47

Even in the United States-an urbanized society with relatively few marriage restrictions-people tend to marry within their __________.

A) class and geographic area
B) geographic area and educational level
C) educational level and profession
D) profession and class

Question 48

Which condition predicts a discouragement of romantic love as a basis for marriage?

A) the husband and wife live in an extended-family household
B) there is relatively little sexual freedom for either spouse
C) both partners are needed to make significant contributions to primary subsistence
D) one of the primary goals of marriage is to produce children

Question 49

Write a definition of marriage that would embrace all known forms of marriage recognized by anthropologists. In other words, what factors do these diverse unions have in common?

Question 50

Which of the following statements is true of the relationship between family and household?

A) In simpler societies, the family and household are indistinguishable, but in more complex societies they may diverge.
B) In complex societies, the family and household are indistinguishable, but in simpler societies they may diverge.
C) In simpler societies, the family is always bigger than the household, but in more complex societies they are of comparable size.
D) In complex societies, the family is always bigger than the household, but in simpler societies they are of comparable size.

Question 51

What is the primary weakness of both the gender division-of-labor and prolonged-infant-dependency models for the benefits of marriage?

A) There are many ways other than marriage for groups of men and women to work together.
B) Marriage seems to be much older than the typical division of labor by gender found today.
C) The division of labor around childcare responsibilities is only found in a few cultures.
D) Many species have a longer infant dependency than humans and get by without marriage.

Question 52

What factor predicts male-female bonding among birds and mammals?

A) whether or not a female can simultaneously provide for herself and her babies
B) greater female sexuality and higher levels of male competition
C) an extended infant dependency period
D) a gendered division of labor between food gathering and defending a home territory

Question 53

Many Westerners view the practices of dowry, bride wealth, and bride service to be about "buying" a wife. Explain why this is an inaccurate description of economic marriage transactions. What is the purpose of such economic exchanges between families?

Question 54

Which of the following factors are most responsible for the return of extended-family households among American communities?

A) economic hardship coupled with a rising divorce rate
B) religious fundamentalism and a return to traditional values
C) population pressure and the associated housing crisis
D) young adults remain in the home longer, but have their own children earlier

Question 55

If some form of male-female marriage is nearly universal, it is reasonable to believe that it is in some way adaptive. Discuss the various theories for why marriage is nearly universal, and explain which idea you feel offers the strongest explanation.