Deck 12: Kinship, Marriage, and the Family: Love, Sex, and Power

Question 1

Approximately how many children were born during the "baby boom"?

A) 5 million
B) 25 million
C) 77 million
D) 190 million

Answer 1

C

Question 2

What is the family formed by a married couple and their children called?

A) Natal family
B) Traditional family
C) Nuclear family
D) Extended family

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Most families function as groups of real people who work together toward common ends. Such family groups are referred to as

A) natal family.
B) extended family.
C) nuclear family.
D) corporate group.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Matrilineal descent is traced through which relative?

A) The father
B) The mother
C) The mother's brother
D) The father's mother

Question 5

In a kinship system with matrilineal descent, who does a man inherit his rights to land and clan wealth from?

A) The father
B) The mother
C) The mother's brother
D) The father's mother

Question 6

A clan that reckons descent through both their mother and father is called a

A) unilineal clan.
B) patrilineal clan.
C) matrilineal clan.
D) cognatic clan.

Question 7

Dowry is given by the

A) bride's family to the groom's family.
B) groom's family to the bride's family.
C) bride's uncle to the groom's father.
D) groom's uncle to the bride's mother.

Question 8

Bride price is paid

A) to compensate for the loss of the bride's labor in her natal family.
B) to compensate for the loss of the groom's labor in his natal family.
C) to buy farmland.
D) so the new couple can move.

Question 9

Polygamy is the marriage of

A) more than one spouse.
B) more than one man by a woman.
C) more than one woman by a man.
D) cousins.

Question 10

Anthropologists have studied hundreds of different kinship systems around the world over the past century, but they can all be grouped into six different patterns based on terms for which group of relatives?

A) Grandparents
B) Parents
C) Children
D) Cousins

Question 11

A surrogate mother is a

A) woman who agrees to have an embryo implanted in her womb.
B) woman who adopts a child at birth.
C) woman who acts like a mother to an orphan.
D) woman who raises another woman's child.

Question 12

Since the early nineteenth century, the traditional American family has consisted of a husband, a wife, a few children, and perhaps a pet.

Question 13

Nuclear family units occur in and are important to nearly every society around the world.

Question 14

One of the key functions of family is controlling and managing its members' wealth.

Question 15

The incest taboo, or the prohibition against marrying within the nuclear family, is a human universal.

Question 16

Until recently, most adoptions were typically local affairs in which a child needing parents was looked after by a neighbor or relative.

Question 17

Why were American birth rates low from 1942 to 1946?

A) Most young married men were serving in the military.
B) The majority of household incomes were low because of the Great Depression.
C) There was legislation in place that discouraged or prohibited many people from having children.
D) Americans were not having sex.

Question 18

Clans come in three types: matrilineal, patrilineal, and

A) cognatic.
B) acephalous.
C) nuclear.
D) corporate.

Question 19

Which of the following do Americans traditionally inherit patrilineally?

A) Land
B) Height
C) Wealth
D) Surnames

Question 20

When descent is based in a single line it is referred to as

A) matrilineal descent.
B) patrilineal descent.
C) unilineal descent.
D) cognatic descent.

Question 21

Matrilineal descent is typically difficult for Americans to grasp because it feels so unnatural to us. What explains this feeling that matrilineal descent is unnatural since Americans also recognize that we are descended from one mother and her parents?

A) Our kinship system is bilateral, recognizing descent through both mother and father, so it seems strange to recognize only one of these lines.
B) We usually get our surnames from our mother, giving our kinship system a matrilineal bias.
C) Although women can now own property, be breadwinner and head of a household, and can earn more than a husband, many Americans still think of the ideal family as centered on the mother.
D) Our kinship system is based on innate biological orders for nurturing.

Question 22

What do anthropologists call the structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives?

A) Ethnic forgetting
B) Ethnic amnesia
C) Genealogical forgetting
D) Genealogical amnesia

Question 23

What is the combined effect of having surnames that are inherited from a child's father and having a woman take her husband's surname at the time of marriage?

A) Land or real estate automatically goes to the couple's sons rather than the daughters.
B) It is easier for the family to forget the surnames of women after several generations.
C) It prevents women from having any control over the family's wealth.
D) Children disavow their matrilineal kin.

Question 24

Men who participate in polygyny often

A) have the support of their other wives.
B) have to share their wives with their brother.
C) don't have the support of wives.
D) have broken the law and are arrested.

Question 25

In vitro fertilization (IVF) births account for approximately how many live births in the United States today?

A) 1%
B) 3%
C) 5%
D) 7%

Question 26

Which technology led to what is referred to as the "sexual revolution" in the 1960s?

A) Television
B) Condoms
C) In-vitro fertilization
D) Birth control pills

Question 27

Nearly all cultures around the world give a similar importance to biological relatedness as the basis for defining a family.

Question 28

In every society there is a gap between that society's ideal family and the real families that exist.

Question 29

Forgetting large portions of relatives is usually done on purpose when people want to distance themselves from a certain part of their broad extended family.

Question 30

From an anthropological perspective, which of the following is not a new issue that arises with in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogacy, adoption, and frequent divorce and remarriage in American society?

A) Whose names should be listed on the birth certificate as mother and father?
B) Who inherits the parent's land?
C) What should the child expect of his or her relationship with the biological parents, surrogate mother, adopted parent, and all of the possible siblings?
D) How should the child address each of these relatives?

Question 31

For most of our history American kinship has had a patrilineal bias, but in most American families women play a key role in keeping the families together. Using anthropological approaches to kinship, how do you explain this difference?

Question 32

What are the social consequences that arise from having a system of unilineal descent rather than a cognatic system such as in the United States?

Question 33

Consider the "Classic Contributions" box on A. L. Kroeber on classificatory systems of relationship. Although earlier anthropologists understood American and English kinship terms as "descriptive," they described all other kinship systems as classificatory because they grouped relatives of different sorts in unexpected ways. What American kin terms are actually classificatory terms? Explain your answer.

Question 34

Although romance novels and romantic comedy films routinely emphasize that people should marry for love, there are many other reasons for marriage. Identify three of these other reasons why people might want to marry, whether they are in love or not. Could one be in love and still marry for these other reasons?

Question 35

What kind of American corporate kin groups are found today? More than one-third of all households are single-person households. Can these individuals belong to corporate kin groups?

Question 36

Dowry is often used in India to make a daughter more attractive to possible husbands, while bride price is used to compensate a family for the work and children of one of their daughters. Explain how both of these payments unite families but in different ways.

Question 37

Same-sex marriage is legal in legal in the United States, but various kinds of restrictions on same-sex marriage and its recognition exist in the other states. What anthropological questions can you identify about the meaning that such unions have for Americans in different parts of the country that help to explain the legislative patterns in each state? What can we say about these cultural expectations when changes occur rapidly?

Question 38

Who would possibly be the "parents" and what kind of possible relationships would exist between those parents and a child in a birth in which an infertile couple used a sperm bank and the egg (ovum) from the wife's sister, a surrogate mother? What would change if the legal parents were killed in an auto accident and the child was adopted by the mother's sister?