Ch12 Kinship, Marriage, And The Family Verified Test Bank

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

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 01

1) Which of the following refers to the family into which one is born and raised?

Feedback: Natal family is the family into which a person is born and in which she or he is (usually) raised.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Traditional family

b. Natal family

c. Nuclear family

d. Family of procreation

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 02

2) Approximately how many children were born during the “baby boom”?

Feedback: The 1950s were a time of unprecedented economic growth, and the “baby boom”— 77 million babies in 15 years—encouraged the expansion of new subdivisions filled with these young families. By the late 1950s, around 60% of all Americans lived in such families.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. 5 million

b. 25 million

c. 77 million

d. 190 million

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 03

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

Feedback: Nuclear family is the family formed by a married couple and their children.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Natal family

b. Traditional family

c. Nuclear family

d. Extended family

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 04

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

Feedback: Corporate groups. Groups of people who work together toward common ends, much as a corporation does.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. natal family.

b. extended family.

c. nuclear family.

d. corporate group.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 05

5) If you live in a household with your mom and dad, your grandfather, as well as your aunt and two cousins, you live in what kind of family?

Feedback: Extended families are larger groups of relatives beyond the nuclear family, often living in the same household.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Nuclear family

b. Traditional family

c. Extended family

d. Unnatural family

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 06

6) When social norms dictate that someone from a particular clan must marry outside of that clan, anthropologists say that the clan is

Feedback: Exogamous is a social pattern in which members of a clan must marry someone from another clan, which has the effect of building political, economic, and social ties with other clans.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. a corporate group.

b. endogamous.

c. exogamous.

d. a lineage.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 07

7) Matrilineal descent is traced through which relative?

Feedback: Matrilineal is reckoning descent through women, who are descended from an ancestral woman.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. The father

b. The mother

c. The mother's brother

d. The father's mother

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 08

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

Feedback: Matrilineal is reckoning descent through women, who are descended from an ancestral woman.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. The father

b. The mother

c. The mother's brother

d. The father's mother

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 09

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

Feedback: Cognatic is reckoning descent through either men or women from some ancestor.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. unilineal clan.

b. patrilineal clan.

c. matrilineal clan.

d. cognatic clan.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 10

10) Dowry is given by the

Feedback: Dowry is a large sum of money or in-kind gifts given to a daughter to ensure her well-being in her husband’s family.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 11

11) Bride price is paid

Feedback: Bridewealth (or bride price) is a transfer of wealth (household goods, animals, money, etc.) from the groom’s clan or family to compensate the bride’s clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with her productive and reproductive abilities.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 12

12) When a woman marries more than one man she is practicing

Feedback: Polyandry is when a woman has two or more husbands at one time.
Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

a. polygyny.

b. polyandry.

c. adultery.

d. matrilineality.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 13

13) Polygamy is the marriage of

Feedback: Polygamy is any form of plural marriage.
Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

a. more than one spouse.

b. more than one man by a woman.

c. more than one woman by a man.

d. cousins.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 14

14) 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?

Feedback: Anthropologists have identified six different basic kinship systems, which correspond to the patterns suggested by anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in the late nineteenth century. The differences between them can be understood by how people refer to their different cousins.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Grandparents

b. Parents

c. Children

d. Cousins

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 15

15) A surrogate mother is a

Feedback: A surrogate mother is a woman who agrees to have an embryo implanted in her womb. She carries the baby to term, and after the baby is born, the child belongs to the couple who provided the embryo. Quite often, couples choose surrogate mothers when the wife is unable to carry a child to term. Surrogate mothers are rarely related genetically to the children they carry to term.
Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?

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.

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 16

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

Feedback: The problem with this view is that the Ozzie and Harriet ideal is not a “traditional” family, but a new pattern—the independent American suburban family—that became established in the 1950s and lasted for less than 20 years. Only 20 years before then, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, American birth rates had fallen sharply; with limited income, most families refrained from having children. The birth rate remained low from 1942 to 1946 because so many men were serving in the military during World War II. But once these millions of men returned, they began to marry and start families. The 1950s were a time of unprecedented economic growth, and the “baby boom”— 77 million babies in 15 years—encouraged the expansion of new subdivisions filled with these young families. By the late 1950s, around 60% of all Americans lived in such families.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 17

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

Feedback: Still, the nuclear family—the family formed by a married couple and their children—is the most important family structure in the United States. Ours is not the only society with nuclear families—nuclear family units occur in and are important to nearly every society around the world. Indeed, for many decades, anthropologists wrote of the nuclear family as the most basic unit of kinship and the core around which all families were constructed.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 18

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

Feedback: Whatever form of family we might find in a society, one of its key functions is controlling and managing its members’ wealth. The most obvious way for a family, lineage, or clan group to control its wealth is by defining rights over the productive and reproductive abilities of its women and children, as well as defining the inheritance rights of family members when someone dies. We explore each of these issues in turn next.

Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 19

19) Weddings and marriages are usually less about the couple than about relationships with the couple's social network, including friends and family.

Feedback: On one hand, weddings proclaim to the world that the couple is united. But, on the other hand, the wedding ceremony brings the two families together in the same spot, where they acknowledge the couple as a unit.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 20

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

Feedback: Many things can happen within a family, but two things that should not happen are sex and marriage. The prohibition on sexual relations between close family members is generally called the Incest taboo, and this taboo is as close to a universal feature of human societies as anything.
Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 21

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

Feedback: Adoption has been a human phenomenon for as long as there have been humans. When a parent or both parents have died, often as a result of disease, war, or natural disasters, in traditional small-scale societies, there has always been someone available to look after orphaned children. But until recently, most adoptions were typically local affairs in which a child needing parents was looked after by a neighbor or relative. The mid–twentieth century saw the rise of adoption agencies that could arrange adoptions across the United States, and they did so anonymously. Neither the biological parents nor the adoptive parents knew each other. It was only in the latter part of the last century that intercultural adoptions became common, and in the 1990s a new phenomenon emerged—international adoption, in which a child is adopted across international borders.
Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 22

22) Why were American birth rates low from 1942 to 1946?

Feedback: The birth rate remained low from 1942 to 1946 because so many men were serving in the military during World War II. But once these millions of men returned, they began to marry and start families. The 1950s were a time of unprecedented economic growth, and the “baby boom”— 77 million babies in 15 years—encouraged the expansion of new subdivisions filled with these young families. By the late 1950s, around 60% of all Americans lived in such families

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 23

23) Clans come in three types: matrilineal, patrilineal, and

Feedback: The term clan refers to something different: a special group of relatives who are all descended (or claim to descend) from a single ancestor.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. cognatic.

b. acephalous.

c. nuclear.

d. corporate.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 24

24) Which of the following do Americans traditionally inherit patrilineally?

Feedback: Patrilineal is reckoning descent through males from the same ancestors.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Land

b. Height

c. Wealth

d. Surnames

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 25

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

Feedback: Unilineal descent is based on descent through a single descent line, either males or females.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. matrilineal descent.

b. patrilineal descent.

c. unilineal descent.

d. cognatic descent.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 26

26) 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?

Feedback: Matrilineal is reckoning descent through women, who are descended from an ancestral woman.
Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 27

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

Feedback: Genealogical amnesia is the structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives, usually because they are not currently significant in one’s social life.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. Ethnic forgetting

b. Ethnic amnesia

c. Genealogical forgetting

d. Genealogical amnesia

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 28

28) 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?

Feedback: Genealogical amnesia is the structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives, usually because they are not currently significant in one’s social life.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 29

29) Women who practice polyandry tend to marry

Feedback: Polyandry is the practice of marriage wherein one woman has two or more husbands at one time. Few societies around the world are known to have allowed polyandry, and the best known are the Toda, one of the hill tribes in India, and the Sherpas of Nepal, who formerly used polyandry to keep large estates from being divided into tiny estates. Among both the Todas and the Sherpas, a group of brothers marries the same woman, a practice known as “fraternal polyandry” that limits the tensions among co-husbands.

Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

a. two or more male cousins.

b. a father and his sons.

c. two or more male friends.

d. two or more brothers.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 30

30) Men who participate in polygyny often

Feedback: The most common form of plural marriage is polygyny, in which one man is married simultaneously to two or more women. In parts of Africa and Melanesia, for example, having more than one wife indicates that a man is important, with greater wealth, higher social status, or more importance in the community. From a woman’s point of view, being in a polygynous marriage can mean that other wives provide support in conducting household duties, such as raising kids, cooking, and so on. But as these indigenous economies have been drawn into the global system, the number of men with two or more wives has declined, as it is increasingly considered too costly and too old-fashioned.
Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

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.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 31

31) Which of these is known as the “Westermarck effect”?

Feedback: The “Westermarck Effect,” explains the incest taboo as a natural psychological revulsion toward marriage (or sex) with close relatives. First-cousin marriage was common in many places and even in the United States, where it is allowed in more than half of the states. For example, during the century or so before the American Revolution, a surprising number of marriages between first or second cousins were recorded, and it was considered an extremely appropriate match.

Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

a. A birth defect that occurs among children of siblings

b. A birth defect that occurs among children of cousins

c. The psychological revulsion against having sex with close relatives

d. The psychological state where people are sexually attracted to their close relatives

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 32

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

Feedback: People often talk about in vitro fertilization (IVF) as a way to produce “test-tube babies.” The technique takes eggs from the mother or some other female donor and sperm from the father or a male donor. Fertilization can occur by incubating an egg and sperm in a Petri dish or, if the donor’s sperm count is low, one sperm cell can be injected into the egg. After the embryos have reached the 6- to 8-cell stage, they are implanted in the womb of the mother, where some of the embryos can implant in the uterus and lead to a successful pregnancy. Only 25% to 45% of all IVF attempts successfully produce pregnancy. But IVF has become an important procedure, accounting for between 1 and 2% of all American births annually.
Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?

a. 1%

b. 3%

c. 5%

d. 7%

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 33

33) Which technology led to what is referred to as the “sexual revolution” in the 1960s?

Feedback: In the 1960s, the birth control pill allowed women in Western countries like the United States, France, and Great Britain an unprecedented level of direct control over their sexuality. This technological development contributed to a so-called sexual revolution centered around the desire for “casual sex.” At first the Pill was available only to married women, but by the end of the 1970s, it became available to single women in most of the United States as well. For all the entanglements of kinship discussed previously, the prospect of having a child does not facilitate casual sex!
Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?

a. Television

b. Condoms

c. In-vitro fertilization

d. Birth control pills

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 34

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

Feedback: Around the world, not all cultures give the same weight to biological relatedness for defining a family.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 35

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

Feedback: In every society, a gap exists between that society’s ideal family and the real families that exist, the reason being that all families are dynamic. For example, as individuals grow older, they move out of their natal family—the family into which they were born and in which they are (usually) raised—to marry and start their own families. In many societies, a man may marry, raise children, and ultimately grow old without leaving his natal family. In these situations, it is the woman spouse who moves out of her natal family. In addition, broader social and economic conditions can change the composition, size, and character of the ties between family members, as the example of the American family illustrates.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 36

36) 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.

Feedback: Genealogical amnesia is the structural process of forgetting whole groups of relatives, usually because they are not currently significant in one’s social life.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. True

b. False

Type: True/False

Title: Chapter 12 Question 37

37) Studies have shown that marriage is mostly about sex.

Feedback: For most Americans, marriage should be about love and sex, and we take for granted our individual right to choose a marriage partner. But in most societies around the world, marriage is about cultivating political and economic relations between families. In such contexts, a common belief is that marriage is too important to be left to the whims of an individual, and so accepted practice is for family members to choose an individual’s marriage partner.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

a. True

b. False

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 38

38) Anthropologists think of bride price as being about not buying anyone but compensation for rights in women—her labor, her support for family affairs, her looking after children, and rights of sexual access. What other social payment is structurally most dissimilar to a bride price payment from this perspective?

Feedback: Bridewealth (or bride price) is a transfer of wealth (household goods, animals, money, etc.) from the groom’s clan or family to compensate the bride’s clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with her productive and reproductive abilities.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

a. A series of child price payments

b. A father's purchase of a new car for his daughter when she goes off to college

c. A countergift for a bride price payment, usually of much lesser value than the original bride price payment

d. An American Valentine's gift, given by a college student to his girlfriend

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 39

39) When cultural anthropologists examine families in different cultures, they use cultural analysis to understand all of the following except

Feedback: Anthropologists have long recognized that we cannot understand a society until we understand the core relationships of kinship, marriage, and family around which people’s social lives are lived.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

a. why it makes sense for people to get married or not to get married in terms of the economic costs of establishing a separate household.

b. the genetic differences among different members of the extended family.

c. how popular media in the society being studied shapes people's expectations of married life.

d. who looks after children in typical households.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 40

40) 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?

Feedback: In recent decades, anthropologists interested in matters of kinship have become attuned to the fact that these new social and technological developments have begun to complicate people’s understandings of kinship relations. We discuss how this might be in three contexts: international adoption, in-vitro fertilization, and surrogacy, each of which puts stresses and strains on our usual notions of family ties, who is related to whom, and how these relationships should be recognized socially within the community and the American legal system.
Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?

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?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 12 Question 41

41) 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?

Feedback: The most common clans and lineages in nonindustrial societies are patrilineal, such as those found among the Omaha Indians, the Nuer of South Sudan, and most groups in the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea. In these societies, clan members claim to be descended through males from the same ancestor (Figure 12.5). These clans are unilineal (based on descent through a single descent line, in this case, the male). Most Americans will easily understand patrilineal descent because in the United States, we have traditionally inherited our surnames patrilineally; that is, taking on the family name from the father.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

Type: Short Answer

Title: Chapter 12 Question 42

42) 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?

Feedback: For relationships beyond the nuclear family—such as the marriage of cousins—societies vary in what they allow. In Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, Australia, and New Guinea, the incest taboo includes prohibitions on marriage with some kinds of cousins, particularly in societies with a unilineal clan system. And in most clan-based societies, the prohibition on marriage within the clan suggests that this extension of the incest taboo defines the boundaries of the clan, just as the boundaries of incest define the boundaries of the nuclear family.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 43

43) 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.

Feedback: Kroeber, one of early American anthropology’s most influential figures, published the view that the key to understanding the differences between kinship terminologies around the world was to understand eight general principles. Although nearly every early anthropologist confronted the conundrum of how kinship systems worked in the particular societies they studied, no one had quite understood the fundamental principles that motivated all kinship systems until Kroeber came along. He ignored the particular terms used for the same relationships—such as aunt or uncle, brother or sister in English, or the forms they take in dozens of other languages. Instead he focused on the relationships and what distinguished pairs of terms (brother and sister, mother and father). Suddenly, the tremendous diversity of kinship systems was reduced to a small

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 44

44) 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?

Feedback: For most Americans, marriage should be about love and sex, and we take for granted our individual right to choose a marriage partner. But in most societies around the world, marriage is about cultivating political and economic relations between families. In such contexts, a common belief is that marriage is too important to be left to the whims of an individual, and so accepted practice is for family members to choose an individual’s marriage partner.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 45

45) 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?

Feedback: Corporate groups. Groups of people who work together toward common ends, much as a corporation does.

Page reference: What Are Families, and How Are They Structured in Different Societies?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 46

46) 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.

Feedback: Bridewealth (or bride price) is a transfer of wealth (household goods, animals, money, etc.) from the groom’s clan or family to compensate the bride’s clan or family for the loss of one of its women along with her productive and reproductive abilities. Dowry is a large sum of money or in-kind gifts given to a daughter to ensure her well-being in her husband’s family.
Page reference: How Do Families Control Power and Wealth?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 47

47) 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?

Feedback: Marriage provides social recognition of the ties between the couple, if not also their families, as well as social legitimacy to the children. The importance of public recognition partially helps explain why same-sex marriage has become a key political issue in the past decade in many societies, including the United States (where it was legalized nationwide in 2015), Canada (where it has been legal since 2005), Mexico (where it is legal in many states but still under debate at the national level), and Argentina (where it has been legal since 2010).

Page reference: Why Do People Get Married?

Type: essay/short answer question

Title: Chapter 12 Question 48

48) 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?

Feedback: The first successful IVF was the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 in England. Between 1987 and 2015, the procedure has been used in 1 million live births in the United States (CDC 2017), creating a variety of new kinship relationships that people had never had to cope with before. For most couples, the preferred situation was the mother’s egg and father’s sperm implanted into the mother, based on the belief that blood relations are the most important. But in situations where a man or a woman cannot provide either sperm or an egg, other possibilities present themselves: a mother’s egg, donor’s sperm; donor’s egg, father’s sperm; donor’s egg and sperm; and any of these in a surrogate uterus. The social relationships between the individuals involved in any of these scenarios do not transfer easily to categories like “mother” and “father,” since who provides the biological material may differ from who raises the child or provides the womb to nurture it during pregnancy.

Page reference: How Are Social and Technological Changes Reshaping How People Think About Family?