Chapter 8 – Families, Kinship, and Marriage

Posted by ANT1001 4:10 section (Aditi, Adiba, Fahim, and Marija)

We learned about nuclear families in this chapter. It is said that a person lives in at least two nuclear families during his or her lifetime. An American would be surprised to know that how many countries still live in extended family. I [Adiba??] remember living in an extended family when I was in India. Everyone member from the patrilineal side of the family lives in the same house and all the children in the house live as siblings, there are no cousins, its just a one big family. This type of living can be classified as an extended patrilocality.

Talking about the divorce rates in recent years, they have soared unbelievably. It is not only in Canada and the United States that these numbers have gone up, but, also in other nations which are becoming westernized. As a result of these divorces the number of single parents has gone up. There are still debates going on in the eastern world if this right or wrong. It is one of the favorite topics with that psychologists in the East discuss.

Another interesting topic that was discussed in this chapter was about descent and lineages or clans. I belong to a patrilocal culture and it was interesting to know from my fellow group members about the matrilocality descent lineage in their culture. The most interesting topic in the chapter was marriage. I could personally relate to this topic because it mentioned about the complicated marriage system that exists in India. Being a witness to endogamy and caste system, this section of the chapter made the most sense to me. Dowry and plural marriages have also been discussed in this chapter. Dowry has existed in the South Asian community since the civilization started. It still exits. Even though there are oppositions to it, but, still one can hear cases of suicide or murder due to dowry and bride wealth quiet often in India. The question that arises in relation to this chapter is, due to westernization of the world, many cultures are loosing their form of institution of marriage, kinship and parenting, is this the right way to go and what should North America adopt from other cultures in order to drop the soaring divorce rates?

Video on kinship and marriage-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3590143710531876202&q=family+and+kinship&total=25&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
Funny Video of comedian Russell Peters speaking on relationship between immigrant parents and their kids-
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5jlrxcpkI