Exploring Family Dynamics, Marriage, and Diversity

The Nature of Families - Families are relationships in which people live together with commitment, form an Economic unit and care for any young and consider the group critical to their identity. - Changing family structure and patterns - Kinship – A social network of people based on common ancestry, marriage, or Adoption extended. - Family – A family unit composed of relatives in addition to parents and children, all Whom live in the same household or in proximity. - Nuclear family – A family unit composed of one or two parents and their dependent Children who live apart from other relatives - Are U.S. Families in decline Changing Views on Marriage and Families - Marriage refers to a legally recognized and/or socially approved arrangement between two Persons that carry certain rights and obligations and usually involves sexual activity. - Monogamy – the practice of being married to one person at a time - Serial monogamy – successive marriages, in which a person has several spouses over a Lifetime but is legally married to only one partner at a time. Diversity in Intimate Relationships and Families - Singlehood - Postponing marriage - Cohabitation and domestic partnerships - Same-Sex marriages

Family Life and Employment in Two-Parent and One-Person Households - Two-Parent Households with Dual or Single incomes - Dual-earner marriages – marriages in which both spouses are employed full-time In the labor - Second shift – the domestic work that many employed women perform at home after Completing their workday on the job - One-Parent Households Child-Related Family Issues - Reproductive freedom, contraception, and abortion - Infertility and reproductive technologies - Adoption - Teen pregnancies and unmarried young motherhood - Family of orientation is the family into which a person is born and in which early Socialization takes place. - Family of procreation – the family that a person forms by having or adopting children, Which married couples with young children create