Three theories of the family in cross-cultural perspective
by Lew Hendrix August, 2005
Three sociological theories of the family are considered in SOC304i. This reading sets out the basic stance, logic, assumptions, motors, etc. of each theory. These theories will be abstract for now, but will make more sense as we apply them to particular topics as we go through the semester. The three theories are: 1. Functionalism, or structural-functionalism 2. Conflict Theory (marxism, feminism, generic conflict theories) 3. Sociobiology, alternately called evolutionary psychology, behavioral ecology, or biosocial theory) a direct application of evolutionary principles to social behavior)
Each of these theories is grounded in part in Darwin's theory of biological evolution formulated back in the 1800s. However, each social theory selects different aspects of biological evolution to apply to social life. Darwin's theory, remember, holds that species evolve through the adaptation of individual organisms to their environment over generations, as they struggle to survive and reproduce.
FUNCTIONALISM. Functionalism uses the idea of adaptation, but holds that each society adapts to its physical environment and to the societies around it. For example if there is a peaceful society and a society of warmongers expands into neighboring territories, the peaceful society may adapt by becoming more warlike in self defense. If it does not do this, it may be overrun by the warmongers and just disappear. Existing societies that we can observe have adapted to an environment, but must change if their environment changes.
There is also internal adaptation of the parts of society to each other. For example, the family institution changes if the economy changes. If wages drop for workers, the family may adapt gradually to that by shucking the ÒbreadwinnerÓ role, in favor of a norm that both spouses earn income. Generally speaking, functionalists see institutions as exchanging functions with each other. The economy provides income that begets the necessities of life for the family. The family provides workers for the economy, instilling in them the basic motor skills and language skills, etc. Importantly, it gives individuals a place for rest, relaxation, and emotional ÒrechargingÓ so that they are ready to go off to work each day with proper motivation. In this way societies tend to have an internal equilibrium: to some degree, they are self-maintaining systems. (This logic grew out the the idea of the organs of an organism each contributing to the maintenance of that organism. If you overheat, you sweat and cool off; if you get to cold, you shiver and warm a little from that, etc).
Basic concepts of functionalism: 1. Function: A consequence of one part of society for the whole society, or for other institutions. (Sometimes functions seem to be activities also, but these too have implications for the whole society). This leads functionalists into a weird kind of logic, in which the consequence of an item of social structure is is explanation, or cause. If we ask, why do modern societies have nuclear families, the answer lies in the nuclear family's ability in fulfilling certain needs of modern societies, such as geographic and social mobility . A function can enhance the society's adaptation (eufunction), or hinder it (dysfunction). They might be recognized by members of the society (manifest function) or even be seen as the main purpose of an institution, or not be recognized at all (latent function). This is the functionalist way of saying that all institutions have some drawbacks (i.e., dysfunctions), and that functions are not just purposes of institutions.
2. Functional requisites of a society: Those activities that must be done if a society is to continue to exist. Fifty years ago functionalists published boring lists of functional requisites. They include such things as: Adequate provision of food, clothing, shelter to meet the biological needs of members Adequate provision for reproduction of members Adequate provision for socialization of members into the groups culture Adequate provision for controlling behavior Adequate provision for establishing meaning in life, so that society's members are motivated to survive and are dedicated to the society.
This is a partial list, but enough to show a couple of key points. The less important one is that functionalists see society as a moral order. Socialized individuals become motivated to conform not just for selfish reasons, but also because central values, norms, and roles are instilled in their personalities. Second, the family, more than any other institution, is implicated in fulfilling several of the functional requisites of societies. All of the functional requisites mentioned above are fulfilled in part by the family.
2. Universal functions of the family: economic, sexual, reproductive, educational: George P. Murdock, among others, has analyzed the family in terms of its functions for society. Murdock claimed to find in his research on 250 premodern societies that the nuclear family ( a maximal unit of parents and children, with no other kin living in) is universal. In some societies it is the normative family type, as in the USA. In others it is the building block of more complex family structures: nuclear families carry out functions even when they are embedded within complex family structures. The family is expanded through the addition of more generations or more spouses. Extended families (3+ generations) and polygamous families (2 + spouses of a given sex) are made up of overlapping nuclear families. Thus the extended family contains the nuclear unit of the grandma and grandpa, and maybe several nuclear units of dads, moms and kids. Murdock also claimed to find in his research that nuclear families everywhere had functions of economic cooperation to fulfill biological needs, providing an outlet for the sex drive, regulating reproduction, and providing part of the child care, socialization, and education of the young.
Murdock then argued that the reason for the nuclear family being universal is that it universally carries out functions that are part of the functional requisites of a society. The nuclear family, if this theory is correct, is a necessary unit for society's continuity. Other authors in the last century examined the changing functions of the family in America. They were concerned about declining functions of economic production, status placement, religion ritual and instruction, reproduction, etc. Some felt that providing intimacy and affection are important new added functions. Affection gives meaning to life and helps keep people motivated. Some were more optimistic about the state of the family than others were.
3. Equity of exchange in relationships. Functionalism assumes that exchanges tend to be balanced and fairÐequitable. This contrasts with the views of other theories, particularly conflict theory. Here are two applications of functionalism to relationships of inequality.
Example 1. Social stratification: by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore. Davis and Moore argue that social stratification (social class, caste systems, status systems, etc) are necessary for society's continuity. They begin by saying that each society has many tasks that it's members do. The tasks in a society differ in terms of: -- how pleasant they are -- how much training and skill they require -- how functionally important they are
Rewards available for task performance are wealth, prestige, etc. Because of these variations in tasks, rewards for task performance must be different to motivate people to go into them. If all tasks (jobs) were rewarded the same, unpleasant jobs would not be filled; people would not want to acquire training and skills for more demanding jobs and would gravitate toward the more pleasant jobs. Functionally important tasks might go unfilled, and society would either collapse, or change its reward structure.
If we read between the lines, we see that Davis and Moore are saying: Yes, there is social inequality, but it is equitable, or fair: A market gives people the rewards that they deserve for the work they perform. Thus, there must be some degree of stratification and inequality for a society to maintain itself. NOTE: The point for now is not whether this argument is true or false, but just to see the logic of the explanation of stratification, which is: because of its consequences in motivating people to work, it is necessary for societal continuity.
Example 2.A necessary pattern of role differentiation in the nuclear family, by Morris Zelditch and Talcott Parsons. Parsons created a list of abstract functional requisites of any groupÐmore abstract than those listed above. We can think of them as two necessary kinds of tasks. Any group must have both instrumental activities (tasks aimed at goals), AND expressive, or pattern maintenance activities through which relationships are kept working, tensions released, etc. Without instrumental activities (economic activities, etc), individuals needs are not fuliflled, people die off, etc. Without pattern maintenance activities, instrumental behavior cannot continue in the long run. The group falls apart, or must change so that expressive behavior does occur.
Because of these two necessary kinds of activities, small group leadership tends to be of two types vested in two different people: the instrumental leader, and the expressive leader. Instrumental leader: the authority--the enforcer; sees that people do their jobs. Expressive leader: the caring, well-liked, person who is rewarding, the person who jokes and laughs with others, etc.
Parsons and Zelditch assume from Murdock that the nuclear family is universal. It is a small group that needs two leaders to coordinate its instrumental and expressive activities. How can the two leadership roles be allocated? Sex and generation axes of the nuclear family make a 4 cell box. Mom, dad, bro, sis Biological traits are the basis for plugging leadership roles into the 3-cell family box. Mom is by necessity the expressive leader. Dad is the instrumenal leader. How does this necessity come about? This is their logic. Kids start as helpless infants and cannot be assigned leadership roles of any kind. Mom has mammary glands that work. She nurses infants, and does other work consistent with that task, such as providing care, affection, etc. Kids come to see her as a general source of gratification and support--as an expressive leader. Meanwhile, dad is physically bigger and stronger than mom. He is assigned more of the instrumental work (food production, etc. outside the home) and thus becomes the instrumental leader.
So for Zelditch and Parsons, everywhere, in most all families, the spouses necessarily divide their activities along gender lines--into instrumental and expressive tasks and leadership. If this happens, the family maintains its equilibrium, provides for members, and is stable.
If we read between the lines, they are saying: The power of the husband-father is not only necessary, but fair. He is one kind of leader: the wife-mother is another kind of leader. Both make important contributions to the functioning of the family, and as many families develop similar role patterns, the society becomes more adapted.
This theory has been criticized for several reasons: In some societies, the extended family has great unity-it is not simply made up of nuclear family ÒbricksÓ with each nuclear unit being a functioning entity. A few groups such as the Nayar caste of India and the early generations of Kibbutzim in Israel did not have institutionalized nuclear families. There are many other societies in which husbands do not reside full-time with their wives and children. Moreover, in many matrilineal societies, the authority structure is embedded in the clan, and does not follow along family lines at all. Thus the father is often not an instrumental leader in this type of society. Still, the theory would have been valid if it had said that some type of family performs the four functions everywhere, and if it had pointed out that male dominance is very widespread.
Strengths of functionalist theory. Functionalist theory points out the usefulness of particular aspects of the family, and tells us why it exists in all societies. It views society as a moral entityÐthat is as a group of people who share values, norms, and concepts. It views a person's behavior as motivated partly by a conscienceÐthe social values and norms internalized into personality. Although often criticized for not dealing with social change, functionalism has treated family change fairly effectively as a shift in functions and structure.
CONFLICT THEORY Since the 1960s, functionalism has been losing its position as the main macro-level theory in American sociology. Very few, if any, sociologists claim to be functionalistsÐalthough many still think in functionalist terms and publish unlabeled functionalist analyses. Various kinds of conflict theory have become more important. Marxist theory was influential in this. Karl MarxÐwriting back in the late 1800sÐwas concerned with economies and politics. He thought that for any system of economic production, there were basically two classes of people: those who owned some part of the means of production, and those who did not: the haves and the have nots. In various epochs, the haves and have nots may be masters and slaves (as in ancient Greece and Rome, and the Pre-Civil War USA), farm owners and farm laborers, or factory owners and factory workers. Marx saw all societies as being inherently unstable. Each Òcontains the seeds of its own destruction,Ó he said. These seeds are contained in the struggle between the classes. Once the human race invented private property eons ago, greed came into play. The haves had an advantage (ownership of productive facilities) over the have nots and exploited them. With industrial capitalism, a factory owner needed workers, but he had resources to fall back on. The urban, propertyless, poor had nothing but their labor to sell, and they sell it a less than its inherent value. Marx thought that eventually, the workers would become aware of this unfair exploitation, and rebel against the owners, and eventually establishing a communist utopia, where there is no private property, no greeed, no exploitation.
We can see that Marx took the ideas of struggle (or conflict) and evolutionary change from Darwin's biological evolutionary theory. Each mode of production (slavery, factory, etc) contains internal struggles between classes that sooner or later lead to changes in the mode of production itself. We see that it is class struggle that leads to change in Marx's theory. Marx didn't say diddley squat about the family however. His collaborator, Frederich Engels, published a book giving a marxist analysis of the evolution of the family, private property and the state. Basically Engels tried to theorize about the social changes by which men came to be the haves and women the have notsÐthe owners and the owned. Here is a too brief synopsis of the three stages from the birth of humankind to the industrial age. Each of the three stages has substages, so this is a gross oversimplification, but enough to get the picture.
SAVAGERY: In these hunting and gathering societies, life was hard. There was no surplus produced, and therefore, no property to accumulate. Community ownership is practiced. People are sexually promiscuous, and ignorant. There was no marriage or family institution, but men and women were equals. Incest taboos slowly develop because of the biological. consequences of incest. Sex becomes less promiscuous over the generations, and group marriage develops. Toward the end of the period of savagery, matrilineal descent is created, because of sexual promiscuity and ignorance of reproduction. Sexual equality gives way to female superiority.
BARBARISM: Herding and agriculture follow on the heels of the domestication of plants and animals. Clan ownership of property develops, but gives way to private ( please interpret as male) ownership in the family toward the end. Since men are the ones who work on the land, or with the cattle, they become owners of the means of production (land, cattle), they come to own the surplus wealth, and gain some power over women. Men substitute patrilineal descent for matrilineal descent, and institute polygynous marriage.
CIVILIZATION: (From Classical greece and Rome to the present). Technological change leads to the creation of some industry and the arts. A large surplus appears. Society becomes stratified, and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, with many being poor. Some men own most of the surplus wealth. Women become more oppressed, as the sexual, reproductive, and menial servants of their husbands. Men create monogamous marriage to ensure that their wive's offspring are their own legitimate offspring. In other words: women are guarded carefully among the owner class, both before and after marriage. Meanwhile, men have outside affairs, and visit prostitutes, who come from the poor classes. Engels says that monogamous marriage is not based on love, but on men's oppression of women and on wealthy men's wish to keep their sexual contacts with poor women. In Engels's stage of civilization, a woman has two possible fates: she can marry, exchange her sexual and reproductive services to her husband, and be under his control. Alternately, she can sell her sexual services on the open market. Engels wants to get the point across that monogamous marriage did not stem from love between women and men. It stemmed from concerns about property and legitimacy of offspring and brought with it the sexual double standard and prostitution. It is all the same ball of wax. If there is love to be found in marriage in the stage of civilization, it is among the poor, the workers, etc. where the men have few resources to control and oppress women of their own class or another class.
Randall Collins's Conflict Sociology. Randall Collins is an important conflict theorist today. He does focus on the family. His conflict sociology book has one chapter addressing family. He also has a family textbook, elaborating his viewpoint more. His ideas are strongly influenced by Marx and Engels. He analzyes marriage as a form of sexual propertyÐthe right of sexual access of one person to another. Sexual property comes in a unilateral form in which a husband has control of his wife's sexuality, or a father has the right to dispose of, or contract out, his daughter's sexuality to her husband. An example of the first is seen in rape laws in the USA, which until recently excluded forcible sex in marriage from the criminal category of rape (although it might have been a form of cruelty and grounds for divorce). A peculiar bit of the tradtional Christian marriage rite contains another. The bride's father gives her to her husband. Some time ago in the European past, fathers had the right to give away daughters in marriageÐbut with the daughters consent in the church's view. Collins sees modern societies as moving toward bilateral sexual property for these kinds of laws are being deleted and marriage rites are changing. Husbands and wives are beginning to have mutual rights of sexual access to each other.
Collins sees a biological basis for sexual property tending to be bilateral. First he says we are a sexually motivated species. People like sex, think it is fun; they are horny, both men and women.He also believes that we are an aggressive speciesÐboth male and female of us. However, since men on average are bigger and stronger than women, men become the sexual aggressors. This basic biological situation means that in most all societies, men view women as sexual prizes, and women have to adopt a defensive posture against men's sexual aggression. Because of his greater physical strength, a man is not only able to claim the sole right of sexual access to a women, but also able to enforce his claim. This, for Collins is the historical and cross-cultural basis of marriage. Other rights, or forms of family property, include the rights to the spouse's labor, to the spouse's affection, to the spouse's material goods, and to the wife's offspring. These spring up to different degrees in different societies, once the right of sexual access has been socially defined and agreed upon.
Sexual property varies in degree across societies, Collins says. We may think of this in some ways as the extent of sexual inequality or male dominance varying widely. This variation depends on 1. the resources men have available and 2. the way that weaponry and the use of force are organized in a society. From these two criteria, Collins theorizes four types of societies, and here they are:
COLLINS'S CONFLICT THEORY: SEXUAL PROPERTY IN FOUR TYPES OF SOCIETIES 1a. Low-technology tribal societies. Example: Yanomamo of Brazil; Trobriands of South Pacific, and similar groups.
In this type of society, little surplus is produced. The sexes are fairly equal in many ways, but sexual property is unilateral. Almost every one, both men and women, must work to survive. Premarital sex is often allowed for both men and women. Men may use their strength to enforce sexual property rights (e.g.,in marrying daughters off, or in punishing an adulterous wife). Female centered family structures (such as matrilineal descent or matrilocal residence) in some societies make for even more sexual equality. Male control also varies with the (limited) extent of surplus in this type of society. Groups planting crops tend to produce larger surpluses than foraging societies do.
1b. Fortified households in stratified societies. Examples: Ancient Greece and Rome; Dark Ages in Europe.
Unilateral sexual property is stronger for several reasons: There is no strong central government that controls the use of force. Each household is an armed unit. Wealthy male householders control the use of force (armies, weapons, etc) and economic property: hence, sexual property reaches its peak because of the extreme concentration of resources in the hands of a few men. Women do much of the menial work. Women of the wealthy classes are restricted, and given as wives in alliances with other families. Sexual property in the upper classes is linked to the concept of honor. A man's honor comes from his position, but also from control of women as his sexual property. In other words, a woman's sexual conduct is a badge of the honor of her entire family.
2a. Societies with private households in a market economy. Example: Victorian times and later in Europe and North America.
Unilateral sexual property declines for several reasons: Government controls the use of force, which fosters commerce and growth of business. Men still control family property and hold the best-paying jobs. The home becomes more privateÐthat is secluded from the world of jobs and commerce, and romantic love becomes the basis for marriage. Ideologies of romantic love and premarital chastity become important. Women push these as a strategy to maximize their bargaining power since men control material resources. Romantic love is used by women to control men's aggressive urges. With romantic love, sexual property becomes applied to men in limited ways: The concept of adultery begins to apply to husbands as well as wives. Women come to be seen as more moral than men--the angel in the home.
2b. Societies with affluent market economies. Example: Contemporary societies in which married women are commonly are employed.
Since women in these societies are often employed, they have more bargaining resources (but still less than men). Men are still the sexual aggressors in courtship, and women more concerned with love and commitment. Sex before marriage is allowed in relationships with love and commitment, but there is a continuing conflict over sex, with men still being the initiators and aggressors, and women still seen as sexual prizes. As women's employment and earnings approach equality with men's in this type of society, bilateral sexual property may come into play more.
Notes: You may have noticed the lack of discussion of how families contribute to the well-being of society in these conflict theory; this is analogous in a backward way to functionalism's lack of concern about women's exploitation. Feminist theory within sociology is generally a type of conflict theory, but it may be grounded in Marx's ideas, or in other theories such as structuralism or post-modernism. There is no feminist functionalism.
Strengths of Conflict Theory. Conflict theory is complementary to functionalist theory. Whereas functionalism stresses uniformity and stability in family patterns, conflict theory emphasizes diversity and change. While functionalism emphasizes fairness in exchanges, along with moral behavior and unity in society, conflict theory emphasizes economic self-interest, inequity, and oppression. Neither theory should be seen as totally wrong, or totally correct, but simply as focused on different aspects of society.
SOCIOBIOLOGY In the 1960s E. O. Wilson published a large book, Sociobiology, about the evolution of social behavior in a large array of different species, including humans. He looked at mating patterns, social organization, etc. Many people in the biological and social sciences were influenced by this book. Social scientists have a variety of names for this type of theory: biosocial theory, evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and more. Its general idea is that much individual behavior is oriented directly or indirectly toward seeing that our genes continue in future generations. In Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest, remember that the fittest is not the most robust, strongest, largest fanged, etc, but the one that has more offspring living to reproduce.
Human sociobiology attempts to apply Darwin's evolutionary theory from biology to human behavior. Human Sociobiology does not try to link a specific behavior with a specific gene. Rather it takes the model of reproductive competition from darwin, and typically argues that people evolve behaviors, body types, etc. in a specific environment that aid in survival and reproduction. If an important widespread behavior pattern (or body structure) exists, it must have evolved through the process of adaptation. Reproduction is treated as occurring in a competitive situation, where the goal is to transmit as many copies of your genes as you can (not just for the joy of sex, or to make babies, but to make babies who grow up and reproduce. People act rationally to reproduce as effectively as they can, given their resources, within their social and physical environment.
Behavior: Sociobiology wants to account for behavior. Consequently it has trouble explaining norms, roles, values and some other aspects of culture. Functionalism and conflict theories are more oriented to explaining these shared cultural items.
Biological Evolutionary theory: A review. First we review some primer-level aspects of heredity and evolution. Humans reproduce sexually, and in doing so genes of each parent combine to produce the features of the offspring. Some form of MATING is necessary for reproduction. The offspring receives half its genes from its father and half from its mother. The offspring has a genotype and a phenotype for a specific trait.
genotype -The types of the two genes (one from each parent) that the offspring carries. phenotype- The actual morphological or behavioral trait exhibited in the organism.
Remember the distinction between dominant and recessive genes. If the gene is recessive, the trait is manifested in the body (it becomes the phenotype) only if the same gene is passed on by both parents. It is possible to carry a recessive gene without being affected by it. If a gene is dominant, the trait comes out, regardless of whether one carries one copy or two copies of it.
Additionally some traits come about as a result of the interplay of several genes, or alternately the interplay of genes and the environment). For example, many fair-skinned people become more tan if they are in sunlight for long stretches of time.
Sex linked traits: traits that are carried by genes on the X or Y sex chromosomes. Male pattern baldness is carried on the female X gene.
Random mutation: Genes mutate randomly and rarely. As mutations occur those that aid in survival and reproduction tend to be perpetuated. Those whose phenotypes are not appealing to the other sex, or reducuce one's competitive edge tend not to reproduce as much. Over many many generations, physical traits and behavior patterns become established, and these are selected on two bases adaptation:
1. Natural selection: or, adaptation to environment. Competition among individuals to survive and reproduce through exploiting resources in the environment, defending self and offspring, etc.)
2. Sexual selection Competition among one sex of the species to attract mates) may lead to characteristics that are not adaptive (in the sense of individual survival)--bright colors, fancy plumage, nest building, mating ritual, etc. tends to produce sexual dimorphism, or sex differences in color, morphology, etc. within a species.
A division of labor between the sexes can also be linked to sexual dimorphismÐ or as evolving together with it. In some species, such as our own, males may help in providing and protecting young. Females may concentrate on nurturing and feeding.
The social in sociobiology comes from the idea of inclusive fitness, rather than individual fitness: Inclusive fitness (also called kin selection): reproductive success in terms of ego's direct reproduction, and also of the reproduction of all of ego's relatives, weighted by degree of relatedness. This is not just reproducing our genes through our own offspring, but through helping kin reproduce. Sociobiologists calculate the degree of relatedness in terms of the proportions of genes you share with a particular relative. Since you get half your genes from your mother and half from your father, you share 50% of your genes with each. You also on average share 50% of your genes with a full sibling. For mother's sister, then, you would share 25% of your genes (you share 50% with mom, she shares 50% with her sister, so 50% times 50% is 25%. For your mother's sister's childÐyour first cousin, you would still share on average 12.5% of your genes.
If one has extensive resources, it may enhance inclusive fitness to invest part of those resources in siblings, cousins, etc.
Sociobiology often imagines that it is the genes themselves that are competing for survival, and not individuals. Hence, individual consciousness is not a big issue: genes somehow push the individual to act as though she is trying her best to pass as many of her genes to her grandchildren as she can. This applies to all species--trees, grass, squirrels, blue jays, and people. People come to hold strategies for mating and reproduction that work in a particular set of circumstances. In this special instance, individuals select strategies from a variety of possible options open to them. It's time for concepts:
There are several kinds of individual effort, all of which ultimately are aimed at maximizing inclusive fitness. Sociobiology divides all human effort into three basic categories:
maturation effort (and resource accumulation) feeding, defending, learning, etc..
maintenance effort (body maintenance and resource maintenance) feeding, defending, caring for one's self.
reproductive effort, consisting of: mating effort parental investment kin investment (also called kin selection or altruism).
There are trade-offs between these areas of effort. Time, energy, or resources spent on one cannot be used on another. The theory says we rationally select the optimum strategy and split our efforts among the categories with the end of maximizing inclusive fitness. Mating strategies can be species wide, can pertain to one sex of a species, or there may be individual variation. They include promiscuous mating; monogamous mating, and polygynous mating. The latter two may be short term or durable, if pair bonds are formed.
Parental investment can vary from none to extremely high; r selection few offspring, high investment in each. K selection many offspring, limited or no investment in each.
Sociobiologists argue that human male and female levels of parental investment tend to differ from across many mammalian species and in humans. Why would this be? Female grow the fetus during pregnancy, and have several weeks or months of investment already. It is rational for females to follow that up by nursing and intensively caring for an offsping. Males, on the other hand, invest little effort in sex. While females can have only a few offspring in a lifetime (maybe 24 or so maximum for human populations), males can have thousands. It is more rational for male to want multiple sex partners, and hope that several of them survive to reproduce. Sociobiologists use the term paternal confidence, or certainty of paternity to refer to the likelihood that a man's wife's offspring are indeed his and not some other man's. If paternal confidence is low, they theorize that men are less motivated to invest in their wives' offspring.
Similarly, since they view men main as providers (provisioners in their lingo), they theorize that women and men are less likely to form strong pair bonds if men don't have material resources to invest in offspring. This tendency becomes stronger if women do control significant resources while men do not. Thy apply this to family patterns in lower classes of modern societies.
Intensive investment by men in a few offspring is nicknamed the ÒdadÓ strategy, while having numerous offspring and not investing in them is nicknamed the ÒcadÓ strategy. Which strategy do plants use? Kin investmentÐ A person may invest not only in own offspring to reproduce successfully, but also in siblings, cousins, in offspring of siblings, etc. In some bird species, the young stay with parents and help them raise subsequent broods for a year or two. This improves the chances of their siblings surviving to reproduce, and also serves as training for reproduction and parental investment. Consequently, the direct offspring of the helper birds are more likely to survive and reproduce.
ReciprocityÐ If two people have different resources or abilities,each may not be able to effectively rear offspring to reproductive age. However, they may each invest in the other's offspring so that each gain a degree of inclusive fitness in this mutual helping. There are different varieties of human sociobiology. In one type scholars make predictions about how people will behave today based on the circumstances early in our species existenceÐthat is as hunter-gatherers. The second sees individual humans as having options that they can choose from, and one can change his/her behavior depending on the specific situation at the present. So here are these two views: 1. Human beings evolved most traits as they adapted during our prehistory, during the millions of years of hunting and gathering, small scale societies. Early culture was a part of the "environment" to which people adapted, and which changed in response to their adaptations. Some traits are pan-human, and may not adaptive in certain environments. This idea is used in explaining the nature of sexuality, family groups, mating (can't say marriage and be a sociobiologist).
2. Human behavior is somewhat flexible. People may vary their behavior in ways that are reproductively rational, depending on the physical and social environment. Early learning is important in this flexibility (or variation) in some accounts. Certain social behavior patterns may be said to come about from adaptation to more contemporary circumstances. For example, matrilineal descent (where children inherit from maternal uncles instead of fathers) is said to occur when people are sexually promiscuous, and men don't know which offspring are their own. Another example is that although it is generally in women's reproductive to pair-bond and get help with offspring, exceptional circumstances may lead a woman to ÒcheatÓ on her mate and reproduce with another man who has Ògood genesÓ then sucker her mate into investing in the child.
Strengths of Sociobiology. Sociobiology reminds us that we are an evolved species, and as such, the theory of biological evolution applies to us. While its practitioners are often Òtrue believersÓ who apply the theory more than test it against functionalist or conflict theory alternatives, a lot of research supports it. Sometimes it has novel interpretations of things such as adultery, trophy wives, and matrilineal descent. It would be foolish of us to dismiss this theory for biological evolutionary theory accounts for lots of body morphology and behaviors in other species. It is a scientifically powerful theory. To assume that it does not apply to our species in any way would be silly. On the other hand, it probably cannot account for some thingsÐsuch as homosexuality, and birth rates in some highly industrialized nations that are so low that they under-reproduce themselves.
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