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|  Essay on Wet Nurses |
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| Wet Nurses Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds a baby that is not her own. As early as the fourteenth century BCE there is documented evidence of wet nurses. The wet nurse to the Egyptian king Tutankhamen (1361-1352 BCE) had a high social status and played an important role in the raising of the royal children. In England during the Victorian era, wet nurses were seen by the upper-class as fallen women who were immoral and often unmarried mothers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wet nursing was an employment option for young women in low socioeconomic groups. Often, wealthy upper-class families would hire live-in wet nurses to breastfeed their babies because they felt that it was beneath them to suckle a baby... |
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| Essay on Wet Nurses » |
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| Essay on Sterilization Procedure |
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| Sterilization Procedure Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Sterilization is the result of any procedure or condition by which a person becomes incapable of reproducing. Sterilization may be voluntary and undertaken as a permanent form of birth control, or it may be involuntary, the result of disease, treatment (including surgery, drug therapy, or radiation), trauma to the reproductive organs (such as castration), or public policy (as for population control). Surgical sterilization--vasectomy in males and tubal ligation (salpingectomy) in females--is the most common form of contraception used in married couples ages thirty and above. Because it is considered permanent, married women are more apt to undergo sterilization than those who are unmarried... |
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| Essay on Sterilization Procedure » |
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| Essay on Ethical Issues of Reproductive Technologies |
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| Ethical Issues of Reproductive Technologies Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Modern reproductive technologies have given many infertile couples the ability to conceive and give birth to children. They also have opened up debate about the ethics of those techniques. Even techniques that have been available as long as donor artificial insemination are not without ethical considerations. Children conceived by this method do not know the identity of their biological fathers because donors are guaranteed anonymity and are legally exempt from parental responsibility for any offspring produced from their sperm. Although sperm banks include some information about the ethnicity, religion, and physical appearance of the donor, they do not follow up... |
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| Essay on Ethical Issues of Reproductive Technologies » |
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| Essay on Assisted Reproductive Technology |
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| Assisted Reproductive Technology Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Reproductive technologies include methods to increase fertility, facilitate conception, provide alternatives for women who cannot carry a pregnancy to term, and allow early genetic diagnosis of a fetus (including sex determination). They also provide a means to preserve sperm and embryos and make cloning (the reproduction of an exact genetic copy of a person or animal) possible. Most often these technologies are directed toward helping infertile couples have a child. Infertility (the inability to conceive after one year of unprotected sexual intercourse or six months if the woman is thirty years old or more) is a significant issue for many couples. Low estimates suggest that... |
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| Essay on Assisted Reproductive Technology » |
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| Essay on Human Intervention in Reproduction |
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| Human Intervention in Reproduction Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Humans currently have the ability to help the reproductive process and systematically participate in the reproduction of various species. Many animals are bred selectively, including dogs, cats, birds, and fish. Many farm animals such as cows and horses are artificially inseminated with the sperm of the best examples of their breeds. Individuals experiencing difficulty reproducing can be helped by augmenting their hormones, artificially inseminating mothers, or even harvesting a mother's eggs and fertilizing them outside of her body in a process called in vitro fertilization, then implanting the fertilized blastulas into the mother's uterus to develop. Surrogate mothers are also... |
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| Essay on Human Intervention in Reproduction » |
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| Essay on Sexual and Asexual Reproduction |
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| Sexual and Asexual Reproduction Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Reproduction is the creation of a living being from the material of previously living beings. It is a process common to all living entities--to plants, animals, microorganisms, and fungi. One central definition of life itself is the ability to make more life--to reproduce. There are several processes by which living organisms reproduce themselves. Many organisms, especially simpler organisms, can reproduce in many different ways. More complex organisms, such as mammals, can only reproduce sexually. Reproductive processes are divided into two main categories distinguished by whether or not an organism can reproduce itself by itself. Asexual reproduction occurs when organisms reproduce... |
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| Essay on Sexual and Asexual Reproduction » |
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| Essay on Historical and Cultural Attitudes toward Pregnancy |
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| Historical and Cultural Attitudes toward Pregnancy Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Historical and cultural attitudes toward pregnancy and pregnant women generally reflect society's view of sexuality and women. Romans regarded pregnancy as a duty and women earned their freedom from guardianship and their right to inherit property only after successfully delivering four babies. Other cultures considered pregnancy and childbirth a natural part of a woman's life with women continuing to perform their daily chores up to and immediately following childbirth. Certain societies confined women approaching their due date to the home or areas specific for those menstruating (and thus considered unclean). A quote often attributed to St. Augustine... |
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| Essay on Historical and Cultural Attitudes toward Pregnancy » |
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| Essay on Pregnancy Stages by Weeks |
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| Pregnancy Stages by Weeks Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Pregnancy is the condition of carrying one or more developing embryos or fetuses in the body. It starts as soon as the ovum is fertilized and implants (normally in the inner lining of the uterus, the endometrium) and continues until the delivery of the baby, usually 280 days after the last menstrual period (though this number may vary, most occur within two weeks of the due date). During pregnancy, both ovulation and menstruation cease--the first indication of pregnancy is often a missed menstrual period. Women frequently note nausea early in the pregnancy (morning sickness), breast enlargement (often accompanied by tenderness), and darker pigmentation developing around the nipples... |
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| Essay on Pregnancy Stages by Weeks » |
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| Essay on One Child Family Policy in China |
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| One Child Family Policy in China Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The one-child one-family policy originated at a national Chinese birth-planning conference in February 1978. That October the Communist Party State Council established birth-planning bureaus in all counties to promote the new policy of allowing one child per family, tolerating two children per family, and preventing families from having additional children. Those policies were instituted because the Party Central Committee wanted to ensure that the national population would not exceed 1.2 billion by the year 2000. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee established a stricter one-child policy, with some special permits for a second child granted. That policy was relaxed... |
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| Essay on One Child Family Policy in China » |
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| Essay on Midwife Nurses |
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| Midwife Nurses Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The term midwife means with woman. Traditionally, midwifery describes the art of assisting a woman through childbirth. The International Definition of the Midwife (International Confederation of Midwives [ICM] 2005) is: A midwife is a person who, having been regularly admitted to a midwifery educational programme, duly recognised in the country in which it is located, has successfully completed the prescribed course of studies in midwifery and has acquired the requisite qualifications to be registered and/or legally licensed to practise midwifery. The midwife is recognised as a responsible and accountable professional who works in partnership with women to give the necessary support, care and advice... |
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| Essay on Midwife Nurses » |
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| Essay on Menstruation: Myths, Traditions, and Attitudes |
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| Menstruation: Myths, Traditions, and Attitudes Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Ancient cultures connected women's cycle of ovulation and menstruation to the phases of the moon, sometimes referring to women in menses as being ''on their moon.'' The term menses comes from the Latin word for month, mensis, which is cognate with the Greek word for moon, mene. The menstrual cycle is thus perceived as a reflection of the cosmic cycles of nature in the female body, but this has not always been perceived as a positive connotation. For instance, the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 493-433 BCE) believed that women menstruated at the waning of the moon, in order to purify their wombs. From ancient times, then, there seems to have been an ambivalence towards... |
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| Essay on Menstruation: Myths, Traditions, and Attitudes » |
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| Essay on Treatment for Menopause |
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| Treatment for Menopause Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Like the range of physiological and psychological symptoms and their intensity and duration, treatment programs and options vary greatly. First, women, regardless of age, must consider a comprehensive approach to their health, including fitness, diet, and stress-reduction. The most common medical response to menopause-related symptoms, particularly estrogen decline, is hormone therapy (HT). Estrogen therapy (ET) provides estrogen supplements to the body and assists in the treatment of menopause-related symptoms resulting from the decline in estrogen. Estrogen plus progestogen therapy (EPT) is used primarily to protect the uterus, which is the function of the added progestogen... |
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| Essay on Treatment for Menopause » |
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| Essay on Symptoms of Menopause |
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| Symptoms of Menopause Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. One of the stages in a woman's reproductive cycle, menopause is ''the permanent cessation of menses resulting from reduced ovarian hormone secretion that occurs naturally or is induced by surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation'' (Nelson 2005). In the United States, women reach menopause at the average age of fifty-one, and it can span several years. Menopause can occur naturally at around that age in a woman's life or prematurely (before age forty); it can also be induced by surgery or medical procedures that remove or damage the ovaries. Although premenopausal women who undergo induced menopause experience many of the same symptoms, they do not experience the gradual adjustment time of perimenopause... |
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| Essay on Symptoms of Menopause » |
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| Essay on Menarche: Definition, Physiology and Psychology |
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| Menarche: Definition, Physiology and Psychology Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Menarche is a female's first menstruation that takes place in puberty, generally occurring sometime between the ages of ten and eighteen. Menarche indicates that a female's reproductive organs have become functionally active. During menstruation the uterus sheds its lining (endometrium) and discharges an unfertilized egg, along with blood, mucus, and tissue. Whereas puberty is more commonly celebrated, first menstruation may also be marked by specific rituals and or celebrations in particular cultures. Individual responses to menarche are often determined by how well a female understands the changes taking place in her body and by the social codes informing... |
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| Essay on Menarche: Definition, Physiology and Psychology » |
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| Essay on Male Infertility |
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| Male Infertility Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Though infertility was traditionally considered a woman's issue, research has demonstrated that approximately 40 percent of infertility is due in part or entirely to male factors (with female factors accounting for another 40% and unusual or unknown factors accounting for the remaining 20%). Approximately one in every twenty American men is infertile. This is frequently the result of any of the following conditions: low sperm count, defective sperm, chronic diseases (including diabetes), damage to reproductive tissue due to infection (such as from sexually transmitted diseases or mumps), testicular injury, autoimmune responses (whereby a man produces antibodies that disable his own sperm)... |
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| Essay on Male Infertility » |
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| Essay on Female Infertility |
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| Female Infertility Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Though infertility was traditionally considered a woman's issue, research has demonstrated that approximately 40 percent of infertility is due in part or entirely to male factors (with female factors accounting for another 40% and unusual or unknown factors accounting for the remaining 20%). Nevertheless, most fertility research and treatment centers on the woman's contribution. One of the main factors resulting in female infertility is ovulatory dysfunction (40%)--the failure to ovulate regularly or at all. This condition may be due to any number of reasons, including hormonal irregularities, chronic disease, malnutrition (including extreme dieting; generally women need at least... |
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| Essay on Female Infertility » |
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| Essay on Infertility and Its Treatment |
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| Infertility and Its Treatment Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The medical definition of infertility is the failure to conceive after one year of unprotected sexual intercourse (six months if the woman is thirty years or older). Under normal circumstances a couple has a 25 percent chance of becoming pregnant after one month, 57 percent after three months, 72 percent after six months, and 85 percent after one year. Ultimately, half of the couples who experience infertility of one-year duration or more will conceive. Treatments are available to help those for whom infertility persists (though many insurance companies will pay for the infertility testing but will not pay for procedures to solve the problem). Though infertility is not always an undesired... |
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| Essay on Infertility and Its Treatment » |
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| Essay on Fertility and Infertility Treatment |
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| Fertility and Infertility Treatment Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Fertility is defined as the quality of being fruitful and productive. Physiologically, it refers to the ability to conceive a child. A closely related term, fecundity, refers to the capability of conceiving and bearing live offspring, though in everyday language the two terms are often used synonymously. Before people had a better understanding of human reproduction, the term fertility was applied exclusively to women, but today the term may apply to either sex. Virility is a masculinized version of fertility and suggests robust sexual activity and the ability to impregnate women. Virility is also associated with culturally determined images of masculine appearance and behavior... |
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| Essay on Fertility and Infertility Treatment » |
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| Essay on Birth, Women, and Culture |
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| Birth, Women, and Culture Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. For most of human history, birth was exclusively the work of women who labored to push their babies from the private inner world of their wombs into the larger world of society and culture. Yet in the early twenty-first century, increasing numbers of babies are pulled from the vaginal canal with forceps or vacuum extractors, or are cut from their mothers' wombs via cesarean section. The medical definition of birth is the emergence of a baby from a womb--a definition that ignores women's involvement and agency. Higher primates walk on all fours and have pelvises wide enough to allow the direct descent of the fetal head, making for easy labors and uncomplicated births. When humans began... |
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| Essay on Birth, Women, and Culture » |
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| Essay on Artificial Insemination Types and Procedures |
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| Artificial Insemination Types and Procedures Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Artificial insemination refers to the techniques of fertilization employed for reproductive purposes by means other than sexual intercourse. Artificial insemination began in the 1700s and in most cases was used for livestock reproduction. The first attempt at human artificial insemination took place in 1780, when the Scottish surgeon John Hunter impregnated a woman by transferring semen from husband to wife with a syringe. Later attempts were relatively unsuccessful until the 1940s because little was known about the female reproductive cycle. Not until 1936 did the scientist C. G. Hartman determine that the menstrual cycle of a female is approximately twenty-eight days... |
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| Essay on Artificial Insemination Types and Procedures » |
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| Essay on Widows and Widowers |
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| Widows and Widowers Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The Latin term for widow, vidua, is related to a root meaning to place apart. There is no Latin or Greek masculine form to match the term widow. In the Anglo-Saxon language, a masculine form only appeared in the late fourteenth century. This reflects not only a higher mortality rate among men married to younger wives, but also points to women's stronger dependency on husbands for their identity than vice versa. Consequently widowerhood tends to affect men less strongly than widowhood affects women. Except for matrilineal communities such as the LoDaaga in Cote d'Ivoire where widowerhood is the focus of much ritual attention, in most African societies, for example, widowerhood is seen as a transient... |
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| Essay on Widows and Widowers » |
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| Essay on Virginity in Contemporary Society |
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| Virginity in Contemporary Society Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The loss of virginity traditionally has been defined as a physical action and most commonly is considered to consist of vaginal penetration. Even in the 1980s, when public awareness of oral sex had become common, many young heterosexuals believed that engaging in oral sex did not entail a loss of virginity. Into the 1970s and 1980s this also was the case among homosexuals, who were likely to have begun their sexual activity with a partner of the opposite sex and often did not consider the notion of virginity to be relevant to homosexual practice. As a result of increased awareness of gay and lesbian sexuality in mainstream culture, however, contemporary definitions of virginity loss... |
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| Essay on Virginity in Contemporary Society » |
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| Essay on Virginity in the United States |
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| Virginity in the United States Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. In the United States predominant social attitudes toward virginity have long stemmed from the Protestant traditions of the first colonists, which generally mandated premarital virginity. Early American colonists held a strict moral view of sexual activity: Both men and women were expected to remain virgins until marriage, and nonreproductive sexual activity within or outside marriage was forbidden. There is some evidence of premarital pregnancies, which typically were resolved by marriage. In the middle to late eighteenth century, in part because of changing philosophies of individual responsibility and the social and economic upheaval of the Revolutionary War, the rate of premarital... |
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| Essay on Virginity in the United States » |
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| Essay on Cultural Significance of Virginity |
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| Cultural Significance of Virginity Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Virginity has long been important in many cultures. Anthropologists speculate that the social significance of female virginity, which seems to be most important in patriarchal authoritarian cultures, comes from the need to guarantee the continuation the husband's bloodline. In many of those societies wedding a virgin helps ensure the husband's family against illegitimate births, and the relocation of the bride--whose virginity often increases both her own worth and the value of her dowry--to her husband's family helps create interfamily or international alliances. Historically, this system, in which the bride and her virginity are viewed as commodities that increase... |
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| Essay on Cultural Significance of Virginity » |
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| Essay on Virginity Definition |
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| Virginity Definition Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Virginity is a state of sexual inexperience, and the term most often is used to denote the status of a person--male or female--who has not had penetrative vaginal intercourse. Historically, many cultures and religions have prized premarital virginity, particularly for women, and others have placed little value on it. In some cultures female virginity is a condition of marriageability and thus is guarded closely. Although there is no physiological means by which the virginity of a man or woman can be determined, some cultures have equated female virginity with the presence of the hymen, a small flap of tissue that partially occludes the vaginal opening. Medically, however, the hymen is not a reliable...
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| Essay on Virginity Definition » |
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| Essay on Patrilineality: History and Theories |
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| Patrilineality: History and Theories Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Patrilineality refers to the organization of family relationships in societies by lines of descent from a person's male ancestors. The term derives from the Latin words pater (''father'') and linea (''thread''). A patriline consists of the generations of male descendants. Both male and female offspring belong to a patriline, but only male children can continue the line. Patrilineality also is called agnatic kinship, a term derived from Roman law. Patrilineality is one version of a unilineal system of descent. The other version is based on descent from the mother: matrilineality. Amilateral or bilateral kinship systems are those in which both matrilineal and patrilineal lines... |
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| Essay on Patrilineality: History and Theories » |
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| Essay on Patriarchy |
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| Patriarchy Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Patriarchy is an important category for social analysis in feminist theory and theology. Patriarchy refers to societies where the rule of the father is the basic principle of social organization of the family and society as a whole. Patriarchal systems seem to have arisen first in nomadic herding groups in the tenth to fifth millennia BCE in various centers of social development: the ancient Near East, the Indus Valley in India, in China, and in Mesoamerican cultures. Gathering and gardening societies seem to have taken on the patriarchal order as they moved to larger scale agriculture, property ownership, and urbanization. This process took place over a period of time in the ancient Near East... |
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| Essay on Patriarchy » |
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| Essay on Motherhood: Cultural Variations |
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| Motherhood: Cultural Variations Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Whereas mother-child relationships in European and North American societies are based on the assumption that children will eventually become financially and emotionally independent from their parents, mothering in Asian societies emphasizes long-lasting codependency between parents and their children. This strong child-parent, and mother-child in particular, bonding in Asian societies is evident when children's perceptions of their mothers are examined. According to an international study ''Family and Changing Gender Roles II'' (International Social Survey Programme 1994), 80 to 85 percent of children in Japan, China, and Korea reported that their mothers understood their... |
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| Essay on Motherhood: Cultural Variations » |
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| Essay on Motherhood and Marital Relationships |
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| Motherhood and Marital Relationships Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The qualities of the relationship between a husband and wife influence their children's cognitive and social competence. The marital relationship provides the primary psychological and physical support for mothers' parenting behaviors, which in turn affects the adjustment of the children. For example, studies have shown that a harmonious marital relationship promotes competence and maturity in the couple's children and encourages their autonomy (Cummings and Davies 1992). In contrast, marital conflict may result in the children experiencing cognitive delays or school difficulties or exhibiting antisocial or withdrawn behavior. Mothers who are satisfied in the marital relationship... |
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| Essay on Motherhood and Marital Relationships » |
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| Essay on Motherhood and Maternal Employment |
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| Motherhood and Maternal Employment Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Because of the rapid increase in mothers' labor-force participation since the early 1980s and the subsequent changes in child-care arrangements and parent-child relationships, many studies in the United States have examined the impact of maternal employment on children. For the most part these studies have yielded inconsistent results. Some studies found that maternal employment has a negative effect on children's cognitive and social development, whereas others found enhanced cognitive outcomes for children as a function of early maternal employment (Vandell and Ramanan 1992). A 1999 study by Elizabeth Harvey found that neither early maternal employment status nor the timing and continuity... |
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| Essay on Motherhood and Maternal Employment » |
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| Essay on Expectations and Functions of Modern Motherhood |
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| Expectations and Functions of Modern Motherhood Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. In many societies a mother is often expected to be a perfect and loving parent who is dedicated to the caretaking role of the child. Sharon Hays (1996) defines the ideology of intensive motherhood as the normative model of the emotionally absorbing, expert-driven, child-centered care that a mother gives her fragile children. This intensive motherhood is largely a myth, however, especially given changing workforce demographics in the industrialized world, such as increases in both female labor-force participation and dual-earner and single-parent households. Consequently, many mothers in different societies are attempting to balance work and parenting responsibilities... |
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| Essay on Expectations and Functions of Modern Motherhood » |
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| Essay on History of Motherhood |
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| History of Motherhood Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Motherhood is the product of particular historical circumstances, social processes, and ideologies, and its social definition and meaning vary by culture, race, ethnicity, religion, and historical time period. Despite these variations motherhood is a major role for women in many societies. Lois Wladis Hoffman and Martin Hoffman (1973) report that in the United States until the 1970s, any role for women other than motherhood was considered deviant. In Confucian societies such as China, Korea, and Japan, motherhood has also been the central role for and status of women. By the early twenty-first century the number of choices for women in many societies had increased and diversified to include motherhood... |
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| Essay on History of Motherhood » |
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| Essay on What is Monogamy? |
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| What is Monogamy? Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Monogamy is one of several ways in which human beings, and other living things, structure their social and sexual lives. It implies a one-to-one association between the two partners (typically, but not necessarily, one male and one female). Although monogamy is considered to be the ideal in current European and North American tradition, it is not the biological norm for human beings, nor has it been for much of human history. Evidence to this effect comes from several independent sources. Prior to the homogenization of cultures associated with European colonialism, approximately 85 percent of human societies were preferentially polygynous--a man mated to more than one woman--rather than monogamous... |
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| Essay on What is Monogamy? » |
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| Essay on Miscegenation Laws |
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| Miscegenation Laws Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Miscegenation is a term that is used to describe sexual relations, cohabitation, marriage, or procreation between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. At its core miscegenation is based on scientific racism and the belief that human blood and genetic material establish an individual's race. As a category of ''difference,'' race has lost much of its currency, especially in light of scientific evidence showing that race is culturally and socially constructed. However, in the nineteenth century, with the rise of imperialism and colonization, physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and the shapes and sizes of body parts signaled a dramatic difference between white Europeans... |
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| Essay on Miscegenation Laws » |
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| Essay on Matrilineality |
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| Matrilineality Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Matrilineality refers to the organization of family relationships in societies according to lines of descent from female ancestors. The term derives from the Latin Mater or mother and linea meaning ''thread.'' Matrilineality is one kind of unilineal family organization in which family members belong to the mother's lineage; another term for matrilineal descent is uterine kinship. The other kind of unilineal group is patrilineality in which family relationship is determined according to one's descent from the father's lineage. Amilateral or bilateral kinship systems are those in which both matrilineal and patrilineal lines of descent are relevant to determining family relations, social identity... |
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| Essay on Matrilineality » |
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| Essay on Matriarchy: Definition and Examples |
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| Matriarchy: Definition and Examples Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Matriarchy--from the Greek roots metr-, mother, and -arch, rule, beginning, origin, or source--describes a society in which mothers rule. In a true matriarchy, the mothers in a society would hold political power over all members of that society (men included), control the economic welfare of the society, and be held in highest esteem socially. In a matriarchate, descent would be determined through the female line (matrilineality), the mother would be the head of the household, and children would belong to the maternal clan. A society where women (regardless of whether they have given birth and become mothers) rule would be called a gynocracy, from the Greek for woman, gyne... |
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| Essay on Matriarchy: Definition and Examples » |
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| Essay on Wedding Bed Rituals: Purpose and Nature |
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| Wedding Bed Rituals: Purpose and Nature Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Weddings are complex rituals involving practices that have the same purpose in spite of differences between cultures and changing traditions. Those rituals correspond to the sequence identified by Arnold van Gennep (1960) in his definition of rites of passage: A wedding includes rites of separation, transition, and incorporation into a new life. All those rites celebrate the new status of the spouses and the fact that their union is not only a private matter but also an agreement involving families and their social environment. Processions and exchanges of gifts are recurrent manifestations of this wider aspect of weddings. Traditionally even the most intimate part of a wedding... |
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| Essay on Wedding Bed Rituals: Purpose and Nature » |
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| Essay on Spiritual Marriage |
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| Spiritual Marriage Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Spiritual marriage describes a legal, religious, and/or self-chosen union in which both partners agree to forego sexual relations. Spiritual marriages were practiced primarily in the late classical period (c. 400-330 BCE) and throughout the Middle Ages (500-1500 CE) and served as earthly incarnations of the metaphoric marriage between Christ and his church. As sexuality was often interpreted as a sign of humanity's fallen nature, the members of a married couple might choose to abandon sexual intercourse in an attempt to sanctify themselves before God. The roots of spiritual marriage can be located in Jesus's and Paul's advocacy of celibacy and the single life. Jesus taught that... |
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| Essay on Spiritual Marriage » |
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| Essay on Marriage as Alliance: Arranged and Semiarranged Marriages |
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| Marriage as Alliance: Arranged and Semiarranged Marriages Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Marriage plays an extremely important role in many societies as the primary means of creating alliances between different kinship or descent groups. Marriage is not the wedding together of mere individuals; marriage is the wedding of one family to another in an alliance deemed mutually beneficial to the continued fortunes and power of each. As a method of forging alliances between families, the stakes of marriage are often considered to be too high to allow children to select their own mates. As the star-crossed lovers of William Shakespeare's (1564-1616) Romeo and Juliet portray in their ill-fated adventure in mate self-selection, the children of elite... |
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| Essay on Marriage as Alliance: Arranged and Semiarranged Marriages » |
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| Essay on Marriage as Social Labor |
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| Marriage as Social Labor Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Institutions such as marriage and the ownership of private property do a great deal of social labor and can be regarded as twin pillars upholding a civilized society. In societies around the world, marriage and private property regulations are often the twin foundations of social stability, two primary means of contributing to the perpetuation of a social structure that is perceived as divinely mandated. (Indeed, careful regulation of property exchange and marriage have historically gone hand in hand, with exchanges of property being negotiated by families in establishing the marriage or betrothal contract.) For those who hold utopian social visions and see the dominant social... |
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| Essay on Marriage as Social Labor » |
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| Essay on Feminist Arguments for Polygyny |
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| Feminist Arguments for Polygyny Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Polygyny seems on the face of it problematic for women. Once again, the specter of competition between wives rears its ugly head. But in societies where polygyny is allowed, it is often the practice of the wealthiest and most powerful men, and not universally practiced by all. The wives of wealthy and powerful men have their own social burdens, as will be seen below, but in general polygynous families are endowed with more material resources than monogamous families in the same society. In addition to the relative wealth that a polygynous wife might have at her disposal, there is the argument that in cases where women select their own husbands, a woman can select as a mate a man who has... |
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| Essay on Feminist Arguments for Polygyny » |
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| Essay on Monogamy and the Double Standard |
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| Monogamy and the Double Standard Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Monogamy would seem to put women on equal footing with men by taking the element of competition between women out of the picture. But much depends on whether a double standard prevails in a monogamy-dominant culture or subculture. Prescriptive literature on monogamous marriage in the major religions often construe marriage as a set of norms that both spouses must follow to win social sanction and religious merit. However, these normative rules are often more assiduously applied to wives than to husbands. There are a number of reasons why this is often the case. Men's inability to conceive children certainly makes male extramarital sexual activities less conspicuous and thus... |
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| Essay on Monogamy and the Double Standard » |
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| Essay on Marriage as a Social Institution |
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| Marriage as a Social Institution Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Marriage is an unusually pervasive social institution that confers social status by joining social actors together in sexual and procreative partnerships. It often serves as a rite of passage to adulthood and a means of enfranchising young people in society. Marriage standardizes, normalizes, and legitimates some sexual partnerships and family formations while marginalizing others as abnormal. As an institution that contributes to social stability through the legitimating of offspring and the conferral of rights of inheritance, marriage canalizes sexual urges into formations regarded as legitimate and worthy of social sanction. Marriage may be, as some social conservatives aver... |
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| Essay on Marriage as a Social Institution » |
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| Essay on Mail-Order Brides |
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| Mail-Order Brides Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The history of the mail-order bride stretches back centuries in world history, with many examples in U.S. history. In the early eighteenth century, Louis XV sent women from France to settle in the New Orleans area, to serve as companions for the men who had already settled there. They were called casket brides, referring to the single trunk of goods each woman was allowed to bring with her. American men living in the West in the nineteenth century would write to family on the East Coast, requesting assistance to find them a bride. In the early twentieth century Japanese settlers in the United States and Canada were introduced to prospective brides--picture brides--through photographs sent through the mail... |
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| Essay on Mail-Order Brides » |
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| Essay on Incest Effects: Interpretations of Harm |
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| Incest Effects: Interpretations of Harm Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. When feminist scholars first drew attention to the issue of harm caused by incest, they interpreted the higher proportion of female over male victims, and the higher proportion of male over female perpetrators, as evidence that incest functions as a poorly recognized but meaningful part of the prevailing patriarchal social structure. It was seen as an expression or enactment of the cultural belief that males are entitled to have access to female bodies for sexual gratification. It was also seen as a particularly potent means by which compliance and passivity are fostered in females. Earlier scholars had argued that the taboo against incest functions to preserve generational... |
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| Essay on Incest Effects: Interpretations of Harm » |
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| Essay on Perpetrators of Incest |
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| Perpetrators of Incest Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Perpetrators of incest have been studied much less than victims. Nevertheless, the fact that perpetrators are overwhelmingly male is commonly reiterated. Furthermore, the proportion of men who commit child sexual abuse is estimated to be substantial. In a 1987 address to a symposium on child sexual abuse, titled ''New Myths about Child Sexual Abuse,'' Finkelhor cited a U.S. study reporting that 10 percent of men, under conditions of anonymity, admitted to molesting a child. Finkelhor and others argue from facts such as these that sociological rather than psychological analyses are required in order to explain the scope of the phenomenon. Specifically, explanations for the sexual abuse of children... |
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| Essay on Perpetrators of Incest » |
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| Essay on Incest Prevalence Rates and Risk Factors |
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| Incest Prevalence Rates and Risk Factors Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Calculations of prevalence rates vary greatly, reflecting the variety in methods and definitions used by researchers as well as the nature of the sample groups studied, and the response rates obtained. Often incest is subsumed under the broader category of child sexual abuse, making reliable statistical data specifically for incest difficult to obtain. ''Table 2. Sexual Abuse in 20 Countries: Prevalence Rates and Proportion Intrafamily Abuse,'' supplied by a preeminent expert in the field of child abuse, David Finkelhor (1994, p. 412), provides a useful and reasonable basis for roughly estimating incest levels in the general sexual abuse data that are more readily available... |
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| Essay on Incest Prevalence Rates and Risk Factors » |
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| Essay on Incest |
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| Incest Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Incest refers to the category of sexual relations that occur between kin or family members. A concept that distinguishes this category of sexual relations is found in every culture, and is generally accompanied by moral and legal prohibitions. Family and kin structures differ across cultures, however, and the specific relations considered incestuous similarly vary over place and time. For example, even within the United States, the marriage of a man and woman who are first cousins is legally permitted in some states, but receives civil sanction in a second group of states, and criminal sanction in a third (Bittles 2005). There is inconsistency between states in the treatment of uncle-niece marriages as well... |
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| Essay on Incest » |
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| Essay on Overcoming the Dualism of Honor and Shame |
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| Overcoming the Dualism of Honor and Shame Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. One aspect of the contemporary debate on shame and honor concerns the potentially positive and negative effects on the self. Philosopher Gabriele Taylor has characterized genuine shame as that which compels improvement; false shame, by contrast, precipitates self destruction. Honor similarly can motivate behavior to uphold basic values of society (e.g., truthfulness and integrity), yet it can also function as an oppressive mechanism of subordination and violence. Increased participation for women in society will help to alleviate the impact of the latter effect. Philosopher and Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen identifies the excess mortality and artificially lower survival... |
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| Essay on Overcoming the Dualism of Honor and Shame » |
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| Essay on Shame and Honor in Ancient and Modern Societies |
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| Shame and Honor in Ancient and Modern Societies Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Honor and shame significantly influenced Greek culture, as encapsulated in the writings of Homer. In his study of Greek culture, Philosopher Bernard Williams describes shame as the experience ''of being seen, inappropriately, by the wrong people, in the wrong condition. It is straightforwardly connected with nakedness, particularly in sexual connections'' (Williams 1993, p. 78). An appearance of the self that causes the contempt, derision, or avoidance of others impacts the self and engenders feelings of shame. While these feelings can induce a desire for self-improvement, the same feelings can be self-destructive and socially oppressive. Feminist philosopher and legal theorist... |
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| Essay on Shame and Honor in Ancient and Modern Societies » |
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| Essay on Honor and Shame |
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| Honor and Shame Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Honor and shame historically have influenced cultural practices, assumptions, and roles, particularly as defined by structures of patriarchy and the control of women's agency, bodies, and sexuality. Traditional cultural presuppositions along gendered lines (e.g., it is shameful for boys to cry; it is honorable for women to marry as virgins) create gender dualisms and establish the normative parameters for what is considered honorable and shameful. These normative boundaries, in turn, shape self-esteem, self-understanding, and relations to others. Mechanisms of imposing shame include the A affixed to the adulterer Hester Prynne's chest in Puritan society (in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter [1850])... |
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| Essay on Honor and Shame » |
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| Essay on Fornication: Non-Marital Sex |
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| Fornication: Non-Marital Sex Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Fornication refers to acts of sexual intercourse between two people who are not married to one another. It is different from adultery, which occurs if at least one of the two intercourse partners is married to someone else, though fornication and adultery are often associated as similar transgressions. The term fornication derives from the Latin fornix, which means archway; the vaulted arches of churches are called fornications. The term gained its sexual connotation because prostitutes in Rome often solicited business from the archways of buildings. In the early twenty-first century, fornication is a slightly obsolete, archaic term, connoting issues of sin and morality, and employed... |
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| Essay on Fornication: Non-Marital Sex » |
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| Essay on The Social and Symbolic Role of Fathers |
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| The Social and Symbolic Role of Fathers Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Fatherhood is the state of being a father. That state can be defined as a biological function, a legal classification, an emotional connection, a social role, a symbol of authority, or even a philosophical position. Fathers in all those guises have constituted a central part of the social, cultural, and religious life of most cultures. Many societies are patriarchies, organized around the father as the dominant figure in an extended family. The roles of fathers have changed in the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. The familial roles of individual fathers have become more nurturing at the same time that biological science has made the identities... |
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| Essay on The Social and Symbolic Role of Fathers » |
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| Essay on History of Family Planning |
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| History of Family Planning Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Family planning is a term that was created in the mid-twentieth century to refer to the ability to control reproduction through access to contraception, abortion, sterilization, and information and education. Reproductive control allows a woman to determine when and whether she will have children. A woman's ability to control the birth and spacing of her children has a direct impact on her educational, economic, and social opportunities, and a woman's enjoyment of heterosexual activity can be affected by the fear of becoming pregnant because she lacks information about and access to contraception and abortion. Women have found ways to control their reproduction since the earliest... |
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| Essay on History of Family Planning » |
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| Essay on Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) |
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| Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Employment opportunities for women in the United States have been limited by the assumption that women are mothers first and workers second or that working and mothering are incompatible. Differences in the treatment of men and women have been justified on the basis that women are or could become mothers. Women's prominence in the private, domestic sphere created a parallel stereotype in which men were thought not to have domestic responsibilities. Employers denied or discouraged men from taking leaves from work to care for family members, especially children. In 1993 Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act to allow both men and women to take leaves from work to provide... |
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| Essay on Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) » |
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| Essay on Alternative Families and Gender |
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| Alternative Families and Gender Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Women-headed families and lesbian/gay families challenge notions of patriarchy and gender hierarchy in very powerful ways. Their successes force societies in Europe and North America to seriously examine their assumptions about male dominance and their romance with traditional family forms. Sociologists who study families are in broad agreement that gender is a social construction that influences the differing roles males and females play in families (Lorber 1994). More specifically, gender roles are the set of attitudes, behaviors, and activities that are socially and culturally defined as appropriate for each sex (masculinity and femininity) and learned through the socialization process... |
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| Essay on Alternative Families and Gender » |
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| Essay on Single-Parent Households |
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| Single-Parent Households Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Diana Pearce (1978) coined the term feminization of poverty, which calls attention to the large number of single women and their children who live in poverty. Pearce concluded that labor market discrimination contributes to the feminization of poverty. Single women care for more children than do single men, and single women receive less income when they enter the labor force than do single men. Meanwhile, father-only households, in comparison with mother-only households, are less likely to be poor, more likely to be in the labor force, and are generally smaller with older children (Norton and Miller 1992). These assertions are borne out in national data. For example, according to the U.S.... |
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| Essay on Single-Parent Households » |
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| Essay on Alternative Families |
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| Alternative Families Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The concept of the alternative family encompasses those models of family life that differ from the so-called traditional, or nuclear, family--that is, a family comprised of a husband and wife and their children. Two family types--women-headed families and lesbian/gay families--are often presented as clear and present threats to a traditional model of the family and thus to the very fabric of the United States. Prior to the 1960s researchers noted that most Americans shared a common view of the traditional family: Family should consist of a husband and wife living together with their children. The father should be the head of the family, earn the family's income, and give his name to his wife and children... |
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| Essay on Alternative Families » |
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| Essay on The Demographic Transition, the Family, and Sexuality |
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| The Demographic Transition, the Family, and Sexuality Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The demographic transition involves a change from the high-mortality and high-fertility characteristic of preindustrial societies to a pattern of low mortality and low fertility. John Caldwell (1982) argued that in Western Europe, the economic and demographic transitions coevolved: The transition from the traditional peasant (family-based) economy to the capitalist economy entailed changes in decisions about and the need for reproduction. There was less rationality for having large families because the cost of each additional child increased. In England and France the rate of population growth increased up until 1780 and then slowed after 1820 and 1879 in France and England... |
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| Essay on The Demographic Transition, the Family, and Sexuality » |
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| Essay on Changes in Households and Families |
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| Changes in Households and Families Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Some of the most extensive studies on changes in household or family types and the impact of economic changes on women's status have been undertaken in Turkey. In the 1970s Kandiyoti delineated six socioeconomic categories of women: nomadic, traditional rural, changing rural, small town, newly urbanized squatter (gecekondu), and urban middle-class professionals and housewives (Kandiyoti 1985). Family form and household composition varied across those groups, as did the sexual division of labor. An interesting discovery was that the patrilocal extended household was being undermined by market incorporation, migration, and poverty, although patriarchal attitudes and practices... |
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| Essay on Changes in Households and Families » |
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| Essay on Strategies for Reproduction and Expansion of the Family |
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| Strategies for Reproduction and Expansion of the Family Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Family strategies for reproduction and expansion are varied. One strategy is endogamy, the practice of marrying within the lineage. In many cultures cousin marriage is used to keep property within the lineage and is associated with adolescent marriage, especially for girls. Jack Goody (1990) argues that endogamy mitigates the view of women as property, rejecting the classic Claude Levi-Strauss's view of women as pawns who embody transaction and exchange, a view adopted by Gayle Rubin (1975). Levi-Strauss (1969) studied primitive groups, which were exogamous, whereas Arab-Islamic tribes are endogamous. Nonetheless, many scholars continue to view... |
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| Essay on Strategies for Reproduction and Expansion of the Family » |
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| Essay on Patriarchal Society and the Family: Rise and Decline |
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| Patriarchal Society and the Family: Rise and Decline Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. In The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels (1972) wrote about the ''world historical defeat of the female sex'' (Engels 1972, p. 68) in the wake of the agricultural revolution and the advent of civilization and class society. The historian Gerda Lerner (1986) opposed Engels's narrative by arguing that the subordination of women--the creation of patriarchy enforced by legal codes in the ancient Near East--enabled the development of private property and state power there and elsewhere. The persistence of patriarchy is a matter of debate, and some feminist theorists argue that industrialized societies are also patriarchal... |
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| Essay on Patriarchal Society and the Family: Rise and Decline » |
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| Essay on The Mythic Golden Age of the Family |
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| The Mythic Golden Age of the Family Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. For some feminists the family is the site of women's oppression and gender inequality, whereas for some psychoanalysts it is the source of personality disorders or conditions such as the Oedipus and Electra complexes. Nevertheless, the family is regarded by many as a haven in a heartless world. Some have argued that in Europe and North America, this concept of the family emerged in the course of struggles against the market and the state. Conservative commentators warn against the breakdown of the family and family values. In the former Soviet Union during the restructuring known as perestroika in the late 1980s, social problems were blamed on the overemployment of women... |
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| Essay on The Mythic Golden Age of the Family » |
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| Essay on Family as Social Institution |
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| Family as Social Institution Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The family is perhaps the only societal institution that is regarded widely as both natural and essential. The biological basis of kin ties and the reproductive capacities of women historically have conferred that status on the family. This emphasis on biology has led to reductionist and functionalist accounts of the family that transcend cultural barriers. For example the sociologist Talcott Parsons (Parsons and Bates 1955), using a functionalist perspective, argued that the modern family has two main functions: to socialize children into a normative system of societal values and inculcate appropriate status expectations and to provide a stable emotional environment that will protect... |
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| Essay on Family as Social Institution » |
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| Essay on Effects of Family Violence |
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| Effects of Family Violence Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. There are generally four categories of the types of physical injuries sustained as a result of domestic violence: those that heal and leave no trace; those that leave visible scars; unknown long-term injuries; and long-term catastrophic injuries (Wallace 2002). Some traumatic injuries that can result from domestic violence include gunshot wounds, stab wounds, burns, and head trauma as well as the variety of physical injuries resulting from sexual assault, including the possible transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and/or HIV. Emotional and psychological responses to domestic violence vary for each individual. A number of factors determine how a victim will respond including... |
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| Essay on Effects of Family Violence » |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership Legislative and Litigation Issues |
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| Domestic Partnership Legislative and Litigation Issues Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Litigation to secure domestic partnership benefits has enjoyed mixed success. Because of preemption by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), state courts may not order private-sector employers to provide partnership benefits, so litigation has focused on state and local government. Until 1998, most cases foundered on courts accepting the argument that there is no unlawful discrimination when same-sex couples are treated the same as unmarried opposite-sex couples. In that year, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled that state constitutional and statutory principles were violated by denying benefits to same-sex partners of employees of a state college... |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership Legislative and Litigation Issues » |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership as Subject of Debate |
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| Domestic Partnership as Subject of Debate Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Domestic partnership achieved its broadest state-law form in California, where legislation establishing a simple partnership registry for same-sex couples and elderly opposite-sex couples was expanded through a series of amendments to a status of quasi-marriage. Thus, effective January 1, 2005, California afforded registered domestic partners almost all the rights of spouses under state law. The most frequent objections to extending benefits relate to anticipated costs and difficulties of administration. The AIDS epidemic fueled such fears, because domestic partnership was identified mainly with same-sex couples, and gay men were seen as the group with the highest risk... |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership as Subject of Debate » |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership and Cohabitation |
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| Domestic Partnership and Cohabitation Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Domestic partnership is an ''alternative family'' based on cohabitation by two adults, with or without children, in a relationship marked by mutual emotional and financial commitment, which may be recognized for a variety of purposes by businesses or government. The term emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of the attempt by lesbians and gay men to attain recognition for their families. This came after a series of unsuccessful lawsuits had persuaded many that the right of same-sex couples to marry could not then be won in the courts. Although some activists sought same-sex marriage as their ultimate priority, others rejected legal marriage as an appropriate... |
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| Essay on Domestic Partnership and Cohabitation » |
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| Essay on Chastity as Sexual Practice |
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| Chastity as Sexual Practice Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Although chastity belts are commonly associated with the medieval era, they were first made in the 1600s. Chastity belts were sometimes worn by females (usually from the upper class) either to keep them virgins or ensure fidelity whenever their husbands went away for an extended period of time. As Western medical practices had long considered masturbation deleterious to a man's health, chastity belts were also made for young men. In recent years chastity belts have made a comeback as part of an alternative sexual lifestyle involving bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism (BDSM). Chastity belts are usually made of plastic, stainless steel and leather, with a key lock in the center... |
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| Essay on Chastity as Sexual Practice » |
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| Essay on Religion and Chastity |
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| Religion and Chastity Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. The chastity movement in modern-day America began in 1940 when fifty Jesuit priests convened to write a booklet aimed at college-bound youths. The key theme of this booklet was that chastity is the queen of Christian virtues. Young adults were enjoined to resist sexual temptation by reminding themselves that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and therefore a shrine to God. Sex out of wedlock is the same as desecrating the house of God. Chastity does not mean celibacy for married couples but it does imply that sex should not be done to satisfy lust and that wife and husband should remember that the body belongs to Christ and not to one's spouse. After a couple has borne children they are encouraged... |
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| Essay on Religion and Chastity » |
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| Essay on Chastity: History of the Idea |
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| Chastity: History of the Idea Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Chastity is a concept found in the three Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It refers to purity of one's thoughts and deeds, particularly as they apply to sexual relations. To be chaste means that one is a virgin until marriage and engages in sex only with one's lawful spouse. For Catholic priests and nuns, chastity includes, but is not limited to, sexual abstinence; the goal of chastity is to eliminate all carnal desires so that one can fully concentrate one's mind and body on serving God. Some Christians argue that married couples should also remain chaste, that is, abstain from sex, except for the purpose of reproduction. However, this was not its original meaning... |
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| Essay on Chastity: History of the Idea » |
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| Essay on Adultery in Roman Law And Its Successors |
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| Adultery in Roman Law And Its Successors Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. At least since the time of Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE), Roman law treated adultery as a criminal action, and required adulterers to be exiled. Adultery under this definition depends entirely on the woman's marital status. A wife commits adultery when she has sex with any man other than her husband. If the woman is not married, it is not adultery, though there may well be penalties for her actions. A man's marital status is not part of the question. According to Augustus's laws, known as the Julian marriage laws, a father is justified in killing his adulterous daughter, and a husband justified in killing his wife's paramour. Regardless of the husband's willingness to forgive, Roman law... |
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| Essay on Adultery in Roman Law And Its Successors » |
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| Essay on Adultery in Islamic Law |
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| Adultery in Islamic Law Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. While the several varieties of Islamic law, or sharia, practiced in some Muslim countries differ in some particulars, the prohibition against adultery is shared by all and derives from the Qu'ran and from hadith, or traditions concerning the practices of the Prophet Muhammad. Though the Qu'ran does not quote the Decalogue, it does refer to it and seems to draw upon its tradition. Adultery is considered one of the most serious offenses, known as the Hadd offenses, because they are specified as offenses in the Qu'ran, another of which is the false accusation of adultery. Perhaps because the accusation is so serious, there are restrictions on it. The punishment for adultery is traditionally rajm, death... |
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| Essay on Adultery in Islamic Law » |
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| Essay on Adultery in Judeo-Christian Tradition |
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| Adultery in Judeo-Christian Tradition Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, adultery is proscribed in the sixth or seventh mitzvah or commandment of the Decalogue (Exodus 20), what is colloquially called the Ten Commandments (sixth or seventh because different religions and denominations group the commandments differently). Perhaps the most notorious adulterer in the Hebrew scriptures is also one of the most revered kings, David, whose adulterous affair with Bathsheba and the punishments he received for it are prominently narrated in 1 Samuel. The prohibition against adultery (and incest) is one of the three strongest in Talmudic thinking, the others being those against murder and against idolatry, such that a person is enjoined... |
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| Essay on Adultery in Judeo-Christian Tradition » |
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| Essay on Adultery Definition |
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| Adultery Definition Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Marriage and Family Life. Adultery is a nearly universal concern. It is defined by Judaic, Christian, and Muslim formulations, and in legal codes deriving from Roman law. Known colloquially as cheating or infidelity, adultery is more complex than simple faithlessness and is not to be confused with fornication, or sex between two unmarried people. In its simplest definition, adultery occurs when a married person has sex with someone other than his or her spouse. Marriage is requisite, on the one hand, for an action to be called adultery. On the other hand, the cheating couple also must not be married to one another; otherwise the situation is not adultery but bigamy or polygamy, even in jurisdictions where such is proscribed... |
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| Essay on Adultery Definition » |
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| Essay on Age, Gender, and Family in Industrial Society |
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| Age, Gender, and Family in Industrial Society Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. The new industries initially favored the employment of men in all jobs, but the textile mills adopted the sexual division of labor that had typified cottage industry: Women did most of the spinning and men did most of the weaving. Many employment traditions quickly broke down, however. Machines often required few skills or little strength to make superior textiles; factory owners often favored women and children for wage labor because they worked for less than men. Women soon held the majority of the jobs in textile mills, and some occupations became feminized jobs, held only by women. Some factory owners spoke of a woman's dexterity and many thought (often erroneously) of women... |
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| Essay on Age, Gender, and Family in Industrial Society » |
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| Essay on Gender System in Scandinavian Countries |
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| Gender System in Scandinavian Countries Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. Women have gained a prominent position in the Nordic societies, both at work and in public life. This was possible because industrialization came late and because the countryside was dominated by family farms. The wife's role was determined by the division of labor in family farms and would change according to whether the household was dependent on jobs, such as fishing and logging, that necessitated the husband's being away. In these cases, it was the women who bore the main responsibility for agriculture and animal husbandry. The division of labor between the sexes was ecologically determined and flexible, but it was socially determined as well, because the low wages... |
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| Essay on Gender System in Scandinavian Countries » |
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| Essay on Family, Marriage, And Gender in Interwar Europe |
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| Family, Marriage, And Gender in Interwar Europe Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. In interwar Europe, fertility rates dropped to record lows. Many commentators voiced fears of ''race suicide''; some injudicious prophets posited that in the year 2030 there would be four people left in Britain. Even when we brush aside such panicked reasoning, there is still much left to explain. Why was it that family size was at an all-time low, and given the appearance in the mid to late 1930s of some resurgence in birth rates, why was the decline in fertility at an end? At this point we enter a field in the history of the family and the history of gender in which cultural norms are crucial. Family life was not egalitarian in this period. If we want to know why fertility went... |
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| Essay on Family, Marriage, And Gender in Interwar Europe » |
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| Essay on Renaissance Family |
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| Renaissance Family Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. Generalizations about the family are difficult for both late medieval and early modern history. What is clear is that the late medieval and early modern family did not follow a simple trajectory of progressive nuclearization, with a large, extended family or household giving way to a smaller conjugal unit. Rather, families varied enormously in structure both within and between regions. In Tuscany at the beginning of the fifteenth century, fewer than one in five households were extended in the technical sense of containing more than one conjugal family, though significantly more than one in five Florentines lived in such extended households at one point or another during their life cycles. In England... |
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| Essay on Renaissance Family » |
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| Essay on Women and Family in Middle Ages |
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| Women and Family in Middle Ages Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. Important developments also took place within the family during the Middle Ages, again creating institutions that we now accept as modern. The basic medieval family was founded on the nuclear unit of husband, wife, and children. Because child mortality was high in an era without modern medicine or infant formula, enough children died in their earliest years to drag down the life expectancy from the sixty or seventy years an adult could anticipate living--unless of course he or she died in war, in childbirth, or in an epidemic--to an average somewhere in the thirties. Scholars at one time assumed that parents faced with the deaths of so many young children must have been hardened to the... |
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| Essay on Women and Family in Middle Ages » |
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| Essay on Marriage and Family in Inca Society |
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| Marriage and Family in Inca Society Research Paper, Custom Essays and Term Papers Writing on Sociology. Marriage and family were central to the Inca culture, and the Incas required everyone to marry. Although Inca noblemen were allowed to practice polygamy, monogamy was the rule among the common people of the empire. When young couples decided to marry, they often entered into a trial marriage, to see if it would work. If it failed, both partners could go on to enter a new marriage without shame. Unlike the Christian Europeans of that time, the Andean peoples in the Inca empire placed no extra value on the virginity of a bride. However, Inca law stated that once a couple was formally married, they had to remain together for life. Even if divorces had been allowed, it would have been almost... |
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| Essay on Marriage and Family in Inca Society » |
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