Patriarchal family

A patriarchy, from the ancient Greek patriarches, was a society where power was held by and passed down through the elder males. When modern historians and sociologists describe a "patriarchal society," they mean that men hold the positions of power and have more privilege: head of the family unit, leaders of social groups, boss in the workplace, and heads of government. In patriarchy, there is also a hierarchy among the men. In traditional patriarchy, the elder men had power over the younger generations of men. In modern patriarchy, some men hold more power (and privilege) by virtue of the position of authority, and this hierarchy of power (and privilege) is considered acceptable. Gerda Lerner's Analysis of Patriarchy The Creation of Patriarchy, traces the development of the patriarchy to the second millennium B.C.E. in the middle east, putting gender relations at the center of the story of civilization's history.She argues that before this development, male dominance was not a feature of human society in general.Women were key to the maintenance of human society and community, but with a few exceptions, social and legal power was wielded by men. Women could gain some status and privilege in patriarchy by limiting her child-bearing capacity to just one man so that he could depend on her children being his children. "Other groups that were subordinated in history — peasants, slaves, colonials, any kind of group, ethnic minorities — all of those groups knew very quickly tha...

Patriarchal Society: Definition, Examples, and Ill-effects Unfortunately, the practice of a patriarchal or male-dominated society has been prevalent in the world since quite a long time. Even more unfortunately, it was unopposed till recent times, and even now, it still hasn't quite disappeared from our lives. Man, born of woman, has found it a hard thing to forgive her for giving him birth. The patriarchal protest against the ancient matriarch has borne strange fruit through the years. ― Lillian Smith As history has demonstrated time and again, almost every society in the world has been (and mostly continues to be) a male-dominated one, with the marked exception of very few cultures. Though social institutions did not look down upon women in the very ancient times, the concept of marriage and family changed over the years. From being ‘equals’ or ‘partners’, to ‘man and wife’, the concept of an egalitarian marriage, of equality between a couple, disappeared as though it had never existed. Though it is slowly being accepted in developed cultures now, the developing and under-developed cultures are still struggling to accept the role of a woman as something other than a womb. This male-dominated society is also called a patriarchal society. Patriarchy took firm root in society, and what is probably worse is that it had blended so firmly in the mindsets of both men and women, that nobody thought there was anything wrong with it. The following sections of this article will be ...

Recent Examples on the Web While India is evolving rapidly, much of the country is still patriarchal to this day and both men and women often perpetuate these ideas as the fabric of the culture. — Radhika Menon, ELLE, 9 June 2023 Advocates say many cases go unreported due in part to a culture of victim shaming in what remains a highly patriarchal society and a lack of confidence in the police. — Tara Subramaniam, CNN, 7 June 2023 The wide-open generosity of spirit in Haring’s vivacious work likely owes something profound to having come through life’s trials in an often cruel and deeply repressive society, white and patriarchal. — Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 6 June 2023 That’s the whole exhibition, and anyone who was expecting this to be a Netflix declension of the Degenerate Art Show, with poor patriarchal Picasso as ritualized scapegoat, can rest easy. — Jason Farago, New York Times, 1 June 2023 In essays and posts on Chinese social media, fans regularly celebrate her defiance of patriarchal norms, her rejection of nationalism and her delight in everyday matters. — Lisa Movius, Washington Post, 3 May 2023 The persecutions contributed to the construction of a new patriarchal divide that degraded and limited women, ranking them below men. — Silvia Federici, Scientific American, 17 Apr. 2023 As Emily Tetherow, Williams exudes a quiet confidence and competence that disrupts the patriarchal power structure of her party. — Wesley Stenzel, EW.com, 3 Apr. 2023 Among ot...

Recent Examples on the Web With a mix of heart and humor, Hannah Gadsby unravels the trauma behind the jokes, while also rattling the patriarchy with every punchline. — Deanna Janes, Harper's BAZAAR, 5 June 2023 Some social media content creators embrace this tension our racial history has brought to the conversation about stay-at-home mothers in particular, seemingly without resorting to absolutist statements about gender roles but still hewing close to ideals of Christianity and the patriarchy. — Nylah Burton, refinery29.com, 21 Dec. 2022 Authenticating work empowers scholars, and now scientists, and seems to be part of the gatekeeping apparatus that makes museums feel like zones of exclusion, or patriarchy. — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 7 Oct. 2022 In a way, her hectic career as a producer, actor and entrepreneur, mirrors her character’s upstream struggle against patriarchy — sans the guns and contraband. — Anna Marie De La Fuente, Variety, 10 Sep. 2022 In some ways, Dacus sights a specifically father-daughter relationship, or even a male-female relationship born of the patriarchy: the stinging vulnerability that comes with not being able to control a woman, maybe one who is your flesh and blood. — Susannah Felts, Longreads, 27 Apr. 2023 According to the station, Yang blames their culture's glorification of patriarchy for his sister's death. — Tristan Balagtas, Peoplemag, 21 Mar. 2023 Some of the antagonists are the Vikings, the high-school football team, who are...

Abstract: Indian society is a combination of a variety of different social groups. But all or at least most of these social groups are compelled to follow a set of social norms that promotes Keywords: Patriarchy, Indian society, family structure. Patriarchal Family structure and their effects India is a collectivist society that resonates with values such as interdependence, making the concept of family the core of its establishment. A pattern of power structure can be observed in most Indian families. In this pattern, the most powerful or influential individual in the family is the one that provides for the whole family which is usually a male. According to the Cultural Atlas, in a generic Indian family, the father (or eldest son) is usually the patriarch or the top of the hierarchy, meanwhile, his wife supervises the daughters or daughters-in-law in the household. This pattern is consistent with the nuclear families as well who reside in comparatively urban areas, as they are instilled with similar Indian values which encourages them to maintain strong connections with their extended families (Scroope, 2016). This could be because of social evils such as patriarchy and sexism as they are still two of the most widespread components constituting Indian society. These social evils are mostly sugar-coated-in Indian families by giving them a justification through religious beliefs. And as a result, forming a well-accepted power structure in Indian families dominated by males....

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Especially in Western cultures, the modern family is today more of a consuming as opposed to a producing unit, and the members of the family The general rule in marriages until modern times was the legal transfer of dependency, that of the bride, from father to groom. Not only did the groom assume guardianship, he usually assumed control over all of his wife’s affairs. Often, the woman lost any legal identity through marriage, as was the case in English In general, modern marriage is best-described as a Dissolution of marriages is one of the areas in which laws must try to balance private and public interest, since realistically it is the couple itself that can best decide whether its marriage is viable. In many older systems—e.g., Roman, Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and Japanese—some form of unilateral The issue of children poses special problems for family law. In nearly every culture, the welfare of children was formerly left to the parents entirely, and this usually meant the father. Most societies have come to recognize the general benefit of protecting children’s rights and of prescribing certain standards of rearing. Thus, more than in any other area, family law intervenes in private lives with regard to children.