Forms of the Family.Power and Descent

In most families of the world the father or male head exercises the greatest power. His authority comes from the customary deference shown to the oldest male of the family and from his legal right to control the family's property and the fate of its members. This system of male dominance is known as patriarchy. Its logical opposite, matriarchy, appears to exist only in theory. No true matriarchy, in which women run the family by law and custom, has yet been discovered.

In advanced industrial societies patriarchal arrangements tend to break down. American men, for instance, no longer have a monopoly over money, education, and social prestige. When the husband was the only wage-earner, his control of the family's resources gave him virtually unquestioned power to make decisions for his wife and children. Now that more women are earning salaries and going to college, their husbands are less able to dominate the family's decision making. A number of studies have shown that working wives have more power at home than other wives. Even in more egalitarian middle-class families, however, husbands usually make the big decisions: what kind of car to buy, where the family will live, and whether or not to buy a house. In day- to-day decision making wives typically exercise far greater authority than their husbands over children and households. But when husbands and wives disagree, it is usually the man who wins. In working-class families, especially, the husband almost always has the final say.

At least in the middle class, children also have a great deal of power. Either by themselves or in coalitions with one parent against the other, older children frequently are able to "swing the vote" their way on such family decisions as where to go on vacations and whether to buy a television set or a washing machine.