Reading Notes from Pasternak, Ember, and Ember

Chapter 6: Extension of the Incest Taboo

Marital taboos extend far beyond close biological relationships. For example, in Korea most everyone is divided into a few clans with names. For example, Kim, Lee, and Park make up 23% of the population of 43 million.

 Mention of the punishments cross-culturally meted out to those who break the rule even though they are distantly related or even unrelated (stepparent-stepchild) At the same time, some of the punishments are weak as, for example, slight social disapproval.

Cousin Marriage and the Incest Taboo
Murdock pointed out that 57% of societies prohibit marriage with first cousins while 43% permit it. Of those who permitted it, 9% encouraged it and another 18% had a more limited preference for either FaSiSo or MoBrSo; 10% preferred on FaSiSo and 3 % MoBrSo.

In matrilineal society cousin preference commonly takes the form of MoBrSo (or FaSiDa for patrilateral cross-cousin marriage) which allows a father to pass in resources to his son’s son.

 An implicit discussion of sentiment and descent and the matrilineal puzzle. In matrilineal systems the father is indulgent and the mother’s brother is the formal one who will give resources to his sister’s son and not his own. Therefore, there is an extension of this warm sentiment to father’s sister’s daughter (or MoBrSo). In patrilineal society the mother is the indulgent figure and this feeling is transferred to mother’s brother and then to daughter, leading to matrilateral cross cousin marriage. So matrilateral cross cousin marriage more likely to be found in matrilineal societies while patrilateral cross cousin marriage is more likely to be found in matrilineal societies. However, most matrilineal and patrilineal societies prohibit any kind of cousin marriage.   Note that this is a kind of psychological reductionism in that sentiments towards certain kin lead to marriage preferences.

Levi-Strauss, on the other hand, in his alliance mode talks about the role that marriage plays in cementing alliances between lineages regardless of sentiments. When such marriages occur consistently it creates long term bonds between lineages. This reasoning suggests that societies are integrated wholes and social practices are designed to maintain the integrity of a social system.

Melvin Ember suggests an alternative to these perspectives:
In small populations there will be a prohibition against cousin marriages (the pool of potential mates is small) and in large they will be allowed because the probability of cousin marriage will be small (larger pool of potential mates). Some support for the position was found but middle range societies (1,000 to 25,000) allowed cousin marriage when they should not have. Ember suggested that depopulation and a consequential lack of potential mates led to cousin marriage.

Durham follows Ember but introduces the notion of rational choice which seems to suggest that people avoid close inbreeding whenever they can but sometimes are forced into for a lack of mates. However, both models do not explain why cousin marriage is patrilateral, matrilateral, or both.

As for marriage and descent in relation to kin terminology,   it is clear that cross cousins are usually members of a different lineage. The process of parallel cousin marriage (largely found among Arabic speakers) is explained by attempts to maintain lineage strength in the face of other competing lineages. But others have argued that this sort of marriage actually leads to fissioning within the patrilineage.

Other Marital Shoulds and Shouldn’ts
 
Very confused section - should be ignored.

Chapter 7: Getting Married

Courtship and Mate Selection

Begins with marriage by capture (most commonly man capturing woman) and provides example from Serbs in Bosnia. It expresses manliness and women when brought before court commonly say that it was not by force (she would have a difficult time marrying otherwise).

As far as courting is concerned males, court autonomously 31% of the time while females 8% of the time (i.e., without parental control or approval).

Parents do not consult sons in 13% of societies and females are not consulted in 21%.

Rosenblatt and Cozby found that local endogamy and choice by the couples is closely associated. They further found that when there are many opportunities for youngsters to get together (dances) there should be more freedom of choice on the part of couples and there is. They also found that the more choice, the more romantic criteria (sexual attraction, affection, and courtly love) are used in selection as opposed to criteria based on economic skills, alliance considerations, strength, or health (which they call objective criteria). They also found a positive correlation between freedom of choice and courtship antagonism (teasing, insulting, verbal disputes, physical battles, wrestling, stone throwing, and playing pranks).

Coppenger and Rosenblatt hypothesized that when economic dependence between spouses is strong the marriages will not be based on romantic criteria and when economic ties are not critical then romantic love will be more important.

Romantic love is found universally but it is not universally the basis of marriage. Lee and Stone hypothesized that romantic love and autonomous mate selection are more common when nuclear families are important. They reason that in extended families the newcomers ability to work well within the family is critical which makes romantic considerations secondary.

Transacting Marriage

 Only 23% of Preindustrial societies lack some sort of economic transaction in marriage (bride price, etc.).
 

Schlegel and Eloul demonstrate the following about marital economic transactions:

• if there is little or no property marriage transactions will be absent
• if there is communal property then marriage transactions will tend to circulate wealth (bride price).
• if there is private property then transactions will tend to concentrate wealth (dowry)

The standard argument for bride price is that it is compensation for the loss of a woman’s (i.e., daughter) labor. But Schlegel and Eloul found that 80% of societies with dowry are patrilocal which suggests that parents are paying to have their daughters married (just the opposite). There is indirect evidence that where women heavily engage in primary production will have bride wealth – the evidence however is limited largely to Africa.

Schlegel and Eloul suggest that it may be the reproductive potential of women in sub-Saharan Africa that leads to bride price (they produce sons and it is an under populated region of the world).

Schlegel and Eloul talk of other functions of dowry:

• to gain a high status son-in-law (hypergyny)
• to gain a client son-in-law (he has low status but he will be loyal to the family because of wife’s wealth)

 
Celebrating Marriage

Marriage celebrations are societies means to place their stamp of approval on marriages they wish to encourage and is a measure of social concern placed on the marital relationship.

Post marital statistics

The authors provide extensive descriptions of Trobriand marriage ceremonies (little concern for virginity of either sex) and Kurdish (strong concern regarding female but not male  virginity).

Frayser found that those societies that restrict women’s sexuality to childbearing tend to have elaborate weddings while those who have few sexual restrictions have small or no wedding celebrations and they are almost always small or non-existence if marriage is simply signaled by child bearing or cohabitation.
 

Chapter 8 The Marital Relationship

In all societies couples are expected to have sex and produce children.

Sex within Marriage
Sexual intercourse may be regulated. In a number of societies sex during menstruation is avoided (may cause problems or belief that women are polluting) or menstruation is not considered a reason not to have sex.. Most of the time it is done in private or in a room when all others are sleeping. And most of the time it is regarded as enjoyable but in some groups it is not so (Mae Enga) and done only for reproduction.

Extra-Marital Sex
Most societies disapprove of extra-marital sex. However, it is relatively common and the punishment varies but is usually more severe for women.

• among Trukese extra-marital sex is common even though husbands are jealous
• among Dogon extramarital sex is permitted by women prior to their first birth
• Maasai husbands must tolerate extramarital sex by their wives so long as it does not prevent husband from having sex
• Tlingit could have extramarital sex within clan but outside clan the woman could be put to death
• Trukese allowed younger brothers to have sex with older brother’s wives but wife must approve.
• Chukchee permitted partners on trips to have sex with his wife so long as he was given access to partner’s wife in return. Jenness reports the same for Eskimo. Burch says this is not wife trading, the partners and their children became tightly bonded, and women had some say in the arrangement.
• Yanomamo permit hoimou when refugee visitors permit sex with their wives to host men.  (Actually, the visiting men and their wives don't like this but it is the price of being a refugee in a host village).
• Azande strictly prohibited extramarital sex and guilty wife faced a death penalty because the cheating wife could magically cause his death in battle. However, sex with unmarried persons.

The Double Standard
Broude’s examination shows that 54% of societies permit extramarital sex for men while 11% permit it for women.

Using psychoanalytic theory Broude shows that societies with a postpartum sex taboo are more likely to impose greater restrictions on women’s extramarital sex than men’s. Furthermore, since men tend to boast about exploits, a taboo on women is an expression of their feelings of sexual inadequacy.   Again, this is another form of psychological reductionism.
 

To be or not to be close

• In 6% of societies, monogamously married couples slept apart.
• In 6% of societies couples slept along together or with just infants
• In 81% of societies unmarried children or other adults sleep with the couple
• In 26% of societies men and women eat separately
• In 9% wife serves husband while he eats (i.e. she is present but does not eat)
• In 53% of societies couples spent leisure time apart or in the company of others
• In 5% of societies couples spent leisure time home alone or with other family members

This is a good place to remind you of the "burden of marriage" in US society:

Cross-culturally marriage carries the following attributes:

Reproduction and care of children
Sexual exclusivity
Economic cooperation

In our society we expect much more, such as:

romantic love
companionship
joint recreational activities
emotional support
career support
common social circle

Where couples sleep near each other they spend leisure time together

What makes marriage in societies intimate or aloof?  Whitings argue that when men are warriors they display bravado and aloofness. They suggest it is adaptive because in order to be an effective warrior one needs to be tough and brave. Essentially an expression the cross sex syndrome.

Alternatively, they suggest that restraint of population growth in the face of frequent food shortages and famine is part of the complex. Aloofness restrains population growth.   Note, they provide no evidence that aloofness leads to lowered fertility.
 
Jealousy
Not much evidence for jealousy in polyandrous relations perhaps because husbands in two of the four cases (Tibet and Toda) are brothers. Plus, in polyandrous societies people tend to have open attitudes toward sexuality. Research by Levine and others suggest that sexual jealousy is a serious problem in polyandrous Tibetan societies and it is the primary factor that leads to the break-up of polyandrous unions.  Typically, the junior co-husbands leaves the union.

Co-wife jealousy over sexual and economic matters is greater is societies with non-sororal polygyny.  The standard argument is that co-wives who are sisters get along better than women who are unrelated.  This finding makes sense in kin selection theory terms.

Burbank’s study of female aggression in 317 societies found that women tend to use verbal and gestural aggression more frequently than men, while men resort to physical violence. Most frequent female to female aggression is among co-wives over husband’s distribution of favors, services, or goods or at the appearance of an new wife. When women aggress against men it is over distribution of family resources.

Murdock made the findings that sororal co-wives fight less than non-sororal. He suggests that there should be institutions to prevent this predictable violence. Indeed, with non-sororal polygyny, 51% of the time co-wives live apart compared to only 14% for sororal.

Other solutions include clearly stated rights to property, sexual access, and the like. Sometimes it is arbitrarily equal. They suggest that these rules may run afoul of a man who may tend to favor a younger wife.

Sexual Jealousy

• Men are far more likely to be sexually jealous. They cite the Darwinian argument relative to paternity certainty but suggest it cannot account for the variation.  This is an old and, pardon the expression, lame critique of an evolutionary model.  The point is that sexual jealousy is common to both men and women but men are much more likely to react strongly (becoming aggressive or abusive) to infidelity.  Furthermore, men are likely to react more aggressively because (1) they are stronger; (2) have more social support and higher status; and (3) have more to loose (they may be supporting the offspring of another man).  Women may also express considerable sexual jealousy when infidelity threatens their economic position or harms their husbands investment in their joint offspring.   However, women normally do not react as aggressively as men for the three reasons outlined above (i.e., weaker, less status and social support, etc.).
• They suggest that psychoanalytic theories can account for why some men are more anxious about wife's infidelity than others.
• Hupka and Ryan indicate that variation in male sexual jealousy is related to the importance society places on marriage as the gateway to adulthood and its privileges, and to the degree to which society limits sex to marriage. Men will then respond to infidelities with violence. Found that where private property is important male sexual jealousy is intense. "And that might well be that infidelity is a threat to that private property" (p. 182). Huh?
• Female sexual jealousy is not related to the same factors found by Ryan and Hupka. They suggest that women have few options when it comes to their husband’s infidelities.

Violence Against Spouses

Are husbands and wives equally likely to assault one another? No. Levinson found that wife beating if found in about 85% of all societies (and about 50% of time can lead to severe injury or death) at least occasionally compared to 27% for husband beating..

Levinson found that wife beating most common where:

• men control products of family labor
• men have final say in domestic issues
• widow remarriage is controlled by husband’s kin
• lack of female work groups

Chapter 9: Divorce and Remarriage

We assume that capacity for independence leads to divorce. If true, would not most people remain single?

Divorce
Broude and Greene found divorce strongly disapproved and stigmatizing in only 16% of societies. And divorce was found to be rare in only 30% of societies.

Frayser found that 42% of all societies had a preference for keeping children with one parent and of these about 22% chose the father!

Property settlement depends on who is judged to be at fault in 41% of societies. Only 21% favor equitable distribution regardless of who is at fault.

Women and her kin suffer more frequently economically in divorce 23% than do men at 15%.

Reasons for Divorce
Betzig found in the case of adultery as grounds for divorce 67% viewed it solely as the fault of the woman, 31% either, and only 2% men. They seem to approve of her Darwinian account for divorce: revolves around reproductive matters.

Frayser looked at the principle ways in which men and women justify divorce:
Table 9.1 Comparison of Primary Grounds for Divorce Used by Men and Women

*Incompatibility as a reason undoubtedly encompasses such reasons as failure in economic duties or neglect.  For example, "His adultery made us incompatible".  Recall, Betzig's discussion of "dislikelyness".

 
Men focus on sexual and reproductive issues while women focus on incompatibility, and husband’s physical violence. She argues that men are less likely to kill women for infertility compared to infidelity because infidelity threatens a man’s sense of control!

Of the societies surveyed, 78% permit remarriage, although it is more difficult for women than for men.

What reduces chances of divorce for women? Hendrix and Pearson found two factors:

1. Agricultural economies where there is considerable interdependence between men and women.
2. Male focused societies: descent traced through males, patrilineal land inheritance, and patrilocality

However, where real property passes through male lines, men also have limited grounds for divorce. Men’s grounds for divorce increase where women have more equality politically and economically. "It appears that husbands’ rights increase with wives’ rights" (p. 197).

What Explains Higher Divorce Rates?
 

Please note that most explanations for divorce, especially increasing divorce rates through time, place the "blame" on women.  That is, when women have the power to divorce or when a woman's social situation allows her effectively deal with the consequences of divorce (e.g., lost income) divorce rates will increase.  Also, realize that in our culture we tend to view divorce as a 'social problem' and view it negatively (although this is changing).  Try not to allow this to color your understanding of divorce.

Another point should be made about divorce: it takes two to divorce.  When it is shown that increased economic opportunities for women lead to divorce this seems to indicate that divorce is caused by women.  However, imagine two cases: (1) a farm woman in the 1900s with an abusive husband; and (2) a woman lawyer today living with an abusive husband.  One would predict that the modern women would more likely divorce and the farm woman would not even though she might like to.  However, if neither of the men were abusive then neither of the women might be motivated to divorce.

The hypothesis is that divorce rates increase with increasing female status. Trent and South state:

Gluckman suggests that divorce is difficult when descent is traced through male lines and where a wife is strongly incorporated into the husband’s lineage.

Pearson and Hendrix note that divorce rates are higher as

• women inherit real and moveable property
• polyandry is permitted
• adultery is not strongly punished for men or women
• and other factors that indicate women can be political and religious actors

However, they note that other factors are also important. Seccombe and Lee pointed out that as female independence increased so did divorce rates. Economic independence means that men and women do many of the same tasks while interdependence means that they do different tasks and they need each other.

Putting it all together Hendrix and Pearson conclude:

• Greater female status does drive up divorce but only when there is low female independence (i.e., a sharp division of labor, or high interdependence)
• A strict division of labor is no guarantee of stable marriages

Furthermore, where women have more status and task segregation there is greater divorce rates. Also, when fathers were more involved in raising children, then divorce rates are lower.

Hendrix and Pearson opine (p. 200)

Task segregation makes spouses depend on each other for satisfying basic needs, but at the same time may provide reasons for wanting to end marriages. Female power in this situation becomes important in that it consists of resources which may enable wives to leave husbands, thus activating the causal link between marital conflict and divorce. 

and

Some suggest that as families become divorced from kinship groups they lose traditional functions (defense, care of elderly and ill, education), so marriages become less stable.

Trent and South’s sixty-six developing nation study found:

• lower divorce rates where there is an under supply of women among people of reproductive age (15 to 49), or late average marriage age for women
• higher divorce rates with more participation by females in the labor force, but the relationship is not linear

 
Widows and Widowers

Broude and Green found that only 7% of societies did not permit widows to remarry. They also found that

• only 8% of societies allowed women to choose their husbands
• but widows could do so in 30% of societies
• in 34% they could so long as they married a man of the husband’s lineage or kin group,
• and in 30% the husband’s kin made the choice for her

It is clear that husband’s kin often believe that they have a residual interest in a woman’s reproductive and economic value.

Frayser found the following:

• 37% of widows could remarry anyone they wanted to
• 33% of societies they often refrained from remarriage
• 5% forbade or strongly discouraged widow remarriage

 
Broude speculates that wife beating and lack of female choice go together since they reflect low respect and autonomy for women.

Speak of the levirate (51% of all societies and only in 23% was it absent or only occasional) and the sororate (40% and only in 24% was it absent or only occasional). Says that it is designed to maintain alliances or rights to female reproduction and labor.

They also note that in the Chinese case it may be in a woman’s self interest and those of her children to accept this form of marriage.
 

Chapter 10: Marital Residence: Who goes where, why and what are the consequences?

 Show the distribution of residential types

Residence, Family and Kin Groups

Who we live with after we marry determines who we have to depend on, who we may have to contend with, and our political, social, and economic opportunities.

Description by Margery Wolf on the difficulties that daughters in law have in a Chinese household – she is at the complete mercy of her new household and under the domineering thumb of her mother-in-law.

Alternatively, in many matrilocal societies men simply move to another part of the village (tend to be endogamous) and may still retain social ties.

Description of the Luo which consists of scattered homesteads and no sharp boundaries between villages. They are patrilocal and patrilineal.

Avunculocal societies have matrilineal descent and men marry and move near to their matrilineal kin or the mother’s brother. In a sense, it is a way for related males to stay together in spite of a system of matrilineal descent.

Marital Residence and the Place of Women

Whyte observes that women in matrilineal societies tend to

• more domestic authority
• sexual restrictions equal to men
• more ritualized female solidarity
• perhaps more value placed on their lives

  but

The work of Diamond on attempts at sexual equality in China. Despite campaigns to reduce patriarchal ideology boys were regarded as more valuable than girls, post marital residence patterns remained unchanged such that local related men remained the core power at the village level.

Calling a son-in-law in a Chinese village
In this situation there was a shortage of female labor because women’s feet were bound making them incapable of intense agricultural work. Poor families with many sons and little land would allow their sons to marry matrilocally. This added an extra male laborer to the household (instead of bringing in a woman incapable of working). However, the Chinese believe that such marriages are more prone to divorce because the daughter stays with the mother and forms a faction against the son-in-law husband. To deal with this problem they choose boys unknown to the girl which lessens the possibility that if the son-in-law leaves the will not take the wife taking the children with him [this needs better explication]. In this case the conjugal bond was sacrificed to maintain the parent child bond

On Taiwan, if a matrilocal marriage had to be arranged then they tried to do it endogamously. Here they tried to enhance the conjugal bond at the expense of the parent-child bond. They knew the boy and he maintained strong contact with his family – so he had less motivation to leave.

Evidence that this situation led to the following consequences (from Chungshe)

• freer premarital sex and greater number of conceptions prior to marriage
• the matrilocal divorce rate was not higher than the patrilocal rate
• total fertility was higher for matrilocally married women
• windows and widowers and divorcees were more likely to remarry than elsewhere in China
• parents were likely to hang on to their own daughters longer until they were sure they had a son who would inherit the farm and provide for them [this seems to be a motivation that is not fully explicated]

Adopted daughters (minor marriages [sim pua]) tended to have higher mortality rates than biological daughters but not in Chungshe because they were adopted at a later age.

Determinants of Postmarital Residence 

Early on it was argued by Linton and Murdock that economic contribution of males or females determined postmarital residence patterns. This was especially true if male cooperation was important, a point stressed by Service in relation to warfare.

They explain their well known model of postmarital residence. They emphasize that internal warfare requires the quick mobilization (or would be more effectively waged) of closely related males which is accomplished their patrilocality.

Divale has a different model which states that patrilocal residence will be common because males tend to be dominant and matrilocality will occur only under special circumstances when migration leads to warfare, matrilocality among the invaders promotes peace within, and allows them to more effectively fight the enemy. But only half of the migrating societies in his sample were matrilocal.

Murdock found that 71% of the matrilocal societies were endogamous are had a tendency to be so while it was true in only 7% of the patrilocal societies. They regard it as a kind of hedge against treachery of neighboring villages should internal war break out. Furthermore, Avunculocality is associated with matrilineal descent. This is a way to maintain core males without sacrificing the integrity of matrilineal descent.

They define multilocality as inclusive of bilocality because it emphasizes that there may be more choices than matrilocal and patrilocal (e.g., neolocal?). There is some support for bilocality as a situation where males and female have near equal economic value and couples choose the situation that will maximize their fortunes. However, Service suggests that it may be a consequence of depopulation. In effect, they were living with whatever parents were still alive.

For bands, bilocality may reflect environmental uncertainty and people choose the situation that best fits their fortunes. This suggests that most cases of bilocality and multiloclity are relatively recent.

Similarly neolocalitiy may be relatively recent since the family is central and public institutions provide protection against enemies, defense, and economic insurance.

Chapter 11: Family and Households

Twenty-four percent of US households are single parent, with 90% of those female headed. Sweden used to be the champion at 13% (1970s).

Is the nuclear family optimal and are other forms truly dysfunctional or aberrant.

Family types:

• nuclear
• polygynous
• extended (two or more nuclear with either siblings or parent-child)
• stem families have two generations
• joint families are composed of siblings and their offspring.

There are criticisms of Murdock’s ideas regarding the functional roles of the family since other units (kinship groups, public schools, extra-marital sex, non-family work groups) can fulfill the functions he said were dominated by the nuclear family. [I think one could stress that the nuclear family does all these things although it may not do them exclusively, no other institution does more of them].

Family Extension and Society Complexity

Extended families occur in societies of intermediate complexity while nuclear are found in most simple and most complex.

In the modern situation the kin group is absent and many family functions are done by public institutions and in hunter gather context mobility is important or there is less need to delay family fissioning.

Nimkoff and Middleton argue that agriculture requires more labor than foraging, engenders private property, and discourages land fragmentation (it is less economical to divide land into small parcels managed by a nuclear family). However, the last argument does not account for shifting cultivators who don’t have a problem with land fragmentation. They also question whether there are needs revolving around economies of scale (sharing of oxen, peak labor loads).

There are empirical problems:

• 60% of agricultural societies have extended families, 40% do not, and
• 56% of foragers have nuclear families, 44% have extended

 
PEE observe the incompatible activity requirements which suggests extended families will occur when

• the absence of hired or slave labor
• tasks require husband and wife to be in different places at the same time (men and women have to do two things at once such as men having to clear and engage in trade or women having to care for children and harvest crops)

They could rely on neighbors and alternate tasks but they suggest that neighbor might not be as reliable as family members and there would be a problem of working for the benefit of someone else versus working for your old welfare.

Variation within Societies

Chinese clues

Joint families still exist in modern China and they are most often achieved by the wealthy.

Part of the reason for the instability of joint families is the competition between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and sisters-in-law because they have rights to resources only through husbands and sons. The parent child bond is argued to be more important that the conjugal bond.

One major reason for female competition is that a woman will normally outlive her husband and she must then depend on her son for support. She then is motivated to press for the division of the estate as quickly as possible as a kind of insurance. The mother would like to keep the family together because subdivision would lessen her economic position.

Gives the example of a pillow ghost: a daughter-in-law resents the subsidization of a husband’s brother so he can go to college. She does not want to work to send husband’s brother to college and presses for division so she retain more for herself. She is the pillow ghost who at night nags her husband to request subdivision.

Another case would be a daughter-in-law who is childless resents a daughter-in-law who has a child and is tired of providing for a non-productive nephew.

Turns to Chungshe where joint families persisted because of labor requirements (peak labor loads after rains) and it diminished when a irrigation system was put in which reduced the need for family cooperation.

Uses another example where some households combined rice growing (male work) with tobacco growing (female work) and the complex of drying sheds and other facilities which would be difficult to divide, so joint families persisted (also, could be economy of scale problem again).

Example of Mr. Lin who is head of a family with many enterprises. Having a large family enables him to manage that enterprise without hiring expensive and inefficient and less trustworthy outside labor.

Family and Household

There are non-residential joint families who cooperate at a distance.

The authors summarizing Myron Cohen’s Chinese research say:

 Female-Focused Families

Gonzalez suggests that matrifocal families may be a modern alternative in societies with recurrent migratory labor and low wages.

Fifty-six percent of white, 26% of black, and 37% of Hispanic live in households with both biological parents or 24% of all American children live in matrifocal households. Why do we have this problem. It is clearly not a result of divorce because people can remarry.

Sex ratio: given high black male mortality and unemployment it is estimated that for every 100 black females between 21 and 28 there are only 80 black males. If we include employed black males then the ratio drops to below 50.

Welfare is probably not an explanation: this is because the Aid to Families with Dependent Children has decreased the amount of aid to families and the number of families on it have declined since the 1970s while there has been an increased in matrifocal families.

Women getting jobs allows them the option of matrifocality: but employed women are more likely to marry than unemployed women.