Kathleen Gough’s study of the Nayar Family is an exception to Murdock’s view that the nuclear family is universal. The ritual of marriage within the Nayar community was one that required no obligation on the part of the two involved. Before puberty, a Nayar girl was promised to a tail husband, although the husband and wife did not live together and did not even have to see each other after the ritual, although the wife would have to mourn the death of her tail husband on his death, which was the only obligation in the marriage. After puberty, the Nayar girl began taking visiting husbands, often warriors who spent long period of time away from their villages acting as mercenaries. During their time in the village they were allowed to visit any number of Nayar women who had undergone the tail rite and were members of the same caste or lower. The Nayar women could have a total of 12 men visiting them. In terms of Murdock’s view, no family existed in Nayar society, since those who maintained ‘a sexually approved adult relationship’ did not live together and cooperate economically. There are three main ways the Nayar community are unlike the traditional nuclear family that Murdock claims is universal. One way is that the marriage was not a lifelong union: either party could terminate the relationship at any time. Also the visiting husbands had no duty towards the offspring of their wives. When a woman became pregnant, it was essential according to Nayar custom that a man of appropriate caste declared himself to be the father of the child by paying a fee of cloth and vegetables to the midwife who attended the birth. However it mattered little whether he was the biological parent or not, as long as someone claimed to be the father, because he did not help to maintain or socialise the child. The final way this type of family rejects the claim that the nuclear family is universal is that the husbands and wives did not form an economic unit. Although husbands might give wives token gifts, they were not expected to maintain them, it was even frowned upon if they attempted to. Instead, the economic unit consisted of a number of brother and sisters, sister’s children and their daughter’s children. The eldest male was the leader of each group of kin. Gough claimed marriage and the family existed in the Nayar society. In order to make this claim, the definition of a family would have to be broadened and would reject the claim of Murdock, that there is one nuclear traditional family that is universal. Gough defined marriage as a relationship between a woman and one or more persons in which a child born to the woman ‘is given full birth-status rights’ common to normal members of society.
Murdock’s definition of the family includes at least one adult of each sex. However, both today and in the past, some children have been realised in households that do not contain adults of both sexes, where the household is usually headed by women, in matrifocal families. This is usually seen in a proportion of families in the islands of the West Indies and parts of Central America such as Guyana and the USA do not include males. The ‘family unit’ often consists of a woman and her dependent children, with the addition sometimes of a grandmother. This shows that Murdock’s claim of a universal nuclear family is not true and that there may not be a definite definition of a family, which is universal. Supporters of Murdock however would argue that the matrifocal family usually makes up a minority of families and is not regarded as the norm in any of the societies in the USA or Guyana. In addition matrifocal families could be seen as the result of nuclear families breaking down rather than being an alternative family form which is valued and which people aspire to. However, even if matrifocal families are in the minority, this does not necessarily mean that they cannot be recognized as an alternative family structure. In many societies that practise polygyny, polynous marriages are in the minority, yet sociologists accept them as a form of extended family. Members of matrifocal families regard the unit as a family and, from her West Indian data; Gonzáles (1970) argues that the female-headed family is a well-organised social group which represents a positive adaptation to the circumstances of poverty. By not tying herself to a husband, the mother is able to maintain casual relationships with a number of men who can provide her with financial support. She retains strong links with her relatives who give her both economic and emotional support. This argument suggests that matrifocal families can be regarded as a form of family structure in its own right. If this argument is accepted, it is possible to see the matrifocal family as the basic, minimum family unit and other family structures as additions to this unit. This view is supported by Ynina Sheeran. She argues the female-carer core is the most basic family unit. “The female-carer unit is the foundation of the single-mother family, the two-parent family, and the extended family in its many forms. Thus it is certainly the basis of family household life in Britain today and is a ubiquitous phenomenon, since even in South Pacific longhouses, pore-industrial farmsteads communed and kibbutzim, we know that female carers per-dominate” (Sheeran 1993). In Britain, for example Sheeran maintains that children usually have one woman who is primarily responsible for their care. These primary carers are often but not always the biological mother; they may occassionally be a grandmother, elder sister, aunt, adoptive mother or other female. However she admits herself that in Britain a small minority of lone-parent households are headed by a man. Thus it is possible to argue that the female-Carer core is not the basis of every individual family, even if it is the basis of most families in all societies.
Another type of household that may contradict Murdock’s claims about the universality of the family as defined by him is the gay or lesbian household. By definition, such households will not contain adults of both sexes; at least two of whom maintain a ‘socially approved sexual relationship’ (Murdock 1949). Such households may, however, include children who are cared for by two adult females or two adult males. The children may be been adopted, be the result of a previous heterosexual relationship, or they may have been produced using new reproductive technologies involving sperm donation or surrogate motherhood. A lesbian may have sex with a man in order to conceive a child to be raised by her and her female partner. Most children of gay couples result from a previous heterosexual relationship. Lesbian mothers are rather more common than gay fathers, due to the difficulties gay men are likely to have in being granted custody or adopting children. However, Mukti, Jain Campion quotes a study which claims that one in 1,000 children were born to gay or lesbian couples in San Francisco between 1985 and 1990, and that there were many more people living with gay partners who has conceived children in heterosexual relationships. Thus, while households consisting of gay partners and one or more children may not be very common, they do exist. This raises the question of whether such households should be regarded as families. Rather like lone-parent families, households with gay parentage are seen as not being ‘proper’ families, especially by those who believe in New Right. In most western societies, the gay couples will not be able to marry and any children will have a genetic connection with only one of the parents. However, Sidney Callahan (1997) argues such households should still be seen as families. He claims that, if marriage was available, which it is now with the civil partnership Act of 2004, many gay and lesbian couples would marry. Callahan therefore claims gay and lesbian households with children should be regarded as a type of family, at least where the gay or lesbian relationships is intended to be permanent. He concludes “I would argue that gay or lesbian households that consist of intimate communities of mutual support and that display permanent shared commitments to intergrational nurturing share the kinship bonding we observe and name as family”
In conclusion whether the family is regarded as universal ultimately depends on the definition of the family. This is seen through the vast majority of variation within families in society and domestic arrangements that are accepted within societies. Diana Gittins (1993) says “Relationships are universal, so is some form of co-residence, of intimacy, sexuality and emotional bonds. But the forms these can take are infinitely variable and can be changes and challenged as well as embraced”. From this we can take the view that it may be pointless to define such a diverse institution as the family, as any relationship can reasonably be called a family.
