Abstract
Having as a framework the reality of household and family relations in Portugal, this paper focus on the marriage as part and as strategy in the process of reproduction and eventual social mobility, which has been increasingly institutionalized over time and subject to the norms and prescriptions of moral, religious and/or state order. After a brief initial reflection on marriage and its components – emotion and interest –, the motivations and the resources, the importance attached, then domestic power will be subject of analysis based on the data collected. It will be revealed the marriage property regime, the values of the assets by the partners before marriage, the division on decision making, by sex, on certain matters, and money management in the household, the couple’s shared moments, and their initiatives and forms of communication.
Highlights
Problem and Methodology in the common sense perspective and for some social scientists [1], is traditionally assumed that, while in the traditional, namely on peasant family, social relations and, in particular, marital choices were structured in function of calculated interest, the volume of economic goods, in modern societies it would prevail the emotion or love, being relegated to the background the interest dimension
Based on the reality of family relationships within the framework of social classes, marriage emerges as a central strategy in the process of social reproduction [4,5,6] or social mobility [7,8,9] and/or reproduction with some social mobility [10,11,12,13,14]
Connected within the marriage – increasingly institutionalized over time and subject to the norms and prescriptions of the moral, religious and/or state order – lies another phenomenon even less openly recognized than the binomial emotion-interest: the domestic power
Summary
In the common sense perspective and for some social scientists [1], is traditionally assumed that, while in the traditional, namely on peasant family, social relations and, in particular, marital choices were structured in function of calculated interest, the volume of economic goods (land, cattle), in modern societies it would prevail the emotion or love, being relegated to the background the interest dimension. [3, 15, 18, 32,33,34,35,36], the power of each marital partner varies depending on the degree of provision on resources and rewards (marriage property regime, value of assets by partner before marriage and ), the way and extent of participation in the production process, the degree of mobility and the presence/absence of hierarchy of sexual roles in the extradomestic division of labour and on reproductive sphere of the family unit and the respective interactions and negotiations, in particular in the mentioned division and eventual overload of household tasks, in decision’s making by sex on certain matters Some conclusions will be presented in the light of the mentioned problem
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