Artificial insemination

While many couples use birth control to limit the number of children, others have taken advantage of changing mores and new technology to increase their chances of having children. One method is artificial insemination, which involves the implanting of semen into a woman's uterus by means other than sexual intercourse. The semen may come from the woman's husband or, if the husband is sterile or is suspected of carrying a hereditary disease, from a (usually anonymous) donor. Artificial insemination by donor, although still rare, is becoming more common and socially acceptable. Nevertheless, for many people there are moral or legal complications.

Many modern Western legal systems fail to distinguish the pater (social father) from the genitor (presumed biologic father), while most traditional societies do make the distinction. Where it is not made, the law may regard the semen donor as the “father” of a child produced by artificial insemination and oblige him to bear financial responsibility for the child. Artificial insemination is even regarded by some people as a form of adultery. In order to prevent such difficulties, clinics that perform the insemination keep the identity of donors secret. Often they also mix donated semen with the semen of the prospective social father, in order to preserve the legal fiction that the pater and genitor are the same man.

Surrogate motherhood

The late 1970s saw the birth of the first “test tube babies,” conceived in vitro (“in glass”) under laboratory conditions. In vitro fertilization normally begins with the extraction of an ovum, or egg, and the fertilization of the ovum in a laboratory dish. The fertilized ovum is then introduced into the uterus, where it develops normally. In itself, in vitro fertilization is not particularly problematic, since it can and often does involve simply fertilizing an ovum from the woman who will carry the child. It becomes problematic, however, when the woman is a surrogate mother.

A surrogate mother is a woman who carries a child on behalf of another woman, who will become the child's social mother. The social mother will also be the child's genetic mother if she donates the ovum. The problem is that three roles normally borne by one woman—genetic mother, childbearing mother, and social mother—are now divided between two. In addition, the sperm may come from the husband of one of the women or from another man. Because of these complications and the emotional strain on both mothers (and potentially the child), surrogacy has been made illegal in some countries. In others, it is becoming institutionalized, and laws are being changed in order to define precisely the rights and obligations of parents and children in this situation.

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Universality of the family Murdock's hypothesis

In 1949 the American anthropologist George Peter Murdock published the results of a major survey of kinship and social organization in a worldwide sample of 250 societies. Murdock's starting point was the family, and on the basis of his survey he argued that the nuclear family is universal, at least as an idealized norm.

All of the societies in Murdock's sample exhibited some form of family organization. More specifically, although many societies were organized into polygamous families and extended families, even these had as their basis at least two nuclear families per polygamous or extended family household. The polygamous (compound) family was made up of two or more nuclear families affiliated through plural marriage, while the extended family consisted of two or more nuclear families joined together through parent–child ties. In Murdock's sample, 47 societies had only the nuclear family level, while 53 possessed polygamous but not extended families, 92 had some form of extended (including polygamous-extended) family organization, and the remainder proved impossible to categorize on the basis of information available at the time. Murdock's key point was that, even where complex forms of family organization occur, nuclear families are still found as the basis of the more complex forms.

Murdock argued further that the nuclear family is not only universal but also universally important. Earlier writers had argued that in many tribal societies the nuclear family is insignificant and serves no important functions in the lives of most people. Murdock, in denying this view, pointed out that the key functions of the nuclear family and its universal status are most apparent when viewed in reference to the relationships that make it up. The key functions include the sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational aspects of the family. The relationships include the bonds between husband and wife, father and son, father and daughter, mother and son, mother and daughter, brother and brother, sister and sister, and brother and sister. These eight relationships have come to be known as those of primary kinship, and they are normally the relationships through which all more distant ties of kinship are traced.