Stacey, Judith. Unhitched: Love, Marriage, Term Paper

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Stacey describes the Mosuo as matrilineal -- all family ties pass down through the mother's line, even though it is not a culture where women rule over males. The Mosuo's social structures question the presumed naturalness of patriarchy and that of the nuclear family unit. In Mosuo society, girls are given their own rooms at night from a young age and it is accepted that men will have sexual intercourse with women. There is no sense of sexual immorality -- or the idea that male-female sexual connections are permanent.

Amongst the Mosuo, women live together and raise children together Sometimes male-female couples will unite for life, but the children do not belong to the father, as there is no concept of the child being tied to the father through genetics. Other Mosuo couples are transient, but there is no sense of superiority of one type of union or another. A woman who has a child with a man who is a 'one night stand' is just as moral as a woman with a consistent partnership. Because of their exposure to Western culture, some couples are establishing more stable unions with others within this traditional culture. But this is more due to media awareness, says Stacey -- it is not due to any specific deficits caused by more traditional matrilineal child-rearing practices in the culture. The unusual patterns of life that have evolved in this highly protected society demonstrate that the assumed stresses that arise from an 'unnatural' marriage for the couple or the children produced by the union are based upon culture, not due to natural, unmet needs.

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While Stacey admits that research indicates that children may 'do better' with two parents in Western society, she still believes that too much emphasis is placed on marriage. Children also 'do better' if they have enough to eat, a good education, and good role models of all kinds. There should not be excessive stress placed upon marriage as the key to happiness. Stacey's anecdotal and statistical data makes a compelling case for her thesis.

Previous to writing Unhitched, Stacey did extensive sociological research upon the communities she studied, authoring several journal articles on the Mosuo and South Africa. Her conclusion is that we cannot "funnel" our desires as a species into a single, prescribed domestic norm (Stacey 203). Stacey's book is a bracing challenge to what is often taken for granted -- the normalcy of the nuclear family -- and forces the reader to appreciate that his or her own family is not the apex of centuries of development. But for some readers, her work will be comforting, given that she stresses over and over again that growing up in a 'nontraditional' or even 'dysfunctional' family unit is no prescription for personal disaster, given that tradition and perceived family functionality is a product of culture, not biology.

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