Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Historical background
- Early stages of relationships
- Home environments of plural families
- Managing everyday life
- Social-emotional and family relationships
- Appendix A Methodology and procedure
- Appendix B Demographics of Mormon polygyny
- Notes
- References
- Index
Home environments of plural families
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Historical background
- Early stages of relationships
- Home environments of plural families
- Managing everyday life
- Social-emotional and family relationships
- Appendix A Methodology and procedure
- Appendix B Demographics of Mormon polygyny
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
The three chapters in this section examine environmental aspects of the lives of present-day Mormon fundamentalists, especially their homes and dwellings. Chapter 10 concentrates on the living arrangements of plural families: wives living separately from one another, sharing dwellings, or residing in combinations of separate and shared dwellings. Attention is also given to changes in living arrangements over a family's history, the factors responsible, and the ideal residential arrangements to which modern plural families aspire.
Chapters 11 and 12 explore the psychological attachments of wives and husbands to their homes. As chapter 11 illustrates, homes are very important to plural wives, and they have control over decorating and access by others, achieve solitude and privacy, and display their personal identity, relationships with their husband, and links to their religious and cultural community.
By contrast, husbands in contemporary plural families have little psychological attachment to their family's homes, as explained in chapter 12. They play little part in managing, furnishing, or decorating homes; often do not have places of their own in these dwellings; and generally display weak bonding with family residences. Even the management of their clothing and personal possessions reflects a lack of attachment to dwellings and attests to their somewhat “nomadic” status in plural families.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society , pp. 181 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996