Bott Hypothesis

Last updated March 16, 2019

The Bott Hypothesis is a thesis first advanced in Elizabeth Bott's Family and Social Networks (1957), one of the most influential works published in the sociology of the family. Elizabeth Bott's hypothesis holds that the connectedness or the density of a husband's and wife's separate social networks is positively associated with marital role segregation.^[1]

Sociological studies of the family look at:

In mathematics and computer science, connectivity is one of the basic concepts of graph theory: it asks for the minimum number of elements that need to be removed to separate the remaining nodes into isolated subgraphs. It is closely related to the theory of network flow problems. The connectivity of a graph is an important measure of its resilience as a network.

Family Structure and Social Networks

In her Family and Social Network (1957), Elizabeth Bott argued that conjugal role performance is related to the density of each spouse's social networks outside the nuclear family. The data Bott used to develop this hypothesis were drawn from the study of 20 working-class, London families.

Thus, according to Bott:

"When many of the people a person knows interact with one another, that is when the person's network is close knit, the members of his network tend to reach consensus on norms and they exert consistent informal pressure on one another to conform to the norms, to keep in touch with one another, and, if need be, to help one another. If both husband and wife come to marriage with such close knit networks, and if conditions are such that the previous pattern of relationships is continued, the marriage will be superimposed on these pre-existing relationships, and both spouses will continue to be drawn into activities with people outside their own elementary family (family of procreation). Each will get some emotional satisfaction from these external relationships and will likely demand correspondingly less of the spouse. Rigid segregation of roles will be possible because each spouse can get help from other people."
— Elizabeth Bott, Family and Social Network. 1971 (2nd ed.). (Originally published, 1957). New York:Free Press.

^[2]

In other words, what she claimed is that if family members maintain ties with a network of friends or neighbors who know one another and interact apart from the family members, the members of these external social networks can develop norm consensus and exert pressure on the network's members. When members of close-knit networks marry and when they continue to be drawn into network activities after marriage, they can develop a clearly differentiated conjugal role organization of tasks. The external close-knit networks provide the spouses with instrumental assistance and emotional support outside the couple and they, thus, lessen conjugal interdependence and make for a segregated role organization.^[3]

Corollary Hypotheses

To support her main hypothesis, Bott also offered three corollary hypotheses:^[4]

The Class Principle. The more segregated the role-relationship, the more likely spouses are to have working-class status and less formal education. (For Bott, working class status was a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for segregated role performance)
The Composition Principle. The more segregated the role-relationship, the more likely females are to have locally concentrated relatives in their network and the more likely males are to have locally concentrated male friends in their network.
The Residential Principle. The more segregated the role-relationship, the more likely couples are to have a stable residence pattern. Conversely, the more joint the role relationship, the more likely spouses are to have a mobile residence pattern.

Considered by some as one of the predecessors of network science, Bott recognized the fact that, although important, individual attributes cannot explain all the variations in family relations. Instead, she claimed that the social environment which can be visualized as a network rather than as a group can affect conjugal roles. In particular, the density of a network (the proportion of individuals with direct ties to each other) facilitates the emergence of common norms and social support making husbands and wives less likely to invest in each other.^[4]

Further Research

Udry and Hall (1965)

Udry and Hall (1965) tested the Bott hypothesis by using a sample of 43 middle-aged, middle-class couples, and the four people each spouse indicated most frequent contact with. However, they did not find a clear-cut relationship between role segregation and network connectedness (measured by asking members of each spouse's network how well they knew each other). Thus, they conclude that Bott's hypothesis may apply only to lower-class couples, or perhaps to middle-class couples at a particular point in the life cycle.^[5]

Joel Nelson (1966)

Joel Nelson (1966) used a sample of 131 working-class women in New Haven and asked the women to list the four people they interacted with most frequently and how often they saw at least two of them at the same time. He introduced the term "clique" contacts for those who had interactions of the latter type at least once a week. Analyzing the influence of the closeness of clique relationships on members' attitudes toward marriage on a traditionalism-modernism dimension, he found the first to be related to marital traditionalism, though not strongly. Thus, women with "clique" relationships were found to have more traditional marital expectations and attitudes than their counterparts whose network contacts were more "individualistic".^[1]

Aldous and Straus (1966)

Aldous and Straus (1966) studied 391 married women living on farms and in towns of at least 2,500 inhabitants. The town group was separated into those with blue and white-collar husbands and the respondents were asked to name the eight women they socialized with most frequently and how many of the eight knew each other in order to measure network closure. Besides network connectedness, several other indexes were devised for measuring task differentiation, sex role activities and power. Although the data failed to confirm the Bott hypothesis, Aldous and Straus note that their sample may have been problematic since there was little variation in network connectedness, they did not know if the wives' social networks were developed before of after their marriages, and there was no data concerning the husbands' social networks.^[3]

Alexandra Maryansky and Masako Ishii-Kuntz (1991)

Alexandra Maryansky and Masako Ishii-Kuntz (1991) find evidence that supports Elizabeth Bott's hypothesis by applying it to a review of social relations among representative species from seven genera of Old World primates. After formalizing and stating Bott's theory more abstractly they highlight three phenomena concerning the effect of social networks:

the negative causal effect of network overlap on density of each actor's networks;
the positive causal effect of network density on the degree of social support provided by, and a normative elaboration of, each actor's networks;
the causal effect of social support and normative elaboration on the segregation of each actor's activities.^[4]

Related Research Articles

Cohabitation is an arrangement where two people who are not married live together. They often involve a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis.

Legal separation is a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a de facto separation while remaining legally married. A legal separation is granted in the form of a court order. In cases where children are involved, a court order of legal separation often makes child custody arrangements, specifying sole custody or shared parenting, as well as child support. Some couples obtain a legal separation as an alternative to a divorce, based on moral or religious objections to divorce.

Common-law marriage, also known as sui iuris marriage, informal marriage, marriage by habit and repute, or marriage in fact, is a legal framework in a limited number of jurisdictions where a couple is legally considered married, without that couple having formally registered their relation as a civil or religious marriage. The original concept of a "common-law marriage" is a marriage that is considered valid by both partners, but has not been formally recorded with a state or religious registry, or celebrated in a formal religious service. In effect, the act of the couple representing themselves to others as being married, and organizing their relation as if they were married, acts as the evidence that they are married.

A conjugal family is a nuclear family that may consist of a married couple and their children or a couple who are unmarried or underage. Conjugal means there is a marriage relationship. The family relationship is principally focused inward and ties to extended kin are voluntary and based on emotional bonds, rather than strict duties and obligations. The spouses and their children are considered to be of prime importance, and other more distant relatives less important. The marriage bond is important and stressed.

A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor, usually their legal spouse. The parties may engage in sexual activity. The generally recognized basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner's eventual return to ordinary life after release from prison. They also provide an incentive to inmates to comply with the various day-to-day rules and regulations of the prison.

A husband is a male in a marital relationship. The rights and obligations of a husband regarding his spouse and others, and his status in the community and in law, vary between cultures and have varied over time.

The type, functions, and characteristics of marriage vary from culture to culture, and can change over time. In general there are two types: civil marriage and religious marriage, and typically marriages employ a combination of both. Marriages between people of differing religions are called interfaith marriages, while marital conversion, a more controversial concept than interfaith marriage, refers to the religious conversion of one partner to the other's religion for sake of satisfying a religious requirement.

Relationship education promotes practices and principles of premarital education, relationship resources, relationship restoration, relationship maintenance, and evidence-based marriage education.

In the context of human society, a family is a group of people related either by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence or some combination of these. Members of the immediate family may include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Members of the extended family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and siblings-in-law. Sometimes these are also considered members of the immediate family, depending on an individual's specific relationship with them.

Remarriage is a marriage that takes place after a previous marital union has ended, as through divorce or widowhood. Some individuals are more likely to remarry than others; the likelihood can differ based on previous relationship status, level of interest in establishing a new romantic relationship, gender, race, and age among other factors. Those who choose not to remarry may prefer alternative arrangements like cohabitation or living apart together. Remarriage also provides mental and physical health benefits. However, although remarried individuals tend to have better health than individuals who do not repartner, they still generally have worse health than individuals who have remained continuously married. Someone who repeatedly remarries is referred to as a serial wedder.

Common-law relationships in Manitoba are government-sanctioned relationships available to both same-sex and different-sex unmarried couples in the Canadian province of Manitoba. While not as extensive as the rights and benefits of marriage, these relationships provide some important benefits to unmarried couples. Registration is voluntary; many of the laws apply automatically to any couple in the province after living together for several years.

Interracial marriage in the United States has been legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia that deemed "anti-miscegenation" laws unconstitutional. The proportion of interracial marriages as a proportion of all marriages has been increasing since, such that 15.1% of all new marriages in the United States were interracial marriages by 2010 compared to a low single-digit percentage in the mid 20th century.

Template:Proposed deletion. concern=no such thing as Zelder's paradox

Filter theory is a sociological theory concerning dating and mate selection. It proposes that social structure limits the number of eligible candidates for a mate. Most often, this takes place due to homogamy, as people seek to date and marry only those similar to them. Homogamy is the idea of marriage between spouses who share similar characteristics, where heterogamy denotes marriage between spouses of different characteristics. The idea of "opposites attract: is heterogamous as well as the idea that one spouse has complementing, not similar characteristics to the other.

Homogamy is marriage between individuals who are, in some culturally-important way, similar to each other. It is a form of assortative mating. The union may be based on socioeconomic status, class, gender, ethnicity, or religion, or age in the case of the so-called age homogamy.

Elizabeth Spillius was a Canadian-English anthropologist, sociologist, and Kleinian psychoanalyst.

Marriage and health are closely related. Married people experience lower morbidity and mortality across such diverse health threats as cancer, heart attacks, and surgery. There are gender differences in these effects which may be partially due to men's and women's relative status. Most research on marriage and health has focused on heterosexual couples, and more work is needed to clarify the health effects on same-sex marriage. Simply being married, as well as the quality of one's marriage, has been linked to diverse measures of health. Research has examined the social-cognitive, emotional, behavioral and biological processes involved in these links.

Newlyweds are people who have recently entered into a marriage. The time frame during which a married couple is considered newlywed varies, but for social science research purposes it may be considered as up to four years into the marriage.

The Vulnerability Stress Adaptation (VSA) Model is a framework for conceptualizing the dynamic processes of marriage, created by Benjamin Karney and Thomas Bradbury. The VSA Model emphasizes the consideration of multiple dimensions of functioning, including couple members’ enduring vulnerabilities, experiences of stressful events, and adaptive processes, to account for variations in marital quality and stability over time. The VSA model was a departure from past research considering any one of these themes separately as a contributor to marital outcomes, and integrated these separate factors into a single, cohesive framework in order to best explain how and why marriages change over time. In adherence with the VSA model, in order to achieve a complete understanding of marital phenomenon, research must consider all dimensions of marital functioning, including enduring vulnerabilities, stress, and adaptive processes simultaneously.

References

1 2 Michael Gordon and Helen Downing. 1978. A Multivariate Test of the Bott Hypothesis in an Urban Irish Setting, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 40, Nr. 3, pp. 585-593.
↑ Elizabeth Bott. 1971. Family and Social Network (2nd ed.). (Originally published, 1957). New York:Free Press.
1 2 Joan Aldous and Murray A. Straus. 1966. Social Networks and Conjugal Roles: A Test of Bott's Hypothesis, Social Forces, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 576-580.
1 2 3 Alexandra Maryansky and Masako Ishii-Kuntz. 1991. A Cross-Species Application Of Bott's Hypothesis on Role Segregation and Social Networks, Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 403-425.
↑ Udry, J. Richard and Mary Hall. 1965. Marital role segregation and social networks in middle-class middle-aged couples, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 27, pp. 392- 395.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[irish-1] 1 2 Michael Gordon and Helen Downing. 1978. A Multivariate Test of the Bott Hypothesis in an Urban Irish Setting, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 40, Nr. 3, pp. 585-593.

[bott-2] Elizabeth Bott. 1971. Family and Social Network (2nd ed.). (Originally published, 1957). New York:Free Press.

[ald-3] 1 2 Joan Aldous and Murray A. Straus. 1966. Social Networks and Conjugal Roles: A Test of Bott's Hypothesis, Social Forces, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 576-580.

[spec-4] 1 2 3 Alexandra Maryansky and Masako Ishii-Kuntz. 1991. A Cross-Species Application Of Bott's Hypothesis on Role Segregation and Social Networks, Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 403-425.

[ud-5] Udry, J. Richard and Mary Hall. 1965. Marital role segregation and social networks in middle-class middle-aged couples, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 27, pp. 392- 395.