Cultural Distribution and Social Structure

In chapter 10, the distribution of understandings among different statuses and the general expectations connecting those statuses are seen to provide a powerful resource for wives based in the unique character of the spouse relationship. This resource is vital to the wives sometimes getting what they want from their husbands even though the husbands have the undoubted power to refuse. This social structural effect, like that involved in the seeking of medical treatment, is seen to work even though some of the key understandings involved are not shared by all—or, in this case, any—of the actors involved.

The husbands say they give in to their wives' wishes because they do not want them to be "unhappy," and the wives say the husbands do it because of their "love" for them and because the husbands are "good." The source of the husbands' concerns about their wives' unhappiness and of their goodness is shown to be related to the fact that in all other relationships, men are blocked in receiving emotional support. The general expectations concerning emotional content in the husband's whole network of relationships makes the spouse relationship unique in this respect and thus gives the wife a powerful resource whether she admits it or not and regardless of her awareness of it.

Again, then, the distribution of culture is itself an important agent in influencing behavior. The effectiveness of the distribution of culture depends, of course, on conformity to the understandings involved. The understandings that people share can only be a basis for social life if the understandings concerned are used as actual guides to behavior. Since there are some understandings that apply to all or nearly all group members and some that apply only to those classified in particular statuses under limited conditions, there must be two different types of pressures for conformity. One of these must be parallel to the differential distribution of culture in order to produce the differentiated behavior appropriate to members of different statuses in various contexts. The other sort of pressure for conformity must be fairly uniform leading people to behave in somewhat similar, rather than differentiated, ways in certain domains and contexts where such similarity sometimes promotes group cohesiveness.