11: Family Formations

Welcome to module 11, where we will be reading Chapter 9: Families and Children, p. 302-339 and watching the video: The Business of Being Born. We will also have our third exam.

Families and Children

This chapter overviews the various ways in which American families form through partnerships and if and how they bring children into the structure. the author points out that the phrase “start a family,” demonstrates how central having children is to having a family in the popular imagination–making families without children somehow appear as less than. A significant shift for the contemporary American family, in contrast to previous generations, is the downward trend of having children. Whereas at the turn of the last century families may have had six children, and the 1950s families.

Childbearing

On page 320 of the childbearing section, some important statistics are highlighted that we should memorize for context:

• half of the unmarried women who give birth live with the child’s father (p. 320)
• Many children have more than two parents, with blended families
• women over age 45 without children has doubled since the 1980s

Following these context descriptions, the author defines fertility rates and how such is calculated, which we should also keep in mind. The fertility rate is the number of births that a woman will have over a lifetime in a particular country (p. 321). The replacement rate is two, since this will replace the two parents.

Unmarried parents–forty percent of children are born to unmarried parents (p. 322).  Marriage has declined much quicker than birth rates. The author points out that the rates of births and marriages are also impacted by demographics categories of class and race. Lower levels of education are correlated with higher rates of birth. Half of all pregnancies were unintended (p. 325).

Adoption

Adoption has had an interesting social context in the US. Before the 1960s, especially in the 1950s and earlier, women who became pregnant outside of married either faced a “shotgun marriage” or “went away” to a house for unwed mothers, where they sat out their pregnancy and then gave their baby up for adoption, because of the social stigma of the time. And of course, before Roe v. Wade, many women suffered through illegal abortions. As such stigma has loosened, women are more able to keep their babies. Currently, 2.1 percent of U.S. children, or 1.5 million, are adopted (310). 37 percent were adopted through the foster care system, 38 percent were adopted through private services, and 25 percent were internationally adopted (p. 328). International adoption is a contention issue, wrapped in geopolitical considerations. It is based on rich countries taking the children from poor countries and raising them away from their culture, in a life where they will most likely stick out visually in their adopted family. Rarely does the adoptive family become culturally competent in the child’s culture in order to transmit the culture, thus ending their connection to their homeland. If we imagine the reverse image, of American white babies adopted in a distant land of Africa or Asia, most Americans would not enjoy the image. “To facilitate the complicated legal relationships involved in international adoptions, many countries, including the United States, have joined the Hague Adoption Convention” (p. 329).

Why (Not) Have Children?

Some individuals and families have no desire for children, or are unable to conceive. What are the various ways in which such outcomes manifest? Class and race dynamics played into this outcome as well. Approximately half of pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned, especially among younger people. For low income communities, having children can represent the transition to adulthood, which is one means that is available when other economic means are not. Historically, having many children in agricultural communities was a way to provide labor and security for parents, and we continue to see this in many developing countries. For people in higher education and income brackets, they often choose to have far fewer children, because they become more of an economic liability and investment. For folks suffering from infertility, which can be roughly correlated with health, not having children can be a difficult experience, and many spend a great deal of money on infertility treatments. Infertility is defined by the author as a couple having sex without contraception for a period of 12 months without conception. Globally the infertility rate is 9% (p. 332). In the United States, the infertility rate is 6% for married couples. For others who may identify as childfree, they have no desire for children, or prioritize other things in their life.

Children’s Living Arrangements

This chart shows the significant transition away from two parent family formations, but still high rates overall. Inequality and class status significantly impact this type of family formation outcome.

Parenting
The chapter overviews the different ways in which children’s living arrangements are managed. There has been a great change towards diversifying family formations. The author points out that some of the central roles of the family are those of socialization, social bonds, and social networks (p. 340). The author estimates that an average family may spend between $175,000 and $370,00 on child-related expenses. In contrast to the early 1900s, when children were used as labor and not allowed a childhood, today’s children, especially those of privilege, require intensive parenting to establish their child’s future, especially in economically desperate times. The sociologist Margaret Nelson in her book Parenting Out of Control, points out that parents can use more technology to control their children: connection, constraint, and spying through such surveillance options (p. 348). The author also mentions the statistical support for spanking children between 70-80%, whereas those against are around 20-30%, and such numbers remain quite consistent over time (p. 349). Overall, the author summarizes that parents in general hopefully provide: supportiveness, monitoring, and discipline (p. 350). The chapter focuses also on the changing ideals and significance of fathers’ involvement in childrearing.

Gay and Lesbian Parenting
When I teach this course face-to-face, I often invite Brian Frank to discuss his family, where he talks about being a gay dad, a foster-adoptive parent, in a transracial family.  You can view the video of his story here:

The author estimates that the percentage of children living with same-sex parents is around 1%, as estimated by an author in 2014, so I would wonder if this number has increased, especially since the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage (p. 350).

The Business of Being Born
Birth: it’s a miracle. A rite of passage. A natural part of life. But more than anything, birth is a business. Compelled to find answers after a disappointing birth experience with her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to explore the maternity care system in America.

You can watch the movie at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/Business-Being-Born-Helen-Ayres/dp/B001IIHAGK

10: Relationships

Welcome to module 10: Relationships. During this section we will read Chapter 7: Love and Romantic Relationships, p. 236-271. We will also watch the video The Mobile Love Industry. Finally, you have your second discussion board posting number 2.

The challenge and lesson of this chapter is to understand the sociological approach to love and relationships. How is this different than the psychological or biological approach?

Chapter 7: Love and Romantic Relationships opens with the idea of how social scripts (238) relate to our dating life: how we encounter mates in social spaces segregated by race, class and social status. How these interactions are scripted based on a normative concept of how such encounters should proceed (symbolic interaction theory). Such scripts are reinforced in our media, social expectations at large, and through the pressures of our peer and family groups. Most of us have the expectation of dating people that are similar to us in background and within a similar social location. Furthermore, when someone dates someone markedly different from them, they may experience social sanctions, especially from family members, which work to reinforce the normative expectations. How do you see this reflected in the world around you? What are examples of being outside the script (which point to the normative position of script behaviors)? Such scripts also contribute to our understanding of romantic love, which only recently a part of married coupling. The chapter talks about how social norms have changed over time and shifted the social script: demise of the dating system, living together, widespread divorce, and communication technologies (239).

Dating

The chapter then goes on to different “relationship rituals,” and lists dating as the first one. We can think of dating as a stage in the life course of relationships. The contemporary version of dating began in the post-war era and provided a social encounter with two people, which may be chaperoned by family, or, with the advent of the car, a semi-private moment (p. 243).

Hooking Up

Paula England has contributed important research to the understanding of hookup culture, with important statistics. Please do watch the video:

Lisa Wade is the other scholar who has written a book called American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus (2017). In this book, Wade overviews her research on the sexualities and behaviors taking place within campuses across the United States. She contextualizes these behaviors within the social institution of higher education and how the unfinished feminist revolution has altered expectations. She also examines how social inequalities are exasperated by hooking up, with the more affluent students liking the hook up culture the best, with differing effects on racial and sexual minorities. Lisa Wade describes the hookup script as one based on pre-game drinking, partying, flirting, and hooking up with a partner, and afterwards, stressing the insignificance of the event.

Connecting Online

Match.com was the first large-scale online dating service, starting in 1995. The company now owns Tinder and OkCupid. Online dating has rising along with the development of the internet; and furthermore, social media sites not occupy a large percentage of our social life. The demographics of dating people has also changed with more single parents and older divorced people joining the mix.

Additionally, Christian Rudder is a founder of OkCupid.com dating website. One of the interesting things that dating websites provide is detailed data about all interactions (and non-interactions) between individuals. This information can be even more truthful than how people see themselves. Rudder wrote his book Dataclysm: Who we are when we think no one’s looking, with his insider access to this information.  For example,while a person may say that they are non-racist in their mate selection, online dating interactions can demonstrate exactly who they do respond to and who they do not respond to based on various demographic factors. For an overview of the book, see the video below for the very interesting information on the ways in which people interact on online platforms.

Different Demographics 

Age. GLBT. Race. Gender. How do these demographic differences change aspects of dating life?

The section on older singles and single parents points to new issues related to different demographic groups entering the world of dating (p. 251). Many divorced women may have children of their own; and the people they date may also have children, leading to issues related to meeting each other’s children and perhaps creating a blended family. Those with children probably have much less free time with which to date, in the first place.

For GLBT individuals, their dating pursuits are tempered by ongoing discrimination, social invisibility, and the overwhelming landscape of heteronormativity. Individuals may be more or less out about their identities, but the general default is to assume everyone is heterosexual, and this will cause difficulties for GLBT folks to express their dating interests and partners.

Gender is a significant factor in the dating world because of the gender scripts that individuals play. For GLBT folks, this can provide more freedom and space for behavior, but some couples also still revert to butch/femme style behaviors and presentations. However, the research demonstrates that GLBT research provides the most potential for equality between partners. How are individuals’ gender presentations scripted in dating relationships? How about their physical presentation through dress and behavior, for reinforcing gender roles?

Race is an important factor in dating, because our larger social context is one within a culture of white supremacy and self-segregation. Overwhelmingly, people choose partners with similar backgrounds, especially when it comes to race. On page 250-251 the data image shows how likely each racial group member is to date someone of the other races. Only whites have a high 61% rating for dating other whites, while for Asians and Latinos, they are also more likely to select whites before their own group members, who are second. Only blacks are most likely to date a member of their own race because choosing whites secondly, and this may be based also on the extreme anti-black racism in our culture.

 The Mobile Love Industry (video)
The smartphone has become the crucial link in modern relationships, it facilitates far more connections than real-world interaction ever allowed — from dating app geniuses who use data and game theory to hack the system, to the darker side of digital love, where app addiction runs rampant and users find themselves endlessly swiping in an empty search for more. Karley Sciortino will take on the task of determining where the human search for love is headed in the 21st century. She’ll meet with the brains behind these dating apps and try each of the most promising apps out using her own love life as a testing ground.

9: Sexuality

Welcome to Module 9: Sexuality. In this section we will read Chapter 6: Sexuality, p. 196-235).  And we have a feature length documentary to watch: How to Lose Your Virginity. 

Description: How To Lose Your Virginity is an eye-opening and irreverent documentary journey through religion, history, pop culture and the sociology of gender double standards. By turns hilarious and horrifying, the film reveals the myths and misogyny behind virginity in America, and what we can do to change the conversation.  A film by Therese Shechter, director of I Was A Teenage Feminist. 

In this chapter, we overview how sociologists view sexuality: 1) identity, 2) biology, and 3) sexual behavior. 

Sexual Identity and Orientation

 

Firstly, the chapter situations our understanding of sexuality in the United States and in the contemporary period. Historically, sexuality was controlled by family and society through both formal and informal regulations–which especially targeted female sexuality. Marriage historians will connect this focus on female, and not male sexuality, demonstrates how women were considered property of first, their fathers, and then their husbands. Such rules repressing female sexuality was in part to protect patrilineal family lines, using women’s bodies as a conduit to pass the father’s name to his children (his legal property, as was his wife). Women did not begin to have their own legal standing in the United States until the 1970s, when women could finally have a bank account in their own name without needing their husband’s permission. The creation of birth control pills and other contraceptions also further uncoupled sexuality to the family institution. These changes were necessary to lead to our contemporary understanding of sexuality as based more on individual liberty. Thus the first sociological concept is that of sexual identity and its social development. Sexual orientation is the pattern of romantic or sexual attraction to others in relation to one’s own gender identity (p. 200). The chapter lists a few sexual orientation categories, such as heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual, but others have contributed a far more vast array of identities providing more nuances, which acronyms such as LGBT attempt to capture. Sociologists have provided different ways in which to understand sexual orientation: questioning its biological rootedness, thinking of it as a permanent state, a evolving state, a performance, or focused more on feelings, behaviors, or self-understanding (p. 200). Heterosexuality is the dominant sexual orientation category and this is the orientation promoted by social institutions, thereby casting a stigma, or homophobia, upon non-heterosexual orientations (p. 201). We can see how institutions uphold heterosexuality and marginalize other orientations (i.e., the family, church, education, military, economy). Homosexuality has been labeled a mental illness until it was removed from the DSM in 1973, and was criminalized. Religions have overwhelmingly condemned homosexuality. While laws have changed, media representation has increased, and visibility is much greater, stigma remains.

The chapter had two charts demonstrating the change in sexual behavior of men and women over time. In the first chart we see women’s sexual behavior in certain categories (age 18-44). The point out the discrepancy between those who have had same-sex partners ever, identify as LGBT, and are exclusively attracted to the same sex (p. 202).

Men’s behavior is much more narrower. What accounts for these differences? Especially considering that society defines men as more sexual than women? The chapter goes on to compare a chart of attitudes about various behaviors to demonstrate how such attitudes and norms change over time (p. 204):

The Biology of Human Sexuality

Firstly, it is difficult to differentiate where biology and society’s influences wear off, as we use all of these concepts in order to reinforce the dominant narrative that has power in our culture. Obviously, we use cultural and social restraints on human sexuality–we do not just act completely freely. Yet, we do have biological urges as well that are related to our hormones and genetics. And it is difficult to assess the impulse to reinforce the dominant narrative compared against absolute truths. We even question ourselves when we do not fully conform or feel the same as what is expected of us on many levels. The chapter states that there has been no findings linking genetics to sexual orientation of parents and children (p. 206-7). Even studies on twins have been inconclusive (p. 207). Other researchers have tried to study the influence upon hormonal factors during pregnancy that are also inconclusive. These studies have often been used to “explain” homosexuality as deviance, rather than to “explain” heterosexuality and its developmental course (p. 207). Other studies have focused on behaviors of animals, which includes tremendous variety, but humans use these studies to justify or outrage their own projections. Overall, the chapter discusses how sociologists do not uphold these evolutionary arguments, as we do not argue that humans are animals, but rather, social creatures that socialize their behavior.

Sexual Behavior

Sexual behavior is very difficult to study, of course (p. 210). While biologists might go out into the forest to observe animals in their natural environment to observe their sexual activity, human sexuality is controlled through socialization and not on display for scientific observation. One of the first mass studies of human behavior was conducted by Alfred Kinsey and colleagues in Indiana at the Institute for Sex Research in the 1940s. He attempted to to find out the actual behaviors engage in underneath the hiding that goes around such intimate behaviors. The movie Kinsey (2004) captures his research quest:

His methods included interviewing thousands of ordinary people about their actual behaviors that they may not have disclosed to those even closest to them. This type of research can assist in our understanding of human behavior in order to understand the transmission of STIs for example, how people understand and mitigate their risks, or not.

In the last 50 or 100 years, we have seen great changes in the sexual social norms and behaviors in our society. In this section of the chapter, the author talks about the changes in intimacy as impacted by social and technological advances, such as contraception development. Beginning with the generation that came of age in the 1960s, 95% of Americans have sex before marriage (p. 212). Men usually have more sexual partners than women do (p. 212). And sexual assault is common at around 20% of women between ages 18 to 44. The sexual double standard allows men to be more more engaged in sexual activities that would cause stigma if done by women. The advent of the pill has had a tremendous cultural impact: first approved in 1960 by the FDA; in 1965 married couples won a right to privacy via a Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut to use contraceptives; and by 1971 1/3 of women had used the pill (p. 216). Sex is an important aspect of long term relationships (p. 218). And for infidelity, the rates have remained fairly consistent for two decades at 21% of men and 12% of women (p. 219). The section goes on to discuss the role of sexual activity in different life stages: adolescence, young adulthood and fertility years, post-fertility, and senior citizens and sexuality. Teen pregnancy and abortions rates are much lower than they were in the 1980s and 1990s; and the rates of condom use is now decreasing after many years of increase for adolescence (p. 222).

Sexuality and Health

Out of the vast array of topics to consider under sexual health, the chapter focuses on sexually transmitted infections and erectile dysfunction, with a cutaway section on sex education in secondary school. While different STIs have been around regularly, the 1980s were marked by the rise of HIV/AIDS, which has overall impacted 700k Americans and each year about 13,000 people die from the disease. Treatments have advanced but a cure has not yet been found. Other STIs are more common and of one quoted study, one third of adolescent girls who are sexually active have an STI (p. 226). Sex education has often been controversial in schools, with parents opting out, school districts being very conservative in what can be taught, and the focus has often emphasized negativity, disease, and an abstinence-focus, in some schools that is the only orientation allowed, and in others, that is highly promoted. Often, the programs do not talk about the emotions involved in sexuality, the pleasures, nor the sexual double standard that harms women and elevates male pleasure and dominance.

8: Gender

Welcome to Module 8: Gender (Nov 7-13). In this section, we will read Chapter 5: Gender, p. 156-195.

The chapter beings with an overview of some key concepts that distinguish a spectrum when it comes to understanding sex and gender. Be sure you can distinguish and define:

• sex— One’s biological category, male or female, based on anatomy and physiology (p. 159)
• gender— The social realization of one’s sex (p. 159)
• gender identity— The identification with the social category boy/man or girl/woman (p. 159)
• sexual identity— The identification with the social category boy/man or girl/woman (p. 159)
• gender expression— One’s pattern of outward behavior in relation to common standards of a gender category (p. 159)
• intersex– A condition in which a person’s chromosomal composition doesn’t correspond with his or her sexual anatomy at birth, or the anatomy is not clearly male or female (p. 167)
• transgender— A term to describe individuals whose gender identity does not match their assigned sex (p. 168)
• socialization— The process by which individuals internalize elements of the social structure, making those elements part of their own personality (p. 176)
• symbolic interaction— How interpersonal interactions reinforce larger social structures, such as gender norms (p. 175)
• gender socialization— The outcome of countless interactions, starting with those between parents and children, which reinforce gender norms (p. 176)

For the purposes of sociologists, we focus more on the socialized aspect of gender performance, rather than the chromosomal, or biological background of individuals. We are interested in the ways in which society selectively takes biological matters to reinforce via social patterned behaviors. Men and women are more alike than different, but our culture emphasizes differences, and individuals behave in ways that reinforce gender differences. In this chapter, we aim to question these social processes of gender socialization.

One of the examples mixing biological and cultural gender norms is that of men being expected to be taller than women, especially in a romantic coupling. While if randomly selected, 8% of women would be taller than their husbands; however, in reality, only 4% of women are taller than their husbands, demonstrating that the social norms are more extreme than the biological facts (p. 163).

However, looking at another biological outcome; in the above chart we see that women live longer than males in every age category (p. 165). However, socially we discuss men in ways that state they are stronger than women. If we shifted our perspective of strength to living longer, we could frame women as a stronger sex. Female is the original state of the unsexed fetus before hormones influence genital development, but we think of “man” as the original human form from which females deviate.

The above key terms cover the distinctions between sex, gender, and identity formation. While the majority of people have a gender identity that aligns with their biological sex, about one in two hundred people have a misalignment between the two, resulting in a potential transgender identity (p. 168). Nowadays, we have some representation of transgender identity in the mainstream media, such as Thomas Beatie or Caitlyn Jenner.

Feminism

Feminism is the social movement and ideology that advances the social and political (etc.) rights for women to be equal to that of men (p. 173). Equality, not supremacy. From this premise, feminism goes on to analyze all aspects of our culture and pays particular attention to inequality, especially in relation to gender, but not exclusively so. Most importantly, we must think of power once again, and how power manifests itself in gender dynamics. Patriarchy is a social system which has privileged the roles of men in society, and handed this down through sons. For those use to being in privileged positions socially, equally can feel like oppression.

Masculinity

Recently in gender studies, masculinity and its social roles has been the center of much research. This research points out the ways that men are socialized into a very narrow parameter of acceptable gender behavior, compared to that of women. The video Tough Guise demonstrates the way in which media frames masculinity, and how this impacts real men and boys, as well as women and girls.

Interactive Circles of Socialization

The author, Philip Cohen, talks about the various circles of socialization that direct us to proper gender behavior from the day we are born, if not earlier. Think of all the pink and blue gender defined toys in the story, and how parents color the rooms of children. How do siblings reinforce gender norms in the household? How does age factor in? Once a child leaves the closed parameters of family life, social institutions influence the individual: schools, peers, religion, activities, neighborhoods, television, video games, and so on. How would you describe the specific ways in which all of these institutions and groups socialize younger members? What are examples of someone being socially sanctioned out of behavior deemed inappropriate? Has that happened to you? Have you been one of the socializing agents in this process?

Gender at Work

Because of these socialized divides and stereotype along the lines of gender; how does this create real outcomes in the economy and the world of work? How does this position men and women differently in relation to their property ownership, wealth, income, and inequality? What percentage of the earth’s property do women own? Which jobs are the most gender segregated and how is that maintained socially, if gender discrimination is illegal? What are female dominated professions? What are the different outcomes when a woman enters a male-dominated field, compared against a man that enters a female-dominated field? What are the salary outcomes for men and women? What percentage of wages do women earn, compared with men in comparable fields? How does this impact status?

What does it mean when people say that raising children is the most important job in the world, yet it remains unpaid, and when it is paid, it is low level service work?

7: Work and Families

Welcome to Module 7: Work and Families. During this section, we will read Chapter 11: Work and Families, p. 398-435.

Work in Institutional Arenas

To start, the chapter defines several key terms: work as labor for an end purpose, care work as conducted to take care of another person, and house work as labor engaged in the house, such as cooking and cleaning (p. 400). Work can be conducted on the market, which is measured by the exchange of currency, and thus is a documented exchange. House and care work is often done informally and not for pay inside one’s own home. However, when this work is outsourced, it enters the market economy and has a financial value attached. The most significant changes in the world of work in the last century has been the dramatic rise of women in the workplace. Men’s employment has remained at a relatively flat eighty percent.

Occupational Segregation

While women have entered the market economy in a large force, their entry has been based on discriminatory laws, policies, informal practice, educational tracking, and so on. Occupational segregation refers to men and women having jobs in separate occupations. Beyond the workplace, when care work and house work is including, the chapter defines gender division of labor as the ways in which all types of labor are distributed among men and women.

Housework and Child Care

Historically and globally, women are pressured to assume the responsibilities of childcare and housework. With the dramatic rise of women entering the workforce, such gender norms are shifting, but they have lagged behind in the household. This work continues to be unpaid and undervalued. While in the market economy, labor can be tracked and documented through the exchange of currency, tracking time spent on care and house labor is more difficult to document. Social scientists may use one measurement tool called the time use study. Nationally, there is the American Time Use Survey, conducted each year by the federal government. Using this type of methodology means asking people to keep a detailed daily log documenting the various activities they do and for how long they do them. Historically, various feminist movement campaigns have been waged to improve the situation of women and unpaid labor, including a campaign for wages for housework (p. 409) and ways to value such work as a society.

The authors define the second shift as how working women come home from their job and conduct further unpaid work in the household, cooking dinner, and taking care of the children. If she walked across the street and did the same type of labor for her neighbor for pay, then this work would be recognized in the GDP. Therefore, we can see that the GDP only narrowly defines and captures labor data.

These gender differences in labor contribute to ongoing gender inequality in society. The employment structures themselves further exasperate this inequality by organizing the workplace around a presumed normative male worker. When women are the workers, the fit between the workplace and their family obligations are much more uncomfortable than it is for men. In the section Division of Labor within Married Couples, the authors provide a chart (p. 412-413) where the division of labor is visualized.

This division of labor is often rationalized because men make more money and therefore it makes more sense for the man to keep his job while the woman sacrifices her career. However, this is a self perpetuating cycle that just reinforces the inequality. Another interesting chart on page 414, presents the earnings differences between husbands and wives:

Valuing Unpaid Work

In this cut-out section on pages 408-9, there is an overview of the issue of paid and unpaid labor as demonstrated by two different hypothetical families. In one, the division of labor is equal and in the other, the division of labor is based on the breadwinner-homemaker model. With such specialization, the latter family has a net gain of 7 more hours of domestic unpaid labor. However, the bigger picture demonstrates that the male partners are gaining skills in the workplace, whereas the wives are not. This puts the women in a vulnerable position of depending on the man, which could result in her having less power in the relationship, and in extreme cases, being victimized and not having the resources to flee. If the couple divorced, the female-partner’s unpaid domestic labor would be easily replaced; however, the female would have a very difficult time replacing her male-provider half. Thus, this scenario needs to capture the opportunity cost of a woman staying at home, especially if she has a great deal of social capital in education and access to professional employment. 

The section concludes with a discussion of the 1970s feminist campaign wages for housework, which is documented in a book by Louise Toupin called The History of Wages for Housework. Coming out of this time period when women were discriminated against in the workplace and financially dependent on husbands, and before the early 1970s, women has no rights to their own bank accounts or employment, this campaign was significant. Ultimately, women began entering the market place in large numbers, leaving domestic work unpaid. 

Towards Gender Balance

In this section, the authors overview the significant changes in domestic work and how women’s ration of 7:1 has been reduced to 2:1 in comparing their unpaid domestic labor to that of their male partner. However, as we can see, it is still far from equal in the ration of unpaid labor, and women continue to get paid less than men in the market economy. These types of strains can cause a work-family conflict when families cannot cope with their employment and domestic requirements. For single parents, the challenges are even greater (p. 417). Historically, from 1930s-1990s welfare provided supplementary payments and resources to single mother families, but not equivalently to male-headed families. Such policies ended in the 1990s under President Clinton. Families have fewer safety nets than ever now. 

The motherhood penalty results from policies that are framed on the assumed male-breadwinner family model and ends up hurting working mothers with punitive policies. Mothers often face discrimination in the workplace that leads to even less total wages earned, as employers assume that mothers will be less committed to their jobs (p. 418). the opposite is true for men–the earn a fatherhood premium–as it reinforces the stereotypical gender model that employment was based upon–married men are esteemed for having children and thought to deserve then a more family-oriented wage. 

Conflicts and Solutions

The labor movement is central to the protections workers have received over the past century. It was the labor movement that won the right to a 40-hour workweek. But these gains have been rolled back in the current neoliberal era. The authors mention some work changes that could be implemented to assist families: reduced work hours, more flexibility, and more support for child-care (p. 419).

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted in 1993 and provided up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for attending to family in case of illness, birth or adoption, but only applies to half of all workers as there are restrictions.

The United States ranks at the bottom for paid leave compared to other countries globally, both industrialized and developing nations. In this Pew Research Center article, “Among 41 countries, only U.S. lacks paid parental leave.” Note Estonia at the top of the chart with 86 weeks of paid leave; and the United States at the bottom with 0 paid leave. Finland provides more than 3 years of paid leave, according to the textbook (p. 421). Many of these countries get one year of paid leave, including our Canadian neighbors. And since the U.S. leave is unpaid, many people who qualify for leave simply cannot afford to take it, thus women may end up back at work very shortly after childbirth. For those with higher education and professional jobs, they have the best outcomes; whereas women working in the service industry, or who have only a high school education, are often pushed out of their jobs.

Overall, the chapter presents various issues of balancing work and life that families endure. Without the major governmental support provided to families in the rest of the world, Americans especially suffer with such imbalances, which especially negatively impact women over men.

6: Families and Social Class

Welcome to Module 6: Families and Social Class. For this section, we will read Chapter 4: Families and Social Class, p. 119-155, and watch two documentaries: Born Rich and Inequality for All.

Chapter 4: Families and Social Class

The chapter starts out with the example of the son of a billionaire real estate developer–Donald J. Trump Jr–born into wealth and thus, set up for life. How does this square with the ideal of meritocracy, and who does this ideal actual end up supporting? While the ideals of the “American Dream” continues to be promoted in the popular culture, the realities of upward mobility peaked in the 1970s, and have declined ever since. Of all developed countries, including the UK–known for its rigid class hierarchy–the USA maintains the least upward mobility. To understand how the wealthy maintain, and exponentially expand their hold on ever-greater percentages of the national wealth, we turn to the documentary by Jamie Johnson called Born Rich (2003). The heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical empire, Jamie Johnson, points his documentary lens in the direction of some privileged children who stand to inherit millions in the not-so-distant future. Johnson manages to pry revelations from heirs with some famous last names – Trump, Bloomberg and Vanderbilt, to name a few. They speak frankly about money, family pressure and their often extravagant lifestyle. Please watch the entire documentary on YouTube or on google for a small fee.

What are the complicated relationship to social class and mobility among the various family members? The author, Philip Cohen states that if a doctor marries a nurse, or a wealthy man married a woman from a lower economic background, do they share the same class level and power within the family? What happens after divorce?

How do the two different sociological theories–consensus and conflict perspective–rectify our understanding of social class in the U.S.? For the consensus theory, it would argue that people and institutions naturally fall into line to best serve the society–both rich and poor people are needed to fulfill different social functions. This theory implies agreement with the actors. Conflict theorists focus on the inequality and power conflicts in society that lead to a small elite group of wealthy people having overwhelming power over the vast majority of everyone else.

Families in their Social Classes

Philip Cohen describes two different families to present a portrait of the rich and the working poor. He cites Katherine S. Newman’s book No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City. You can see a video of her discussing her research here. How do these portraits demonstrate how social relationships keep individuals within the web of their social class? How do family and peer influences lead you to choose the college you attend, or the job you pick, or actually get? How did these social class webs impact the lives of your parents and grandparents? Which generation do you see had more upward mobility potential? And how do these individual family examples relate to the larger picture of social class in the United States? Are things getting more or less equal now compared to the last 100 years? Look up statics to understand this larger context.

The chapter overviews and provides examples for key words, which are important for us to understand. Social class is more than just one’s income level. What other factors are significant in expressing social class location? In the chapter summary video, many of these terms are defined. Be sure to understand and be able to define the following key terms:

• Weber’s life chances
• class identity
• the Gini index
• poverty line
• social class persistence
• social mobility
• concerted cultivation
• accomplishment of natural growth
• division of labor
• exploitation
• social capital

Classical sociologist Max Weber’s concept of “life chances,” is important for us to understand, as he talked about the material realities that people need access to in order to be able to success, not simply based on inherent qualities. As we live in a capitalist society, our overwhelming social value measures everything based on financial value. Therefore, to get ahead in society, one must have access to significant material resources (p. 122). Not only materials resources, but social resources as well, which sociologists call “cultural capital.” This reflects one’s life context and resources based on social class, which can be not a directly obvious connection at first, but it is a way in which we are constantly measuring people: how one speaks, dresses, where one lives, where one works, who one associates with, the taste one has in leisure activities, the schools one attends, where one travels, one’s health care regime such as dental care, and one’s aspirations. People are groomed to stay within one’s social categories–class, race, religion, prestige, and so on. Thus, socialization is confined such that people who are similar to each other will associate with other similar people, which also works to reinforce the same ideas and perspectives inherent in those social classes and categories. If one does not meet people who are different from themselves, they will not face much challenge about their own privileges and contribution to inequality.

In this chart from the textbook, we can see that there is a distinction between who fits into which social classes (which are a shorthand measure) and who identifies with each class: and the working class has the largest percentage of people who define themselves as a member, with 42.4% for the middle class.

The United States has the highest rates of poverty for all developed countries in the world. On each point of societal health and wellness, the USA is at the bottom of the list of countries. The USA simply does not invest in the infrastructures that would assist people who are the vast majority: in education, healthcare, city infrastructure, access to resources, nutrition, and so on. Since the 1970s, when equality achieve great heights in the post-war era, there has been a steep rise in inequality, rivaling that of the Great Depression. Now after the 2008 Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the inequality has grown even faster, while the billionaires’ wealth explodes exponentially, demonstrating a direct transfer of wealth from the people to the wealthy. Family formation contributes to this class division, as male workers still make more money, and therefore families without a male breadwinner often have less financial resources. The charts on pages 138-9 demonstrate the percentages of families and their poverty rates:

In the next sections of the textbook, it demonstrates how taxes, social policies, and larger social structures all contribute to social class persistence. After generations of upward mobility, contemporary generations of young people are not expected to achieve greater financial heights than their parents. Government assistance programs can be helpful to level the playing field for those not born rich, but the American culture stigmatizes such assistance, while denying the help gained by families of wealth who can pay for their children’s needs. About 1 in 6 Americans cannot pay for their basic necessities (p. 140). Eviction and its impact on families is discussed on page 141, overviewing sociologist Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted (2016).

Finally, the book discusses the digital divide–access to the internet and the use of such utilities by families–as well as family practices that cultivate adherence to social class norms. The book discusses two different types of childhood based on access to financial and material resources: concerted cultivation versus accomplishment of natural growth (p. 149-150). The first reflects the ability to pay for a child’s tennis lessons, horseback riding, camps, and so on. For impoverished families who do not have the money to pay for such activities, nor the social connection to such practices, they practice the latter concept, more of a free-range childhood. Imaging the inherent class expectation related to such activities such as: track, ballet, horseback riding, lacrosse, rowing, basketball, street hockey, breakdancing, swimming at the community pool, and so on. If one enters one of these arenas and people don’t look like themselves, they might feel alienated and uncomfortable, and thus, not continue.

Please also watch the feature length movie Inequality for All (2013), a documentary that follows former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as he looks to raise awareness of the country’s widening economic gap. This movie will overview and describe in detail the concepts overviewed in the latter half of the chapter and really help our understanding of rising inequality and social class persistence.

Compare and contrast the two documentaries and the information in the chapter. How does this apply to families of various classes that you have witnessed in your own life? What social class worlds are you navigating in your own life?

4 & 5: Race, Ethnicity and Immigration

paper doll family

Chapter 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration

Welcome to Modules 4 & 5 on Race, Ethnicity and Immigration. The materials for both modules 4 & 5 will be on this one blog posting.

Module 4: Race & Ethnicity
Chapter 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration, p. 72-109
Module 5: Immigration
Chapter 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration, p. 72-109 (cont.)
Video: Documented (2014) (watch entire feature length)

Transracial family portrait

What Are Race and Ethnicity?

How does the author, Philip Cohen, define race, while arguing that biology doesn’t support the classification of people into races (79)? What is the foundation of our contemporary understandings of race and how does it enact itself in our culture? In the first chapter, the sociological theory called “symbolic interaction” is a good beginning for understanding race. How is this understanding of race established by our historical and institutional processes that define race? What are they? How has the U.S. Census been a party to the construction of racial boundaries (76-7)? How has it changed over time? What are the current racial demographic numbers in the U.S. according to the Census? How does white racial identity relate to our historical and social understanding of race? What does it mean to be white in North America? How are mixed race people classified and understood in this context? 

Once we learn that biology does not point to distinct human races, as all human emerged from the African continent approximately 50 to 80,000 years ago, superficial differences emerged based on environmental context. Humans have mixed since this global migration. More recently, the process of Western colonialization established many of the socio-cultural perspectives we continue to hold on race. Some post-colonial societies were founded on widespread inter-marriage or mixing by other means, although racism based on “colorism,” or judging people based on skin color, were inherent culturally. Other countries, such as the United States, has formal segregation laws that required people to be identified by race and subsequently endure different treatment. America’s segregation, based first on defining a population for slavery, and also defining the indigenous population in order to control them, in such cases as creating a reservation system and boarding schools, provided a model for other segregationist nations such as South Africa. South Africa, inspired by the American Indian reservation system, implemented the Population Registration Act. No. 3O which forced people into officially registering as one of four racial groups, and facing distinct segregation and treatment. The US Census has evolved its categories to reflect social divisions, and thus is “socially constructed.” 

Since 1880, the race and ethnicities categories on the census form have changed every decade (p. 81). Only in 2000, was the option of checking more than one racial box implemented (In 1850, the category “mulatto” was included” to represent Black and European mixed-race (p. 81). On the 2010 Census, only 10 million people marked more than one race; a quarter of them were Latinx or Hispanic (p. 81). The categories in the United States are particularly embedded into our racial history as a nation. As these categories were established by the government, based on protecting White-racial supremacy, it is important to recognize this racial hierarchy of power inherent in such classifications. By defining these categories at all, White colonizers and their descendants were also defining themselves as NOT indigenous, Black slaves, Chinese laborers, Mexican (indigenous population to the region)–all of whom designated as such faced laws that treated them in an inferior manner to those categorized as White. While these official segregation and discriminatory policies are no longer the law, the social effects continue to linger. We see these historical trajectories continuing in the current racial dynamics of our nation (and globally).   

What about Whites? (p. 84) 

White people, those of European descent, are the majority in the United States (even with Hispanic Whites excluded). However, as they are the dominant racial group, and historically categories as the central powerful racial group in the nation, they often do not identify racially because of their centrality to these definitions and power structure. Historically, people from different countries in Europe did face various discrimination, notably the Irish, Italian, and Jewish migrants, but over time, these distinctions fade based on a shared skin color and contemporary cultural context that flattens this population.  This is where the “melting pot” concept stems from, which does not really apply as much to people considered different races. The concept of the “melting pot” is based on an assimilation model, but often those of Latinx or Asian descent continue to be treated as foreigners no matter how many generations their families have been in the United States. Notably, these European descendant ethnicities were not segregated from inter-marriage, and thus were able to come together to form what comes to be called simply White in the US. The textbook has a chart with the percentages of the population as self-defined by ethnicity category, with German at 22.9 %, followed by Irish at 16.3%. The chapter then turns to define the context of the major racial-ethnic groups in the US and their positioning within the national and historical context. 

 American Indians

picture of children playing at water spigot

Before the creation of the United States, hundreds of tribes (some estimates say 350) were spread throughout the lands of the Americas–the original inhabitants. Since Europeans landed on the continent, their position has been constructed by this interaction. One of the major impacts of this interaction was the spread of disease, which reduced the indigenous population; in addition to war and conflict, which reduced the indigenous population by as much as two thirds. 

“By 2010, there were 2.5 million American Indians counted by the census. That number rises to 5.2 million if we include those who self-identify as American Indian as well as another race” (p. 88). Therefore, American Indians make up less than 2 percent of the entire population. “The largest tribes today are the Cherokee, Navajo and Choctaw, who together account for 40 percent of those American Indians who specify a tribal identity” (p. 88). Historically, during the colonial period, as we saw in the history chapter, American Indian culture was disrupted by white Christian institutions, which set out to break indigenous cultural practices and replace them with white structures, and those was most intimately done through boarding schools and placing indigenous children with white foster families. You can watch this documentary about the development of Native American Boarding Schools to hear individuals recount the impact of this institution on the destruction of indigenous culture: 

The Dawes Act of 1887 was instrumental in establishing the reservation system and other institutions that would come to organize native life. Native American children today are three times more likely to live in foster homes than other racial groups. By 2010, 22 percent of American Indians lives on reservations or tribal lands, which can be very high in poverty levels. The Navajos in the Southwest, is the largest reservation, with approximately 175,000 residents (p. 90). Many social and health issues related to poverty are very prevalent in trial lands and within the population in general: obesity, diabetes, alcoholism, family disruption, early death, suicide, and domestic violence. Indian-owned gambling facilities have provided an income for such communities, generating $25 billion in revenue (p. 90).

African Americans

Historically, African Americans came to the U.S. through the institution of slavery, which broke the cultural connections with African traditions, languages, and religions. This disrupted family life and cultural continuation. Structural racism since slavery, and continuing today, has impacted the larger African American community, which has shaped the formation of family life. Because many men were unable to get jobs that would support their families, women were often required to work and contribute to the household income; compared to white women who were idealized for being able to be a full time housewife. Many men had to travel in search of work, leaving behind wives and children.

After WWI, many workers, around 6 million, left the south in what has been called the Great Migration. Industrial jobs, providing a family wage for those without a college education, was a great boost for the middle class. However, residential segregation was rampant, with the government and industry participating in redlining (racially discriminatory mortgage and housing policies).

Manufacturing jobs reached one third of the job market in 1960, and by 1990 it was down to one fifth of workers, and today, it is just one-tenth of jobs. This decline especially hurt black communities. Currently, there is a large black middle class, yet, overall, poverty persists. African Americans have the highest rates of poverty of any major racial-ethnic group. Poverty impacts all aspects of live, including diminishing the marriage rate, as marriage currently is viewed as a crowning accomplishment after financial security is established to some degree. Men without jobs do not provide good prospects for marriage, as women will consider having to take care of their spouses, on top of any children they may already have. In 2011, while 52% of the total population was married, about 32% of the black population was married. Besides lack of employment, imprisonment impacts one out of four black males, with the subsequent rippling effect that impact those family and community members related to the individual. Thus, a great deal of black children are impacted by having an incarcerated parent. Therefore, extended families, and grandparents, become important support for taking care of children in the situation of absent parents. 

Latinx, Hispanic, Latino/a 

“At more than 50 million, Latinos are the largest minority group in the country and quickly growing” (93). The majority are Mexican origin (63 percent), followed by Puerto Ricans (9 percent) and Cubans (4 percent). However, there are Latinos in the U.S. from all of the central and south american countries, with varied histories of coming to this country. For example, what historical conditions create these top three groups of immigrants listed? And of course, Mexicans have been a part of this country from the very beginning, as the southwest was originally part of Mexico that was annexed by the United States after the Mexican-American War in 1848. “Puerto Rico was also annexed–first as a U.S. colony and later as a partly self-governing commonwealth–when Spain ceded the island to the United States in 1989” (93). Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. After WWII, many of them migrated to New York and New Jersey in search of work. Because of the differential history with colonialism and segregation in Latin American countries, their understanding and relationship to racial and cultural mixing is different than the white dominated U.S. with its history of strict racial segregation, outlawing such practices as interracial marriage until 1977.

Asian Americans

Today the U.S. population is 6 percent Asian. The largest groups are the Chinese (23 percent), the Philippines (20 percent), and Indian (18 percent) (97). Because of restrictive immigration policies and decades long wait lines, immigration slots are mostly reserved for professionals, students, or family members of people already established, this contributes to the stereotypical idea of “the model minority.” Confucian religious background contributes to an emphasis on schooling, related to the historical Confucian exam system. Only 3 percent of Asian Americans drop out of high school, compared to 8 percent of the total population. But this association of Asians with schooling is more likely an association between class privilege and educational access and achievement. Also think about how geography plays into immigration, with Asians at such far away distances that it becomes very difficult for them to gain access to the U.S. compared to Latin America, which is closer and shares a land border.

Immigration

“At 13 percent, the proportion of the U.S. residents born in another country is higher than it has been since 1010” and if you include Americans whose parents were born elsewhere, it is twenty-five percent (100). Immigration laws are central in shaping the demographics of various immigrants groups. The 1965 change in policy was a federal shift that moved away from maintaining quotas of different racial groups so that whites would maintain certain percentages. Be sure to overview and understand the significance of the following laws and policies:

• The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act
• 1924 Immigration Act
• 1945 War Bride Act
• 1942-1964 Bracero Program
• 1965 Amendments to the Immigration and Naturalization Act
• 2002 Homeland Security Act
• 2005 International Marriage Broker Regulation Act

For our class assignment, please watch the feature length version of Documented (2013). [On the movie website you will be able to purchase the DVD or a digital copy for rent or purchase. You may also be able to search for the movie online.] In this documentary it follows Jose Antonio Vargas, who began his immigrant journey at age 12, when he was sent to the United States from the Philippines by his mother to live with his grandparents in Mountain View, California. After attending San Francisco State University, Vargas pursued a print journalism career — landing jobs at newspapers in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington D.C. for the Washington Post — all the while, managing to keep his true citizenship status a secret.

You can find the video on Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/search/documented?jbv=80007975&jbp=0&jbr=0

Besides immigration restrictions, the U.S. government restricted racial groups from intermarriage as a means of keeping the white race pure. All states enacted rules against whites marrying other racial groups. There were also hypo descent laws, or one-drop rule, where only whites without any other “blood” of different racial groups were considered white. This would force mixed race individuals to identify as their non-white descent, or else “pass” as white. It was not until the Supreme Court case ironically named Loving v. Virginia, that these bans on interracial marriage were struck down in 1975.

Key Terms

Race
Biology
socially constructed
hypo-descent (“one drop rule”)
Census categories
Ethnicity
Racial ethnicity
Endogamy/Exogamy
minority group
American Indian
African American
Hispanic/Latino/Latinx
Familism
Asian American

3: The Family in History

Chapter 2: The Family in History

Victorian family portrait

Welcome to Module 3: History of the Family. In this section we will read Chapter 2: The Family in History, p. 32-68 and watch the video The Way We Never Were (2010) by Stephanie Coontz.

Dr. Coontz “The Way We Never Were”

Coontz is a faculty member at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. She has published extensively on the topic of marriage and family life and is the author of several highly praised books, such as The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. [Please note that the following video is a lengthy lecture. You are free to view the video in shorter segments, come back to it over time, and pause the playing.]

Family Types and Terms

The chapter sets out to define different anthropological terms of different family types. Be sure that you can define all of those variations:

• Monogamy— “the marriage between one person and another person” (p. 38).
• Polygamy– “in which one person has several spouses” (p. 38).
• Patriarchy– “a system of male control over the family property and fathers’ authority over the behavior of the family’s women and children” (p. 40).
• Stem family— “was the household formed by one grown child remaining in the family home with parents, and would inherit family home or farm” (p. 43).
• Extended family— “family members of various generations and distant relations considered as one family” (p. 43).

Origins of the American Family

Colonial America (before 1820)
“From the settlement of Europeans through the early nineteenth century, American family history was primarily the story of three interrelated groups: American Indians, White Europeans, and African Americans” (39).

Indigenous population

The clash between White European settlers attempting to dominate a land occupied with indigenous peoples was a bloody battle of occupation. Europeans established their institutions and families structures, and Native Americans were forced into these traditions through boarding schools and enforced Christianity. Their own practices such as language, religion, and family traditions were banned. The chapter points out that a prominent aspect of Native families was that many were matrilineal, where people were primarily considered descendants of their mothers rather than their fathers (40).

White Colonial Americans

For the White colonial people, marriage was a practical arrangement, more for bringing people together to work and survive together, not about love and affection. Women came with a dowry, which was desired almost as much as the wife was. Women provided labor and were completely dependent on their husbands, establishing a situation ripe for abuse. When a woman was married, she no longer had any rights at all, “under the legal doctrine of coverture, which meant that the wives were incorporated into their husbands’ citizenship” and he had complete legal control over her (41).

Children were desired more for their labor than their future prospects. Children worked in the home, on the family farm, or were leased out to work for other people (41).

Black Americans

Blacks, stolen from their lands in West Africa, were brought to the country as slave labor, where their ability to structure their own families was broken. Slave owners could trade and sell slaves regardless of their relationship to other members. Indeed, they were often raped by slaves selected by the owners, in order to selectively breed, as well as raped by the owners themselves, as they were his property, as much as his white family was. Dorothy Roberts overviews how black bodies were used in the beginning of the century in many medical experiments, as forced labor in prisons as well as plantations, and sterilized against their will later on, in her book, Killing the Black Body.

The Emerging Modern Family (1820-1900)

Great changes took place during the emerging modern period, as the country transitioned from the colonial past into the industrial period. Men and women maintained roles that were more and more separated under this economy, coming to be called “separate spheres” (43). How does the author detail the conditions of separate spheres? How did it develop? Before industrialization, the family worked more as a unit on their farms, but with increased urbanization and industrialization, white men began leaving the family home to work in factories, leaving wives in charge of the home life and child rearing. Attitudes around family formation softened, proving more choice and independence, or the illusion of such.

One of the most significant changes in the emerging modern family was that of having far fewer children. Previously, families had numerous children due to lack of birth control, high infant mortality, use of child labor, and so on. As conditions improves and the role of children in the family changed, families had far fewer children. Infant mortality continues to be twice as high among African American communities as that of the White population, demonstrating ongoing inequalities of health and health care.

Institutional Arenas

Market and Family: Men and Women, Separate and Together

The labor market, with its emphasis on white male workers, leaving women at home to tend to children and household work, empowered men financially over women. The labor market was overall shifting from a rural farm lifestyle for the vast majority of the population, to an urban and industrial one.

Family and the State: “Monogamous Morality” 

In the colonial era, marriages may have been much more loosely regulated, with a local authority overseeing the union. Now, the state began to more forcefully organize control over the family life, including who could get married and how. This was demonstrated between the Mormon Church and the creation of the state of Utah. The Church had to agree to officially renounce the practice of polygamy, thus demonstrating the state’s ability to limit marriage to a monogamous pair (p. 51).  During this time period the fledgling beginnings of social safety nets, such as poorhouses, orphanages, and penitentiaries, as well as the plight of widows of soldiers, resulted in the beginnings of the contemporary welfare system (p. 52).

African, Asian, and Mexican Americans: Families Apart

For Asian and Mexican migrants, they were put to work as laborers, but often not allowed to bring women with them (for Asian workers), so that they would not put down roots in the country and were expected to leave. Many anti-Asian laws were established to keep them from becoming citizens, marrying whites, or bringing over women.

The Modern Family (1900-1960s)

“In 1900, the typical man married at about age 26, and the typical woman at 22” (53). Men would work and perhaps become boarders with another family that rented rooms, while women would stay with this family until they married. Towards the end of this time period, men were given a family wage, which rather than being the norm, was an usual time in out history overall, but became an expectation that we still think of as a standard from which we are slipping.

 New Family Diversity (1960s-Present)

Since this time period, the chapter overviews many changes that have transpired within the American family. What are they and how did they develop? Define:

• The Baby Boom
• changes in household technology
• social safety nets
• women’s legal and economic rights
• changes in household demographics
• the role of children in the family

Study Guide 

Chapter 2 overview the origins of the American family and how different it could be for various groups based on race, ethnicity, nationality, class, and age.

• The chapter describes different histories for Native Americans, Colonial Americans, and enslaved African Americans in American history. What were these differences in family outcomes for these groups and how were these differences instituted through various institutions (government, church, school)?
• Compare the relationship between men, women, and children in Indian families, Colonial American families, and enslaved African families prior to 1820.
• How did married life change during the nineteenth century? Why?
• How was family life disrupted for many African American, the Chinese, and Latinos in the nineteenth century?
• How have the relationships between parents and children changed since the 1960s?
• Define “coverture” and what it meant for family life and power.

Key Terms

nuclear family, heterogamy, homogamy, patriarchy, coverture, extended families, stem family, courtship, separate spheres, monogamy, polygamy, companionship family, companionate marriage, dating, family wage, baby boom

2. How do Sociologists Look at the Family?

Welcome to Module 2: How do Sociologists Look at the Family? (Sept 12-18). In this section, we will read Chapter 1: A Sociology of the Family, p. 2-29.

1: A Sociology of the Family

Chapter 1: A Sociology of the Family opens with a discussion of how very divergent individuals have discovered each other through DNA tests. Even though they identify as different racial groups or come from very different communities, such DNA tests bring them together based on very distant relatives, making us question: what makes a family? The opening also talks about the importance of pets for American families, even virtual ones that have been created to keep seniors company. Has your family taken a DNA test? does your family have a pet that you consider family? What percentage of American families have the same pets that you do? We want to make sure that we include statistics in our autobiography, as they help us understand the percentage of the population that relates to various demographics that we fit into. Always make a note of the statistics in the textbook, as the exams will focus on this type of information. For example, what percentage of people live alone, according to the textbook?

“In the simplest definition, families are groups of related people, bound by connections that are biological, legal, or emotional” (4). However, the textbook talks about what the label “family” means to people when they refer to individuals outside of the legal definition, what does it say? The author defines the family into three different types. What are these types and their definitions? What are the legal implications of these various definitions?

The U.S. Census

Understanding the work of the U.S. Census is centrally important for sociologists, because this provides the main government collected statistical information that we have on American families. The section in the chapter on the U.S. Census (p. 9-11), tells us that the U.S. Constitution in 1789 ordered that the population be counted every ten years, which is a huge feat for a country as large as ours. In 2010, the Census cost more that $13 billion and employed more than a million people (p. 9). How has the Census defined families, and who was left out of the definitions? What other demographic information is not captured by the Census questions, such as mixed race people? Has your family ever answered the Census?

Image of a diverse family comprised of multi-generations and genders.

The Family as an Institutional Arena

The family is an institution, just like the military or the government or the church. This means that there are standards of expectations created and this institution interacts with other institutions, and creates expectations for individuals’ behavior. How does your family both conform, and not conform, to the typical expectations of family and the various roles that each member plays? How has your behavior as the child in the family both upheld family expectations, as well as challenged them?

How have the other social institutions impacted with your own family, as the chapter discusses in relation to the state and the market (economy)? How has religion, the military, or the health care industries impacted your family and its history? Incorporate this into the discussion on your sociological autobiography.

The Family in Sociological Theory

Sociology has a foundation in theories established by theorists prominent at the very beginning of the discipline, over a hundred years ago. These theories provide a framework for sociological understandings and approaches, and so it is important to understand what these theories are and apply their in your understanding of the social world. Do any of these theories help explain your own family dynamics? How do these theories provide insight into your own life that you may not have considered before?

• The consensus perspective: “projects an image of society as the collective expression of shared norms and values,” also known as “structural functionalism” and based on the work of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) (16).
• The conflict perspective: “opposition and conflict define a given society and are necessary for social evolution” (17). This perspective is most closely associated with the theorist Karl Marx (1818-1883).
• The feminist theory: “seeks to understand and ultimately reduce inequality between men and women” (18).
• The exchange theory: “sees individuals or groups with different resources, strengths, weaknesses entering into mutual relationships to maximize their own gains” (20).
• The symbolic interaction theory: this theory focuses on the roles people play in their life (daughter, student, teacher, manager) and how they interact with other individuals to uphold these various roles (20-21).
•    The modernity theory: “concerns the emergence of the individual as an actor in society and how individuality changed personal and institutional relations”(22).

By using these different theories, what insights do you learn about your own family and those in your community? The chapter also includes two other perspectives, not necessarily theories, “demographic perspective” and “life course perspective.” What information do these perspectives provide about family life?

Studying Families

The chapter overviews various methods that sociologists use to gain their information and data about U.S. families. These methods were:

• sample surveys
• longitudinal surveys
• in-depth interviews
• observation
• time use studies

Be able to define and understand how each of these methods collect data and what kind of insight each method provides, as well as the information that each method would not capture. Which method would be best for studying various social issues related to the family? If you were going to do a historical analysis of your family, what method would you use and why?

OPTIONAL comments:
In the comments section below, share with us your response to the topics covered in this chapter and how you would use these perspectives to gain further insight into your own family dynamic? How would these theories help you understand families that come from very different backgrounds than your own? What stood out to you about the chapter?

1: What is Sociology?

Welcome to the first module in our online sociology course. This week, our objective is to understand what sociology is as a discipline, the perspective it has, and how it relates to our own socio-economic positioning in society. For this we will read two articles: The Sociological Imagination, by C. Wright Mills, a classical sociological reading, and Who is Elite? by Rivera, proving the social class context. (You can find the readings on Canvas under files>readings).

According to the American Sociological Association:

“What Is Sociology?

• the study of society
• a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies
• the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes
• the scientific study of social aggregations, the entities through which humans move throughout their lives’
• an overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics”

While sociology is similar to, and may incorporate information from these other fields like psychology and economics, how is it different? What is the difference between sociology and psychology? [Videos for your information, not required, unless stated otherwise.]

While psychology focuses on the individual, their brain functions, and how they exist in a vacuum, or maybe consider their relationships to their parents, sociology studies people in relationships to other people, group relations, and especially, POWER, and how it is exercised through social institutions. What are social institutions? List a few and think about how each one of them create conformist behaviors.

Three of the most important organizing concepts in sociology are: Institutions, Power, and Demographics. 

Institutions:
School
Religion
Government
Military
Health Care
Corporations
The Family

Institutions and the Family:
Thinking about these institutions, how do they constrict behaviors and beliefs as they relate to the family? How does schooling impact the family? How does religion impact the family? How does the government constrict the family? How does the military create family structures? How does the family interact with healthcare? How have these institutions shaped your own family? This will be the information that you will write about in your sociological autobiography in the next module.

Institutions and POWER:
How do each of these institutions exercise power over and between people? Power is a central organizing concept as we look at all social relationships, because power is a dynamic between all human interactions and how institutions structure human behavior. How do schools exercise power? How does religion exercise power? How does the government exercise power? How does the health care system exercise power over people?

DEMOGRAPHICS:
The sub-groups we are born into, and the bodies in which we inhabit, shape our relationship to others because social aspects and power relationships have been placed over natural embodies states, such as ethnicity, race and gender. Ethnicity is one’s national identity (country into which one was born), one’s national identity which one identifies, if not within the country that one lives in (i.e., immigrant family), and the related cultural aspects of this nation-based identify (food or religion practices).  Race is a social concept that has no biologically proven aspect, but has become an organizing concept in society. People are placed into different racial categories, but these categories are based on the history of the country and how this country has related to certain groups. It does not point to a reality of racial differences, which becomes apparent when we try and understand the racial boundaries and overlaps between groups. For example: “Asians” is a term in the U.S. that captures people that come from dozens of different countries, have different nationalities, cultures, languages, and include all skin colors and races, from black to brown to white, yet in the U.S., they are called by the same term and therefore the treatment and understanding of this group is organized by this categorization. Yet, the categories based on race, ethnicity, and gender have huge impacts on how other people will treat us, and even how we understand ourselves. How have you been taught what ethnicity and racial categories you fall into? Did your parents teach you? Did your school or friends? Did the T.V.? How has your own ethnicity been exercised inside the house and in relation to other institutions? (i.e., how does one exercise their Asian American identity inside the military? Inside school?) How would you be different if you were the opposite gender? How do you perform your gender identity through the clothes you wear, your behavior, and your interests?

POWER:
In the U.S., which groups are in power? How does that power manifest itself in structural ways (through institutions and laws, for example) and how does power manifest itself through interaction between two people (a teacher and a student, segregation of races, how men and women interact). In whichever categorization of people, some are empowered socially through our history and social institutions. For example, which gender is more empowered in our society: men or women? How is this manifested through institutional structures? How is this created through interpersonal interactions: men and women in the family? When someone goes against these power structures, how are they punished? What happens when someone wants to be outside of the binary of men and women and wants to consider themselves transgender or “genderqueer” (not identifying as strictly woman or man but a mixture of the two). We often do not explicitly speak of power, but in this course, we will want to examine this as a central organizing concept, because it is not only dividing people into different groups and categories, but then assigning supremacy and preference to one of these categories, over others: Men and women, whites and blacks, Americans and Mexicans, and rich and poor. List the different groups you belong to and which ones are dominant and which ones are marginalized? How does it shape your life to come from the dominant white racial group in the U.S.? How would your life be different if you were a different race? How does it shape your relationship to school when you come from an immigrant family?

The Sociological Imagination, by C. Wright Mills

In this introductory chapter to his famous sociological treatment, Mills attempts to develop our perspective on how we understand the individual’s role in society and how the society has shaped nearly every aspect of the individual, even while they may perceive themselves as self-developed. He is constantly urging us to understand one’s societal context in our development: what time period and country we are born into, which social class our parents hold and how this initiates our perspective on the world, and how larger social events can have the most personal of individual life outcomes. The three primary elements of his perspective are centered around 1) the structures of this particular society, 2) how this society fits into the larger trajectory of human history, and 3) the different categories of people that society has developed, and how they are hierarchically organized in the power structure, their experiences with oppression versus privilege (p. 6-7). He brings our attention to understanding what are social institutions and how they intimately shape our lives. What are the larger social events that can mark a generation? He asks us to consider war, consider marriage (p. 9).  What are the key issues and social problems of the times and how do they mark us as individuals and our relationships among each other (p. 11)?

Who is Elite?

In the book, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs, Lauren A. Rivera, overviews the significance of soci-economic class in the United States for maintaining and achieving upward mobility through education and subsequent employment. This book is based on qualitative fieldwork as Rivera observed elite hiring firms in law and finance to see how the companies recruited directly from certain Ivy League schools, such as Princeton, regardless of ability, as the screening process of elite schools satisfied the firms on the hire’s social capital. For our purposes, we read one chapter of this book, called “Who is Elite?” in order to understand the role of socio-economic status in our lives.

Student created discussion questions:

• The first sentence of “The Promise,” introduces the broad claim that ultimately man, specifically “ordinary men,” find themselves in series of traps. What exactly constitutes an ordinary man? In the same regard, what is an unordinary man? An extraordinary man? (P. 3) Are men and women defined by their jobs? What are the series of traps that Mills discusses?
• As society changes, how do men change along with the times? Specifically, how do the desires and ambitions for certain careers change as time changes?
• How have different demographic groups change in relation to their previous oppression and current trajectory? How does this past of discrimination continue to evolve?
• How does society define being in trouble or having problems? How does society define the solutions?
• Based on your personal experiences, what factors determine your behavior? How were you raised? Your socioeconomic status? What environmental or familial factors contribute to your problem solving skills?
• How have you witnessed generational perspectives differing and why?

LINKS:

The field of Sociology  by asanet.org
What  do Sociologists do? By the British Sociological Association