Structure vs. Agency is an important way of thinking about how people make choices and why people behave in certain ways. It is common belief among sociologists that individuals have both the capacity to make free choices (agency) and are simultaneously influenced by their environment and are limited in choices and opportunities because of it. The conflict or convergence of free will and what society tells us to do was a very prevalent theme in our Marriage and the Family class.

Sociologically there are many reasons why a person would want to get married at some point in their life. Some of the reasons we read about and discussed in class were for financial stability, for children, for love, and for companionship. We also said that people would be inclined to get married because research has shown that married people are happier later in life. I personally would want to get married for all of those reasons. I think everyone wants to get married at some point in their lives just because it is the socially acceptable thing to do. However, I want to get married because I believe that you can find love with someone and that can greatly affect your happiness. Also it is very important to me to have children one day, and I don’t think that I would want to have children without being married first. I know that many people are having children without being married, and I definitely respect their decision to do that, however I don’t know if I would be able to nor want to raise children without a husband to help me. Mostly however, I think that getting married for love provides you with someone to spend the rest of your life with, and to share all of your life experiences with, and that is very important to me.

According to the research by sociologist Dalton Conley that we discussed in class, I would probably get married to either the youngest or middle child because I am the oldest of three. According to his research, middle children can marry either the youngest middle or oldest children, youngest children will marry either the oldest or middle children, and oldest children will marry either youngest or middle. However, oldest children are not very likely to marry other oldest children, and youngest children are not very likely to marry other youngest children and have satisfactory marriages. Also I will want to marry someone who is similar to me. People are more likely to be happy in their marriage if they are similar to their spouses and if their spouse has a stable personality. Also the three main factors in marital dissatisfaction and divorce were the husband’s neuroticism, husband’s impulsivity, and the wife’s neuroticism. Basically what that means is that I will probably want to marry a man that is responsible, does not make impulsive decisions, and is also emotionally stable. (Personality Psychology, David Buss) Also, I think that it is very important that I marry someone who has similar religious beliefs to my own. I know that in class we said that people were more likely to marry someone who is their same race and grew up at around the same socioeconomic status. However, I do not think that these things are necessarily as important to me as the same religious belief. Being religious is something that people choose and that is something much more important to me than the type of family you are born into and how much money you have. Yes, I think that those things can influence a person and we might differ in beliefs about things because of that, but I don’t think that race and money will ever really make me think twice about getting married to someone that I am in love with.

As for what kind of family I want, well, I have been planning this since I was about five so excuse the details. I come from a family of three girls, and even though having two sisters so close in age to me was a little crazy at times, I love having them and I would never change our relationships for anything.  Therefore, I would love to have 3 or more children. I think that it is very important for children to have siblings. Through all of the hard times that my family went through, I always had my sisters to turn to and even today I know that if I ever need to talk about something, my sisters will understand me completely. I really want that for my children, and if I could have all girls that would be great (maybe one boy). I already have all their names picked out, but I won’t go into that here. I also want to be able to be a stay at home mom at some point in my children’s lives, if not all. I am planning on having a more egalitarian approach towards raising children and I want my children to feel like both parents are providing for them. Also, I grew up in a large extended family and I very much plan on staying close to my sisters and some of my cousins. Because I grew up with parents who were not divorced, I am sociologically probably less likely to get a divorce, than people whose parents were divorced. However, my paternal grandparents were divorced, and because their divorce ended on a bad note, my sisters and I were even affected by it 30 years later. Because this was something that affected my life, I think that it will actually make me less likely to get a divorce. I have seen how terrible some divorces can be, and I definitely will consider that before I get married.

I think that love is a very important part of marriage, and is something that is very important to me when I am considering getting married. I don’t think that there is any way that I could ever get married without being in love first. I don’t need to get married for financial reasons or anything like that, I’m pretty sure that I can provide well enough for myself. However, I think that sometimes you can love a person, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the two of you are meant to be together for the rest of your lives, or that marriage would work just because of love. As I said before, married couples must be similar in many ways in order to make a marriage really work.  The same thing can be said for long term relationships. People must be similar and be in love in order to have long happy relationships. In one of our explore assignments, we were asked to interview married couples. From the couple that I interviewed, the main thing that they talked about was being respectful to their partner and making compromises.  

This class has taught me a lot about what my options are for the future concerning marriage and starting a family. I think that overall I have learned a lot about different relationship styles and different parenting styles. I have also gained more respect for those different types of families and relationships even though some are very different than what I would ever be comfortable with. I am very grateful for everything that I have learned in this class and I will definitely apply some of them to my future relationships and family.

Parent’s co-sleeping with their children has always been a cause for infant mortality, and is still prevalent today.  In the article by Barbara King, she identifies a recent case of a baby dying after his mother fell asleep while breastfeeding him in bed. This practice is strongly discouraged by the American government.

King says that evolutionarily co-sleeping makes sense. She says that mother-child skin to skin contact is very important for a baby. Also, in less modern times it was important for a mother to have her child in close proximity to her in the night. Now however, at least in America, co-sleeping might not be relevant to survival at all and instead can cause much more harm than good. There were some specific advantages that King examined in her article, including research that showed the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) might be decreased by a baby sleeping next to its mother helping to regulate its breathing. However, this point is not proven yet and is still being debated.

King also says that there is another option to co-sleeping that is both safe for the baby and allows the mother to be in close contact with the baby. She says that parents sleeping in the same room as the baby is a good way to still have those benefits she described and keep the baby safe from suffocation.

In class last week we discussed the issue of spanking children as a punishment for bad behavior. Recently this topic has become an important one for parents who wish to raise responsible children in the best way possible.

There are two very different sides to the debate, one side says that spanking children is an acceptable way to teach children right from wrong, while the other say the spanking a child does nothing and can sometimes be abusive. On average attitudes towards spanking are much more positive towards spanking and parents are more likely to spank their children in the southern region of the U.S. Parents who report spanking their children say that they believe that by spanking their children they immediately extinguish unwanted behaviors in their children.

Parents who report that they do not spank their children say that spanking teaches children to hit people, and is abusive. These parents believe that there are much better ways to teach children right from wrong such as timeouts.

I think that there are certain times where spanking is an appropriate way to punish a child, but I think that overall spanking is not effective. It is the common psychological view that positive and negative reinforcement is much more effective for teaching a behavior than punishment is. Therefore if it is a parents wish to extinguish a bad behavior in a child and show them the right behavior, giving them a reward or taking away something aversive to them is the best way to do that. I think that in certain situations like if a child continuously runs across the street without looking or gets out of bed, spanking is a way to immediately show that child that they are doing something wrong.

In class yesterday and on Wednesday we discussed why people might live in lifestyles other than the traditional western monogamous relationship. We discussed a few different kinds. First there is polygamy which just means there are multiple partners. Then there are two subgroups of polygamy; polyandry, or more than one husband, and polygyny or more than one wife. Polygyny is the most common around the world and in America.

Polygamy was found to be more common in agriculturally based societies, and where there was a high infant mortality rate. In these societies it makes more sense to have multiple wives in order to have as many children as possible to help the family in agriculture.

According to Christopher Ryan, people are not necessarily meant to be in monogamous relationships, and polygamy might actually be what our species is meant for. He says that in the time of the hunters and gatherers humans had to share everything in order to survive. He says that they shared literally everything concerning their lives therefore they must have also shared their sexuality with more than just one person. He says that this might be a basic survival instinct and that the only reason why people are now in monogamous relationships is because western society enforces that as the norm. He says that the reason why infidelity rates are so high in the U.S. is because peopel are not meant to just be with their spouse or significant other, but are supposed to be with multiple people.

In America, polygyny is the most common form of polygamy. This practice is mostly found in the FLDS sect of the Mormon Church, or the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. These people believe that their founder Joseph Smith had a revelation from God that men were supposed to have more than one wife, and if families did not live in a polygamous lifestyle, they would not be able to have an eternal life. Today there are still many sects of this subculture, even though the Mormon Church has official banned polygamy and excommunicates all members that live in a polygamous life style. These fundamentalist sects now live separated from the rest of society and do not associate with the Mormon Church. In a polygamous family, the more wives and children you have the better your heaven or eternal life will be. They believe that when they die, all of the family will be reunited in a heaven where the patriarch of the family becomes a god, and the more wives and children, the better that heaven will be. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2006.10.1.43)

The third term we discussed was polyamory. This is often called “ethical monogamy, and is engaging in loving intimate relationships with more than one person and based upon the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.” Basically what that means is that people in polyamorous relationships will have multiple boyfriends/girlfriends, and all parties involved are aware of those other relationships. The reason why this might seem so shocking to many Americans could be because there is no social model for people engaging in these relationships. There are also very few people who would choose to live this way, whether they secretly want to or not, because it is so deviant from American norms.

After discussing in class all these different types of relationships, I have much more respect for them. Sure I still morally believe that living in a household where there is one husband and ten wives is wrong, I at least respect that it is their decision to live that way. Same goes for the polyamorous relationships, I might think that it is morally wrong and probably unhealthy for their relationships, it is in the end their choice regardless of what Americans have decided is the norm.

In class on Wednesday and Friday we discussed the divorce trends in America’s recent history. We were also shown a graph of when divorce started to rise in America, and discussed some of the reasons why this occurred.
The graph showed that the divorce rate in America began to slowly rise from around the 1960’s, and reached its peak in the 1980’s. There were several reasons that our class came up with to account for this dramatic rise in divorce. Firstly, during that time women were finally able to file for divorce without their husband doing it for them. Also in earlier history people were unable to file for divorce without proving that there was infidelity in the marriage, or some other extreme circumstance. Now people are able to file for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. Also during this time in American history, equal rights for women were becoming important in the U.S. and women were more able to financially support themselves, and if women were not able to financially support themselves without their husbands they are less likely to get a divorce.
After the 1980’s divorce rates seem to have plateaued. People now are getting married more for love than for other reasons such as financial support as was the case in America’s past. Marrying for love might mean that people are more likely to get a divorce if there are problems in the marriage because they are not financially dependent on their spouse. Also the younger that you get divorced the more likely you are to get a divorce. Five percent of divorces in America are made up of couples in their first year of marriage.
I think that today people are much more likely to get a divorce than they were say in the 1950s because it is much more socially acceptable now. My grandparents were divorced in the 1950s and there was certainly a social stigma on my grandmother. There were hardly any other divorced couples that she knew and my father and uncle didn’t have any friends whose parents were divorced. Also, my grandmother was not able to financially support herself as well as my grandfather could, and it was a very hard life for her after their divorce. I am really actually proud that my grandmother was divorced and was not afraid to do it in a time that divorce was almost taboo. She was one of the strongest people I have ever known and I think a lot of that came from facing adversity after divorce. I think that nowadays people are much more accepting of divorce and that will hopefully encourage couples to feel empowered to take control of their lives and end an unhappy marriage.

In class on wednesday we discussed the differences in siblings and what it means to be the oldest child, middle child, and last child. According to recent findings, there are certain stable traits that oldest/middle/and last children all have in common with each other. These findings do not necessarily mean that every single child with these treats has to be the first second or last child, or the first child must have certain traits and the middle and second must have certain traits, but it does mean that there are some similarities between all first borns, second borns, and third borns.

In class we said that most first born children are more likely to be responsible, and more ambitious than their younger siblings. They are also morel likely have a type A personality and be perfectionists. We said that middle children are more likely to be like a mediator in conflicts, and perhaps wanting to make themselves stand out in some way. The youngest children were said to be more spoiled, more demanding, and attention hogging.

The characteristics that we came up with in class are very similar to the family dynamic in my home. I have two younger sisters, the middle one is two years younger than me, and the youngest one is 5 years younger than me. I have always been the more responible sister in my family, however my middle sister is much more type A and more of a perfectionist than I am. However my middle sister also uses those qualities to stand out from my other sister and I, which is one of the middle child traits we discussed. My youngest sister very much has the youngest child syndrome. She is really and trully spoiled rotten. She gets much more attention from my parents than my middle sister and I get, and is conctantly being bought new things. Also being the youngest she is also the laziest, even though she is by far the smartest of the three of us.

I have found that the traits that characterize who is oldest/middle/youngest child are very similar to what my family structure looks like. I have also seen many other families that look this same way and whose children demonstrate these quialites.

The panel of mothers that we had in class was very informative.The women ranged from one of our classmates who has two yound children, a woman with a young daughter who is pregnant with a second child, and a woman with a young son and a newborn baby.

All of these women gave birth to their children in hocpitals, and with some of their pregnancies, had had problems and were very thankful to have doctors and nurses around to help them. However, two of the women had horror stories coming after being in the hospital and both had heard of other horror stories that happen in hospital births. The woman with the newborn actually gave birth while her doctor went to get a cup of coffee. She was also unable to give birth in the position that she wanted too, because the hospital only allowed a certain way of giving birth. One of the women also said that often times a doctor will come in and break your water (if it hasn’talready) without even asking you or letting you know what they are doing. Overall the women said that doctors beleive that since you are in labor you really have no idea what is going on, they said that this is definitely not the case. One of the things the women reccomended to avoid situtations like that is to have your birthing plan set into the last detail and to let someone like your husband, mother, ect…, know what that plan is so that they can advocate for you at the hospital.

On the topic of breastfeeding, all of the women had chosen to breastfeed their children and had never considered doing anything different. One of the women said that the minimum reccomended age to stop breastfeed was 6 months old but that its reccomended to contiune breastfeeding until the child is 2 years old. Also this includes breast feeding and nothing else. For some reason I thought that is was normal for people to only breastfeed until their child was like 3 months old, and then start adding formula and other things. I honestly don’t really know what I think about people breastfeeding their child until they are 2 years old without adding anything else to their diet. I think I find that sort of strange but if that is really what is healthiest for the baby then I think people should follow that reccomendation.

Overall the mother panel was very interesting and I feel like I learned alot about birth and breastfeeding, and important things to remember whenever I enter a stage in life where I am ready for those things.

  Emerging adulthood is the term used to describe the phase that young adults are now experiencing between adolecence and adulthood. Arnett describes this phase as a sort of transition between being a teenager and reaching full adulthood. In emerging adulthood, young adults are faced with many of the questions that adults face, however emerging adults do not have as much responsibility and often times have avenues to explore themselves and who they are. Emerging adults often are enrolled in college, and have time to think about their lives and what they want for themselves before having to work. Without stressors such as work, and having their own family, emerging adults are able to explore a wider variety of options for their futures without being encumbered by those great adult responsibilities. 

My life narrative definitely reflects Arnett’s definition of emering adulthood. Growing up in the 21st century has definitely affected why I knew that I would be experiencing a period between being in adolescence and adulthood. I knew that I would be going to college and that I would have the opurtunity to be what I wanted because of education. As we have learned through readings such as the betty friedan article, in the 1950s and 1960s, women were moving from being a teenager into being an adult without ever having an emerging adulthood phase. Women weren’t pursuing an education because all they wanted to be was wives and mothers. They did not explore career options, or question who they were and what they were supossed to be, they were what society expected them to be, and what was socially acceptable. Earlier in America’s history, women and men did not only get married early just because that is what was socially acceptable, but for survival. People back then did not have time to think about what they would like to do with their lives, they needed to work to survive and provide for their families. Growing up in a time where more and more men and women now have more opportunity to pursue their education at a higher level, and more time to think about things like the meaning of marriage, and exploring their religion.

Emerging adulthood is a time for men and women to make many choices about the future. Arnett says that some of these choices are about jobs/careers, marriage and families, changes in relationships with their parents, money, and religion. As an emerging adult, I am facing all of these issues in my life right now. I have always wanted a family. When I was a child and thought about my future it always included being a wife and mother. I still want that for myself; however I first very much want to pursue a career before I even think about setting those things into motion. Emerging adulthood is a phase where people are on the lookout for potential future spouses. As we read in the Lori Gottlieb article, women are being too picky and ending up unmarried. We discussed how people could possibly be influenced by media and society, and expect a perfect man, who really doesn’t exist.

As an emerging adult, my relationship with my parents has greatly changed. Although I am still very dependent on them for financial help, I am not at all dependent on them for the things that I was in high school. I am very independent from them in the respect of school, and personal issues. Even in freshmen year of college I was still very dependent on my parents, and I probably talked to them every day, and let my mom set up doctor’s appointments for me and take care of little things like that. Now that I am a senior my relationship has greatly changed. I am still very close to my parents and I feel like our relationship is constantly getting better; however I no longer am dependent on them for anything other than financial help.

As for religious issues, emerging adulthood has definitely been an important phase in my religious development. I was raised in a religious household, and grew up going to church. I think that in emerging adulthood is when you must decide for yourself if you really believe what your parents had you grow up believing. In emerging adulthood I came to realize more of what I actually believed to be true, regardless of what my parents thought. I think this is a very important aspect in emerging adulthood because you are developing your own sense of what is real and true to you, solely for you (not for your parents sake). Another important aspect of emerging adulthood is deciding on a career and on how much money you would like to earn. As a senior this year, deciding on what I am going to do after college is coming up fast. I have decided to get my master’s degree in social work after I graduate. I hope to pursue a career (after grad school) either as an advocate for children, or work with children in hospitals. Obviously money is not going to be abundant in any of the jobs that I will have after college. However I decided a long time ago that being happy and fulfilled in my job is worth way more than money. All of these issues are faced by emerging adults that have time and the education to pursue their dreams.

After this time of transition and thought about the future, emerging adults can finally become adults. After finding a job, becoming financially independent from their parents, and starting their own families, emerging adults are truly adults.

The readings that we had for today covered the different styles of parenting, and the question of whether or not it is better to bottle or breastfeed. The first reading was about the differences in social class and styles of parenting. According to the chapter, there are some significant differences between how children are raised in middle class families and how children are raised in lower class families.

In middle class families, childrens lives are very much dictated by adults, more specifically by their own parents. Parents sign their children up for many structured activities to explore their child’s skills. The parents also structure much of their “play time” with other children. The middle class parent is more likely to step in on their own child’s behalf, instead of letting their child firgure out a situation for themselves. Lower class families are very much the opposite. Lower class families are often more concerned with making ends meet, and promoting what the article called “natural growth”. Lower class parents are often more likely to leave the structured part of their childrens lives up to professionals, and their childrens play time is more child sponsored and is often between, siblings, cousins, and neighbors.

The second article that we read was about the history of breastfeeding in America. Earlier in America, breastfeeding was something that a wet nurse provided for a rich mother. However, times began to change once the breast pump was invented. It allowed mothers to pump their own milk to provide for their babies. The pump is now a very common thing for new mothers to own and the article argues that it it now the wet nurse. Due to recent findings of health benefits to breast milk, breastfeeding is becomign more and more popular in America, especially amoung wealthier mothers. The article also identified some of the problems that women face today concerning breastfeeding. There  are a number of laws that “protect” women and their right to pump and store their breast milk at their place of work. However according to the article these laws only require a company to make and effort to accomodate these women and are not present in all states. These issues are contradictory to the recent plea of health professionals that women breastfeed for the health of their babies.

I think think that these issues all go back to equality for women in the workplace. Obviously men are not going to need to nurse or store breast milk for their children. However, to make women equal in the workforce, these special circumstances must be accounted for.

The Feminine Mystique includes the certain qualities that women were supposed to posses, and the only qualities that were socially acceptable for them to posses. In the 1950s and 1960s, women were expected to be stay at home moms and housewives, nothing else. In Betty Freidan’s article “The Feminine Mystique” she describes the negatvie mental and emotional affects this lack of purpose and stimulation had on housewives.

In the episode of Mad Men that we watched in class, we got a glimse of what life was like for those women, and also a glimse at the psychological affects it was having on one of the housewives. One of the wives was having some seemingly psychosomatic issues probably caused by depression. Her hands would shake whenever she was experiencing some form of stressor. She was even in a car accident because her hands started shaking and became uncontrollable after her children were screaming and playing in the back seat. After discussing this with her husband, who was ashamed at the thought of his wife having something “wrong” with psychologically, she went to see a therapist. Apparently there was also no doctor patient confidentially back then if you happen to be a woman, because her husband was able to call and get all the information about his wife from her therapist shortly after her first session. It was as if he were responsible for her, and she had no right to privacy.   

Overall the feminine mystique, and the episode of mad men illustrate the extreme social disadvantages of women in America’s past. Women were not seen as individuals, but as a part of the family with no voice, needed only for taking care of children and housework. Especially prevalent in Mad Men, women were seen almost as children, their husbands were allowed access to private information about their lives and they basically could not do anything without their husbands permission.

Today women are not as affected by the feminine mystique as they were in the past. However, women are still affected in the way that in the buisness world, men are still payed far more  than women. Also women are still supposed to act more feminine and kind, not “pushy”. If women do act in a way that is less than feminine, they are called all sorts of names, and are seen as deviants from the norm.