Marriage & Family

Can we apply what we are learning in this course?

EXPLORE #1

• How romantic is your view of love?
  • Instructions: Have 6 people (3 males, 3 females) complete The Love Attitudes Scale.  Report their scores and answers to the additional questions in this spreadsheet. Locate your name on the lefthand side of the spreadsheet and fill in the information for each of your respondents.  Your rows should be filled in by 5pm on Sunday.

EXPLORE #2

EXPLORE #3

How does religiosity affect gender dynamics in a family (specifically for a married couple)?

Many religious traditions proffer a particular view of gender, often as it relates to family/domestic life.  Choose a married couple that you can interview about religion, gender, and gender roles in the home.  Try to interview the male and female member of the couple separately.  Ask the following:

• Background:
  • How long have you been married?
  • Do you have children?
  • Do you work?
  • What is your occupation?
• Religion
  • What is your religious background?
  • In what religious tradition were you raised?
  • Do you consider yourself to be religious? Why?
  • How often to you attend church/synagogue/place of worship?
  • What other sorts of religious activities do you do (e.g. bible study, pray, etc.)?  How often?
• Gender
  • Do you believe that there are inherent differences between men and women?
  • Why do you hold this belief?
  • If you believe that there are differences, describe these.  Why do they exist?
  • Do you believe in submission in the context of marriage?  If so, what does this mean to you?
• Domestic Life
  • What kinds of chores or work are you responsible with respect to running the family/household?
  • How much time would you say you spend on domestic work each week?
  • What determines who does which chores or work in the home or with respect to the family?
  • Do your religious beliefs dictate the delegation of various household tasks?  How so?

Although you will not need to record the interview, you should take notes so that you can reflect on the  interview after it is completed.  Note that, although you will be asking questions about religion, it is not necessary to interview a religious couple.  For the purposes of the exercise and discussing it in class, it will be helpful to have a mixture of interviews with religious and non-religious couples.  Following the interview, reflect on the relationship between gender and religion in the context of the marriage of the couple you have interviewed?  What observations can you draw about the impact of religion on the life of the couple?  How does the religiosity of the couple appear to influence domestic life?

EXPLORE #4

Assignment instructions:

This week, we will be discussing the concept of the  ”feminine mystique” in class.  On Friday, we’ll watch an episode of Mad Men depicting this phenomenon.  In response, reflect on the following questions in blogging about the feminine mystique and its significance.

• What is the feminine mystique?
• How is the feminine mystique illustrated in the episode viewed in class?  Be specific.
• What is the broader cultural significance of this phenomenon?
• Do you think that the feminine mystique still affects women today?  Why or why not?

EMERGING ADULTHOOD

Over the first half of this course, we have read about and intermittently discussed emerging adulthood as a new developmental phase in the life course of individuals in post-industrial societies.   In order to conclude our work on this topic, this assignment asks that you comprehensively address the question, “What does it mean to become an adult?” drawing on the material from Arnett’s Emerging Adulthood.

Assignment instructions:

Use the concept of “narrative” as discussed in class to explain what is means to become an adult.  Draw on either your own life or an example from popular culture (e.g. song lyrics or a movie, such as The Last Kiss) to explain the narrative of emerging adulthood.  What are its characteristics?  How does the narrative of emerging adulthood guide the behaviors of the individuals in this age category?  How does one exit emerging adulthood to become an adult?  In responding to these questions you should discuss 4 of the 6 substantive areas Arnett details in his book: relationship with parents, love & sex, marriage, college, work,  and religion.

Regardless of whether you choose to discuss emerging adulthood in relation to your own life or as evidenced in popular culture, your written response should include the following elements:

• Explanation of emerging adulthood and its characteristics
• Explanation of the concept of narrative
• Application of the concept of narrative to emerging adulthood: How does the cultural narrative of emerging adulthood influence how 20-somethings experience or expect to experience this life stage?
• Discussion of any 4 of the 6 areas and emerging adulthood (For example, if you chose to talk about the depiction of emerging adulthood in pop culture through a film like The Last Kiss, you would explain how marriage is depicted for emerging adults in that film as it corresponds to Arnett’s observations on emerging adulthood and marriage.)

Reflect thoroughly and write clearly.  It should be clear from your written response that you have been engaged with the reading and with class discussion on the topics germane to this project.

Explore #5

Ayelet Waldman is an author, a feminist, and a mom– three statuses which, sociologically speaking, sometimes conflict.  In 2009, Waldman was interviewed by Terri Gross on the program Fresh Air.   There, she discussed several aspects of her life which map onto issues we’ve been covering in class including variation in waves of feminism, abortion, and the trials of parenthood.

Assignment instructions:

Listen to the interview with Ayelet Waldman (about 27 min) and react to its themes sociologically.  In particular, use the sociological perspective to explain the status conflict Waldman alludes to with respect to feminism, parenthood (including prospective parenthood <i.e. abortion>), and the role of language in these struggles.  How can you use sociology to understand Waldman’s experiences with abortion?  Pay particular attention to the differences between the two experiences.

*Note that your post for this assignment should be sensitive to differences of opinion on this issue.

Explore #6

In The Pecking Order, Dalton Conley explains that divergent outcomes for siblings are often reduced to differences in character or other in-born disparities among siblings.  It is common, for example, to suggest that an individual gets ahead because of hard work or ambitiousness.  Conley argues that we cannot consider individual characteristics such as personality apart from the social structure–both the familial and societal–in which they exist.

Assignment instructions:

Siblings turn out differently from one another in a variety of ways. Often there are notable differences among siblings in markers of socioeconomic success including educational attainment, occupation, prestige and so forth. What explains these differences?  Apply Conley’s framework from The Pecking Order to explain sibling differences in success in a family you know well.  This may be your immediate family, extended family, or another family whose history you are familiar with.  It is not important to disclose the identities of the individuals in the family you refer to in the execution of this assignment.

In describing sibling differences in the family you have chosen to examine, explain how 6 of the 8 following factors (note that some are inter-related) that Conley discusses apply to your family’s situation:

• Distribution of resources among children
• The impact of family size
• Spacing or the number of years between children in a family
• Gender differences (e.g. differences in treatment between a male and female child)
• Obesity
• The impact of birth order
• Race (i.e. differences in skin tone between siblings)
• The fit between genetics and environment

*Note: I have asked you to focus on social outcomes in terms of success– e.g. income, education, etc.– not psychological outcomes.  Therefore, DO NOT argue that Conley’s framework is invalid with respect to the family you discuss in your assignment because, although one sibling did not do well socio-economically or the like, s/he is “happier” and hence more successful. In addition, if you find that a factor you have chosen to examine in your family of choice does not explain differences among the siblings, you must explain why, sociologically, this is the case.

Final Assignment

Choose from one of the following assignment options.

Option 1:

In the words of your classmate:

“My suggestion is that every class member take a family from the media, whether it’s the Cleavers or the Kardashians, and analyze them in a bunch of different ways, based on the different areas we’ve discussed in class. This would allow us to show what we’ve learned from the course and would make it a lot more fun in the process! Also, this kind of assignment lends itself to pictures, video clips, etc., which always makes for a better blog post. I think this kind of assignment would really show what we’ve learned, would require the appropriate amount of time and effort, and would be interesting both for the writers and the readers.”

As another classmate suggested, for the family you analyze, you should…

“look at the family structure, function, etc. maybe describe the parent’s relationship (married, divorced, religious views, etc) and if there are children, tie in the pecking order book and emerging adulthood book. We might also tie in the culture, SES, background of the family and say the impact of those factors.”

Option 2:

Sociologists often engage in a debate over the relative impact of structure vs. agency.  Put simply, a sociologist might ask whether someone’s behavior is determined by the social structures she inhabits or by her own choices (there’s even a Wikipedia primer on the subject).  Now nearing the close of this course, you can <let’s hope> count yourselves among the ranks of armchair sociologists and weigh in on the debate as well.  Specifically, I’d like you to think about the relative impact of structure and agency with respect to your marriage-and-family choices and trajectory.  Here are some areas to think about:

• Why do you want to get married?
• What is the purpose of marriage?
• Who (what kind of person) are you likely to marry?
• What kind of family structure do you expect to have?  How many children?
• How will your family compare with the family you have come out of?  (e.g. if your parents divorced, how will this affect your chances of divorce)
• How likely are you to divorce?
• How important is love in the context of the stability of your future romantic relationships/marriage?
• Assuming this a general goal of long-term relationships, how will you remain satisfied in your relationship/marriage across the marital life cycle?

As you think about the relative impact of social structure vs. personal autonomy in decision-making in these areas, you might find it helpful to think back to the beginning of the course.  How would you have answered these questions at that time?  How can you answer them based on the sociological understanding of marriage and family you have garnered from our time together in SOC3354?

Assignment examples from previous iterations of this course:

• Are college students adults?  How does their understanding of their adult/non-adult status relate to trends in marriage and family? x
• How do we define marriage?  Who gets to define marriage?  When has a marriage occurred? x
• Is it nature or nurture that is responsible for differences in outcomes between siblings?x