SOCIOLOGY EXAM 2
household labor
Household labor refers to unpaid work that is done to maintain the lives of family members or the home. This includes feeding work, housework, and care work (and can also include child care).
How is household labor shaped by gender?
How is household labor shaped by gender?
endogamy
limit intimate choices to people within one's own social group, however that group is defined (principally race, ethnicity, religion, and social class)
passionate love
the intense, sexually thrilling feelings of attraction that mark the beginning of a relationship
companionate love
the quiet, often predictable affection that people experience later in a relationship
Discuss some important differences between marriage and cohabitation.
Marriage is far more institutionalized than even the most serious cohabiting relationship. The law provides tremendous support for the institution of marriage, including economic benefits, legal protections, and health and medical decision making. Also, despite the logic that living together prior to marriage would give partners the opportunity to test out the relationship and therefore decrease their chances of divorce, in reality people who cohabit are actually more likely to have unhappy marriages and to divorce.
How does gender shape marriage?
Most heterosexual relationships in the United States continue to be dominated by male partners, in part because societal resources are still unequally distributed by gender and because gendered norms are deeply entrenched in society. Even couples who identify their relationships as equal and their roles as non-gendered tend to show traditional male-dominant patterns. Women may be more attracted to marriage than men, but they end up getting less out of it. Women experience more legal, social, and personal changes when they become wives than men do when they become husbands. Women still make more concessions and adjustments to their lives upon marriage than men do. Women's increased participation in the labor force has not been matched by men's increased involvement in the home.
Why are love and dating important for studying and understanding the family?
Relationships, especially romantic ones, form the foundation of family experiences and family formation. Most of us learn early on that relationships are the standard against which we judge the quality and happiness of our entire lives. Cultural images and media messages tell us that we can't be truly fulfilled without falling in love, being sexually satisfied, and having a long-term relationship with someone. Love and dating are important facets of the sociology of families.
Why is it important to consider issues of power in marriage?
So often in our culture, marriage is thought of only in terms of love and intimacy. However, power is important in the context of intimate relationships because it provides privileges to some people and not others. Being part of a couple requires many choices and decisions—the way these decisions are made (and who benefits most) depends greatly on the way the relationship is structured by power.
What is meant by the ideology of separate spheres?
The division between men's and women's labor stemming from industrialization resulted in the ideology of separate spheres—the belief that women's place should be in the home (the private sphere) and men's place should be in the work world outside the home (the public sphere). Women were assumed to be inherently nurturing, selfless, and sacrificial—a perfect fit for their restricted domestic roles. Men, on the other hand, were thought to be "naturally" aggressive, calculating, rational, and bold—a perfect fit for the demands of the marketplace.
What is meant by the "feminization: of love?
The feminization of love means that love is culturally defined in terms of feminine characteristics, such as emotional expression, talking about feelings, vulnerability, warmth, and affection. Qualities we associate with masculinity—being independent, strong, competent, assertive, and unemotional (e.g., rational)—contradict our common ideas about love. The consequences of love becoming feminized can be far-reaching. In heterosexual relationships, feminized conceptions of love can reinforce men's power over women.
How have historical changes in the economy and work influenced family life?
With the advent of industrialization, new technology and opportunities drew people away from farms and into cities and factories where they could earn wages in exchange for their work. Consequently, the family economy was based outside the household, and the majority of families depended on wage labor for their financial support. These changes had profound effects on family life. Men went to work in the factories, while women were charged with managing the home and rearing children. Because the kind of work that women now did was either low paid or unpaid, and because marketable goods were no long being produced in the home, women's work became devalued.
exogamy
rules that require an individual to form a long-term romantic relationship with someone outside certain social groups to which he or she belongs