HDFS 436: Family Interaction

focus group

A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging.

Sample population

A population includes all of the elements from a set of data. A sample consists of one or more observations from the population.

Role of gender -

Gender is socially constructed

Heteronormativity

Implicit moral system or value framework that surrounds the practice of heterosexuality.

Marriage and divorce rates -

In Western cultures, more than 90 percent of people marry by age 50. However, about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.

Family

In its most basic terms, a family is a group of individuals who share a legal or genetic bond.

Gender roles -

In the socialization process, children are introduced to certain roles that are typically linked to their biological sex. The term "gender role" refers to society's concept of how men and women are expected to act and behave. Gender roles are based on norms, or standards, created by society.

Three themes of symbolic interactionism: Theme 3

Individuals are influenced by society. o Allows us to understand or guess how others will react to a particular situation or behavior.

Meaning -

Meaning is the result of the interpretations of interactions with others and symbols in the environment

Shared meaning

Meaning is the result of the interpretations of interactions with others and symbols in the environment. Shared Meaning is particularly important; When there is a lack of shared meaning, likely to see array of negative emotions (e.g., confusion, frustration, anger, etc.)

Gestures -

Non verbal expressions.

Three main tenets of Feminist Theory-

Oppression and power, Choice of family, Role of gender.

Three themes of symbolic interactionism: Theme 1

People will react to something according to the meaning that thing has for them o We are essentially creating/ learning meaning. (Example: How kids react to domestic violence later in life) o This is important because ppl act based on their definition- or to the meaning of their subscribed symbols.

Power dependency theory

Power-dependence theory is the name commonly given to the social exchange theory originally formulated by Richard Emerson (1962, 1972a, 1972b) . As the name suggests, the dynamics of the theory revolve around power, power use, and power-balancing operations, and rest on the central concept of dependence. Mutual dependence brings people together; that is, to the extent that people are mutually dependent, they are more likely to form exchange relations and groups and to continue in them. Inequalities in dependence create power imbalances that can lead to conflict and social change.

Queer theory-

Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women's studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself.

Gender binary -

Real males & females or Gender deviants

Three themes of symbolic interactionism: Theme 2

Sense of self provides motivation for future behavior.

Sexuality binary

Straight or gay

Queering -

Term queering not strictly about sexual orientation. Strange/odd from a "conventional" or societal viewpoint. Our understanding of gender/sexuality/families is socially constructed through our interactions not defined by nature

Choice of family -

The definition of family is fluid and all encompassing.

Oppression and power

Underlying mechanism of inequality in families and society. Women's experiences are central and valued, and essential to our understanding of families.

field research

a form of research that focuses on natural events , interviews, and case study analyses.

correlation-

a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.

Outliers

a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system.

Personal inquiry

a personal inquiry means that you need to know something and you ask your question yourself. a seeking or request for truth, information, or knowledge.

Extroversion-

a personality trait characterized by outgoing behavior and a desire to be surrounded by and involved with large numbers of people.

Neuroticism

a personality trait referring to how emotional, anxious, or "high-strung" an individual is as opposed to being even-tempered or self assured.

Openness-

a personality trait referring to how open an individual is to new experiences and ideas.

Agreeableness

a personality trait referring to how warmhearted, trusting, and kind an individual is. Agreeable individuals also tend to be high on empathy and compassion.

Conscientiousness

a personality trait referring to the level of ones personal organization and tendency to plan ahead.

Introversion

a personality trait that, in contrast with extroversion, is characterized by quieter, more reserved behavior and an affinity for smaller groups and more intimate connections with others.

Feminism -

a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social rights for women that are equal to those of men.

spurious relationship-

a spurious relationship (see also spurious correlation and spurious regression) is a mathematical relationship in which two or more events or variables are not causally related to each other (i.e. they are independent), yet it may be wrongly inferred that they are, due to either coincidence or the presence of a certain third, unseen factor.

Genogram-

a tool used for understanding family processes that employs charts and symbols to map out several generations of family relationships. Genograms can also be used to identify significant events that might have an influence on families and individuals.

participant observation

a type of field research in which researchers immerse themselves in situations, family groups, tribes, or communities and record, in detail, their observations.

in-depth interviews

a type of field research in which the researchers select a relatively small number of individuals who share common experience and then conduct lengthy interviews with each individual, taking detailed notes, to obtain as much information from those individuals as possible.

Generations-

all of the people born and living at about the same time, regarded collectively.

Construct

an idea or formulation deemed relevant to a particular theory or research question.

Experiential reality

an individuals perception of the world based on his or her own personal life experiences.

Cohabitation

an intimate relationship in which partners live together without being formally married either legally, or religiously; sexual involvement is usually part of such relationships.

reductionism

an orientation toward research in which complex systems are studied primarily through the analysis of their most basic parts.

Social norms -

arbitrarily agreed-on rules that govern and inform how individuals are to behave in social environments.

Sex -

biological, chromosomal configuration resulting in physically observable sex characteristics.

Integrate-

bring (people or groups with particular characteristics or needs) into equal participation in or membership of a social group or institution. combine (one thing) with another so that they become a whole.

Sensitize

cause (someone or something) to respond to certain stimuli; make sensitive. make (an organism) abnormally sensitive to a foreign substance.

Sample bias

ccurs when a certain group of people from a population is over or under represented in a sample. Data collected from a biased sample will not be representative of the total population.

Identity

condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the qualities, beliefs, etc., that distinguish or identify a person or thing

Binaries -

consisting of, indicating, or involving two.

Fixed

fastened securely in position.

Personality

individual characteristics or temperament traits that are generally stable throughout time and across various situations.

Cross-generation (intergenerational) alliances

instances in which family members from separate generations (i.e: mother and child) form a relational alliance to the exclusion of other family members of that generation. Such an alliance often occurs because of the failure or absence of normal generational bonds (i.e: father is unable to keep a job or is an abusive alcoholic).

Rituals -

involve more than one family member, overt behavior, repetition in the form and content of what is done, they have continuity and change, more symbolism, more emotion, and more extraordinary behaviors.

Variability

is how spread out or closely clustered a set of data is.

Predictability -

is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system's state can be made either qualitatively or quantitatively.

Gender socialization-

is the process of learning the social expectations and attitudes associated with one's sex

Symbolic interactionism

is the result of the interpretations and interactions with others and symbols in the environment. Symbolic interaction is basically socialization- learning how to behave in society.

Inalienable -

not alienable; not transferable to another or capable of being repudiated

Family of orientation

ones family of orientation centers on the family group within which one was raised. Your family of orientation would include your parents and you as a child or grandchild.

Family of procreation-

ones family of procreation involves forming a close relationship (usually through marriage) and then adding children to that relationship.

Transitions -

periods of rapid change in which new roles are adopted, old roles are abandoned, or both.

quantitative research

research method in which individual responses are reduced to a series of numbers and then analyzed using statistical methods. This research strategy often focuses on responding to identified hypotheses formulated by researchers.

Salience -

role of salience changes depending on ones environment.

Gender-

socialized characteristics regarding what is and is not appropriate behavior for boys or men and girls and women.

Variable

some aspect of the measured experience that changes or varies. Variables are subject to change and hopefully responsive to measurement during which researchers attempt to assess a construct.

Symbols -

something that has shared meaning and value. ( a person, an institution, a word,...) they are products of social interactions and needed to interact properly with one another.

Power -

the ability to influence others to behave in a manner they normally would not.

Reliability

the degree to which a measure is used in a study can repeatedly obtain similar results.

Validity

the degree to which a measure used in a study is assessing what it was intended to measure.

Role strain

the felt difficulty experienced when trying to conform to the demands of a new role or roles.

Marriage-

the legally or formally recognized union of a man and a woman (or, in some jurisdictions, two people of the same sex) as partners in a relationship.

Economic dependency theory

the notion that resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the "world system".

Empiricism-

the philosophical tradition suggesting that to really know our world we have to rely on objective experience.

Anticipatory socialization-

the process of learning the norms, values, and so on, of a role or roles before one is expected to take on that particular role.

causation

the relationship between cause and effect; causality.

Roles -

the specific functions and purposes that an individual has within a family structure. a set of social norms for a specific situation or part. (The "self" is a character that we play

Family processes

the strategies families use to attain goals. These strategies include, for example, the enactment of routines, creation and maintenance of rituals, adoption of key ideological orientations, use of communication decision making and problem-solving styles, parenting approaches, and ways couples and family members resolve power issues and conflict.

Morphogenesis-

the tendency of a system (a family in our case) to need to adapt and change to new circumstances and ever-changing development of family members.

Morphostasis-

the tendency of a system (in our case a family) to maintain order and sameness.

Agreement reality

the tendency of individuals to conform to or adopt views or opinions that most closely resemble their own without consideration of additional viewpoints.

Intergenerational transmission-

the transfer of information from older generations to the new generation by means of relational processes.

Overgeneralization

to take the opinions of a person (or a small nonrepresentative group of people) and assume that what those people think or how they behave is representative of a larger group.

Two-parent vs single-parent households

two-parent households are declining, from 1960: 87%, 2000: 73%, 2014: 69%, as opposed to the increase in single parent households 1960: 4%, 2000: 22%, 2014: 26%.

Interaction -

we derive meaning for symbols through interaction with others. They can be verbal or non verbal.

Purpose of queer theory-

• 1. Deconstruct heteronormativity as a system of privilege • heteronormativity involves a system of privilege. • "real" males and females (vs. gender "deviants") • "natural" sexuality (vs. "unnatural" sexuality) • "genuine" families (vs. "pseudo" families) • Those in "real, natural, genuine" positions (heteronormative) have more power and legitimacy than those in "deviant, unnatural, pseudo" positions. • Heteronormativity ... • regulates those kept within its boundaries • marginalizes and sanctions those outside them • i.e., there is a system of privilege for those that occupy positions within heteronormativity. • 2. Move beyond gender/sexuality/family binaries • Three binaries to describe normal: • Gender • Sexuality • Family

Strengths of feminist theory -

• Inclusion of different viewpoints in explaining social phenomenon and with a focus on interactions • Attempts to end unfair treatment of women and other socially marginalized groups by focusing on processes that create inequality in society • Practicality of research by being inherently political and central to issues of social justice

Limitations of feminist theory -

• Not a unified theory • No standard measurement tool available • Might be seen from traditional research framework as too inherently political and not concrete enough (Wills & Risman, 2006)