SOC 285 exam 1
When it comes to understanding families, how are structural functionalist/consensus and conflict theoretical perspectives different? Based on what you read in the chapter, contrast how the two theories might explain the breadwinner-homemaker family?
• Consensus Perspective: A perspective that projects an image of society as the collective expression of shared norms and values. • Conflict perspective: The view that opposition and conflict define a given society and are necessary for social evolution.
What are the four overarching historical trends?
a. Most people today live much longer than in the past b. People have many fewer children than they used to. c. Family members preform fewer functional tasks at home d. Families have become more diverse.
Why does Cohen believe classifying people by race and ethnicity still matters?
many aspects of family and social life still reflect persistent separation between people along racial-ethnic group lines.
1. Compare the relationship between men, women, and children in American Indian families, Colonial American families, and enslaved African families prior to 1820.
• American Indian: practiced a gender division of labor. For example, in groups that mixed hunting with agriculture, men did most of the hunting, while women grew and prepared food and reared young children • Colonial Women: bore about seven children. Colonial Children: Played an economic role in the family, contributing to its survival and prosperity. • African Families: All were required to work
Beginning in the 1960s, why did family patterns depart so dramatically from the 1950s ideal? Again focus on changes in the three arenas: the state, the market and family as an institutional arena.
Market: forces more than ever challenged so of the modern services State: forces were the second institutional factor promoting family diversity with welfare ect. Institution: Have more people arrange their lives, and family.
What role did religion play in marriage and family in the early American society? What did marriage mean to European settlers in colonial America?
• As with the relationship between God and man under Proestant doctrine, the idea of free choice in marriage only served to reinforce the wifes duty to the husband • practical arrangement that was necessary for civilization, not for love or affection • man was very much in charge
How is the companionship family different from the patriarchal family?
• Companionship Marriage: Am ideal type of family characterized bt the mutual affection, equality and comradeship of its members • Patriarchy: The system of men's control over property and fathers authority over all family members
What does Coontz mean by "a peculiar compromise between egalitarian and patriarchal views" (p. 43, Chapter 2)?
The result of promising women independence, then trying to take it away.
Be able to explain exchange theory, symbolic interactionism, demographic perspective, and the life course perspective
• Exchange theory: The theory that individuals or groups with different resources, strengths, and weaknesses enter into mutual relationships to maximize their own gains • Symbolic Interactionism: A theory concerned with the ability of humans to see themselves through the eyes of others and enact social roles based on others expectations. • Demographic: The study of how family behavior and household structures contribute to larger population processes. • Life course: The study of the family trajectories of individuals and groups as they progress through their lives, in social and historical context.
According to modernity theorists, what distinguishes first modernity from second modernity? What are the implications for relationships?
• First Modernity: up until the 1960s or so, there was gradual change in family behavior—for example, more divorce, a gradually increasing age at first marriage, fewer children in families, fewer people living in extended families, and more choice in spouse selection. • Second Modernity: Diversity and individuality are the new norm, and it's up to each person to pick a family type and identify with it.
Use the division of labor and exploitation to explain how functionalists and conflict theorists differ on the topic of social class.
• Functionalists: consensus theorists have worked backward logically from the prevalence of social inequality in all societies, albeit to widely varying degrees, to the assumption that inequality therefore serves an essential function. Conflict: takes the division of labor as the crucial element in defining the class system But rather than seeing classes, and the inequality between them, as necessary and beneficial, conflict theorists see inequality as the result of economic exploitation, the process by which the labor of some produces wealth that is controlled by others.
1. What is a sociological definition of family?
• Groups of related people, bound by connections that are biological, legal, or emotional. • Refers to family as in institution
How did married life change during the nineteenth century? Why?
• Men could not support a family by being the only one working, so women had to go and get jobs.
What are the three kinds of scarcity that can make it more difficult for a single parent to reach the middle and upper classes as Cohen discussed in this chapter?
• Money • Time Social Capital
What is familism and how does it play a role in Latino family life according to Cohen?
• One cultural trait that many observers associate with Latino culture is familism, a personal outlook that puts family obligations first, before individual well-being.
1. Be able to distinguish personal families, legal families, and the family as an institutional arena.
• Personal Family: The people to whom we feel related and who we expect to define us as members of their family as well • Legal Family: A group of individuals related by birth, marriage, or adoption • Family as an institution: A social space in which relations between people in common positions are governed by accepted rules of interaction
Be able to explain the social construction of race/ethnicity.
• So biology doesn't support the classification of people into races. But deeply felt divisions between groups of people remain important socially.
Be able to explain the three arenas: the state, the market, and family as an institutional arena.
• State: Law, violence, and welfare • Market: Labor, exchange, and wealth accumulation • Family arena: The institutional arena where people practice intimacy, childbearing and socialization, and caring work.
Why has poverty increased since 2000?
• The increase in poverty was caused by a combination of the factors that increased inequality (discussed earlier) and by the severe economic crisis that began in 2008.
What factors led to the decline in the number of married couples in the late twentieth century? What does marriage mean now?
• The increase in womens paid work was an important factor in the decline of married -couple family dominance Americans on average spent much less of their lives within marriage than at any earlier time in the nation's history
Describe three significant contributions of feminist theory to sociologists' understanding of contemporary families
• They try to reduce inequality within the family. They think that both parents should share each role 1. Feminists researches demonstrated that gender inequality is central to family life. 2. Feminist scholors have argues that malt structure is socially constructed 3. the gender perspectives themselves are uniform
Is inequality increasing in the United States? What factors contribute to increasing inequality between families according to Cohen?
• keeping the poor from improving their lot. . • divergent fortunes. In the middle-income ranges, some trends have pulled families down while others have lifted families up, resulting in a greater degree of inequality. • the new superrich.
Be able to explain the other two theories of social class: life chances, and social capital
• life chances, defined as the practical opportunity to achieve desired material conditions and personal experiences. • Social Capital: The access to resources one has by virtue of relationships and connections within a social network.
What was a gender perspective on declining marriage rates among African American women according to Shirley Hill? What does marriage mean to African American women according to Hill?
• rather than slavery per se or traditions imported from Africa, it was poverty, lack of opportunity, and mortality that historically limited Black family structure.
There are two perspectives on class: the ladder view and the boxes view. What are these two views of class?
• with the ladder climbers representing the continuum-of-resources view and the stacked boxes representing the discrete-groups view. Both views show people in richer-versus-poorer stations, but the ladder accentuates their status as individuals and their ability to move up and down. The boxes, on the other hand, highlight the shared positions of people in groups and also the barriers between groups that make it difficult to climb around.
