Marriage, cohabitation and parenthood

From Mannis' (1999) paper, we can see that the ongoing agency-structure debate that goes nowhere has hit also family studies. She refers to the stories of those who’s, according to her, “movement toward motherhood is an agentic oddyssey” (p. 126). What is agentic that is found in those well-employed, well-educated women with resources that is not agentic of those in worse conditions? Is it structure? Is it just that access to adoption and reproductive technology is more expensive? Are poor single mothers having children because they are less agentic? What does she mean? I am not sure if poor single mothers are less agentic, according to Valerie Mannis, and what would this imply, if true. She writes: “one can only imagine how much more ‘tough’ it must be for women with less advantages and fewer options” (p. 126). Of course having children is hard, and of course it is more difficult to be a parent with fewer resources. I wish she had done a true comparative study that could thus illuminate on the biases of this study.
After watching the videos, I have two brief comments. One, to what extent children’s social construction of marriage is changing and how is the media, especially TV, affecting children’s understanding and conceptualization of marriage? Second, I found interesting that in “The Defenders” the judge is a woman who has a bible and a flag of the US. I think that this talks about institutions and structures responsible for growing stigma against non-traditional families, about control and manipulation. What is the role of religion in defining marriage roles, attitudes and behaviors? In this sense, it is interesting what Le Bourdais and Lapierre-Adamcyk (2004) note in the comparison of Quebec and the rest of Canada with the United States and Sweden: “this cultural difference partly explains the divergent trends in cohabitation observed in Quebec and in the rest of Canada, but cannot account for the fact that Quebeckers now closely resemble their Swedish counterparts, who were not influenced by the Catholic Church. We argue that much of the evolution observed in Quebec has to do with changes in men’s and women’s roles” (p. 940).

1) In accounting for different patterns in cohabitation, motherhood, parenting and same-sex couples, how much can be explained by legal, cultural and economic factors?
2) How do you interpret the factors accounting for different relative risks of family disruption by type of union and region of residence (Le Bourdais & Lapierre-Adamcyk, 2004, 937)? What is the value of the marriage certificate? What are the causes and consequences of getting a paper certifying a union? What are the possible selection biases of marriage, cohabitation and parenthood?
3) Hochschild analyses the reactions of the ad for a personal assistant. If you are told that the man received thousands of applications, then would you read different her text? Do you blame the “offer” or the “demand” side of this labor-market transaction? Are married women living conditions of “personal assistants” only different to the one he is looking in the ad because sex is involved?

marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Parenthood

The YouTube video The Defenders made me think of the controversy surrounding Laura Schlessinger, radio talk-show therapist who offers advice to people who call in to her radio show. On her show she said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet:

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

In terms of Patterson’s article on the family relationships of lesbians and gay men, I had no idea that so many studies had been done on lesbian and gay parents and their children due to judicial concerns such as “the psychological health and well-being of divorced lesbian mothers and their children compared with that of divorced heterosexual mothers and their children” (p.1050). Results of the studies are basically what I expected, showing little or no differences. But I guess that’s just our society; someone, some group, or some institution is bound to raise issues surrounding the ways of living which differ from the traditional way or the nuclear family. For example, as Patterson says, gay families may raise an issue in a case where a judge presides over custody disputes.

In Seltzers article about cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing, it seems that one great challenge is in keeping up with the rapid rise in the number of families forming outside of marriage. I have to say that almost all families I know were once/are formed within a marriage, however I am not surprised that it is becoming more and more common for people to no longer feel obligated to stick to the marriage tradition, whatever their reasons may be. I babysit for a family where the parents are not married, and I most certainly see them as a family, as more and more people would agree since it is more acceptable than ever before. I once asked the mother if they were planning on getting married, she informed me that the father wouldn’t mind getting married, however she says she is not interested and is perfectly content with the way things are.

Marraige, cohabitation and the family

I found the YouTube video, “the Defenders” to be not offensive as you warned but instead quite truthful because according to interpretations of the bible many of the marriages that we have today would not be morally acceptable. It also made a clear reference to the current controversy over gay marriage in the United States which as we all know is a hotly debated subject in politics. What I personally enjoyed about this video was that it showed how if we do not let one type of couple such as a gay couple the right to be married then who is to say that this won’t lead to further rules on who should get married? Also, after having watched this video I thought about how in the past interracial cultures were socially forbidden and looked upon with disdain by the majority of the population. Now, for the most part or at least I hope for the most part this type of marriage is socially accepted. I hope that one day this will be the same case with gay marriages because I think what is truly important when getting married is whether you love the person you are marrying and are committed to building a life with them. Not your sex or skin color.

This week, the readings about cohabitation, the state of marriage and child rearing were quite thought provoking. The article by Mannis about the rise of single mothers who have chosen this lifestyle challenged the traditional view of the family. In this article the women interviewed were economically stable and of an age where they thought they were ready to have children but at that point of their lives did not have a suitable partner to do this with. I think that the choice by these women were very logical and well thought out and I believe shows that women no longer believe they have to wait for their prince charming to sweep them off their feet in order to start a family. As the article described, the women who chose this path knew it would be challenging to raise a child on their own but were willing to accept such a challenge. I think another important aspect of this article was how the women described being encouraged by family and friends to do this. This shows a complete shift in ideas and what is considered social acceptable because 60 years ago socially, having a baby out of wed lock was one of the worse crimes you could commit.

The second article that showed to what degree the traditional view of the family has shifted and that I identified with, most likely because according to this article I am currently in a cohabitating relationship was the article by Le Bourdrais and Lapierre-Adamcyk. I was actually surprised the rate of cohabitation was so high in Quebec especially since there is a large population of practicing French Catholics. I believe that this article demonstrated the degree to which secularization has taken place in Quebec. It seems that this has led to a reworking of what is considered the traditional family. Personally, and in the case of many of my friends cohabitating just seemed to make sense. Economically, it made more sense to split the costs of one apartment instead of paying for two but still spending most of our time together. A wedding itself is also expensive and just not an option for many people so the “logical” answer would seem to be living together before becoming married or getting married at all.

1) 1) The Mannis article discussed a rise in the number of women who are choosing to become single mothers. In this article many of the women interviewed discussed how they were encouraged by those around them to raise a child by themselves. Do you believe a male who made this same decision would also be encouraged by those around them? Would this be viewed differently by others in society?

2) 2) Why do you think cohabitation has become socially acceptable by many in Quebec? Why do you think this is not the case in other countries like the United States?

3) 3) Do you agree that marriage no longer meets the needs of the postmodern family and this is why in Quebec it is being “replaced” by cohabitation? What is it about marriage that you think people are finding undesirable and therefore choosing to cohabitate instead of eventually becoming married?

Marriage, Cohabitation and Parenthood

I really did enjoy this week’s readings. I found that they were quite engaging and interesting to follow. One aspect of the reading’s I found was the prevalence of the breadwinner role in differing couple relationships.

I both Patterson and Seltzer’s, although articles on different aspects of family life, both indirectly postulate the existence of a breadwinner ideal in both relationships of lesbian and gays as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. In Patterson, it is found that “older, wealthier men tended to have more power in their intimate relationships” and this finding was found to me the same for older and wealthier women in lesbian relationships. This finding continued into the economic realm for gay couples, but not lesbian couples, in that the wealthier man in the relationship had more power in money management issues. In Seltzer’s article on cohabiting couples, it follows that within cohabiting couples the ones more likely to marry are those when the male is stable economically. As well, couples opt to cohabit over marrying, especially in young couples, when the male’s “economic circumstances are precarious.”

In this time of “equality” when it is now socially accepted to cohabit rather than marry, and in Canada where gay marriage is legal, I found it completely fascinating that so much depends on earnings. In gay couples, being the breadwinner equals more intimate power, as well as in gay couples, more power over finances. In cohabiting couples, it dictates the time of marriage. It is interesting to see that money is such an important and crucial factor in determining the dynamic of a relationship.

I also found Hoschild’s article quite fascinating, and I too was quite offended by the ad. However, what is so striking about it, rather than the over-use of the word sensual, is that he was looking for one person to fulfill many roles in maintaining his household. He wasn’t just looking for a masseuse, or a cleaning lady, or a personal assistant, he was looking for it all: he wanted a complete package. Had he hired a separate person for each duty, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. However, he is looking for one person to fulfill these roles, which seems as though he is looking for a housewife for hire.

1. Were you offended by the ad Hoschild mentioned? Do you think that the commodity he is purchasing truly is purchasing a wife?

2. How important do you think income is when establishing power in a relationship? Do you think children can sense power discrepancies between their parent’s relationship?

3. What I felt was missing from LeBourdais and Lapierre-Adamcyk’s study were enough hypotheses as to why the cohabitation rate in Quebec is so high. Do you have any ideas or hypotheses as to why cohabitation rates are so much higher in Quebec than the rest of Canada? Can you posit a relationship between the trend of cohabiting in Quebec to cohabiting in Sweden?

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Parenthood

As the society changes, the individuals change as well. The change in the values of family led to different needs of individuals. In a world where change is constantly present, we need to be aware of the changes in ideals and values within the society.

As more women are going into the workforce, they manage their domestic sphere in a different way than those of the traditional women. They may have a career outside the house while partaking in all the domestic labor as well or they may choose to focus entirely on their work and find those who are capable of care and love to take over the private sphere. Does this mean that we should consider these “new-age” women as abnormal and unfeminine? No, they have different ideas of what a family should be and how they should invest in their partners and/or children. As Hochschild says, “a cycle is set in motion—as the family becomes more minimal, it turns to the market to add what it needs and, by doing so, becomes yet more minimal” (Hochschild, 37).

In addition, not all families today are based on marriage. Unions could be formed through cohabitation, divorce, or separation. The partners involved could either be heterosexual or homosexual. They could choose to have children or decide not to. Or those who want children but not a spouse/partner can choose to form a single-parent household. As we all know, there are different forms of households and families that stray away from the “normative, traditional” families. While there may exist some reluctance in recognizing all the different families and their different needs, we should not be so quick to condemn them. Society is made up of different, unique individuals who have their own definitions and values of what care, family, and love is. We should not hold on to past norms, just because they are “traditional”, but we should include and acknowledge all of these diverse values and ideas each modern individual have.

Q1) Do you believe that there will be stigmatizations on those who do not have the resources to meet their needs in the market while failing to do so within the family? Why?

Q2) In Patterson’s article, she looks at the unions of lesbian-gay families. With regards to Talcott Parsons, will children of same-sex families grow up to be “dysfunctional” adults, just because they may lack a role model in their families?

Q3) What are your opinions on the crime statistics which claim that children of single-parents or “broken families” have a greater chance of becoming juvenile delinquents?

Marriage, Cohabitation and Parenthood

I’ll be honest – when I saw the YouTube video “The Defenders” I got chills. I also made my roommates stop studying for their midterms to watch it with me. The changing nature of peoples’ attitude towards marriage, cohabitation and parenthood hits controversial nerves as it crosses religious, ethnic and social lines. This weeks’ articles raise a lot of questions and issues, which, while all, interconnected, each profess to hold their own legal, ethical and moral significance.

With regard to the issue of births in cohabiting relationships, I see the recent rise in occurrence rates as a social issue of the near future. Judith Seltzers highlights that there are “substantial racial and ethnic differences,” with an overriding majority of these births occurring in non-Hispanic Black relationships (“Families Formed Outside of Marriage,” 1257). Due to the instability of cohabiting relations and the subsequent legal effects that non-marital births create, such issues as child support, health care benefits and legal responsibility must be highlighted. She points to the fact that currently “the union can be formalized by individual contracts…[but] they are not universally available” to the economically disadvantaged which make up the majority of the cohabiting cohort (1262). Thus, it will be interesting to see how the recent shifts in laws that define what constitutes “family” will affect these unions with careful vigilance that the hegemonic discourse of morality does not sideline already disadvantaged children and mothers. Additionally, because a majority of single-parent households come from low SES, and children of these families “are disadvantaged on a variety of educational, economic and social outcomes,” I wonder the extent of the generational effect, the perpetuation of a cycle of disadvantage (1259).

The issue of cohabitation raises questions of contextuality. In Le Bourdais and Lapierre-Adameyk's article, “Conjugal Life in Canada,” they state that “In Quebec, however, married couples who lived together before marriage formed equally stable families as those who did not” (937). I also found it interesting that “For German couples, premarital cohabitation actually enhances marital stability” (1253). Despite every study that says cohabitation is essentially a precursor to marital divorce, I wonder what it is about German or Quebec culture versus the rest of North American society that creates this difference. I wonder if the difference is due to greater social acceptance, government policies or some other outside factor. This point alone raises issues of how cohabitation is viewed: as a step before marriage or as an end unto itself. Furthermore, in Seltzer’s article she says that when there is an “egalitarian division of labor in marriage…[it] creates strain and conflict” between the partners and “marital solidarity may depend on a specialized division of labor”(1253). Yet, “Cohabiting couples in which partners have similar earnings are more stable than those with dissimilar earnings” (1254). While recognizing issues of independence, I question why this division of labor and stability changes once a marriage certificate is involved. As cohabitation becomes more common and socially accepted, and rates of marriage decrease, it will be interesting to see what will become the defining differences between the two institutions.

Q1: Do you think that society will ever reach the stage which Heuveline and Timberlake describe in which couples would be “indifferent to marrying?” (“Conjugal Life in Canada," 939). What effects would this have on those who do choose to marry?

Q2: With regards to the dichotomy of family life and consumer capitalism that Hochschild discusses, do you see any advantages in the disintegration of the “enchantment” of the family for the creation and acceptance of alternative family types?

Q3: What type of re-organization will government and broader society need to undergo to accommodate the ‘post-modern’ family?

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Parenthood

Nowadays it appears that people are opting out of a traditional life of marriage and opting into a lifestyle that may not be what society expects, like cohabitation or choosing to be a single mother. The rise of cohabitation, as suggested in Le Bourdais’ article, implies that marriage no longer meets the requirements of the post-modern family. Universally rising cohabitation rates show us that change is occurring.

In this week’s reading Hochschild presents us with an advertisement of a male requesting a woman to come in and take on the wife role but be paid for it. Therefore he is exempted from having any emotional attachment. My first reaction to the article was “this is not serious, and that there is someone who is laughing at all the women who are applying.” My next reaction was, if this is true than this man is removing a great deal from his life by eliminating the emotion of having a partner and it is very depersonalized. To me it was sad that this is how far society has come. Hochschild raises a good point that “capitalism isn’t competing with itself, but with the family, and particularly with the role of the wife and mother.” (37) Women go out and hire people to do “wifely chores” in order to alleviate the burden of household mundane duties so that they can focus on their day jobs, by doing so the family is becoming more minimal.

Perception of ideal families, marriages, and ways of raising children are encoded in specific societal beliefs, and deviation from those expectations can severely affect peoples lives. Becoming a single mother by choice is increasingly common now, especially with celebrities, but there is still a stigma attached to it. Traditional marriage seems to be the predominant social norm, but with all these new ways of finding a partner and starting a family, should it be?

1. Do you think there are advantages to cohabitation before marriage? Could it lead the couple to a comfortable life living together and defer from the aspect of marriage?

2. Do you think single mothers by choice are being selfish by bringing children into the world without a father? Is a father required in a child’s life? What are the benefits of a traditional two parent household?

3. Do you think it is harder for a child to be born to a lesbian or gay couple or to be born with a heterosexual parent who comes out during the child’s life? Why? What do you think are the long-term effects for these children?

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Parenthood

This week we look at the controversial states of marriage, cohabitation and child rearing as they vary by geography and demographics. These readings ask us to consider the choices we make with regards to family and children, while taking our individual and societal context into account. More often than not these two are in conflict, and it is important to consider whether the resulting dissonance has a positive or negative effect on our lives and the lives of our family. For Canada and the United States, traditional marriage has been and continues to be the predominant social norm. The various legal rights and protections inherent in marriage are limited within cohabiting couples. In the United States, some states such as California provide cohabiting couples with almost equal protections as married couples, however other parts of the country limit the rights provided. In addition, the definition of “cohabitation” varies by state. In Canada there is less property right protection for cohabiting couples, however common-law marriages are available to straight and gay couples. Interestingly though, only a small percentage of Canadians qualify two married homosexual individuals with children as a family. (We will post the survey that discussed this shortly.)

In the United States, recent controversy over the definition and “protection” of marriage erupted onto the political field with a bid for same-sex marriage. While support for same-sex marriage seems to be growing, (according to CNN, 46% of the US now feels that the government should give legal recognition), the rhetoric is still not acceptable within politics. Neither President Barak Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, two politicians lauded for their socially groundbreaking presidential campaigns, say that they support gay marriage (President Obama did support the overturn of Proposition 8 in California despite his lack of commitment to gay marriage).

Furthermore, the existence of cohabitation appears also to be in constant conflict with the institution of marriage: recent debates rage over the ideal family to raise children, the legitimacy of non-heterosexual marriage, and the rights of non-married family members to legal protection and support.

This week’s readings have demonstrated that lived realities may not coincide with ideology. Perceptions of ideal families, marriages, and ways of raising children are encoded in specific societal beliefs, and can severely affect the lives of those who deviate from those expectations. Universal rising cohabitation rates show us that change is occurring. The example of Quebec illustrates that an “avant-garde” life choice can become a stable norm when there is societal acceptance.

More and more people are making the conscious choice to cohabit, to be single mothers, to fight for the rights of gay and lesbian couples, but will this be enough to synthesize the realities and ideals of family life?

As Mannis states toward the end of “Single mothers by choice”,

“Most social institutions operate as if the traditional heterosexual, married, two-parent family is the only family form. This places burdens and stigma on nontraditional families. The dominant view supports the traditional family as ideal and the norm against which other families are compared. Other family structures are viewed as deficit models (Rice, 1994).”

Mannis, however, along with much of Western society, continues to base assertions of familial variability on the traditionally White, high-status normative family structure. In so doing, fails to fully acknowledge the societal differentiation between valued and non-valued groups. A reorganization of single mothers (or any other social group) across socioeconomic, racial, or geographical boundaries (artificial or otherwise) does not recognize the intersectionality of disempowerment. Indeed, the above statement takes on an ironic meaning considering the subjects of the article.

While many continue to challenge the two-parent, heterosexual family ideology, individuals who engage in non-traditional relationships adopt or retain highly traditional sexual roles (gay parents as disciplinarians, lesbians as nurturers, single mothers in need of children to mother). The evidence on cohabitation suggests that marriage no longer meets the needs of the post-modern family. As societal expectations and personal goals shape and shaped by the broader socio-political environment, many areas (Sweden, Quebec, to name but two) no longer seem to be compatible with traditional marriage. Take a look at these two articles on the changing nature of marriage and cohabitation:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-minogue/traditional-marriage-and_b_191423.html

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/06/is-living-in-sin-still-bad-for-your-marriage.html?from=rss
As well as these:
A simple definition of marriage from our friendly neighborhood monsters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQJvSzkVfRg
And this offensive yet effective video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNiqfRyoAyA

We look forward to reading your responses!

Sociology of Elders

Sociology of the Family: the Elderly/the Aging.

Be nice to your kids they'll choose your nursing home

Aging may be seen on a biological, social, or psychological level, all of which vary within and across societies. This paper will concentrate on the biological aspect of aging; the elderly. Physical aging is inevitable, and today there are around 34 million Americans over the age of sixty-five. By the year 2030, it is expected that there will be around 80 million elderly Americans. Today most of these American elders manage to live independent lives, however, poverty and high medical bills, physical and social isolation, inequality and discrimination (ageism), are all perfectly present. With the life expectancy of human beings increasing with time, the elderly are a large and rapidly growing group that can be examined from a sociological perspective in relation to the family. Analyzing the latter as an institution and a unit of socialization, while keeping the relationship between the nuclear family and industrial capitalism, allows the elderly in a family to be viewed from economic, social, and political perspectives. Globalization and social change jeopardize the traditional roles of the elderly in a family and in many societies or cultures (where respect and care for them may vary as well). There are many theories of aging: functionalist/disengagement theories (suggesting that the elderly should pull out from their social roles making room for the younger people); activity theory (suggests the importance of elderly being engaged with society for health and vitality); conflict theory (suggest how social institutions result in inequality among the elderly); etc. Basic sociology concepts to explore relating to the elderly include alienation, civil rights, community, culture, freedom, discrimination, equality, freedom, etc. Another area to touch on deals with the aspect of life-long learning, which refers to older-adult learning (geragogy), as well as the possible changes to come, socially, economically, and politically, based on the baby-boomer generation moving into the elder stage. Questions to consider: what is the significance or role of elders in society? What is perceived as right/normal in terms of aging? Who makes what choices when it comes to the elderly (for example in terms of nursing homes)? When did nursing homes become popular and what kinds of consequences/roles to they play? My initial plan for this research paper was to be base it entirely on secondary sources (books, articles, etc.), and I do believe that there is enough documentation, studies, statistics, and research available on sociology of the elderly. However, I am still considering combining it with primary research, which would include interviews with friends and family members.

Books & Article:

Newman, L.
A Woman Like Me
WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly - Volume 37, Numbers 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 2009, pp. 173-175

Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. Introduction to Sociology (5^th ed.) Chapter 12

Article by Daniel Greenfield, Socialized Medicine’s Logic of Killing the Elderly

Article by Tara Parker-Pope on Health, How to Choose A Nursing Home, NY Times Sun. Oct. 17, 2008

Other topics considered:

1) Disabilities

2) Inbreeding

Research Paper

In a somewhat predictable fashion, I’d like to write my research paper on the effects of divorce on children, in particular, the tendency for children of divorce to grow up with weak paternal connections.  In today’s age of divorce, with many children and adults growing out of single-parent households, what role does sex have on likelihood of retaining a parenting role post-divorce?  If households headed by single-mothers are more common than single-fathers, why is this so?  What becomes of fathers after divorce?  Similarly, how does the experience of family change for children without consistent fathers?  For this paper, I do not wish to look at single-parent households from birth, rather, I will focus on households with children, who ,at some point, contained two parents (for this paper, the two parents will be female and male sexes, not same-sex).  It would be interesting to look at not only the amount of time awarded to fathers, but also, if possible, to investigate the variation in roles between the two parents to better understand how being a divorced father shapes individual behavior (for example, do divorced fathers adopt more of a care-giving role during the time spent with their children?).  What I hope to accomplish is a better understanding of the changes and variations in parenting styles of divorced fathers, and the impacts on children of these individuals.  The main difficulty I foresee is in data collection: choosing the correct variables to analyze will be very important (I can’t exactly quantify the happiness or satisfaction of children, can I?).  If anyone has suggestions on this topic I would be glad to have them!

Research Proposal

It has been shown in research that there is a relationship between a child’s family’s socioeconomic status and their cognitive development. It has been found in past research that there is a negative relationship between low socioeconomic status and the cognitive development of a child in that they lag behind their peers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds in phonemic awareness, reading skills and mathematical skills. Personally, I am interested in this subject because I had two field placements during my undergraduate in education in schools in which the students were from low socioeconomic households. I found that these students were lagging behind their peers from higher socioeconomic backgrounds that I had previously taught. I also noticed that most of the students were not from a traditional nuclear family but were either in single parent households and in many cases the child was in the foster care system. Another area of interest for this research paper would be to discover if there are any longitudinal studies on this topic. Thus far the articles that I have examined only discuss the effect socioeconomic status has on school performance in primarily elementary students and more specifically prior to grade four. I would be interested in trying to determine if it has been shown that socioeconomic status has a long lasting effect on a child’s school success or if they catch up to their more affluent peers in high school.

I believe this research topic is relevant to the topic of sociology in the family because as nuclear families become less common and the rate of divorce and single parent households increases the amount of students coming from lower socioeconomic classes may increase. Also, with the crash of the economy the rate of families who are facing economical difficulties has also increased. I believe it is important to study whether this decrease in financial resources for families will have a negative effect on children’s success in school.

Research Paper Proposal

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are classified as mental disorders under the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). According to the DSM-IV, a diagnosis of ADHD requires that the person display six or more symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity, and that the symptoms persist for at least 6 months, to a degree that is maladaptive and inconsistent with the developmental level. Some of these symptoms include fidgeting, talking excessively, and interrupting. As a child or an adult being diagnosed with ADHD puts a lot of strain on a marriage and family. Once a child is diagnosed, the household is required to change and adapt in order to fit the needs of the ADHD child. In 1989, Szatmari et al. indicated that ADHD affects four to six percent of the school-age population in North America. One study compared the rate of marital dissolution between parents of adolescents and young adults with ADHD to parents of those without ADHD. Parents of youths diagnosed with ADHD in childhood were more likely to divorce and had a shorter latency to divorce. (Wymbs, et. al.) Although it is mostly children who are diagnosed with ADHD, it still affects 30 to 50 percent of adults who had ADHD in childhood.

In my paper, I plan on discussing the effects of an ADHD diagnosis on marriage and divorce rates, examining whether the disease is genetic, detailing the differences between adult and childhood ADHD, and showing the immediate and long-term effects of ADHD on parents and other siblings. Having a sister who was diagnosed with ADD at age two, I have many personal experiences with the disorder, which proved to be difficult at times. The symptoms that accompany ADHD can dramatically alter a family’s experience, not only affecting the child with the disorder, but changing the lives of all of the family members, as well as impacting relationships with those outside the family.

Research Paper Proposal

International migration implicitly means people leaving behind family members. Depending on the context and legal framework, while some temporary workers need to migrate alone and are forced to return to their home country where relatives have remained, permanent immigrants may move along with others. Countries have different policies for those that want to reunite with family members that have migrated previously, as well as regulations for dependents to enter the labor market or have access to certain rights and services. It has been shown that family structure and household living arrangements are important factors for immigrant integration and for their children’s future.
For most of the twentieth century, most migrants to the United States from Mexico were temporary, moving for seasonal work and returning to the communities where the rest of the family had remained. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Mexican migration to the United States has taken on an increasingly permanent character as migrants obtained year-round jobs and were joined by other family members. A flow that was before mainly composed of males migrating alone has been changed to include an increasing number of women and children. In terms of living arrangements and family structures, it has been shown that recent Mexican immigrants in the US are more likely to live in extended family or non-kin households than nonimmigrant households in the US and Mexico.
In this paper I am interested in analyzing family structures and living arrangements of Mexicans in Canada, a recent destination, and comparing these to the patterns in the United States, the traditional destination. I would expect differences that can be attributed to Canadian immigration policy, the maturity of the flow and selection of immigrants. My main objective will be to describe first the phenomena and give possible explanation of how to disentangle the interaction of the sources of these differences. The specific research questions of this paper are: how do household and family structures of immigrants differ in the United States and Canada? How does immigration policy differ in terms of family reunification and migration of dependents? How are Mexicans living in Canada in terms of their family and household structures and how do these differences relate to age, gender, socio-economic status, human capital and time since arrival? The first two questions will be informed by a literature review while the third question will be answered using a statistical analysis of the complete confidential set of individual records of the Canadian 2001 and 2006 censuses. Due to time limitations, I will use secondary data and published results for the United States in order to focus on the analysis on Canada.

family and intimacy

I don’t believe I speak solely for myself when I say that this section, dealing with a more or less universal phenomenon, as Giddens would say, was just so interesting! This phenomenon being amour passion (passionate love): “expressing a generic connection between love and sexual attachment” (Giddens). His social historical analysis of the construction of passionate love, with its gender roles resulting in varying responses to this phenomenon, shows insight into its connection to sexual desire and attachment. I am interested in Giddens’ argument that “romantic love introduced the idea of a narrative into an individual’s life – a formula which radically extended the reflexivity of sublime love”; intertwining love with self-narrative. Passionate love then becomes a way of seeing oneself in terms of whom they love romantically, in turn learning as much about their self as they know about the other. This is one way where interest, desire, attachment, love, etc. are institutionalized with institutionalized rituals like wooing, courting, compliments, surprises, flowers, chocolate, love letters, etc.). From romantic comedies, to “the avid consumption of romantic novels and stories” (Giddens), to just thinking of myself and those around me, it has been and still is most often the men that do the romancing with these rituals. I don’t think it was men who started this, but keeping Giddens’ connection of romantic love and self-realization in mind and basing myself on personal experience, I could see how this type of romance does seem to cause more trouble for women, since they are basically taught to expect these things from men. It is the women I know (including myself) who tell stories of the love letters, the compliments, the flowers, and all that nice stuff a boy does, inevitably becoming one of the meanings of romance. I can’t imagine men getting together and getting excited to share all the institutionalized practices they did that day for the woman they are interested in. The institutionalized meaning of romantic love may be great at the beginning of a relationship but it leaves out what really matters for a real happily-ever-after. This leads me into Helen Fisher’s TED talk where she tries to answer the question: what makes a person fall in love with one person and not another? She describes love as an addiction and a need; the god of love lives in a state of need. It is a need. It is an urge. It is a homeostatic imbalance. Like hunger and thirst, it is almost impossible to stamp out (Plato). When someone you love dumps you, logically you should want to forget that person. I know I most certainly wanted to! However as Fisher says, we end up wanting the rejecter even more after we’ve been rejected. Wanting what you can’t have seems like much more of a reality than just a saying, and as Fisher says it becomes an obsession; an addiction.

Paper Proposal

For this paper I would like to examine the role of the family in the prevention of HIV/AIDS in adolescents. Higher parental involvement correlates negatively with risk taking behaviors in adolescents, which includes less risky sexual behavior such as sex with fewer partners and a greater incidence of contraceptive use. Ecodevelopmental theory cites that this must include family involvement at an individual/intimate level, parental monitoring of interactions with peers, and parental involvement in school. It also acknowledges that macro factors such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and immigrant status have an effect on the rate of adolescent infection. However the theory does little to address the tensions between the micro level expectations and macro level patterns, and for that reason it remains incomplete. The micro level structures focuses mainly on an “ideal” of the middle class nuclear family, while Hispanic, Black, and those of a low socioeconomic status are overrepresented in the macro level structures. In addition, the majority of families affected by HIV/AIDS, particularly childhood and adolescent cases, are Black or Hispanic, single parent families, and of a lower socioeconomic status.

While studies necessitate a functionalist role of the family in health, variation among race, socioeconomic class, and changing family structures challenge and complicate this theory.

By looking at studies of family structure and involvement over ethnicity and socioeconomic class I would like to examine the correlation between greater parental involvement and rates of HIV/AIDS in adolescents. In addition, I would like to examine different types of family structures on rates of infection, and the effect of tension between micro and macro level effects on intimacy and care. The highest prevalence is currently among Black single-mother families, but can changing family structures affect infection rate? The micro level structures of involvement focus on the time spent on intimate relations and care, but I do not think that this can, or should, be prescribed only to the nuclear family.