Culture Of Politics

Hochschild’s emotional perspective on institutional care is an interesting way to look at the culture of politics. How intimate, personal, and genuine is the care of daycare workers to nursing home attendants? I have been exposed to two kinds of daycares in Montreal where I have observed many differences; a government funded 7$/day daycare (I worked there for a short period) and a 35$/day private daycare founded by a parent (attended by the little boy I babysit). The government daycare was decorated with big-cartooned pictures and alphabet letters, whereas the private daycare was decorated with pictures of the children (on field trips or doing activities) and the children’s artwork and projects. How intimate and personal do/can caregivers be?

Hochschild suggests that our modern model for care requires “upgrading the status of public caregivers” (p.222) and “upgrade the value of their work” (p.222). How can this be done to get the desired results? Hochschild explains “to do this, they [daycare workers] need well-organized occupational groups to establish control over accreditation, monitor the entrances and exits of people from the field, and lobby for other measures to increase the public’s appreciation for their emotional labor” (p.223). But this depends on each person's view of the caregiver...

Household Labor

Household Labor

During the evolution of sociology, or more specifically the evolution of cooperation, individuals seem to at one point or another compare their own efforts, pay-offs, and rewards to those of other people. In the article “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay”, the comparison is with, as the title clearly states, monkeys! A nonhuman primate; the brown capuchin monkey; Cebus apella. This is what I find so unique about this article versus the other ones on the topic of household labor. It is always interesting when/how authors take a new perspective on a particular topic, just as Brosnan and Frans took this biosocial perspective on household labor. I do also very much like the title the authors chose for their scientific report, however I wonder how seriously it would be taken as the title seems like more of a newspaper headline..

This makes me think of philosophers such as Plato and Kant who believed in a rational basis for fair behaviour. I also think of the famous comment by Gordon Hewart in 1923: “it is of fundamental importance that justice not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done”.

Questions:

1. What do you think of the chosen title for the article by Brosnan and Frans: “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay”?
2. What was the division of household labor like in your home? Was there gender division?
3. Thinking about Hook’s article, what do you think about policy-makers promoting equal division of household labor for women?

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.

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

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.

Feminism and Care Perspectives

Glass half full; Glass half empty. Perree’s use of the latter idiom is a clever way to demonstrate the economic and political changes of gender perspectives in terms of the family. Right at the beginning of her article she considers the loose definition of gender analysis and its effects in terms of perceiving a glass as either full or empty; “a loose definition of gender as a variable distinguishing women and men as individuals or as defining relationships located within the context of family is omnipresent” (Perree, 2010).

Many of the articles that we read prior to this one present the change in the family and gender roles as a serious problem with negative consequences, such as Popenoe’s article on the American family decline. This is a perfect example where the glass is half empty because “family change has continued to be seen more as a crisis than an opportunity for challenging pervasive structures of societal inequalities” (Perree, 2010). With the nuclear family being so long associated with functionalism, more “emptiness is revealed by the continuing force of functionalism in defining a normative standard family…(Perree, 2010).

However there has been advancement in family studies even though Perree suggests it cannot fully include real gender analyses until economic and political changes in gender perceptions and other forms of inequality (race, class, age, etc.) are seen in a collective as well as individual way, there has been theoretical advancement. The glass can also be seen as full “in the volume of empirical research on families that takes gender relations rather than sex roles as its core analytic concept for thinking about women and men” (Perree, 2010). Unlike Popenoe who is weak in his arguments that are backed up by assumptions, I think Perree is very successful in getting her point across with all the structured studies she presents.

As Perree concludes that “attention to power and change will inevitably make studies of gender and family political”, I think it is just as important to figure out how to apply ‘deinstitutionalization’.

With more fullness of the glass being the theoretical advancement of the definition of gender perspective, which refers to the micro, meso, and macrolevels, with each “seen as relating systematically to each other” (Perree, 2010).

Theoretical Perspectives of the Family

It is clear that Parson’s functional perspective of the family was a once dominant theory in terms of its functional location in the social system. Today this theory can easily be criticized due to the evolution of the family and sex roles. I see his view as old-fashioned, with inexplicit consensus reasoning and lack of testability. Parson distinguishes the different sex roles when he claims that the working parent, the father, represents the “instrumental” role by attaining a “job which is fundamental to his [father’s] social status”, and there is the stay-at-home parent: the mother; the nurturer. Parson does mention his observations on women beginning to take up occupational roles, but states that “only a very small fraction have gone very far in this direction”. I wonder what he would have to say about my family where my dad stayed at home with the children and my mom founded and ran a successful business. I do not think that children need to be socialized into what Parson would consider proper sex roles, keeping society stable.

Family Decline?

Popenoe’s article, American Family Decline: 1960-1990: A Review and Appraisal argues that there is a concerning decline of the American family resulting in negative consequences. To prove the latter, Popenoe brings to light the decrease of the number of children in families, the increase of divorce rates and it’s connection to the feminist movement, and the “me-centered” attitude in modern society. This article is just asking to be criticized from the start when Popenoe tries to define the family; “a relatively small domestic group of kin consisting of at least one adult and one dependent person”. Not intending to leave out the different types of families such as single-parent families, stepfamilies or homosexual families, he constantly reverts back to a structural-functional definition of the nuclear family. His inconsistency and weak arguments are not enough to prove a correlation between the family decline and it’s negative social consequences. As Cowen states in his response to Popenoe’s article, “correlation does not establish proof of causation”. Another problem with Popenoe’s arguments can be seen from a feminist perspective. Stacey’s responds by pointing out Popenoe’s assumptions on this matter, including his correlation between the increase in divorce rates and feminism. I see Popenoe’s issue with the change in society as more of a shift away from the traditional nuclear family rather then a decline in family values. Thus in my opinion this shift promotes openness, acceptance and humanity rather than associating so much negative change when using the word “decline”.

Questions:

1. Popenoe associates serious negative change with his use of the word “decline”. Do you agree with this choice of word? What word(s) might you have used instead of the word “decline”.
2. From your personal experience, what negative consequences, if any, have you observed in the non-nuclear families around you?
3. A new reality tv show will be coming out about a polygamous relationship between a man and three sisters. They all live under the same roof with children between all of them. How do you think Popenoe would respond to this family structure? What are your thoughts about media and the decline of the American family?