Jan 17/19: Family

Readings are available under Library Reading List in the menu.

IS: Excerpts from Chapter 14: Sections 14.1 and 14.2 only

Acosta, Katie L. “We Are Family.” Contexts, vol. 13, no. 1, Feb. 2014, pp. 44–49,
doi:10.1177/1536504214522008.

Lan, Pei-Chia. 2019. "Raising Global Children Across the Pacific." Contexts 18(2):42-47

Pay particular attention to being able to understand and give examples of these key terms and to
answering these study questions.

Terms From the Textbook:

 marriage
o a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a
sexual relationship, and implying a permanence of the union
 approaches to studying family
o Macro
 Ex. the rise of non-nuclear family forms is a macro-level debate. It focuses
on the family in relationship to a society as a whole.
 functionalist approaches: non-normal family forms lead to a variety of
society-wide dysfunctions such as crime, drug use, poverty, and welfare
dependency
 Critical perspectives emphasize the inequalities and power relations
within the family and their relationship to inequality in the wider society.
 Ex. the nuclear family should be thought of less as a normative
model for how families should be and more as an historical
anomaly that reflected the specific social and economic conditions
of the two decades following the Second World War.
o Meso
 the various ways in which the dynamics of the group, or the family form
itself, act upon the desire, preferences, and choices of individual actors.
 At the meso-level, sociologists are concerned with the interactions within
groups where multiple social roles interact simultaneously.
 Ex. how do peers influence choices of partners?
o Micro
 focus on the dynamics between individuals within families.
 Ex. What role each partner takes?
 exchange theory
o all relationships are based on giving and returning valued “goods” or “services.”
o Ex. money, time, chores, emotional support, romantic gestures, quality time, etc
 Monogamy
o being married to only one person at a time.
 Polygamy
o Polygyny: a man being married to more than one woman at the same time,
common in a majority of cultures (78%).
o Polyandry: a woman is married to more than one man at the same time, only
occurs in about 1% of the world’s cultures
 Kinship
o kinship, or one’s traceable ancestry, can be based on blood, marriage, or
adoption. 60% of societies, mostly modernized nations, follow a bilateral descent
pattern (both parents).
 family life cycle vs. family life course
o family life cycle
 The set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time,
developed by Paul Glick
 The stages: people will grow up, establish families, rear and launch their
children, experience an “empty nest” period, and come to the end of
their lives.
 Theories have been criticized for generalizing family life and not
accounting for differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle, less
rigid models of the family life cycle have been developed.
o family life course
 recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as
parting terms of a fluid course rather than in consecutive stage
 It accounts for changes in family development, such as the fact that
today, childbearing does not always occur with marriage.
 functionalist approach to studying marriage and family
o four universal residual functions of the family: sexual, reproductive, educational,
and economic
o “Includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially
approved sexual relationship, and one or more children”
o Gender roles are important
 critical sociology approach to studying marriage and family
o point out that North American families have been defined as private entities, the
consequence of which (historically) has been to see family matters as issues
concerning only those within the family.
o highlight the political-economic context of the inequalities of power in family
life.
 o Ex. Why are women expected to perform the “expressive” roles in the family
while the men perform “instrumental” roles,
 Symbolic Interactionist approach to studying marriage and family
o Family is a social construct
o The family itself is a symbol. To some, it is a father, mother, and children; to
others, it is any union that involves respect and compassion.
o Ex. “parent” was a symbol of a biological and emotional connection to a child.
With more parent-child relationships developing through adoption, remarriage,
or change in guardianship, the word “parent” today is less likely to be associated
with a biological connection than with whoever is socially recognized as having
the responsibility for a child’s upbringing.
o Interactionists view the family as a group of role players or “actors” that come
together to act out their parts in an effort to construct a family.
 What are some critiques of the functionalist approach to defining and understanding
families?
o No regard to diversity such as race, socioeconomic status, or current conditions.
o To the functionalist, family is a fact that cannot be changed
 What are the trends in each of the following (not specific statistics, just whether they
are increasing/decreasing/staying the same):
o Traditional nuclear family (husband, wife, children)
 Decreasing
o Single parents
 Increasing
o Cohabitation
 Increasing
 Living together before or in lieu of marriage is a growing option for many
couples
o Same-sex couples
 Increasing
o People staying single
 Increasing
 More apparent in men than women

From the article "Raising Global Children Across the Pacific."

o What does the term "concerted cultivation" mean and how does it apply to the
families described in the article?
o What differences are there between how families in Taiwan and families who
have immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan approach creating cultural capital?
Why are they different?
From the article "We Are Family"
o What did the author's research on sexually nonconforming Latinas reveal about
the ways that they try to negotiate acceptance from their families? What
strategies did they use?

o Why does the author say that these women attempted to gain acceptance rather
than distance themselves from their families?

From lecture:
o What are some specific negative consequences of legally defining marriage and
family?
 Some people are left out and excluded
 Ex. The 2 women in the slides
o What are "fictive kin"? Explain the typology developed by Margaret Nelson
 “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect
and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up
under the same roof.”
o How do Canadian immigration policies shape the experiences of immigrant families?
 They cannot live together, they have to travel back and forth; thus, it affects how the
parents and kids interact and grow
o In what ways do migration policies reflect gender norms? In what ways do
migration policies have gender effects?
 Women are responsible to take care of the kids while the men stay in one
place and provide finical support
 In family migration policies, the family is viewed as this nuclear unit
consistent of husband, wife, and children. The reality of life is different for
my respondents.
 My respondents are members of transnational families. Transnational families
are shaped by unequal power relations. They provide resources and constraints.
 Strategies that women use to improve their wellbeing in Canada are dependent
on life-long relationships with multiple different family members (husbands, in-
laws, fathers, brothers, children and other extended family and friends who
might be considered family).
 Migrant Iranian women do family across the borders. Sometimes they strategize
to maintain relationships with certain members. At the same time, they
strategize to sever or curtail ties with other members of their transnational
families across the borders.
o What do these terms mean?
 Family migration
 the term used to categorize the migration of people who migrate
due to new or established family ties
 Transnational families
 Transnational families are families that have members who are
scattered across national borders but maintain strong emotional and
economic ties on a regular basis
 Doing family
 shifting the language from family as a unit to family as a verb
allows us to see how individuals strategize to spend time together
and maintain intimate relationships or not