Marriage and the Family

Class Entry - 4/13/07

2007-04-13T07:36:00.000-05:00

Questions:
1. According to Joseph Pleck, how did the role of fathers change in the United States over time? What are the expectations about fatherhood today, both according to the article and based on your own observations?

According to Pleck, fatherhood has gone through a few specific, important role-changes since the eighteenth century. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the father's role was extremely involved and nearly all-powerful: the moral overseer: "Fathers were viewed as the family's ultimate source of moral teaching and worldly judgements." In this role fathers played an extremely active part in their family's lives, representing the primary authority in the family. Men were responsible for making sure their children weren't ruled entirely by their quickly-changing passions (women were seen as less capable of ruling the household without help). Fathers became the way that children later communicated with their family's, even specifically with their own mothers.

The early nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries saw a significant change in this role. Fathers became breadwinners, distant and often disconnected from the family and most importantly, from childrearing. During this period mothers took on the role of moral authority and child-rearing. Women and femininity gained new importance as they were viewed as more pure and gentile than men and were therefore better suited to raising children. Fathers then, largely because of necessity, left the house for their jobs and were therefore far more absent than in previous times. While they maintained the patriarchal role and were the final arbiters of important decisions, their day to day interaction and child-rearing roles had all but disappeared.

Finally, fathers following WWII have become a kind of sexual role model both for their sons and daughters (but primarily for their sons). Women during the war were blamed for any sort of weakness in the American fighting man and fathers were more and more expected to instill in their sons ideas about manhood and masculinity. From fathers, sons would learn what it was to truly be a man (and later a father himself some day).

Pleck outlines the implications of this history on the present expectations of fatherhood. He maintains that fathers have largely retained the role of breadwinner and sex role model. He states that the growing conflict and clamour for more fatherly involvement in all aspects of family life will be difficult to bring to fruition. For example he sites the difficulty of instituting and keeping programs for paternity leave. For me personally, I think of the role of fatherhood in simple terms (for better or worse). More important than any other roles, fathers should love their daughters and worship the ground they walk on. For sons, fathers should love them but teach them challenge and competition. Of course the role of the father is far more complex but trying to stick to those two simple ideals will make things easier.

2. According to Francine Deutsch, why do couples with children decide to work alternating shifts, and how is that decision related to their social class status? How does these families' division of labor compare to their gender ideologies? Would you select an alternating shift arrangement for your family?

Deutsch lists basically two primary reasons why parents choose to work in alternating shifts. For the blue-collar or lower-middle class family in lower income brackets, the alternating shifts bring in more desperately needed cash. For upper-middle class families (lower-middle class as well but to a lesser extent) the alternating shift has been used because of the fear of outside help. Many of Deutsch respondents site the fears they have of letting anyone but family take care of their children.

For me personally, I think alternating shifts is a last resort in a tight monetary situation to have the children raised by family rather than strangers. I would almost NEVER choose such a situation. MOST important in child care, is that the relationship between husband and wife stay extremely close and strong. Almost to the point that if you take care of that relationship, everything else falls into place. Its my opinion that too many couples sacrifice this in an attempt to focus more on their children and by doing so are doing their own offspring a serious disservice. Alternating shifts are extremely difficult and take away nearly all time for couples to do upkeep and maintenance on their own relationship. To me an alternating shift setup would be like admitting defeat.

3. According to Dorothy Roberts, what are the societal forces that discourage family participation of Black fathers? What elements of Black fatherhood led to the creation of the myth of the Absent Black Father, and what patterns of Black men’s behavior contradict this myth?

Roberts article is interesting to say the least. She essentially states that the role of the absentee father is a Black one, both statistically and psycho-sociologically. She then somehow gets around to slavery and how America has used the absent Black father to explain African American failure to succeed in this country. That someone the focus on the lack of Black fatherhood keeps us from dealing with centuries of undealt-with institutionalizaiton.

She continues by citing the facts that many of these absentee Black fathers are either jobless or in prision. Without the ability to financially contribute its difficult for fathers to stick around and more importantly, many women won't stick with a man unable to provide. She talks then about the 'myth' of absentee Black fatherhood while at the same time citing the absence, statistically of Black fathers. She attempts to rationalize this by citing evidence of Black communal childrearing and fathers' relationships with their children even if they are absent or can't provide significant financial support. She has a point, there are unstudied characteristics of the so-called Absentee Black Father, and there are important issues to be dealt with - primarily the ability of young black men to get and keep decent paying jobs. However, she seems to overlook her own facts with a kind of idealistic view of the way Black families adapt to the father's absence.

Class Entry - 3/21/07

2007-03-20T20:05:00.000-05:00

Questions:

1. According to Hafner-Eaton and Pierce, what are the reasons why some prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife? What is your opinion about the best setting for giving birth?

Hafner-Eaton and Pearce make several arguments the primary being that some statistics and studies show that in-home births attended by midwives can often be more safe and less detrimental to both the mother and newborn that hospital births attended by physicians. They further argue that many women prefer the environment, safety, comfort, and personal feel of their own homes over the austere and sometimes impersonal medical, hospital setting. They state further that doctors can very often "make things worse" by intervening unnecessarily, prematurely, or to too great an extent, often to the point that other interventions are required to correct earlier interventions.

As for my own opinion, I would have to say that despite the interesting information the article provides (i.e. that European countries where lay-midwifery is extremely common have lower risk and fatality rates than the US) I will probably still prefer a hospital birth. As the article says , there are always risks that something unforeseen will go wrong and in some of those circumstances minutes, even seconds, can mean life or death.

2. How did the legal ties between parents and children change over time? How did the adoption laws changed? Historically, what was the purpose of formal adoptions?

Legal ties between parents and children have changed a great deal. Far enough back there was a surplus of orphans, made so by the deaths of their mother and father (dangerous childbirth, plague, etc...) In some cultures children may live one day with their family, one day with an aunt or uncle, one week with a neighbor, etc... yet the parents never lose contact with the child, they simply can't afford to support it year-round. Even now it differs state to state - in some states adopted children still have rights regarding their birth parents in addition to their adoptive parents yet in states like California, adoption waives any right the child might have had to inheritance or care from their birth parents.

Historically, the purpose of formal adoption was to carry on the family name and inheritance and more often occured with widows and widowers who could no longer afford to provide for their children and so uncles and aunts and grandparents often adopted these children.

3. According to Sharon Hays, what are the conservative and liberal views of welfare? What are the main differences between the requirements introduced by the welfare reform of 1996 and the earlier welfare policies? What are the two contradictory visions represented in the welfare reform? What does the welfare reform tell us about the values of our society?

Sharon Hays article was to a large extent difficult to read at times and confusing. Liberally viewed, I'm to understand, welfare is a tool to bring the poor out of poverty and support children most importantly. Conservatively, welfare has a tendency to instill laziness and poor moral values and needs/needed to be reformed.

The welfare reform of 1996's primary difference is the requirement that anyone on welfare either have a job, be training for a job, or be diligently searching for work. If they are not, they are assigned to State work to earn their welfare checks.

The two contradictory visions, I think, are supposed to be that one vision sees welfare as designed to create a self-sufficient workforce in a limited span of time, able to care for their children, selves, and families. The other view is that welfare is to I guess instill "family values" by fighting teenage and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, teaching abstinence, and encouraging marriage.

I guess welfare reform tells alot about our society - we still highly value marriage as an institution and a way to regulate and better society; there is still negative stigma attached to single mothers, teenage pregnancy, and outofwedlock pregnancy; and that the majority of people in this country perceive that hard work and dedication is the way to a better life.

4. According to Block, Korteweg and Woodward, how do countries such as Norway understand poverty? And what is the prevailing theory of why poor people are poor in the United States? How does this theory operate as a self-fulfilling prophecy? According to the authors, what can we do to make American Dream more accessible to the poor?

Countries such as Norway understand poverty differently however this article misrepresents the diversity, vast cultural differences, and differences in values and economies between countries. Essentially this article states that the prevailing theory in this country is that the poor are poor because they are immoral or make bad decisions or that they cheat so they can be "more dependent" on the welfare system. They claim that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - i.e. less aid and more rules means more cheating and more cheaters. I honestly didn't read far enough learn what the authors propose. I think their misrepresentation of American sentiment and of facts was gross and unconscionable.

The problem with these articles is that the authors apparently can't see the facts in front of them. Something like 80-90 percent of people on welfare are women with children out of wedlock from either unknown or delinquent fathers. Without the dependence of their children, many of these women would likely be able to, in fact, pick themselves up by the bootstraps. So many programs encourage teaching combinations of birth control, abstinence, the importance of marriage etc... Why are these bad ideas?? If we can decrease the number of teenage and outofwedlock pregnancies and births, we thereby decrease the number of people on welfare - decrease the number of people on welfare and you increase the amount of aid per person to the people who are in need through no fault of their own.

5. According to Clawson and Gerstel, how can we improve the child care system in the U.S.?

Clawson and Gerstel seem to defer largely to the French model of government sponsored child care - in France child care is seen as a "social responsibility" paid for by all, where in this country child care costs are placed on parents. They seem to favor some sort of adoption of this plan which in my opinion is absolutely wrong. We in this country can choose to have or not have children. Quite literally, even in sexual relationships if we do not want or are not ready for children, many states offer free birth control at places such as Planned Parenthood. If you can't afford to have children, then you can very easily prevent pregnancy. Done and done.

Class Entry - 3/14/07

2007-03-14T08:12:00.000-05:00

1. According to Felson there are two perspectives by which we can view violence against women - gender and violence itself. A gender perspective views acts of violence in a gender-specific light meaning that for some reason (sexual, sexist, etc...) the action is motivated at least in significant part because the victim is a woman. The violence perspective sees abuse as motivated by violence in itself, meaning that the purpose of the abuse (or rape in many cases) is not sexually driven, but dominance driven and has little to do with the victim being a woman.

While I initially found Felson's article interesting, reading Ann Jones article immediately after quickly convinced me otherwise, I almost couldn't understand how I had almost wholeheartedly taken Felson's article at face value. He strings his somewhat meager evidence together to form a rather convincing conclusion which includes primarily academic studies of violence and dominant behavior in spousal relationships. Without the Jones article I might never have understood but Felson completely missed the point.

2. Jones' answer to the question, "Why doesn't she leave?" is essentially that would shouldn't be asking such a dumb question. I was initially apprehensive - Jones' writing style can be extremely aggressive and off-putting at times. Yet as I read further into the article and many of Jones' example cases her point became clearer and clearer - that in many cases we seem to focus too much on the victim and by doing so either consciously or subconsciously start blaming them for the actions of their husbands. Jones would definitely side with a gender perspective on abuse and rape.

While I truly appreciated reading Jones' article I still have one bone of contention and that is that she seems obsessed by the question "Why doesn't she leave?". I understand that it provides structure and a good focal point for the article but I think she's being unfair to many of the people that ask it. I can't recall specifically but it sounds like a question that I would ask, yet when I have it has absolutely nothing to do with blaming the victim. I think that when most men ask the question, its because we don't understand. Perhaps its because we're men still living in a male-dominated society, whatever the reason, I think that it can be hard for men to understand the reasons why some women can't leave. Moreover, I had no idea that there were cases like the one of Karen Straw where in fact she did try to leave and the system just outright failed in protecting her from her maniacal husband to the point that she had to kill him in self defense. I simply didn't know that happened.

I think that's exactly why the question "Why doesn't she leave?" is asked by many men. I'd be willing to bet that most men don't realize this is going on on any sort of a significant scale. Jones' is in fact answering the question that she hates to have posed which in my opinion is exactly what needs to be answered (just perhaps not in the way that many academic studies have viewed the topic). In many cases the answer is simple - "Because she can't."

**Last night as I worked on this I could not find the Ptacek article in the course reserves. I found it now this morning as I'm double checking my post unfortunately I don't have time before class to read it and answer the last question.**

Class Entry - 2/26/07

2007-02-25T13:47:00.000-05:00

These three readings were the first to really grind at my sensibilities. The first two articles are especially bothersome. Both Williams and Hochschild put forth ideas and opinions that fail to take a number of different factors into the equation (especially Hochschild whose article I found borderline infuriating). First however I'll briefly answer the questions before I make my own argument.

1. Briefly explain the egalitarian myth that Hochschild documents in her chapter. What is emotion work and how is it related to this myth? Compare Holts' situation with your observations on the division of labor in your family or those of your friends.

The egalitarian myth, as Hochschild describes it, is this myth created by many families in which the husband and wife talk about how everything (namely housework) is equal, but in reality, somehow the man's time is valued more highly than the woman's and she ends up doing the majority of the household labor. Emotion work is essentially the work that the wife has to do to subvert her own desires - by compromising in terms of housework or her own career, she is performing this emotion work for the better of the family as a whole. Initially there felt like there was some familiarity with my own family in comparison with the Holts' however the roles were somewhat reversed (mom makes more than dad). In reading the totality of the article the similarities disappeared quite quickly.

2. Explain the concept of the “ideology of domesticity” described by Williams. What are the three constraints that domesticity places on the organization of work in our society? Based on what you learned from lectures and movies, did ideology of domesticity exist in hunters and gatherers societies? In colonial America? Use specific examples to support your answers.

The ideology of domesticity is difficult to describe in its entirety. Williams describes it as a phenomenon that arose as men's careers became their defining characteristic, and the aspect of their lives that gave them dignity and satisfaction. In turn, women took on a domestic, child-rearing role, as the man's income was enough to sustain the family. This domesticity, according to Williams places three constraints (with many sub-layers) on the organization of work: Employers are entitled to 'ideal' workers, free from the time-consumption of their own family; Men are entitled to BE those 'ideal' workers (and are more importantly REQUIRED to be so); Finally, that mothers are societally supposed to have 'all the time and love in the world to give'. This ideology of domesticity didn't work in the same way as it does today but to a large extent I think there is significant evidence to contradict Williams' claims that domesticity is somehow a phenomenon of modern society. Its true, for example, that in colonial families nearly all members of the family were required to participate in the maintenance of the family - usually men worked either in the fields or in the marketplace, women worked in the home usually performing secondary jobs either as another source of income or for example making/mending clothing, and children performed menial, simple, but important tasks. While it may not have been called domesticity, there was a clear delineation between what men were responsible for (the primary means of care for the family - food, money, shelter) and what women were responsible for (the equally as important aspects - clothing, secondary income, education, etc...).

3. Explain Williams’s argument about sex discrimination and the “free choice.” Do you agree with her?

I think there is something to be said for both sides of Williams' argument. On the one hand, lower-middle class and poorer families may require that both parents work full-time jobs thereby limiting the argument for choice in terms of a woman choosing a career. However, using the Holt's as an example, both the husband and the wife are clear that the family could definitely make do without the wife's income (NOT the case with the husbands income). Here is a clear choice in terms of having a career instead of staying home.

Now for my own thoughts. When I read the Hochschild article, I almost stopped and began this entry right there. Her arguments in my opinion are short-sighted, unfair, and quite honestly infuriating. She begins by describing the daily life of the Holt's family in which both mother and father return home from work, exhausted (both of their 'feet are tired), and despite this, somehow Evan (the husband) just always seems to fail to do enough of the housework to make things equal and keep Nancy happy. And in these very first few pages Hochschild fails to deal with one of the defining differences between the work that Evan and Nancy do (although she touches on it later she fails to really take it into account). Namely, the job Evan does, selling furniture, is not a job that he particularly enjoys or cares about, and despite its difficulty, Evan NEEDS to work because his income is the primary income and sustains the family. He doesn't have the luxury of searching for a career that he absolutely adores, even if it makes less money, because in the end he is responsible for keeping a roof over Joey, their son's, head, and food in their mouths. On the contrary, Nancy's job as a social worker brings in significantly less money (app. two-thirds according to the article), and according to both Nancy and Evan, is helpful in terms of money but not necessary. Thus Nancy is able to work at a job that she loves because she enjoys the freedom of not having to worry about being the primary breadwinner. In return for this freedom - and let me be clear on this - FREEDOM, granted by the work that her husband does, Evan is suscepted to all sorts of manipulation by his wife who attempts to get him to do an exact, equal amount of housework (cooking, cleaning, childcare, etc...) including nagging, cajoling, even her use of sex (denying Evan because he wasn't performing enough of the work around the house). This, in my opinion is a deal breaker, but there's much more that Hochschild fails to deal with.

Not only does Evan have to have his career to provide for his family, he HAS to have it so as to attract a wife. Ask any girl my age, the generation that should be more comfortable than any before it with a part-time or stay-at-home husband. Not a SINGLE one will tell you she'd be happy with a stay-at-home spouse. Like it or not, men are still judged largely by the career they have and the living they make (let me be clear here also, I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing; women search for a mate that can provide not only for her, but more importantly for her children). Men have to work full-time careers, perhaps in jobs they don't particularly love, because the more successful a man is, the better a spouse he'll find - its not romantic but its true.

Articles like these are intolerable. There are a laundry list of other problems. Not only do they fail to tell the men's side of the story in their progressive demonization of manhood and masculinity, but in the process they often demonize motherhood, demonize women who want to stay at home with their children and in the process be homemakers. In all these areas, feministic propaganda like that of the Hochschild and Williams articles not only fail in their arguments, but perpetuate these stereotypes of men and women and in my opinion do far more damage than good.

Class Entry - 2/12/07

2007-02-12T08:49:00.000-05:00

According to the Risman and Schwartz article, the current trend among teens shows a few things - that the number of teenagers (15-17) having intercourse has been on the decline since the early nineties, that fewer young men are reporting having sex before age 18 than before, and the instances of pregnancy and STD's are significantly lower. Risman and Schwartz causally argue several different possible explanations for all of these.

First, they argue that the widespread sex education, fear of disease, and possible cultural backlash against the sexual revolution all play a role in lower the number of people having intercourse before adulthood. The only factor that they try to eliminate is that of abstinence teaching. Risman and Schwartz also claim that fewer men are having sex before age 18 (especially white and hispanic men) because the context in which sex is appropriate has changed. That is to say, sex outside of relationships is less and less acceptable but sex inside of a relationship is far more widely accepted. The result being that instead of a few "bad" girls servicing a number of different boys, intercourse is largely saved for "relationships" (sometimes these are extremely short nonetheless, i.e. two weeks long) and so the numbers of young men and women having sex in highschool is starting to even out. Finally, they tout the success of sex education by showing the dramatically lowered instances of STD's and pregnancy (and subsequently abortion).

Risman and Schwartz make some extremely good points - especially the changing dynamic of acceptable sex. Nevertheless their research has a lot of guesswork. In trying to explain the changes in patterns of teen behavior, they essentially state four possibilities, make some effort to eliminate one factor (abstinence teaching and pledges) and make little effort to prove their other three explanations. Also, Risman and Schwartz then state towards the end of the article that the sexual revolution was essentially a complete success. There is no 'counterrevolution' and the general public just needs to get used to the idea of teenagers engaging in sexual intercourse and everything leading up to it. I wasn't prepared for a such a blanket opinion and bias. The article up until that point had seemed at least as though it was attempting to remain unbiased. The article failed to deal with the extreme young ages at which many children are beginning to have sexual encounters - 10, 11, 12 years old, sometimes even younger. Don't tell me that that's just part of the growing process and that I'll just have to deal with the idea that my kids will be partaking.

I found the England and Thomas article far more interesting. They discuss the rapid decline in the traditional date on college campuses and the growth of the "hookup". Hardly a phenomenon anymore (this was common knowledge by the time freshman year for me was over, probably earlier), England and Thomas nevertheless discuss some interesting changes in collegiate behavior. First they discuss the growth of relationships out of hookups and then the gender differences in terms of orgasms.

From hookup to relationship has always been a strange phenomenon in my eyes (despite the fact that almost any relationship I've had has begun that way). I think the reason it seems strange is that its misunderstood. As the article itself cites, most hookups occur between people who at least know each other a little bit outside of the setting where they hooked up - from class, an extracurricular, a friend of a friend, another party, etc... More often than not, people who hookup and end up in a relationship were friends first, before anything sexual happened. From my personal experience, I've sort of grown tired of just hooking up and I'm not the only one. Not to say that seniors don't hook up (please), but myself and a lot of other people that I know are changing that behavior significantly. Anything that I've done sexually over the past 6 months or so was a result of going out on a 'traditional' date with a girl. Old ways are the best.

Finally England and Thomas discuss the inequality of orgasms in college hookups - men have them about twice as often as women do. The authors do little to explain this phenomenon (they essentially just say "see, its not equal yet"). They fail really to discuss the differences in men and women emotionally - from my experience women are often more uncomfortable in a hasty sexual experience than men. They also fail to discuss the biological differences between men and women. That is, men reach their sexual prime around age 18, women around age 30. Many women cannot even have an orgasm through intercourse until they're 23, 24+. Nevertheless the disparity cannot be explained purely through biological differences.

As for my own experiences I think that abstinence teaching (while I don't believe in it) does have some merit and I think that it did help push back my first time until I felt I was truly ready. While the hookup is still a widespread occurance on what I'm sure is every college campus in the country, I do see some slight change in students' behaviors. I've been on far more dates in the past 5 or 6 months than during my freshman, sophomore, and junior years combined and I know others doing the same. Personally I usually prefer that to casual hooking up. Yet the best relationship I've had grew out of a hookup that became so much more. Am I short-changing the 'hookup'? I haven't thought about that till right now.

Class Entry - 1/29/07

2007-01-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

Article 1: Scripps Howard News Service. September 20, 2006, Wednesday 1:56 PM EST
HEADLINE: Numbers don't add up for women in math, science
BYLINE: BONNIE ERBE, Scripps Howard News Service

This first article quotes a study that claims it could find no reason why women made less money in the workplace. However this is not the core of the article's argument. Bonnie Erbe goes on to attribute women's lower salaries to conservativism in the White House, unintended bias (we like to hire our own sex), and lower motivation on the part of women. In all, she uses no data to form the rest of her argument. While intelligently written with interesting material, there isn't really sufficient information to evaluate the quality of her research.

Article 2: Salon.com. September 28, 2006 Thursday
HEADLINE: Blaming women's workplace woes on ... women
BYLINE: Carol Lloyd

In this article, Lloyd draws from several different studies but largely uses a false form of logic (the name of which I can't remember at the moment) to deny each conclusion. Instead of attacking the research she attacks the character of the creators of the study which is at once unknown and irrelevant. Nevertheless her discussion of household business did have some interesting insight.

Article 3: The Washington Post. August 13, 2006 Sunday, Final Edition
HEADLINE: Women in Top Ranks Pull Up the Pay of Others;
Study Says Existing Salary Gap Fades When Female Managers Are in Charge
BYLINE: Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer

The most well written of the articles thus far draws largely from a UC Irvine study based on the 2000 census. This article really has some credible statistics and an interesting argument - when women achieve senior management positions, it tends to increase the salaries of all women in the company significantly (by up to 10% or so).

Article 4: The Times (London). October 4, 2006, Wednesday
HEADLINE: Juggling act keeps women happy
BYLINE: Lucy Alexander

This article felt extremely sloppy. While Alexander quotes some statistics in her attempt to prove that women get more enjoyment out of employment, her argument falls pretty flat in my opinion. First, its difficult to measure emotions. Second, she quotes one percentage of one company implying however that what is true of the part must be true of the whole. While she has an interesting argument, I think she falls VERY short of proving anything.

Article 5: The Guardian (London) - Final Edition. December 6, 2006 Wednesday
HEADLINE: Response Is this the reason smart women don't make it to the top?: Business is a man's world and women have to cope with an alien environment, says Julia Payne
BYLINE: Julia Payne

This article deals with an incredibly interesting, though very difficult to quantify, subject - the idea that women's personalities in the workplace are under far greater scrutiny than mens, AND that they have a far smaller or narrower margin of "acceptable" attititudes. If a woman acts too push or too demanding, she's a cold bitch. If she falls short of the mark, then she's too nice and is viewed as less capable.

While there are certainly biases in almost every article written...ever, we can nevertheless garner important information. Bias in itself, especially when its visible, can reveal alot not only about the author of a particular article but about his or her audience. I would say that some of the main topics of controversy are the women's salaries while much better than say 20 years ago, are still averaged at around 80% of men's salaries. Next, there is the issue of family and the home and how women are continuing to cope with the question of motherhood and career. Finally, one article discussed the lack of seniority on the part of women and the change that increased seniority would bring.

For my own opinion - I think most women face a number of extremely difficult choices. The biggest of these being whether or not to work, in what occupation or career, and how to reconcile that with raising children. (this isn't to say that men don't deal with this question but its different certainly) And to be honest, I don't know what good answers are. I think there are ways to compromise, ways to work and to be home with the kids, especially some jobs or careers that tailor themselves to children. But from personal experience, I plan to be successful enough so that my wife can stay home. Because when your two year old follows you to the door as you return to work crying for mommy, that kind of petition is hard to deny.

Class Entry - 1/22/07

2007-01-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

First to briefly summarize the assigned readings:

1. Popenoe's article - at times it feels like an ideological appeal to some sort of return to family life from the 1950's. While he decries the unequal role of women in most marriages from that time period, he nevertheless uses statistical comparison between the late 50's and early 60's to the 90's to analyze the 'decline' of family life (which by his definition means childrearing and the distribution of affection and care). Largely empirical in its analysis, Popenoe's article still leaves alot to be desired in terms of an in depth analysis on whether or not (or to what extent) families are in decline.

2. Stacey's response - While Stacey makes a few interesting remarks in terms of refuting Popenoe's arguments, her statements are for the most part, heated rebukes of what she perceives as an attack on her work. She sees any discussion of family values as some kind of disguised prejudice towards race, gender or sexual orientation. She even says as much, "Family values rhetoric, in my view, serves as a sanitized decoy for these less reputable prejudices."

3. Cowan's response - Cowan on the other hand makes an extremely compelling argument largely refuting Popenoe's article. He critique's Popenoe's method of analysis, his logic, and his strategy without much in the way of an emotional response to his general hypothesis. On the contrary, Cowan, at least to a certain extent, agrees that American family is on the decline. He argues however, that different steps should be taken to ensure its survival or to analyze its importance and how adaptations can improve it.

Now for my own opinions on the subject. While I don't necessarily like Popenoe's article as a whole - it just generally feels shoddy and underdeveloped - I don't wholly disagree with some of his points. I do see American family as being in decline and I don't totally disagree with his definition of family (as Stacey and Cowan largely do). While many factors have affected the change and/or decline in family value, stability, and viability, I truly do believe that women's changing roles in society at large and especially in families are the cause. THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN NEGATIVELY. On the contrary, over the past 3 or 4 decades in this country, women have become highly-educated, intelligent, capable members of society, all but equal to their male counterparts (although some disparity remains).

However, I think that the vast new world of opportunity open to women has created a change in family life. Women are free to pursue extremely successful careers in all but any field of their choosing. The bottom line is, though, that everyone, trying to do everything, makes things difficult. Let me give an example. Drawing from personal experience (which is admittedly limited in its scope, especially in terms of diversity of demographic, economic, and social factors), I have spoken with a number of women surrounding my age about where they see themselves or what they expect from life over the next 5 to 10 years, and almost every time I've gotten the same response. Most women whom I have spoken to want to be married to a successful working husband, have a full-time successful career of their own, and have children. While many would argue differently, I think that having all three (while of course not impossible) is tough. Both parents working creates a need for either some type of nanny (especially when the children are young) or at the very least, day-care after school when the children are old enough. Not only that but both parents will then be returning home to a child who is desperate for their attention, when both are already exhausted from a day at work, putting even more strain on the family's relationship.

My opinions, I realize, are extremely controvertial, especially at a university (which are by their nature progressive in thought and study). Nevertheless I feel strongly that it is extremely difficult for everyone to do everything.