Death, Sex, And Fertility By Marvin Harris

Frederick Elliston’s “In Defense of Promiscuity” elucidates promiscuity and claims that non-committal sex holds more merit than sexual experiences restricted to either marriage or commitments; two spheres of the Western norm rejected by Elliston. Contrarily, Robert M. Stewart claims in “Meaningful Sex and Moral Respect” that engaging in “junk sex” (i.e. non-committal sex) hampers a person’s overall ability to achieve a higher level of sexual experience which surpasses physical pleasure and seeks deeper meaning. Although Stewart presents his arguments in accordance with morality and respect, his claims are one-sided and represent only the detriments of “junk sex” which make his arguments more questionable. On the other hand, Elliston’s arguments

Motherhood was an expected part of the wife’s life. Woman would have a large number of babies right after each other although some babies would not survive. “High mortality rates must have overshadowed the experience of motherhood in ways difficult to

Abortion continues to make a profound impact on public policies and remains one of the most controversial debate of our time. Though abortion continues to be a debate, it was not always a problematic one. Abortion has been present throughout history dating back to the ancient Egyptians, Greek and Roman. Before abortion became a crime in the 19th century, abortion was a womans choice. “Before abortion became the object of law, it was a subject of everyday life” (Roe v Wade BOOK p. 11). From early civilizations to today, abortion was and may still serve as a form of birth control. It has been observed that through abortion those of upper class avoided “unwanted childbearing and the lower classes used it to limit family size when 1 or more child

Premarital pregnancy rates were particularly high in rural and frontier areas, continuing throughout the nineteenth century. Courtship became much more popular in the nineteenth century as men and women began to leave their domestic spheres and interact with other members of their community. Southern people courted after church and western people courted after community events, such as holiday or harvest celebrations, and urban working class youth courted on the job as well. The act of courtship facilitated romantic love becoming a norm, as flirting became a norm wherever there was sexual integration. The idea of marrying for romance impacted sexuality, and having recreational sex. Many couples from the nineteenth century wrote in their diaries the intense urge they felt to have sex with their significant other, although not all of them acted on the urge. The idea that sex and reproduction didn’t have to go hand-in-hand was what caused people to actively control their sexuality with various methods of birth control. As these ideas spread throughout the country, different regions, races, and classes had different ways of controlling their sexuality. Fertility rates dropped throughout the country in rural and urban areas, but remained high in frontier communities. However, many southern states didn’t care for controlling sexuality, since there were many farmers making their living off the land. The larger the family was, the more land they could work on at a time,

Premarital sex did not exist in America, and young girls were likely to still be virginal upon marriage and faithful afterwards, sadly that is just a traditional American myth. The reality is that sexual activity before and outside marriage was a common practice, among the Puritans, in the seventeenth century. Throughout the eighteenth-century in America, 30 to 40 percent of brides walked down the aisle pregnant. Premarital pregnancy was not just limited to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Today, families are not quite the same as what they use to be. They include a more diverse environment than in the past and are more probable to be formed away from marriage. Beginning with the family life in colonial America, we examine the household structure between the families and colonial communities, compared to the emergence of the modern family. We apply our attention to the shift from agriculture based to industrial economy and the consequences for family life that follow.

Many tragic events have occurred throughout history that lead to the protection and advocacy of children, for example in Greece, during ancient times, infanticide would be legal and even enforced under certain cases like illegitimate or deformed children. Children would be sold into slavery or be put to work if families needed the extra income. Unwanted European newborns were discarded without penalty and children were pushed into adulthood as quickly as possible. “Owing to the high infant mortality rates of the times, estimated at one or two in three, the investment of love in a young child may have been so unrewarding that by some ruse of nature… it was suppressed. Perhaps also the frequent childbearing put less value on the product. A child was a born and died and another took its place” (Tuchman, 19778, p.50).

The most notable aspect of Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides would be its first person-plural narrative voice. Literary scholars have often addressed the issue of the narrative voice and the effect that having multiple narrators has on the story. In her article ‘A story we could live with’ Narrative voice, the Reader, and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides Debra Shostak addresses how the “we” inadvertently draws attention to the “otherness” of the Lisbon girls. She attempts to dispel the belief that The Virgin Suicides is a misogynistic text by analyzing Eugenides’s complicated use of the word “we”. Shostak’s article gives deep insight into the complexities of the plural narrative and provides a foundation for future analysis of the text. However, what Shostak does not address is how this perception of otherness, by both the narrators and the community in which they reside, ultimately leads to the downfall of the Lisbon sisters. My argument is twofold. Firstly, I will address how the perception by the narrators that the girls are radically different from themselves and their community, combined with the tendency to group the girls as a single monolithic entity serves as one explanation for the girls deaths. Treating the girls as though they are the same person leads to the perceived inevitability of their deaths, which ultimately plays a vital role in their untimely and fatal ends.

I have chosen to use an article called, "Canada is a Complicit Partner in Sex-Selection Abortion," written by Andrea Mrozek. I found this article on the Huffington Post website. The author, Andrea Mrozek, is a program director at Cardus Family and founding director of an organization called, ProWomanProLife. She has written many powerful pieces focusing on childcare, feminism, women 's issues, education, and how the family affects different aspects of society. Not only is she a very influential author, but she also speaks about these topics at various events. Within the ProWomanProLife program she acts as a spokesperson, speaking out about pro life. The following quote from Mrozek gives a pretty accurate description of her viewpoint on abortion. "Top-heavy legislation, that might criminalize abortion, for example, gets us nowhere with a culture of women who believe abortion to be anything from a necessary evil, to a compassionate act, to completely neutral. We must be able to discuss the issue with complete and total freedom, and to highlight how uncompassionate abortion actually is, from a woman’s perspective.” (Mrozek, 2016)

Jane and Akiko: Fertility and DES All humans, disregarding their ethnicity and skin color grapple with the subject of their own personal issues and relationships. In the novel, My Year of Meats!, Ozeki uses a documentarian style to follow Jane Takagi Little and Akiko Ueno personal hardships. With the use of two culturally different characters and through the television series, My American Wife! , Ruth Ozeki attempts to raise awareness of the truth behind the meat industry and its effects on fertility.

The modern world is in the midst of reconstructing gender roles; debates about contraception, reproductive freedom, and female inequality are contentious and common. The majority now challenges the long established assertion that women’s bodies are the eminent domain of patriarchal control. In the past, a woman’s inability to control her reproductive choices could come with ruinous consequences. Proponents of patriarchal control argue against reproductive independence with rhetoric from religious texts and with anecdotes of ‘better days,’ when women were subservient. Often, literature about childbearing fails to acknowledge the possibility of women being uninterested in fulfilling the role of motherhood.

The paper, “The Immorality of Having Children”, by Stuart Rachels provides insight as to why it is wrong to raise children by supporting the Famine Relief Argument. Rachels argues that the cost of raising a child today, over two-hundred thousand, is so staggering that it would be better spent on donations towards famine relief projects. Throughout the paper, Rachels provides substantial arguments that emphasize the point that having children is the biggest decision that someone will ever make in their life rather than what to believe or whether to get married, and the decision should not be taken lightly. All the arguments presented are persuasive, but the argument is flawed overall because it never takes into account the importance of

The most evident similarities and differences in our society and the world state society was regarding reproduction. A similarity our societies both share, is the process of in vitro. However, in our society, we

'The Abortion' by Anne Sexton is a first person narrative poem in the style of a stream of consciousness and conveys a woman's emotional and physical journey whilst undergoing an abortion. I intend to discuss how through the effective use of imagery, tone, symbolism and word choice the poet successfully builds up an atmosphere which adds to your appreciation of the poem.

But the death rate exceeds the birth rate, which triggers the population increasing very slowly or almost stable. In this stage, birth rate becomes high due to less use of contraception and sterilization. Most of the people do survive in agriculture where the children are considered as economic assets and so people are encouraged to get many children. Similarly death rate becomes high due to diseases, natural calamities, wars, etc. Infant death rate is also found very high. Because of poor health facilities provided by the state to the people, lack of clean water and sanitation and food shortage, health of the people will be weak so that the people will depart the life in high numbers. Before 1920, China and India were at this stage (Raj, H. 2003). This stage is generally found in the countries where people depend on agriculture as a main source of surviving. At present, the countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Angola, etc. are passing through this stage (Raj, H.2003)

Artificial reproductive technology (ART) is defined as procedures which stimulate a woman 's ovaries to produce eggs, the eggs are then removed, combined with sperm, and then returned to a woman 's body (Bell, 2016). ART is becoming more and more popular throughout that globe. This method of conceiving children gives women who may be struggling with infertility options that were not possible before the advent of such methods. ART is relevant to the sociological definition of global health because it is evidence of the fact that our world has become interdependent especially when it comes to medical technology. However with ART comes the notion of the culture of disguise and in many countries this is an integral part of artificial reproductive technology process. With that being said, sociologists should look to study and understand the culture of disguise in ART as it pertains to global health and it shapes interactions between people and the society they live in.