Power Relation Within The Household

While taking Introductory Sociology with Professor Cole Smith this semester, the course revealed concepts covering various topics about society and the world around us. During the course, the ideas and concepts covered were impressionable because of the nature of the content. Each chapter discussed controversial topics challenging the way the students previously perceived information. However, there are chapters in this course that have been the most influential. For example, chapter one covered the theoretical perspectives, chapter four examined the concept of the social construction of reality, and chapter twelve exploring the family dynamic. Although each chapter provided insight on various subjects, the information allows for the reader

Male dominated relation in the household is seen by feminist social theory as another patriarchy structure. Such approach holds that traditional family is an institution shaped to impoverish and disadvantage women in order to maintain stability and social order (Saul, 2003, p.5). Accordingly, feminist social theory explains that man expropriates the household labour of woman, and provides her maintenance (Walby;

Marianne Weber argued that marriage was the linchpin of patriarchal domination as women were being dominated by their husbands. According to Weber, once a woman married they were seen as property of their husband. Women being addressed or seen as “property” was supported by “legal codes…religion and the economy” (Inst. Comments), which I believe that it made it difficult to see any positive changes. Women were dependent on their husbands for economic support, which gave them more power over their partner’s and their overall household. Weber argued that “the wife is economic dependent of her husband… Even in cases where she works, full – or part-time, her income typically is only a fraction of his” (L&N 206).Even though women who work do not make as much money as their husbands, I agree with Weber, that those women who have an external money supply do become more independent, although they are not getting paid as much as their partner. Women’s employment opportunities outside the home have helped

Many factors all contribute to a demand for women workers in new sites and to the disintegration of families under stress from lack of income, causing women to look for alternatives away from home, and migration becomes the solution, even though it poses many pragmatic problems.

The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) reports that millions of children around the world are imprisoned daily into illegal child labor, depriving them of their childhood. The conditions of the work facilities are often life threating to their health. Instead of getting an education, these suffering children are working. Without an education, they really have no chance of escaping poverty. If you are thinking this only happens in poor countries, you are mistaken. It happens everywhere, including the United States. There are an estimated 50,000 children slaves in the United States. We can all agree this is horrific. In “The Color of Family Ties: Race, Class, Gender and Extended Family involvement”, Sociologist Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkistan challenge popular notion that minority families have weaker ties and are more fragmented than white families. They find if we only focus on nuclear families, thus ignoring extended families, it creates a biased portrait of families of color. Furthermore, we are missing much of what minority and families of color do for one another. According to their research, the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households contests stereotypes that Black and Latin families lack strong family’s ties. Most importantly they find social class is more relevant in revealing statistics than ethnicity. Their research also reveals Blacks and Latinos/as typically have less income and education than whites, so they rely more on their family for day-to-day needs: such as childcare, household task or rides. Furth more, Economic deprivation of minorities leads in many ways to higher levels of extended family involvement. The tendency of minorities to live near kin may also reflect their greater need for kin cooperation as well as decreased opportunity’s and pressure to move away, including moving for college. Because Whites tend to have more income than Blacks and Latins, they are more likely to give or receives money to/from family. They find races with the same amount of income have similar involvement with their extended families. Middles class families are more probable to share their private concerns and lend money to relative

Marriage: Despite her independent streak Skeeter is constantly pressurized to marry, is often made to get ready by her Mother and look beautiful for her dates with so called handsome well established men. The marriages of various characters in the movie, Skeeter’s parents, her friends, Minny, Stuart’s parents are all nearly shown with problems that are intertwined with gender related power

Analyzing two families helped explain how roles can affect the strengths and weakness of all the family members. Family roles affect the expectations of the members that are included. The Shade’s observe to know who their role is. The children know the mother and father and who is the head of the household, same with themselves knowing they are the siblings, daughters and son. This family knows their roles within themselves give this family great strength. The affective roles such as the provider for food, clothing, and shelter are affected by the choices the parents make. The parents are in charge of family decisions. All the members within them offer the support and encouragement with their affective roles. The Shade’s show the five important

Again, these women are being exploited for the benefits of men who hold higher work statuses. The women identify themselves a group. According to the textbook, “Group are not just collections of people who randomly come together for some purpose. Their structure defines the relationships among members”. This may have made it easier for men to take advantage of these women, because they identify themselves as a group. The women are likely to follow the rules if other members of their group follow the rules; women will go with the flow and try not to break that harmony in risk of feeling excluded from their group. Another social institution that plays a majority role in any society is the economy. Stated in the passage, “these women plant their lives around withdrawing money from their provident fund…”. Money controls the lives of these women, they plan their entire lives around this issue. We see that in America as well. We acquire education to later in life gain money, and we spend the entirety of our lives working for money. But, these women had to wait for their money from their provident fund just to pay for events like a wedding or

In this reading the author argues the role of inequality among house wives and mothers. She describes how she should conduct herself according to those roles, while being viewed through the eyes of a man. The author discusses her daily duties of caring for the children, taking care of her home and taking care of her husband. She seems to want independency. At times, she seems to be bitter about her expectations such as cooking, cleaning, caring for her children and pleasing her husband romantically. It can be inferred that she might be tired and wants a wife of her own. The tone of the writing can be perceived as sarcastic at times, which may lead you to conclude that men during that time period might not have taken this reading serious. On the other hand, women could relate in more than one way therefore impacting the feminist movement during this era.

As a structural functionalist, you mainly study specific societies by classifying the major structures of society and then asking the question, how does this matter. When studying these families, however, you undertake that this society blossoms when it is able to maintain social stability and social integration. Social stability however is valued over changes in time, not just immediately. This topic of family dynamics and family structure seems to be of great importance to you, and to be honest, quite important to me as well.

In many developing countries globalization has brought masses of wealth to the elite at the expense of the poor. Consequently, many women of the poorer classes leave their homeland in search of opportunities for employment. These women are disproportionately affected by

In her book The Unfinished Revolution, Kathleen Gerson argues that today, family pathways are more important than family structure. In this context, family structure refers to the organization of a family, and the way that it has been changing as a result of the gender revolution. For example, some nontraditional family structures that are explored in the book include double parent families with both parents earning, single parent families (mostly single mothers), and families with same-sex parents. Gerson argues that while family structures are not negligible, it is family pathways that are more important for the children of the gender revolution. That is to say, the children value the dynamics of their family more than the structure. They are more concerned about how well their parents are able to provide them with the necessary emotional and financial support than they are about how well their families follow a norm. For them, it is more about feeling like they’re part of a family rather than just physically being in one. Gerson emphasizes this when she explains that the people she interviewed “focused on the long-term consequences of parental choices, not on the specific form or type of home these choices produced at any one moment in time.” One important implication of this argument is the way in which the children of the gender revolution imagine their own romantic relationships unfolding. Even there, they prioritize a feeling rather than a format. For example, one

As a child, I did not believe that women had women has any power at all. I am not sure where I got this idea from because that is not what I was taught by my parents. I also saw that power was distributed in levels. The way I saw things, the man had the highest amount of power, then the woman had a bit of power, and the children had not power. Depending on the situation my father had a final say on decisions. It is hard to pinpoint who made the final decision at all times because every situation is different. Power was demonstrated in my household by yelling. The person who was doing the yelling became the person in power. If my mother was angry enough, she would slap or pinch us. If my father got very angry eh would say something hurtful and/or call us a name. He never was physical with us.

The family structure determines where you derive from and provides a sense of who you are. The typical family structure is perceived as a father and a mother, two children, one boy and one girl, and a pet. The typical family description described above is still promoted and expected to be the “dream family.” Author Meyerhoff, “While the nuclear family with Dad, Mom, and offspring happily coexisting beneath one roof-remains the ideal, variations in family structure are plentiful and often successful” (Meyerhoff). Meaning that a lot of families are remarried spouses with prior children and more common in the last decade same sex marriages. So, do these nontraditional families have the same qualities? Personally, I would think so. After

This is an important issue, as previous research (Adeto, 2000; Mahmud, Shah, & Becker, 2011) suggests that women`s share in household income determines their participation in household decision making and their intra-household bargaining power. Moreover, Agarwal (1997), Quisumbing & Maluccio, 2000 and Njuki et al. (2011) indicated that income in the hands of women enhances the welfare of household members more than income in the hands of men. Hence, the income shift from women to men in market participant households can negatively affect the women`s intra-housheold bargaining power, as well as the other household member`s welfare.