Week 1 Homework
Chapter 1
2. What is meant by the idea that race, class, and gender are interactive systems rather than individual variables? Think about your own family of orientation, and take one particular aspect of your family life as an example. Discuss briefly how race, class, and gender act simultaneously to shape that aspect of your family life.
The one particular aspect of my family would be having a nuclear family. So you become what you know. The values I learned growing up, has made me the person who I am today. My family is a very traditional family, mother and father and two sons, who were all white and middle class. You find comfort in living around the same individuals/families have and are likeminded. These values are shared with more than just your family they are shared with your community. Growing up in Kentucky along the banks of the Ohio River, a major majority of the population fell into the same orientation; white, working middle class and male/female relationship. At the time this is what my family knew a nuclear family was the norm.
4. Most people agree that marriages and families underwent major changes during the last half of the twentieth century; however, few people link these changes to larger societal changes that have taken place. Identify some of the major changes that have taken place during the past 50 years (for example, in transportation, technology, and social welfare policies), and discuss their impact on contemporary marriages and families. Reflect on your own family and consider how one such change has affected your family and/or families like yours.
Technology and how we communicate I believe is one of the biggest changes we have undergone. We have become a “now world” what more and more information faster and faster but at what cost. Feelings could be hurt and trust could be lost if you do not respond back to your significant other within a given time. We have move from sending letters...