CHAPTER 1

Question 1

Define polyamorous relationships

Answer 1

Consensual, transparent intimate relationships of more than two adults

Question 2

What are Living Apart Together (LAT) couples?

Answer 2

couples who are in a relationship but maintain separate residences, sometimes in different cities, provinces, or countries

Question 3

What are transnational families? Where are these relationships most prelavant?

Answer 3

Families where 1+ more immediate or extended family members live in another country and may be separated for extended periods of time.

**Especially prevalent among MIGRANT WORKERS, who must leave their families to work in countries like Canada, may be separated for years before family reunification

Question 4

Children who were placed for adoption in the context of a closed adoption who are now adults can ________________.

Answer 4

Establish contact and a relationship with one or both biological parents and any siblings, half-siblings, or other relatives of their biological parents.

Question 5

In a research study where Black parents’ experiences dealing with child protection rules were observed, what was concluded?

Answer 5

Black parents felt that their parenting practices were UNFAIRLY TARGETED by child welfare agencies, resulting in the over-representation of Black children in the welfare system.

Question 6

What are skip-generation families?

Answer 6

Families where children are raised by their grandparent or grandparents because the parent is deceased or unable to parent

**Many skip-parent families are in fact headed by senior women (grandmas) who face a variety of challenges, including strained economic resources.

Question 7

Other than grandparents, what other family member could undertake parental responsibilities?

Answer 7

Older Siblings –> often in cases of parental absence, parental neglect, or addiction/health issues

Question 8

How did family roles shift for some Canadians during the global COVID-19 pandemic?

Answer 8

Many Canadians worked from home and those who had previously been away from the home for long days (perhaps due to long work commutes) became more available for caregiving.

Question 9

What type of surrogacy has become more common?

Answer 9

TRANSNATIONAL surrogacy –> where parents find surrogates in other countries

Question 10

What are co-parenting agreements?

Answer 10

Agreements made between both parents of the child that are often made in advance of the birth of a child to determine access schedules, decision making, and financial obligations

**not necessarily just made after relationship dissolution, it is more and more popular to co-parent with a friend, or someone else in order to raise a child without the commitment of a romantic relationship.

Question 11

What is serial monogamy?

Answer 11

a term used to describe how many Canadians will experience multiple monogamous relationships throughout their lives

Question 12

Today there is __________ alignment of relationship status, living arrangements, and sexual relationships.

Answer 12

LESS

For example, LAT couples, couples who live together but are not monogamous, individuals who are in polyamorous relationships, etc. are WAYYYY more common than they used to be and is more normalized in society.

Question 13

What does contemporary sociological scholarship argue for when it comes to definition of families?

Answer 13

Argues for INCLUSIVE definitions of families.

• suggests process-based definitions (focus should be on the activities and labour that are accomplished within families) rather than definitions based on family structure (e.g., a nuclear family or a lone-parent family).

Question 14

Define social reproduction

Answer 14

the physical, mental, and emotional labour of caring for family members

Question 15

What are family-process definitions?

Answer 15

definitions that focus on what families achieve

** used by governments, research organizations, and political institutions

Question 16

What is a kin-keeper?

Answer 16

The family member who maintains and nurtures family contacts

**Women tend to do kin-keeping, and this labour becomes visible once a kin-keeper is unable to do this work due to death, sickness, etc.

A FORM OF UNPAID LABOUR, along with housework and caregiving (also both women dominated)

Question 17

What is the sociological imagination? How can it be used to better understand contemporary family issues?

Answer 17

Was coined by C. Wright Mills to show how private experiences or problems are often a reflection of broader public issues or trends.

Instead of looking at problems as “personal issues”, viewing these problems through a wider lens allows us to notice trends in society.

Question 18

Provide examples of Canadian households that represent the diversity of households and families in Canada

Answer 18

• polyamorous families
• multifamily households,
• three-generation households
• adult siblings who live together and help to raise children
• adult children living in parents household

Question 19

What features of family life make it difficult for individuals to be protected from abuse and violence?

Answer 19

• it’s private nature
• economic dependence on family members

Question 20

In what ways did COVID change/impact family dynamics?

Answer 20

• intensified women’s domestic labour
• more women left the labour market than men (due to lack of childcare/social supports)
• more women lost their jobs than men
• parents of children with disabilities faced enormous stress (lack of social supports)
• family violence and spousal violence had risen dramatically
• increase in child abuse (concerns that it would go unreported due to school closures)
• mental health of children and youth declined
• increase infant abuse (malnutrition, head trauma)

Question 21

What’s a kinship group?

Answer 21

a group of people who share a relationship typically through blood or marriage and may have positions in a hierarchy of rights over property

Question 22

Define patrilineal kinship systems

Answer 22

individual’s relationships are determined by their father’s relationships

Question 23

Define matrilineal kinship systems

Answer 23

individual’s relationships are determined by their mother’s relationships

Question 24

Define bilateral kinship systems

Answer 24

individual’s relationships are determined by both their mother’s relationships and their father’s relationships

Question 25

How does Statistic’s Canada define family?

Answer 25

as comprising a married or a common-law couple with or without children, or a lone parent living with at least one child in the same home

**still excludes many families who don’t meet this precise definition

Question 25

In the second half of the twentieth century, sociologists often referred to ____________’s 1949 definition of families

Answer 25

George Murdock’s

**a non inclusive definition because it was based on the traditional nuclear family.

Question 26

Why are government definitions of family significant?

Answer 26

because not only can they exclude individuals and families from receiving support, they also inform the decisions that we make about our private lives.

**there is many programs that Canadians have not had access to prior to definitions changing (ex. 2004 compassionate care benefits, All Families Are Equal Act)

Question 27

How does Structural Functionalism theory view family?

Answer 27

• The focus is on social order and consensus in society (everyone agrees on what’s important)
• The heterosexual nuclear family is the most ideal family structure
  ^^ Combining the two roles in a family (women = emotional/caregiving & men = working) makes the family stronger since women and men complement each other.

Question 28

Which sociologists saw the heterosexual nuclear family as the most ideal family structure?

Answer 28

1. Émile Durkheim
2. Talcott Parsons

^^ Both were important STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISTS

Question 29

What’s a critique of the “male breadwinner” that is the centre of the heterosexual nuclear family model?

Answer 29

All family members become reliant on one person!
^^ Better for two parents to invest in their paid employment in the event that one spouse is unable to work or the couple breaks up.

Question 30

What was Talcott Parson’s argument on families?

Answer 30

How families had changed over time and how the functions that families once performed had eroded due to the emergence of other social institutions and industrialization.

(ex. medical care/nursing homes took away the care that families used to perform on their elder family members)

Question 31

What were the 5 functions Talcott Parsons identified that families continued to perform?

Answer 31

1. regulating sexual activity (through monogamous marriage)
2. economic cooperation
3. reproduction
4. the socialization of children
5. emotional support.

**Parsons was advancing an idealized version of families because these dynamics do not always exist in families.

Question 32

What are the 4 main critiques of Parsons view on family?

Answer 32

1. Overlooked economic inequality within families and did not provide an accurate understanding of how money is understood and handled within intimate relationships and families
2. He did not acknowledge that emotional support is absent in many families as well as family violence
3. Did not reflect the realities of married life or sexual relationships - casual sex, infidelity, open marriages, etc. have always existed
4. Overlooked other important agents of socialization beyond the family such as media: radio, books, magazines, etc.

Considering each of the functions that Parsons wrote about, it is clear that his view of family life was INACCURATE.

Question 33

What are critiques of structural functionalism?

Answer 33

• promoting the nuclear family
• viewing diverse families as problematic
• not considering that the interests of individual family members may be different
• suggesting that changes in families such as the decline of the nuclear family are detrimental to society
• promoting women’s financial dependence on men.

Question 34

How does Symbolic Interactionism theory view family?

Answer 34

Views families and intimate relationships as being actively created and negotiated through rituals, celebrations, and symbols.

created through micro-level interactions

Question 35

What is subjectivity? How is it used in symbolic interactionism view on families?

Answer 35

Subjectivity = our own personal view or understanding of what is going on in a particular social interaction (ex. 2 ppl can think a convo went 2 completely different ways)

Interactionists examine how our individual subjectivities are informed by our intimate relationships and family roles and relationships.
(ex. following relationship dissolution an individual may no longer define themselves as a spouse or partner)

Question 36

Define “free-range kids”

Answer 36

children raised with minimal parental supervision

Question 37

Define “helicopter parenting”

Answer 37

children raised with intense parental supervision

*Transformations in parent–child relationships are fluid and actively negotiated - interactionists study how these changes are understood by the individuals

Question 38

How can money have different social meanings?

Answer 38

Money is treated differently depending on how it came into a family and whom it may have been earned by.
(ex. money given to a child may be spent differently than if money was given to an adult and income may be viewed as individual or collectively owned)

Question 39

What’s a critique of symbolic interactionism?

Answer 39

Been critiqued for de-emphasizing the impact of social structure (ex. labour market conditions and social policies) on families.

Generally not being conducive to creating social policies to address the challenges facing families.

Question 40

How does Conflict Theory (Marxist Theory) view family?

Answer 40

The economic mode of production shapes families, living arrangements, and gender roles.

^^social class conflict between the working class and the capitalist class.

Question 41

How did industrialization change the operation of families and hosueholds?

Answer 41

Production shifted to factories during Industrialization and families were now reliant on waged work.

—> Households were no longer units of production but units of consumption.

With the middle class, a distinct ideology emerged where the home came to be seen as a haven from the horrors of the workplace –> this is where the ideology that “a woman’s place is in the home” emerged

Question 42

How did Marx describe worker alienation?

Answer 42

Workers are alienated from the products they make because:

• they don’t own them and have no control over how the product is made
• their creativity is not valued
• they are doing the same task repeatedly
• workers are alienated from each other

Question 43

What did Friedrich Engels argue?

Answer 43

He argued that it wasn’t until private property emerged that the nuclear family, monogamy, and focused efforts to enforce women’s fidelity in marriage emerged

His arguments align with CONFLICT THEORY because he is showing how economic factors (like private property, shape family structure)

Question 44

What are the critiques of Conflict/Marxist theory?

Answer 44

• for focusing on class-based inequalities and overlooking other forms of oppression (ex. gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation)
• overlooks how women’s unpaid labour actually supports capitalism –> women reproduce the next generation of workers and by regenerating workers (feeding, clothing, and otherwise providing care so that workers can continuously return to waged work)

Question 45

What does Marxist feminist theory suggest?

Answer 45

That capitalism is dependent on the housework, caregiving, and other forms of unpaid labour that women perform.

Question 46

What did Meg Luxton argue?

Answer 46

Argued that any analysis of capitalism must also include an analysis of UNPAID labour, not just paid labour.
^^ articulates a Marxist feminist framework.

Question 47

What’s a critique of Marxist feminist theory?

Answer 47

• Gender-based inequality exists for women living in non-capitalist societies too (evidence of gender-based inequalities in societies based on socialism and communism)
• Experiences of Black women, women of colour, Indigenous women, the 2SLGBTQ+ community, women with disabilities, and immigrant women were largely overlooked

Question 48

Describe aspects/arguments of Feminism theory

Answer 48

• Society is characterized by gender-based inequalities in the public realm and in the private realm of intimate relationships and families.
• Women perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid labour in society.
• Diverse families are embraced, and aspects such as abuse, violence, and economic exploitation are highlighted.
• highlights the importance of gender, differences in the lives of men and women, and how this is connected to power and inequality.

Question 49

What’s the “second shift”?

Answer 49

Heterosexual married women who work full time continue to perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid labour, leading to a second shift after their first shift in paid employment is finished.

Question 50

Research on 2SLGBTQ+ families finds _______ sharing of unpaid labour

Answer 50

GREATER

Question 51

Differentiate between Liberal and Radical Feminism

Answer 51

LIBERAL:
- advocates for social policies such as equal pay for work of equal value to eliminate gender disparities in pay.
- focuses on the public sphere of work and politics and does not focus on the private sphere.

RADICAL:
- sees women’s oppression as caused by patriarchy
- tackles issues such as family violence, domestic abuse, sexual assault, and control over women’s bodies (including childbearing)

Question 52

What’s a critique of feminist theory?

Answer 52

• Criticized for focusing on the concerns of privileged groups of women, and ignoring the needs of Black women, other women of colour, Indigenous women, immigrant women, impoverished women, women with disabilities, the 2SLGBTQ+ community, older women, etc.

Question 53

Which theory thinks there is no singular variable that helps to explain our social world?

Answer 53

POST MODERNIST THEORY

Question 54

Describe broadly what post-modernism is trying to do

Answer 54

It seeks to uncover all of the possible truths or discourses and look for alternative or different truths that are not popular and that may be suppressed due to the lack of power of those individuals or groups who share that truth.

**Emphasizes the fluidity of truth, the power of language, and the importance of power relations within society.

Question 55

What is a discourse

Answer 55

Essentially knowledge, and how that knowledge is constructed and communicated.

Examples of discourse include medical, academic, political, religious, scientific, philosophical, and psychiatric discourses.

Question 56

Who is Michel Foucault?

Answer 56

He developed postmodernist theory!

His writings reveal how knowledge and our understanding of various social phenomena change over time. For postmodernist scholars like Foucault, there is no great “truth” or grand narrative that explains society.

Question 57

What would postmodernism suggest about family life?

Answer 57

It would suggest that there are competing discourses that shape how we make sense of our family relationships.

In the information that parents read from “experts” such as child development experts and child psychologists influences how we behave as parents and how we evaluate our own parenting.
^^ These discourses may be used in institutional contexts in ways that may adversely impact parents who do not conform to specific ideas about appropriate parenting.

Question 58

How does the discourse of breastfeeding impact women?

Answer 58

The influential discourse convinces new mothers that breastfeeding is the best option for feeding a newborn, new mothers may feel shame and stigma if they do not breastfeed, whether because they choose not to or because they are unable to.

Question 59

What’s a critique of Postmodernist theory?

Answer 59

• been criticized for being difficult to understand, therefore hard to understand society through it
• less straightforward than “grand” theories, which makes them less likely for influencing social policy.

Question 60

What is Life Course Theory?

Answer 60

It follows families and individuals over time and looks at different social dynamics of close relations and how these change throughout lifetimes.

Question 60

What are the 5 principles of life course theory?

Answer 60

1. Says that human development occurs throughout life
2. People build their own lives through choices and actions
3. People’s life courses are shaped by the times in which they live
4. The same events affect individuals and families differently depending on when they occur in the life course
5. Lives are linked (changes in one individual effects family members)

Question 61

What’s are critiques of Life Course Theory?

Answer 61

Has been critiqued on challenges in connecting an individual’s or family’s experiences to their social environment and time in which they are living.

Ex. 2 ppl who were raised during the Great Depression or who lived through war may have different life trajectories, and it may be difficult to determine the role that the broader economy or war played in the lives of individuals.