Chapter 11-13 soc Flashcards
Homogamy
people enter into relationships with others who are similar to them on a range of important social and demographic dimensions like social class, education, occupation, race, and religion
- preserves group identity and values and prevents economic loss
- Dissimilarity leads to lower quality and shorter relationships
What keeps us from dating outside of race/social class/etc
- Group pressures prevent people from crossing socially recognized boundaries, like pressure to not marry outside of your religion or race, or pressure against “dating down” with someone from a lower socioeconomic status.
- We are more emotionally attached to “sameness,” perhaps because people similar to us share our values and attitudes
- There are important material and financial considerations in relationships tied to education, income, and prestige
Mate selection
- For heterosexual women, studies indicate that men who show more dominance, and who are taller and stronger partners—those who are better able to protect mates and accrue and defend resources—are viewed as more attractive
- For heterosexual men, fertility is a key biological and evolutionary factor. Youth, lustrous hair, good teeth, smooth skin, a curvy figure, and good muscle tone are outward indicators of fertility and genetic suitability for mating.
- While evidence shows that mate selection can be tied to biology, cultural, psychological, and social factors are equally, if not more, important.
Monogamy
The practice of marriage or sexual practices with one person at a time
- Love often frames what an ideal intimate relationship should look like: closeness, intense feelings, sexual attraction, and monogamy
Polygamy
Having more than one partner at a time
Progression of mate selection
- Enlightenment ideals of individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness promoted individual freedom and choice and threw off the yoke of family and social control that had limited personal freedom in mate selection. This was especially true for women
- Previously, mate selection was beholden to traditional family and economic structures, and romantic love was a deviation from traditional norms. Only since the late 18th century has romantic love become a central feature of private relations between people in Western society
- It’s been a long process, however, and it took until the end of the 20th century for people to declare love to be the most important factor in mate selection.
Assortative mating
The non-random matching of people into relationships.
- Leads to homogamy
- People still tend to form relationships with those of their own racial and ethnic background, notwithstanding greater social acceptance of interracial relationships
- Moreover, less similarity between partners has been shown to lead to lower quality and shorter relationships
Pure relationships
relationships defined by the interests and needs of each partner rather than by laws, traditions, or necessity
Assortative mating is therefore fostered by assortative meetings
Where the pool of available partners is shaped by social arrangements, like where you live and work, and these arrangements constrain the types of people with whom you form romantic relationships
Mere exposure effect
You are more likely to be attracted to someone simply because you are around them more frequently and are more exposed to them. And this exposure is often controlled by geographic or social arrangements that favour homogamy.
Marriage market
- In Canada, the marriage market is a colloquialism for the idea that we use assets like attractiveness, income, or education to attract desirable mates.
- Arranged marriages in some countries achieve similar ends by controlling mate selection, all but ensuring homogamy.
The idea that love drives attraction
We may very well be hard-wired to be attracted to some people and not others, and we may very well follow our hearts and fall in love, but we do so in contexts that are shaped by relatively predictable social and cultural forces.
LGBTQ and dating
- Young people are more likely to experience harassment, rejection, discrimination, and possibly violence. All of these factors create challenges for LGTBQ youth on the verge of beginning romantic relationships.
- Adolescence is a time of conformity to social norms around gender and sexuality, and sexual minority youth—those from the LGBTQ community—experience pressure to conform to heteronormativity to avoid rejection
- Dating relationships for same-sex young people have been shown to increase self-esteem, lower depression, and reduce the internalization of homophobia
Hookups
- When asked about hookups, young adults report behaviour that ranges from kissing only to sex, and 80% of university students who reported engaging in hookups did so less than once a semester
- When people do engage in hookups, their partners are often friends rather than strangers, and repeated hookups are usually with the same person rather than with different people, what some call “friends-with-benefits.”
- About one-third of people who engage in sexual intercourse in a hookup report that it makes their relationship closer, and a similar proportion hopes that the hookup will lead to a more conventional dating relationship, particularly those hooking up with friends
- It’s also important to note that while hookups represent one form of intimacy engaged in by young people, they have not replaced committed romantic relationships among teens and young adults
Do men equate sex with love?
We often think that women are more likely to connect sex with love, but there are few differences between men and women, and most men also connect sex with love. Indeed, a third of young men who have had sexual experiences outside of a relationship express a desire for their partners to become their girlfriends
Online dating
- Dating apps provide a richer dating pool in a generally safe and more discrete environment.
- almost 50% of younger people (aged 18–29) have used online dating, including 22% of those in high school or lower
- One possibility is that new technology can promote diversity in romantic relationships because of increased contact with a larger and more diverse pool of people, and the reduction of the third-party influence of friends and family
- Increase inter religion dating, but not interracial or inter social class
- They are less constrained by norms around assortive mating because their sexual minority status is itself non-normative, making gays and lesbians more likely to date across race
How we date online
- Women online continue to adhere to gender scripts around passivity and dating, sending fewer messages to prospective dates than men and often waiting to be “approached” online with messages . That said, many women report more satisfaction with online platforms because they are safer and offer more control over partner selection.
→ This sense of empowerment allows women to shape the nature and direction of their dating, and in doing so has reversed some gender scripts. In one study of Tinder users, women reported a higher number of casual sexual partners than men
Family
a social institution consisting of a socially recognized and intimate primary group usually joined by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption that serves as a cooperative and economical unit.
- how families are defined has varied by culture and over time.
Kinship:
one of the most fundamental human relationships and often centers on the family. In general, we establish kinship ties in three ways:
- through blood, such as the kinship between a parent and child,
- through affinities, such as kinship ties with people not related by blood, like partners or spouses
- through social ties with those not connected through blood or partnership, such as through religious affiliation or community membership
- Creates cooperative social relations, identifies how we are related to others, which is especially important for marriage and procreation, defines legal and social obligations, like obligations to children, and it helps people relate to one another in society as family, friends, neighbors, or even outsiders
Nuclear family:
family of a mother, father, and children, the “ideal” family structure in Western society.
- This family structure was prominent during the “baby boom” period after World War II when economic and labor market conditions allowed a family to be supported on a single income, and where there was a rapid increase in marriages and fertility
- The prominence of the nuclear family model also ignores and diminishes a variety of family types in Canada
Extended family
Includes aunts, uncles, grandparents and other relatives
Census families
Married or common law couple and their children living in the same home
- Can be remarried or common-law couples with children, lone parent, or complex stepfamilies with step siblings or blended families
- A census family is always an economic family, but economic families aren’t always census
Economic families:
Household of two or more people related by blood, marriage, cohabitation or adoption.
- Can be two siblings that live together, a person with foster children, or census family arrangements
Indigenous families
- Indigenous families, for example, often have unique and varying family and household structures that may seem ambiguous to non-Indigenous people, reflecting cultural nuances and different child rearing practices
- In some Inuit communities, for example, “uncle” is a general term referring to many people in the community rather than to a blood relation like your mother or father’s brother, as is more typically the case in Western understanding of family. Overall, Indigenous understanding of family is evident in household membership, caregiving, kinship systems, and mobility.
- There is also a higher presence of skip generations where children are raised by grandparents without the presence of parents.
Highest percentage of non nuclear families based on geography
When looking at the proportions of children living in a lone-parent family, stepfamily, or family arrangement without their biological parents, the three territories (Nunavut at 40.3%, the Northwest Territories at 36.8%, and Yukon at 37.8%) stand out as among the highest (compared to Ontario at 29% and BC at 28%), in part due to the higher proportion of Indigenous people present
Importance of defining families
- How families are defined is not a trivial issue, and it can be a cause for concern when different notions of family limit access to or availability of resources. Complex family structures do not fit well with traditional definitions and may be at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing economic resources or social supports
- This is especially important when primary caregivers are not recognized as legal guardians of a child, which can lead to fewer resources or even the removal of children from their family and cultural environment.
Why do families have a lot of diversity?
The changes to the definition of the family and modern families come from a combination of social, political, and economic circumstances. These include longer life expectancy, changes in gender roles and employment, including shifts in gender norms and rights obtained through the women’s movement of the 1960s, a growing acceptance of unmarried or common-law unions, increased sexual freedom and the legalization of oral contraceptive in 1969, the growing acceptance of different sexualities and same-sex couples, and a growing elderly population
- As a result of these historical changes, there have been significant changes to households, children and fertility rates, and unions like marriage.
Children living at home
- About 1.9 million people in Canada aged 25–64 years (9% of Canadians) lived with one or more parents in 2017, which is more than double the number from just two decades earlier
- Just over one-third of young adults specifically—those aged 20–34 years—live with their parents, a number that has been steadily climbing with each census
→ Adults living with parents are about as likely to be employed as those not living with their parents (74% compared to 80%). The lower figure may be due to the higher proportion of students among those living with parents, or because they provide care for family members or have health issues or disabilities that limit employment
→ Adults living at home are more than three times more likely to be single compared to similarly aged young adults who do not live at home.
→ A Lot of adults overall are moving back in with their parents or staying longer because of economic or cultural reasons
How to have a satisfying marriage
- Be similar
- Be conscientious, and don’t be neurotic
- Be a man (men in marriages usually report higher satisfaction due to them taking on less emotional labour)
- Be a good communicator, maybe
- Be sexually active, and be good at satisfying one another
- Get past the honeymoon period
- Share the housework
- Have money, or at least agree on how to spend what you have
- If your #1 goal is satisfaction, do not have children
Infidelity overview
- Ashley Maddison - there are 1.13 active female accounts for every one active male account.
- Infidelity is one of the leading causes of relationship breakdown and divorce
- The actual rate of infidelity is around 50–60%
- women who are having affairs to fulfil unmet needs in their marriage report higher life satisfaction than before their affair. For them, infidelity is a way to stabilize their marriage by retaining the structure of a monogamous relationship while having unmet needs satisfied elsewhere
Reasons for infidelity
These can be categorized into situational, relational, and structural reason
- Situational: it could just be a matter of opportunity. Walker explains that some women will have affairs with acquaintances, coworkers, or on vacation because the opportunities are available
- Relational: both men and women report having affairs for emotional reasons, including unmet intimacy needs, the need for companionship, the thrill of a new relationship, self-esteem, or having an affair as a form of revenge
- Structural: economic dependence and economic dominance increase the likelihood of infidelity
→ Economically dominant women are also less likely to cheat, while economically dominant men are more likely to cheat
Polyamory
When people have multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all of the people involved.
- 1 in 5 people have been in a polyamorous relationship
- People may flow between monogamy and polyamory—exploring monogamy and polyamory when young, committing to monogamy during childrearing years and early career, and flowing back to more open relationships by midlife.
Structural functionalism on family
Families socialize children and prepare them to thrive as members of society, they pass on culture, and they are largely responsible for reproduction as most children are born to families. Families, therefore, are critical units for maintaining social coordination and order.
Functions of the family:
- Reproduction
- Sexual regulation
- Socialization
- Economic
- Shelter and security
- Belongingness
Conflict theory on families
With the advent of private ownership of property (by men) and the idea that family life is private and distinct from public life, women lost power and control inside and outside of families because they were not property owners and largely took on the work within the home.
- This economic and social arrangement concentrates autonomy and economic power in the hands of men.
- Economic change, therefore, can bring about more equality in family structures.
Feminist perspectives on family
- For some, the family provides a sense of shelter, security, and emotional support. But the family is also a site for exploitation, isolation, and violence
Many were unhappy with their role in the household despite living in material comfort and having children. - Feminists showed that the men and women who provided care work and household management were contributing not only to the well-being of their family but also to their society and economy
- As part of a broader movement to recognize the value of domestic and care work and its importance in local and global economies, women’s groups pushed for reform and were successful in creating legislative change. These changes led to a presumption of equal sharing of assets under the assumption that both parties in a relationship contribute in meaningful ways.
-Feminists have demonstrated that families are not private, but are instead interconnected with other social institutions.
- women mobilized to overhaul sexual assault laws in Canada, including the absence of laws punishing men for assaulting their wives.
People are getting married later
Because of factors like the Economy → people move back in with family, pursuit of education, change in attitudes + norms
Declining marriage rates
- Expensive to get married, less societal push to get married as there was in the past,
Same sex couples
- Married and common law rates going up
Divorce rates (not including separation)
- Going down
- Cases in 2020 got backlogged because of covid
- Fewer people getting married, fewer people getting divorced
(Legal separation is very similar to divorce in canada
To get remarried you have to be divorce)
Birth rate in Canada
Women are having children later in life
- Around in their thirties
Children per family has dropped through the replacement rate
- Canada’s replacement rate is maintained through immigration
- Children are expensive
Colorism and race
Colourism is a form of prejudice or discrimination that is based on social meanings attached to skin tone
Past research shows that whites and asians have a reluctance to date partners with dark skin
Skin tone as a predictor variable in recent studies of asian daters
- Darker skin asians more likely to date those with darker skin
- More likely to express preference for darker skin partners
- Could be that prejudice makes them sympathetic, reluctant to reach out to lighter skinned partners due to rejection
Most predictive factor in a child’s academic success and attainment
The family’s SES is an enormously important influence on a child’s educational outcomes. Whether you measure SES via parental occupation, years in schooling, or income, nothing is more predictive of how a child does in school.
Statistics of schooling
- In the 2015–2016 school year, 97% of 15-year-olds were attending school
- The rate in which Canadians attend high school has gone up because less families require their child’s labor for income ex. On farms, and attending high school is mandatory (even though the government doesn’t enforce punishments)
- In 2016, almost 90% of Canadians aged 25 to 64 had a high school diploma or equivalent
- Enrolments are highest in the most populous provinces; in 2015–2016, 45% of undergraduate students were enrolled in a university in Ontario and 38% of community college enrolments were in Ontario, while growth in enrolment has slowed in Western provinces
- International enrollments have grown over time
Educational attainment
The highest level of education that an individual has completed, measured in terms of their qualification (such as “high school diploma”) or the level (such as “university”
- The province with the greatest proportion of university-educated individuals (and above the national average) is Ontario, though British Columbia, Alberta, and Yukon are also at or above the national average. Nunavut has the highest proportion of individuals without any certificate, diploma, or degree.
The hidden curriculum
- The lessons about expectations for behavior that tend to be more informal or unwritten
- May not necessarily be explicitly hidden
- Those who regard the hidden curriculum as positive are generally echoing the themes from structural functionalists
