Exam 2 Flashcards
What is “no force” divorce?
Allows married couples to agree to disagree and disengage from marriage without pointing fingers
What is the intergenerational transmission of divorce
Phenomenon in which parental divorce is associated with an increased risk of offspring divorce
Where does divorce fall in relation to other stressors
Divorces is the #2 stressor, with the death of a spouse as #1
Explain traditional values
Values that were in place when divorces rates were infinitesimal compared to today
Who is Thomas Hardy
Argues that marriage should dissolve when one party is treated with cruelty, as death of either partner used to be the only way out for many
What is the average age for woman to marry
27.5
What is the average age for men to marry
29.5
How do longterm couples like Mike and Carol (the Brady Bunch) stay together for so long?
They have brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (positive illusions)
What is selection bias
A particular kind of problem that shows there is something about the people who get divorced that happened before they got into the current situation that makes them more likely to divorce; instead of independent variable to dependent variable, there is a third variable between the two
Explain resilience
Most children of divorce far just as well as children whose families stay together
What are sleeper effects
Difficulties emerge with age
What is prospective study
Starts a present exposure and moves forward in time to outcome (started before an divorces happened)
What is the worst family environment for a child to be raised in?
A distressed and married family
What is pre-disruption effects
Differences in marriage outcomes exist prior to divorce
What is post-disruption effects
Negative effects after divorce; cascade of negative life events
Distressed marriages
Utilize contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling; more likely for women to be unhappy (domestic violence)
Explain fixed effects
Tells us if there are aspects of individuals that are not measured explicitly but that account for results
Why did fewer people get divorced during the recession?
Divorce became more selective because it was more expensive; as a result, there was an increase of intimate partner violence
Why are U.S. divorce rates so high in comparison to most other countries? (Cultural dimensions theory)
The U.S. is a highly individualistic society
What is individualism
Loose ties between individuals; everyone is expected to look after themselves and their immediate family; “I” identity
What is collectivism
Strong ties between individuals from birth; “we” identity; there may be out-groups, but in-group harmony is valued; competition between “tribes” or members of different groups
Why are divorce rates declining in the U.S.?
- Fewer people are getting married
- There is an increase in age of marriage and of cohabitations rates
- Divorce divide: Phenomenon that divorce rates among poor couples have increased, while divorce rates among affluent couples have decreased
What are micro-level reasons for divorce
- Extramarital affairs
- Domestic violence
- Substance abuse
- Conflict over money
- Lack of communications
- Annoying personality characteristics and habits
- Not being home enough and growing apart
What are demographic reasons for divorce?
- Parental divorce
- Age at marriage
- Premarital childbearing
- Cohabitation
- Gender (women file because of housework/gender roles)
- Race, ethnicity, religion
- Education
- Money (independence and dependence effect)
- Occupation (predictor of infidelity is opportunity
Which member of a stepfamily that is most likely to abuse the children?
The biological mother
blended/reconstituted/reformed
Words that are used to de-stigmatize step families, as it is commonly believed that they are bad for children (ex. Cinderella)
What is “simple” stepfamily
- Includes stepparent
- Biological parent
- Children from a previous union
What is “blended/complex” stepfamily
Each adult brings children to the household from previous relationship
Explain lesbian stepfamily
If it dissolves, only the biological mother can legally keep the child in many states (the stepmother has no rights to the biological mother’s child anymore)
What are LAT couples?
-Living apart together couples
How can a stepparent get legal rights over their stepchild?
The stepparent must adopt the stepchild with the consent of the biological parent, as it is a very vulnerable position to put themselves into
What was wrong with a lot of earlier stepfamily research
- It was very unsophisticated
- Since then, we’ve learned that “if… then” statements are necessary to draw conclusions about stepfamilies
What is the Normative adaptive approach
Assumes divorce and remarriage are normal lifestyle choices
When do stepfamilies work best?
When stepparents support the biological parents instead of taking over disciplinary roles
“Shamster” example
Showed that the different ways in which we interpret data can have severe effects on how certain products are advertised; the “drug” itself represented marriage (marriage doesn’t make people happier, they already are happier than single people before marriage, but not by a significant amount)
What is lifelines of Happiness study?
Suggests that if you’re not already happy, marriage won’t make you any happier; being single doesn’t mean you will descend into despair
Problems with Waite and Gallagher’s study
- Confirmation bias
- Their averages were problematic
- They cut out important data
- They skewed data to get answers they liked and they didn’t address 3rd variables
The power of marriage is ____
Mythical
Explain selection effects
Link between variables is an artifact of personality characteristics, family backgrounds and sociodemographic disadvantages
The number of elders living alone is ___ thanks to social security (can afford to do so) and retirement (allows them to socialize)
Increasing
What is the most common way co-residential romantic relationships are now being formed (other than marriage)?
Cohabitation
Who is more likely to cohabit?
- lower socioeconomic status
- Less education
- More liberal values and less traditional sexual values
- Less religious
- More supportive of egalitarian gender roles
- Common in subgroups
Who is less likely to cohabit?
“Traditional” people who are more conservative and less supportive of gender equality
What is “Slide” cohabitation
Happens smoothly with no conversation, almost like an accident
Why do people move in together?
- Want to spend more time together
- Finances
- Important way to evaluate compatibility for marriage (fear of divorce)
Does marriage make people healthier?
It makes men healthier, but they get over it
What is soulmate marriage?
We feel entitled to companionship, intimacy, caring, friendship, advice, sharing of household task, etc.; the couple relationship is values above all other peer relationships
The majority of women are living ___ a spouse? 51%
Without
Explain legally single
Anyone who is not officially, legally married; includes divorced, widowed, and always single
What is socially single
Anyone who is not seriously coupled
Singles are targets of ____ discrimination
legal
What are federal benefits directly tied to marriage?
- FMLA (Family Medical Leave act)
- Social security benefits
- Final expenses
- Tax breaks favor married people (2 singles will almost always pay more)
What is the “free love” movement
- Resistance to marriage
- saw it as a failing institution that enslaved women
How do those who decide to not marry view cohabitation?
They see it as a “free form social prescription” that “doesn’t constrict personal development”
List some reasons not to marry
- Political views
- Economic practicalities
- Divorce concerns
- Lack of incentive
- Doesn’t fit a couple’s personal beliefs, desires, or needs
- Couple doesn’t agree with what it means in today’s society
- The couple doesn’t like what it does to the relationship
- The couple simply doesn’t like weddings or can’t afford one
Does cohabitation cause divorce?
No; early marriage causes divorce (especially as a result of pregnancy); divorce is also influenced by how long one is involved in the relationship before moving in and how the relationship formed/developed
What are the types of co-habitors
-Testers: want to see if they have
-Here and now/money savers: Cohabit for economic convenience
-Pension partners: will lose benefits if they marry
-Engage/pre-engaged
-Substitue
-Marriage
never/cohabitants forever
What is heterocentrism?
- Presumption that everybody can function like heterosexual people
- Viewing and evaluating behavior of LGB people out of cultural and historical context and historical context and using heterosexual relations as ideal; presumption of heterosexual ideal, or that everybody can function like heterosexual people
Ways in which homo/heterosexual relationships are more similar than you think
- Partners place more value on security, permanence, shared activities and togetherness
- Lower value on having separate activities/personal autonomy
- Higher expressiveness
- More perceived intrinsic rewards for being in relationship
- Fewer perceived alternatives to relationship
- More perceived barriers to ending relationship
- Less belief that disagreement is destructive
- Higher trust in partner
- Greater closeness and flexibility
- Better problem-solving skills
- Higher shared decision making
- Greater perceived social support
Ways in which same-sex relationships are actually better
- Escape traditional gender roles
- Emotionally closer
- Most flexible
- Best with conflict
Specific same-sex couple challenges
- Antigay prejudice
- Ambiguity in social/legal definition of relationships
- Barriers to forming cohesive support networks (family of choice)
Coping with antigay prejudice may require…
- Working actively for change
- Changing social environments
- Reattributing causes of distress
- Recognizing that some discriminatory situations can’t be changed
Examples of subsidies to married people
-Wedding showers
-Wedding gifts
-Discounts on memberships, insurance policies, meals, travel, etc.
for couples subsidized by singles paying full price
Professor Munsch’s Research
- Married people viewed as better in many aspect than non-married people (gender, reasons for being single, and race all have similar levels of stigma); being single as master status (like cardinal trait)
- Job applications for married vs. single people; not married people were seen as better applicants because they could be exploited, but were no more likely to be promoted (better workers get less rewards)
What is singlism?
Bias against people who are not married (single people)
3 influences on sexuality
- Attraction
- Behavior
- Identity
Mize and Manago’s Studies
- wrote vignettes about an individual’s recent sexual encounter; all 4 identical EXCEPT that they change the person’s gender, history, and whether the encounter was homo/heterosexual; found that men were more likely to be categorized as gay/bi after the same-sex encounter than women
- redid experiment, but asked WHY the participant thought the person in the vignette acted the way they did; found that women behaved the way they did because they were experimenting/out of curiosity, while men were finding their “true” sexual identity
What is Obergefell vs. hodges (2015)
Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry; 5-4 Supreme Court ruling
What are formal rights?
Legal rights
What are informal privileges?
Interactional and often subtle advantages that dominant groups enjoy over minority groups
What is internalized homophobia?
Refers to the repulsion some people feel in response to their own feelings of attraction to other members of their sex
Marriage never/cohabitants forever
A couple that lives together but is unmarried; they don’t believe that a legal ceremony is relevant to their commitment to each other and view their non-marital relationship as equivalent to a common-law marriage
What is heteronormativity?
The belief that people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles associated with each, belief that heterosexuality as normal; cultural bias in favor of opposite-sex relationships and against same-sex relationships
Ways stepfamilies are considered different
- Stepfamilies usually had some kind of loss before
- The parent-child relationship exists before the marriage: parents will initially be closer to their own children
- In stepfamilies there are very few legal ties between a stepparent and a stepchild
- Unlike first-married families, in stepfamilies, members do not share a history
What is aging in place?
Refers to older Americans preferring to remain in their own home
What are factors that increase likelihood to cohabit?
- Lower socioeconomic status
- less education
- More liberal values and less traditional sexual values
- Less religious
- More supportive of egalitarian gender roles
- Common in subgroups
Why do some heterosexual couples abstain from legal marriage?
- They don’t like the role of “wife” and the expectations for women that come with marriage
- They feel marriage is too closely tied to religion
- They don’t want a wedding ceremony and feel they’d be expected to have one if they married
- They believe marriage changes relationships for worse
What is the Divorce Divide?
Phenomenon that divorce rates among poor couples have increased, while divorce rates among affluent couples have decreased
Cohen, Philip N. wrote
“Silver Linings Divorce Trend”
Cohen’s “Silver Linings Divorce Trend” article
- According to Cohen divorce rates fell during the recent economic recession because the cost of divorce was very high, despite more unhappy marriages
- There is a spike in intimate partner violence in the years men’s unemployment rates jump
Divorce Revolution
- Legally, a divorce is easier to get.
- Women less dependent on men, today’s marriages are stressful.
- Dual earning families, high work-family conflict, divorce is more socially acceptable
Coleman, Marilyn, and Lawrence Ganong wrote
“Stepfamilies as They Really Are: Neither Cinderella nor the Brady Bunch”
DePaulo, Bella wrote
“Science and the Single Person”
True or false, Living alone does not equal social isolation.
True
Older people who live alone are more likely than married people to _____?
Spend time with friends and neighbors
Klinenberg, Eric, Stacey Torres, and Elena Portacolone wrote?
“Aging Alone in America”
Why are elderly women less socially isolated than elderly men?
They are better at cultivating and maintaining social ties
Are men or women more likely to age alone?
Women
Who becomes widows in greater number?
Black women
Who is more vulnerable to poverty, men or women?
Women
Smock, Pamela J., and Wendy manning wrote?
“New Couples, New Families”
Hatch, A. Wrote?
Saying I Don’t to Matrimony
Green, Robert-Jay wrote?
“From Outlaws to In-Laws”
