unit 2: historical perspective

Question 1

what is the goal of Adams (2014) paper? what are they trying to express?

Answer 1

providing historical overview about how heterosexuality came to be the centre of family in social discourse after WW2

Question 2

according to Adams (2014), what were some immediate post-war changes that impacted expectations of women?

Answer 2

high immigration led to changes in labour force and women’s place in society. high divorce rates led to an era of sexual liberation, in which sex became a thing of pleasure for both men and women

Question 3

according to Adams (2014), how did the Red Scare affect public attitudes toward the nuclear family?

Answer 3

homosexuals and women who gave birth outside of wedlock were labeled as “deviants” due to associations with communism. any sort of social change was viewed as a threat to the domestic ideal. heterosexuality was promoted as a natural and normal form of sexual expression, in part due to christianity in north american culture (communism, on the other hand values secularism)

Question 4

according to Bignami-van Assche and Simmack (2020), what is the consequence of Stats Can’s question-asking and its incompatibility with Indigenous community structure?

Answer 4

leads to ineffective policy-making. Stats Can lacks information from 40% of Indigenous population

Question 5

what do Bignami-van Assche and Simmack (2020) propose as the way forward in gathering data on Indigenous communities

Answer 5

• data accessibility/availability
• defining broader categories of family
• proceeding without a “census definition”

Question 6

why, according to Bignami-van Assche and Simmack (2020), is Statistics Canada’s method of question-asking incompatible with the way Indigenous communities are structured?

Answer 6

Stats can puts a heavy emphasis on the nuclear family, while in Indigenous communities, caretakers tend to be more spread out and children are therefore more mobile

Question 7

what are the steps of Paul Glick’s 1965 family developmental theory?

Answer 7

1. family formation
2. start of childbearing
3. end of childbearing
4. empty nest
5. family dissolution

Question 8

what are the steps of Duvall’s 1977 family developmental theory?

Answer 8

1. beginning families
2. childbearing families
3. families with preschoolers
4. families with school children
5. families with teens
6. families as launching centres
7. families in the middle years
8. ageing families

Question 9

what are some of the general family patterns of Indigenous peoples of North America?

Answer 9

• strong respect for elders
• resource reliance on extended family
• matrilineality
• men hold political leverage
• gendered division of labour (not inherently inequality)
• monogamous marriage

Question 10

what was the purpose of the 1876 Indian Act?

Answer 10

targeted Indigenous families in an attempt to “civilize” them. colonists were perplexed by Indigenous people’s way of family life and instead made a forcible effort to replicate the white middle-class ‘ideal’, legislating women’s subordination

Question 11

how did changes in the mode of production during the Industrial Revolution influence family dynamics?

Answer 11

as the labour market shifted from rural to urban, there was an emergence of separate spheres of labour (private vs public), with men as the breadwinner and women as the homemaker.
(note: this trend excluded many poor, working class, and immigrant families who required more than a single breadwinner)

Question 12

what are the ideal qualities of the “good provider” at the time of the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 12

• men’s primary contribution to family is economic
• men’s behaviour is governed by the tough business world (materialist, aggressive, vulgar, full of temptation and trouble)
• fathering/parenting is secondary to providing

Question 13

what are the ideal qualities of the “cult of true womanhood” or the “cult of domesticity” during the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 13

• women seen as weak and delicate, responsible for home and hearth, a place of spiritual restoration for men, responsible for nurturance and affection of children
• women should be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic
• women were thought to lack primal motivation for sex, and were therefore more morally suited to care for children

Question 14

during the Industrial Revolution, how often was sex recommended for couples? how were men supposed to resist the temptation to have sex more frequently?

Answer 14

sex recommended once a month. graham crackers and corn flakes were meant to lower men’s sex drive

Question 15

how did attitudes toward childhood change over the course of the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 15

sentimentalization of childhood: as children began going to school rather than being sent to work in factories, childhood and individuality became valued more, and children were viewed as morally pure blank slates who had to be raised well. as such, the number of children per family began to decline as there was a higher expectation for parental investment in childrearing.

Question 16

how did reasons for marriage change over the course of the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 16

marriage wen from being practical and economic to affective, or based in love

Question 17

define what is meant by the “compassionate family,” which saw its rise in popularity during the 20th century

Answer 17

family based on mutual affection, sexual attraction, compatibility, and personal happiness

Question 18

what new developments took place in the 20th century that led to the rise of various social and relationship trends?

Answer 18

• improved transportation and mass-scale production led to a “cash and cars” culture among adolescents and youth, with growing independence triggering a sexual revolution (circa 1920s) and a hedonistic culture of drinking and sexual flirtation.
• mass communications advancements prompted a rise in various social movements, particularly that of women’s suffrage. as divorce rates tripled, there was a growing fear of women’s emancipation and a panic about the future of family.
• greater commercialization through mass communication also led to the creation of family-oriented holidays like mother’s day

Question 19

how did the great depression impact family dynamics?

Answer 19

• the struggling labour market had a great effect on family finances, leading to a gender crisis through the undermining of men’s authority in the household.
• there was a downward extension of “adult-like” experiences, with teens forced to work outside the home
• marriage desertion increased, divorce rate decreased, and many delayed marriage due to financial instability
• childbearing was also delayed with 20% of women never having kids, and punitive parenting became commonplace due to economic stress

Question 20

what were the primary causes of the marriage boom circa WW2?

Answer 20

• reaction to 1930s low marriage rates, as people delayed marriage until they were financially secure
• the average age at marriage dropped during the early 50s due to economic prosperity coming out of the war

Question 21

roughly how many of the marriages during the marriage boom ended in divorce shortly after the end of the war?

Answer 21

one third

Question 22

how long did the baby boom last?

Answer 22

from mid-war though the 60s

Question 23

true or false: after the war, many women wanted to continue working in the public sphere

Answer 23

true, even many of those who were married with children. surveys showed that women were not keen to leave their jobs, and that they actually enjoyed working in the public sphere. unfortunately this was countered by a push for domesticity after the war as a way of trying to return to normalcy

Question 24

what does The Idea File’s video on Why the Nuclear Family Wasn’t Built to Last mean when they say that family is a ‘moral unit’?

Answer 24

family is supposed to be a means of socialization, in which adults teach children traditional values and what differentiates right from wrong

Question 25

according to David Brooks, in the late 50s and early 60s, what social pressures of the post-war world “conspired” to make the nuclear family so popular/successful?

Answer 25

higher wages meant single-earning households were possible.
there was also high union membership, high church attendance, and high social trust, creating a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.
cold war fears caused the nuclear family to be seen as a sort of protection

Question 26

according to Adams (2014), why was being/staying single seen as socially unacceptable in the years following WW2?

Answer 26

gay people and parents of illegitimate children were seen as dangerous, and were associated with communism because of their supposed inability to do the right thing.
bachelors were presumed to be gay, and single women (particularly those raising children) were seen as lesser than married women

Question 27

according to Bignami van Assche and Simmard (2020), what are the two main reasons for lack of attention to the residential arrangements of Indigenous families?

Answer 27

1. no nationally representative data sources on Indigenous families and households (except the census)
2. statistics canada’s reports have never included house-hold level indicators disaggregated by Indigenous identity

Question 28

according to Bignami van Assche and Simmard (2020), what is problematic about “census families” as a categorization for Indigenous families?

Answer 28

• census family is a western idea of a nuclear family
• it does not account for individuals’ co-residence in extended families
• compared to non-Indigenous families, Indigenous lone parents are more likely to live on their own without another household member
• proportion of multiple census families with children is almost double for Indigenous peoples
• overall, the focus on census families limits our understanding of family structures among Indigenous peoples and their evolution over time

Question 29

recall the examples used by Coontz (2015) to illustrate how definitions of family have changed over time

Answer 29

early middle ages -18th c: family was kinship groups from which european nobility derived their claims to privilege and property
16th - 17th c: North American natives used family ties to organize nearly all political, military, and economic transactions; everything had to do with kin and not the state. in europe, they operated on the framework of the state
mid 19th c: married couple with co-resident children, division of labour by age and gender
mid-late 19th: fight for women’s reproductive rights led to smaller families with fewer children and marriages about love. govt started to care about who could marry and who couldn’t
20th c: children going to school, intimacy in marriage, marriage boom during and following ww2, homemaker/breadwinner dynamic, higher divorce rates
1990s: racial and ethnic diversity became more accepted, more diversity in families, 1970s women’s movement led to more economic freedoms