Course Guide for Family and Society

Course Guide for
FAMILIES AND SOCIETY
(last updated 9/2013)

Developed by Marcie Hambrick, MSW
Georgia State University

Defining Contemporary Family

• How do we define a family?
• U.S. trends in marriage, divorce, and cohabitation
• Why I’m not married
• Less marriage and more cohabitation in Los Angeles
• “Traditional” marriage
• Marriage is over: “Live with it”
• Recession, resilience, divorce?
• Is marriage changing?
• Considering the meaning of marriage equality
• Global attitudes toward homosexuality
• Americans underestimate how many other Americans support same sex marriage
• Why are people changing their minds about same-sex marriage?
• Nearly one-in-five adults still living with their parents

Partnering

• The banal, mundane sex lives of college students
• Men feel bad around smart, successful women

Childless Families

• Women, education, and trends in childlessness
• Should moms hate childless women?

Parenting

• The cost of in-vitro fertilization
• Representing transracial adoptions
• Discourses on adoption in Once Upon a Time
• Teenage pregnancy as moral panic

Socialization of Children

• Babies learn how to have a conversation
• Baby worshipper: An example of religious socialization
• On children and socialization
• Hasbro teaches girls to be good housewives
• Boys, social control, and school dress codes
• Halloween costumes

Extended Family

• Grandparents as support system
• On Grandparents’ day: Living with Grandparents

Gendered Roles

• Most women would rather divorce than be a housewife
• The power of pork: Who needs feminism?
• The relationship between patriarchy and the denigration of men

Work and Family

• The “motherhood penalty”
• Both sexes increasingly value both career and family
• Gender and family time
• Why did married mothers go to work?
• Class privilege and parental leave
• Relax, “breadwinner moms” do not portend a coming matriarchy
• Single mother, meet jobless man
• Gender and the dual career academic couple

Race and Family

• Framing children’s deviance
• Failing to understand when non-white people distrust the police
• Does positive stereotyping explain Asian academic success?

Social Class and Family

• Social class and the college choices of high school valedictorians
• Poverty poses a bigger risk to pregnancy than age

Family Violence

• Lady spanking: From Kiss Me Kate to comic books