Sociology: SOC 3403

SOC 3403--The Family
Chapters 9 - 15
Study Guide for TEST 2
1) As of 1980, the group of women least likely to favor housework was college educated, young wives.
2) As more women enter the labor force, what has happened to the gender differences in time spent in housework? Women who are employed spend less time doing household work than homemakers do and husbands spend additional time doing housework when their wives work outside the home.
3) From a feminist perspective, the unequal division of household labor is best explained by unequal opportunities for men and women and patriarchal gender ideologies that affect family role organization.
4) Jessie Bernard stated that in comparing the experiences of husbands and wives, more wives than husbands expressed marital frustration and dissatisfaction, negative feelings and marital problems. More women were unhappy with their marriages, regretted being married, sought marital counseling, and initiated divorce proceedings. In short, the husband views his marriage as “better”.
5) Scott South found that over the past thirty years, wives’ employment has increasing impact on marital dissolution. Three societal changes may be observed as a result of wives’ employment: ( 1) the development of institutional supports for unmarried mothers; ( 2) a reduced tendency for working wives to adopt traditional gender roles that otherwise temper the effect of their economic independence; and ( 3) the growing exposure of working women to spousal alternatives concomitant with declines in workplace sex segregation.
6) Power involves the crucial dimensions of authority and influence.
7) Mary Rogers makes several points about power. Which statement is true? All of the three points made by Mary Rogers can still be considered as true. Power is still defined as the capacity or an ability to influence others. The extent of an individual’s power is relative to the social system and the position that the person occupies in that social system. Lastly, power is largely determined by resources: the greater resources an individual has, the greater advantage he/she has over others.
8) Wives will have more power in societies which are nuclear – rather than extended - family structures. They tend to have greater power in societies with matrilateral rather than patrilateral customs of residence and descent.
9) In their research involving conjugal power and decision making, Blood and Wolfe determined the area to be predominantly the wife’s province was her work and food.
10) Blood and Wolfe concluded that power in a marriage seems to be primarily related to resource availability. The source of authority and power lies in the comparative resources the husband or wife has available.
11) Hyman Rodman refined the resource theory of conjugal power relationships by adding an emphasis on the cultural context in which the interaction occurs.
12) In studying conjugal power, Mark Rank found that the increase in wive’s resources led to increased wives’ influence which supports the theory of resources argument. Yet, increased resources in husband’s resources had a negative effect on his influence which can be explained by the husband’s coming into contact with egalitarian norms involving spousal relations.
13) Tichenor, who examined marriages where the wives earned more than their husbands, contends that resource and exchange theory breaks down when women bring more money and status to the marital relationship. The balance of power is more closely related to gender than income or status: increase in the wife’s income and occupational status does not lead to greater power within the marriage.
14) The highest levels of marital satisfaction appear to be when couples are able to communicate well. Couples with high degree of self- disclosure and find expressions of love, support, and affection tended also to experience greater satisfaction.
15) The concept that generally refers to the achievement of one or more goals, such as permanence, companionship, and fulfilling the expectations of the community, is marital success.
16) Various components of Spanier’s dyadic adjustment scale were described. The one not included was marital quality or conditions of the relationship that predict whether or not a marriage works successfully and is satisfying the partners involved.
17) Scanzoni, in writing about marital conflict, argues that in order to understand the dynamics of husband-wife interaction, the first step is to throw out the notion that equilibrium or stability is a necessary ideal, and the second step is to throw out the idea that conflict is by nature bad or unhealthy within marriage.
18) Studies suggest that marital/family satisfaction over the life course tends to decrease over the early stages of the lifecycle and then increase over later stages.
19) The effect of children on the marital happiness of parents is highly consistent. In the US society, the presence of children in the family lowers marital happiness for parents.
20) The type of analysis that calls into question the belief that marriages tend to improve during later years is cohort type of analysis (people born within a specific time period).
21) The desire to stay in a relationship because it is highly rewarding is known as personal commitment.
22) Most researchers agree that, in the United States, the frequency of marital coitus decreased with age.
23) The frequency of sexual intercourse appears to be highest for the first two years after marriage.
24) Research suggests that female coital frequency in marriage is lower among young married females but older females expressed the wish to have more coitus more frequently than their husband desired.
25) Compared to the working and lower classes, people from the middle and upper classes are more likely to have intercourse in total nudity, use a variety of positions in intercourse, and engage in oral/ genital contact. Middle class men and women start their sexual activities at a later age, are more likely to enjoy their first sexual experiences, and are more likely to react positively to masturbation.
26) Regarding the relationship between sexual adjustment and martial adjustment, it appears that sexual adjustment may be one indicator of general marital adjustment but having a good sex life by itself is not an assurance of a continued relationship. Researches show that the lack of sexual activity appeared to be associated with the existence of other problems in the relationship and may indeed be a danger signal for many marriages.
27) Of all the factors Kinsey examined, the factor that affected the incidence of extramarital coitus more than any other, particularly for females, was religious devoutness.
28) The most common justifications for extramarital relationships for women were emotional in nature. For example, romantic love, getting love and affection, intellectual sharing, understanding, companionship, ego- bolstering, aspects of enhancing self- esteem, and respect.
29) Which of the following statements is TRUE of same sex couples? where are the statements?
30) In industrialized countries, cultural pressures to become parents appear to have decreased.
31) The idea that children are of value in providing security in old age or in case of divorce, widowhood, or financial difficulties, is referred to as a(n) pronatalism.
32) The government in China instituted a one-child policy. It was announced that couples with two children should have one partner sterilized.
33) Explanations for the higher than normal sex ratios in China include female infanticide, the underreporting of female births and gender-specific abortion.
34) The birth rate in the United States in 2006 is 14.2 births per thousand population.
35) The baby boom refers to sudden increase in live births (to over 120 per 1,000 women between 15 to 44) which occurred in the period after WWII.
36) Which statement is true about fertility in Japan?
37) It is known that most women leave their jobs with the birth of a child. The number that have been found to return to their employment within two years after the birth is about 60%.
38) Which statement is true about the consequences of parenting?
39) Which statement is true?
40) In the United States, infertility is estimated to affect approximately 15% of couples.
41) When compared to couples with children, voluntary childless couples were found to have higher levels of marital satisfaction.
42) The majority of teenagers who become pregnant have out-of-wedlock births.
43) Black unwed teenagers who become pregnant are more likely than their white counterparts to get their children adopted.
44) Fathers least likely to live with their first child are black teenage boys.
45) Adolescents who relinquished (put up for adoption) their children, when compared with adolescents who kept and raised them, were more likely to complete vocational training, have higher educational aspirations, and are less involved in sexual risk-taking behaviors. They are more likely to delay marriage, be employed six and twelve months after the birth, and live in higher income households.
46) As of 2007, of all births, the percent that were born to unmarried women was approaching 1.75 million.
47) The biggest percentage increase over the past twenty years in births to unmarried women was to those aged 20 to 29 years.
48) Birth rates among mothers who are not married is lowest among those under the age of 20.
49) In 2007, the country with the lowest percent of births to unmarried women (about one percent) was in Japan.
50) National data that looked at adults who had no siblings, found that on eight dimensions of well-being, being an only child yields positive results. Only children were more likely to say they were very happy, find life exciting, see their health as excellent, and get satisfaction from where they live, from their nonworking activities, from their family life, from their friendships, and from their physical condition.
51) Blake’s research findings on the only child suggest that only children are intellectually superior, have no obvious personality defects, tend to count themselves happy, and are satisfied with important aspects of life, notably jobs and health. They have problems with health and achievement only when they come from a broken family.
52) Blake and Downey illustrate that increased family size effects each child negatively. Their explanation for this is called a resource dilution hypothesis.
53) A review of family size effects showed that in large families child rearing was more rule ridden and less individualized, corporal punishment was more prevalent, and resources such as time and money were more limited.
54) Research on the effects of birth order has revealed that first-born females tend to be more religious, more sexually conservative, more traditionally oriented toward feminine roles, and more likely to associate with adults.
55) Middle-borns, compared to first- or last-borns, were found to have significantly lower levels of self esteem.
56) Freeze and others suggest a word of caution on the effect of birth order by suggesting that a better predictor of social attitudes are gender, class and race.
57) Studies involving gender preference in the having of children suggest that girls are preferred over boys.
58) The chairman of the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine said that it is sometimes acceptable to choose the sex of their children by selecting either male or female embryos and discarding the rest.
59) According to this theory, the reproductive strategy that best increases the likelihood that the female’s genetic material will be passed on through her offspring is to limit her fertility and do all she can to protect and nurture the child to adulthood. parental investment theory
60) In the secure attachment style of parenting, individuals feel comfortable with both proximity and some distance.
61) According to Baumrind, authoritative parents: are more focused on the child’s needs and development than in simply maintaining control. They establish clear and consistent guidelines for behavior but bring about conformity to those guidelines through reasoning and positive reinforcement rather than through punishment. They are also willing to make exceptions to rules or change the rules based on their assessment of their child’s developmental state and needs.
62) Sociologist Murray Straus recommends that corporal punishment become a public heatlh agenda because it presents a serious threat to the wellbeing of American children. It should then be eliminated.
63) Classical conditioning links a response to a known stimulus.
64) Socialization, according to a learning/behaviorist frame of reference, assumes and requires changes in behavior that result from experience.
65) The psychoanalytic stage of development in which a parent’s child rearing techniques sets the stage for adults who are motivated to create things that will please another person is the anal stage.
66) According to traditional Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the key to feminine psychology is penis envy.
67) The theorist who views the social order as resulting from and in harmony with his eight stages was Erik Erikson.
68) Child development frames of reference, like those of Erikson and Piaget, tend to share with symbolic interaction theories an emphasis on language, reasoning and societal influences.
69) Which statement is true from the perspective of the symbolic interaction frame of reference?
70) An assumption of a symbolic interaction frame of reference is that a difference between humans and nonhumans, or animals, is one of kind. Some of the differences between humans and non-humans include language, symbols, meanings, gestures and related processes.
71) Which one of the following is not a basic assumption of symbolic interaction theory?
72) According to a symbolic interactionist, the newborn infant at birth is asocial. The infant is neither social or antisocial.
73) The organization of internalized roles is the social self.
74) Personality, according to a symbolic interactionist, consists of self- concepts, self- perceptions, and defini-tions of self- worth and self- esteem, or definitions of self with the predisposition to act or behave consistently.
75) Persons who are important to us and with whom we psychologically identify are termed significant others and reference groups.
76) Significant others are perceived as role models wherein personal behavior and thinking are patterned on the conduct of these persons.
77) To most adolescents, the key group of reference is their peers.
78) In Mead’s theory of the development of the self, the generalized other becomes important during the stage known as the game stage.
79) According to Mead, the generalized other refers to a reference which includes the behavior of everyone else, and the need to respond to the expectations of several other people at the same time. It is one way that people learn to see themselves from the standpoint of multiple others who are either physically or symbolically present.
80) The way one defines or perceives oneself in terms of being masculine or feminine is termed gender identity.
81) Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are more likely to experience of negative outcomes: confusion over their gender and sexual identities, becoming homosexual themselves, being molested, being more prone to delinquency, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, suicide, or dropping out of school, suffering greater risks of depression and other emotional difficulties, and not having only one “ real” father or mother, among others. Note, however, that Stacey and Biblarz questions these claims.
82) In terms of value orientations, females were found to be more likely than males to express the concern and responsibility for the wellbeing of others, less likely to accept materialism and competition, and more likely to indicate that finding purpose and meaning in life is extremely important.
83) The category of persons who are most likely to believe in innate, inborn, sex roles are men or husbands.
84) Margaret Mead’s classic study of three primitive tribes in New Guinea found that both men and women among the Arapesh to be cooperative, mild- mannered, gentle, and unaggressive (sex- typed “ feminine” behavior). Among the Mundugumor, both men and women were hostile, aggressive, combative, individualistic, and unrespon-sive (sex- typed “ masculine” behavior). Among the Tchambuli, the typical sex roles found in Western cultures were reversed: women were dominant, powerful, and impersonal; men were emotionally dependent and less responsible.
85) The Khasi tribe in northeastern India was matrilineal in which property and the family name pass from mother to daughter.
86) Research by John Money found that biological males, defined and reared as females, had an interest in mothering, preferred marriage over career, and were oriented towards dolls a...