3.00 Credits
Families are diverse and changing social institutions that influence our wellbeing, social relationships, and position in society. The families we live with and the family roles we fulfill influence who we are and who we are becoming. Our belonging to a particular family defines our social status, roles and responsibilities, and our access to resources and opportunities. In addition, our social class, sexual orientation, gender, religious affiliation, race, and ethnicity each inform our decisions about family, such as whether to marry, whom to marry, how many children to have, and how to divide household labor. Many of the decisions we make about family, in turn, influence our social position, workforce opportunities, and access to public resources. In this course we will use the sociological imagination to explore and analyze families in historical and international perspective. We will highlight the diverse and changing definitions of family, with a specific focus on the intersection of macro-level social change and change in family structure, roles, and ideologies. We will address how economic systems, culture, class structure and public policies influence the character of family life and create changes in the form and function of families across time and space. Most of our readings, lectures and discussions will focus locally'on families in the U.S. and our own communities. However, we will also take a global perspective on families. This international perspective will allow us to consider how different social and cultural circumstances, and the forces of globalization, influence families in the U.S. and countries across the world. By considering the similarities and differences across families internationally we will gain a more complete understanding of families as socially-constructed institutions conditioned by social and economic structures.