Summary
Chapter two of Marriages & Families talks about two major topics: theoretical perspectives on the family and research methods. The chapter opens up explaining that there are three major reasons why theory and research are important. The first is the fact that what we as people don’t know can actually hurt us. The second is research is essential to understanding people and families best, and the third reason is that theory and research allow people to think more critically.
The eight important theoretical perspectives are structural-functionalist, conflict, feminist, ecological, developmental, symbolic interactionist, social exchange, and family systems (in order from macro to micro theoretical perspectives). Each discusses the role of the family, however they all have their own criticisms. Researchers tend to combine perspectives nowadays. Social scientists use qualitative (non numerical material) and quantitative (numerical) approaches for research. The six common ways to collect data for research are: surveys, clinical research, field research, secondary analysis, experiment, and evaluation research.
What I Found Interesting
My concerns
My main concern is that politics and religion are affected in different ways by the research done by social scientists. The fact that pregnancy resource centers are usually associated with religious organizations really bothers me. In this text Benokraitis cites from Kaufmann that some of these centers are claiming that abortions cause breast cancer, even though this isn’t proven. Without the proper education, young women (and men) are being fed propaganda from these centers that were originally set up for true help.
Extra
One thing that struck me while reading this chapter is that a lot of the theoretical perspectives actually go hand in hand with many sitcoms from the last couple decades. For example TV shows such as the Honeymooners and The Leave it to Beaver demonstrate and promote the structural-functionalist perspective – man provides for the family while the women takes care of the family. Many modern TV shows portray the developmental perspective where the family accomplishes tasks in a series of stages. An example of this perspective is the show Malcolm and the Middle. The family systems perspective is shown by the recent TV show The Office, where the characters daily survivals are based on each others interactions.
I found your 'Extra' discussion to be very interesting. As a television and movie buff I saw similar relationships between the theories discussed and the television shows you have mentioned above, as well as a few of my own. Looking at any sitcom from the 80's to the current time period we can easily find the family dynamics discussed in this chapter.
ReplyDeleteI think your concern about the intersection of social science research and religion and politics is definitely warranted. Scientists and their results are often a product of the societal environment that they are located in and are therefore subjected to bias. Similarly, often religious and political groups use and even sometimes skew results from social research in order to confirm laws and policies that have already been established by our government or religious institutions.
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