Chapter 2

David Komorowski
Summary: Within chapter 2 there is a very heavy theoretical perspective shown. I say this because nearly the entire chapter is based off of explaining certain theories—conflict, feminist, developmental, and social exchange just to name a few—in a good detail as well as their strengths, limitations, and criticisms that other sociologists may have with those theories or perspectives and why. An example of this could be the Ecological Perspective in which the family is explained in how it is influenced and influences its surrounding environment. The chapter then says that this perspective is useful in explaining family dynamics and making programs to deal with youth violence and other problems a family may have. Some critics would say though that this system deals mostly with predominant white middle-class populations and wonder how this system would hold up with a “nontraditional” family. After this the chapter then describes ways in which a sociologist can do research—surveys, field research, clinical research, etc—and their criticisms as well as strengths.

What I learned: Within this chapter I learned that not only is it good to look at many theories and perspectives (even if you have a favorite one already) as well as combine theories to make your own perspective as to how things work and why they are the way they are. I say this because in looking at each perspective I have found that each one could be completely right, completely wrong, or could just use a little tweaking to make a pretty good explanation as to why the family happens to be the way it is. I believe it’s our job to tweak a theory until it makes sense to us in a way that we can describe it to others and help shape their perspective as well.

What could’ve been explained better: I wish that this chapter would have described how these theories came about more than they actually did. I do understand that each chapter cannot be a hundred pages long because it would be impossible to read but to go into such detail as to what a certain theory is and why it does and does not work without describing how it was found is unfulfilling when trying to figure out how you can mold and make your own perspective.