Summary:
The chapter starts out with describing how sociologists view the dating process. They see it as a process to meet the end goal of finding a person’s prospective spouse. Dating helps to compare the assets and liabilities of different partners and choose the best one for what the person is looking for. This can be seen as a trade depending on what everybody has to offer each other. This is how dating fulfills both manifest and latent functions. Manifest functions of dating are recreation, companionship, fun, and mate selection. Latent functions are socialization, social status, sexual experimentation, and meeting intimacy/ego needs.
New trends have developed in the dating world recently. Some examples are getting together and hooking up. This is especially popular in adolescents and young adults. The way adults go about finding a potential partner are using personal classified ads, marriage bureaus, computerized services, and the Internet. The way we decide all these methods are reasonable are shaped by homogamy. Homogamy are rules that define appropriate mates in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, age, social class, values, and other characteristics. This is why the eligibility expands greatly when people seek partners with different religions, races, and ethnicities.
The chapter states that a relationship is most satisfying when it is seen as egalitarian. This is why the social exchange and equity theory suggest that dating partners seek a balance of costs and benefits in a relationship. Typically in the world marriages are arranged by families and restricted to the specific religious, race, and culture groups. The US and western nations are some of the only ones with open courtship systems in place. This influence though is changing some traditional society’s perspectives on courtship. Dating seems like a harmless concept but comes with risk factors. Women are often victimized because of power differences between men and women, peer pressure and secrecy, and the use of drugs/alcohol. The chapter concludes at the end that ending a relationship is not the end of the world and just opens new opportunities to find a better, well-suited partner.
My Opinions:
I like the concept of propinquity. I feel that this is why there is such a concept such as “High School Sweethearts”. Because geographic closeness truly does affect the way people think and interact with other people. It also might provide the other effect that people do not want to be with somebody who is similar to the people in the area they grew up in so they look elsewhere for someone who was raised somewhere the complete opposite. For example a country girl/boy might look for a city boy/girl because of the different perspectives and excitement of something new and different. I also found it interesting about the other cultures that were non-western seemed to still have the traditional dating systems. But if anyone has seen the show Gypsy Wives I don’t think that is very traditional. The girls are 15 years old and being married off to men twice their age, and not only that they dress scantily clad and parade with no sense of class.
Questions:
As I was reading I wanted to understand better how we strayed so far from the values of traditional dating and ended up with a concept of “hooking up” as the norm of today’s societies? I mean why is it ok to just hook up with a random person who you might not even know their first name when back in the day you had to know all of their family history basically and be married before you even kissed them.
Also, I wanted to pose a question to the class because the topic of an egalitarian relationship still confuses me. I mean I can see how it can get close to becoming egalitarian, but I feel that the women will still do more work in the home plus hold a normal job, and the husband just has a job and occasionally does “man’s work”. My question is what would actually create an egalitarian relationship? And is there such a thing that exists today?
Brianna,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and think it is very interesting to consider how much our dating styles have changed compared to traditional dating. The fact that more and more people are turning to the concept of “hooking up,” rather than “going steady,” is kind of disturbing. This trend of “hooking up” may even be contributing to the rise in the number of people with STDs; many hook ups are with people one may not even know and often occur when alcohol is involved; therefore, many people do not put into perspective the risks that are involved with hooking up with random people or not settling with just one mate, as “going steady” included in traditional dating. I think our society would benefit by eradicating hook ups and returning to traditional concepts of “going steady” with only one mate.
To answer your question about what would actually create an egalitarian relationship, I think this is a subjective question and it changes with every individual. In my opinion, an egalitarian relationship involves men and women sharing the economic and nurturing roles; no gender dominates in one specific area. Both genders share the power, with no single gender being more controlling than the other. I do not consider traditional relationships/families with discrete gender roles as egalitarian. I do believe my definition of an egalitarian relationship does exist and are increasingly replacing traditional relationships that are not equal. In fact, I would actually consider my parent’s relationship as egalitarian. Both my mom and dad work outside the house, bringing economic support into the household. Additionally, they both do household chores and equally care for my sisters and I. Neither of my parents have more power or control than the other; they are both in charge of what goes on in the family. Egalitarian relationships, in my opinion, are healthy relationships that can prevent a lot of conflict that may arise in relationships that have distinct gender roles, such as traditional ones with women being nurturers and men as breadwinners.
-Natalie Fisher