Family, Aging, and Social Change: Analyzing Marriage, Dependency, and Population Trends - , Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download Family, Aging, and Social Change: Analyzing Marriage, Dependency, and Population Trends - and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Monday, April 16, 2007 Marriage and Family  Every society has rules. The family is also a way to provide for various people who are dependent and can’t take care of themselves (children, elderly people, and people who are physically disabled.) In most societies the primary duties fall on the family for taking care of these people. The family is also first in line of different agents of socialization. The family teaches young people things they need to know to become part of the society. The family is the oldest form of socialization that we know of. Long ago governments societies were organized according to families or clans.  Most of us will have two forms of families o Family of Origin - the family we are born in primarily consist of our parents and siblings. o Family of Procreation -when we get married and have children ourselves.  Some of the rules about families: o Patrilineal societies - the line of decent is figured from father to son. The old Testament is full of different family trees. Almost all of these have names of men (rare you will find a women’s name). o Matrilineal Societies - the line of decent from mother to daughter. o Bilineal Societies- the line of decent of males is figured from father to son and the line of decent of females is figured from daughter to mother. However societies do it this line of decent is usually strongly connected to inheritance (ex: family property). That is why societies have rules about incest (not because of the dangers it causes biologically, but because it screws up the line of decent).  Rules of incest are about who we can marry o Exogamy - rules that say we have to marry outside of a certain group. Here in the U.S. you can’t marry your mother, father, siblings, 1st cousin, sons, or daughters, and some states 2nd cousin.  Other societies have different rules about incest, but to marry someone in your own clan would be considered incest. In the Old Testament it was okay to marry your half sister, or cousin. o Endogamy -rules that say you have to marry within a certain group. In some societies you would have to marry within your own clan.  These rules often have combinations.  Phratries - a clan but describes a group that is divided up in two. o Eagle - Eagle has to choose a bride from the Bear clan. You would marry your 1st cousin on the opposite side of the family (so a boy has to marry a 1st cousin from his mother’s side). o Bear - a women would have to marry a 1st cousin on her father’s side. Then they wouldn’t consider this to be incest.  Only in America’s society did we not have any laws for a while stating that you couldn’t marry someone from a certain group (except you couldn’t marry someone from a different race).  Non Hispanic or white is the biggest group (69%)  African America - 12 %  Hispanic - 13.2 %  Asian American 6%  Native American -1%  Table for Men-This is a table of men who married outside of their race. 1990 2000 Men N.H White 3.0 4 African American 8.3 14.2 Native American 58.8 56.8 Asian American 50.2 45.8 Hispanic 35.3 31.9  The reason for the whites being so big is because they are the biggest race so it will happen most often in this race.  Native Americans have the highest rate of intermarriage but this is because they have the least people.  Table for Women o African American- We would expect to see more African Americans intermarriages then there are???  More African Am. males married outside of the race both years. Unequally sex ratios means that there is a certain percentage that doesn’t have an available male partner within their race. o Asian/Hispanic- there are slight drops  The numbers are far lower then what would be predicted by chance. Numbers for interracial cohabitation (people living with people who are not married) are higher.  We also have rules about how many people we can marry o True Monogamy - a person can have one spouse only. We like to think this is the way it is in America. In America things are not true monogamy, because many people do wind up having more than one spouse. o Serial Monogamy - we can only have one spouse at a time, but we can have one after another. 50% of marriages today wind up in divorce and many of these people remarry (sometimes multiply times). There will be a considerable amount of time from your birth to death (hopefully!!!!). You go through different stages in-between those times. What stage of life we are in will have a huge impact on our status in society.  Childhood and Adolescence - we are in a state of dependence –people are providing us with our needs (food, clothes, and shelter) they are also making decisions for us. More and more we are given the right for ourselves and we begin to plan our future. We start going to college and handling our own finances and moving into young adulthood.  Young Adulthood and Middle Age - this is where we reach a state of independence and we are providing our own needs and making our own decisions. We may be taking care of others who are dependent on us (particularly children). This state last to the middle age  Elderly - the older we get we start slipping gradually into a state of dependence again. Our bodies don’t work like they use to. More and more we will need someone to help us with the routines of our daily life. The more this is true the more people will think they have the right. Most people during the U.S. today are providing care for the elders (nursing homes) still most people would say taking care of the elderly is their responsibility as long as they can handle the job. o To do this first we tend to be a highly mobile society. We are able to get to our elderly easily. o 1/3 of caretakers of the elderly are the son or son-in-law. Either way if this is the case that can lead to a certain problem if we consider people who are VERY OLD (like 80’s and up). This means that the caretaker is old too.  The primarily fertility ages for women is between the age of 20-25 years old. This means that the primarily caretaker is only about 20-25 years younger. This means they are pretty old to and they are starting to have some of their own problems. In the U.S. we are keeping people alive longer and longer with medicine. This is becoming more of a problem because their health care also cost lots of money. In America’s society we spend 90% of health care societies. Retirement for a person means you can drop that income and for some people their only source of income after retirement is social security. While income usually drops with retirement most wealth is in the hands of elderly. Income is how much money you have coming in. Wealth is how much you own. Elderly people have had a lifetime to accumulate wealth. Younger people have not had as much time and are trying to provide for their families. They don’t have the opportunity to put money away. o Disengagement theory - the oldest theory of retirement and ageing. It looks at the process of how an older person disengages from society.  Retirement (reduced income) -for most people this means drop an income.  Health problems -more and more you encounter health problems. The more years of wear and tear on your body the more they will have an affect.  Restricts Activities -These two things combine to restrict an elderly person’s activity. It cost money to do things. The more health problems you have the more you have to buy things to help you do things. o For most people what they do for a living is very important. Retirement not only means you lose social status in society but now you have a lot of free time. So trying to structure your time is a major problem with elderly people. o More and more we can’t do as much of things we use to because of money and health.  Network Attrition - for most people their friends will probably be the same age so some of their friends will have already died or are having the same problems. So our social network is strained. When we do leave this earth it will affect a small number of people. This engagement is a structural functional theory. How would you get a job if no one ever retired? How would we every find a piece of earth to live on if no one who was ever born died. Through this process this means when a person does leave that loss will affect a small number of people and have a small impact on society as compared of someone who dies early in the 40’s.  People are living longer and longer and living healthier and healthier. Monday April 23, 2007 The Demographic Transition  Fertility and morality was high  Eventually fertility will drop. Today we see very low fertility and very low mortality. We see the population decline. The effect on North American and Europe was not so dramatic as everywhere else in the world because we are getting everything imported. Thomas Mathus 1766-1834  English man who is the first person we have any record of looking at population growth. You can see from the dates of his life that he watched these changes first hand. He said population can expand exponential (constantly doubled in a short amount of time). He also said our food supply can only grow arithmetically. So there will be a gap between the amount of food we produce and the amount of people we have to feed. This will lead to world wide famine. The more people you have the more land their going to be living on which means the less land you have to grow food. He also said not only will they have a world wide famine but they will be susceptible to all kinds of disease. Also people will be fighting over food supply and land for living. All in all it was not going to be a pretty picture. The only way to fix this would be delayed marriage (which means you produce children later) or Celibacy. o What Mathus didn’t foresee was….  The reduction of fertility in modern industrial societies (since people were working more, they delayed having children)  technological advances allowed us to grow a lot more food The number of people being born and dying determines that society’s age structure. This can have a big impact on a society and the problems it faces. Population Pyramids We usually represent the age structure to population pyramids. Constrictive Population Pyramid (Europe)  Most industrialized nations (most of Europe, as well as Japan) have a Constrictive population pyramid. It looks like its wearing a gurtle.  The fertility rate is below the replacement rate. There are fewer and fewer young people. You are not having enough babies to replace the population. o This leads to a number of problems. Certainly if you look at the government’s role in society the strains are at the top of the pyramid (usually the people who need the most health care and attention). you have fewer tax payers and workers to support the programs. Stationary Pyramid (U.S.)  a little bit broader at the base  We have the baby bombers. After WWII all the soldiers came home got married and had a bunch of kids. Now they are getting to that age where they are reaching retirement. There has been speculation about our S.S. system. There will not be enough younger people paying taxes to pay for all these retirement baby bombers. We call the S.S. system a trust fund which congress oversees. S.S. Has brought in more money then is paid out every year since 1992. The problem is Politicians have been taken money out of the excess S.S. system and spending it on other things. Expansive Pyramid (Brazil)  Shorter and much wider at the bottom the fertility is very high  In many of these countries the average age of the population is 15 (half are 15 or younger and half are 15 or older). People at the bottom are trying to provide for all these young people. What happens here is even if you bring down your fertility rate below the replacement rate you have huge numbers of women and men who are 20-30 years old. These are the ones having lots of babies. Even if you reduce this number the people are getting to the age when they are 15 and going to have children and even if they only have 2 children that’s still a lot of 15 year olds having children are just a number of people who can make their own living on a farm. So people come to the cities they need money they need jobs so they can have money. o 2) That brings us to another problem. These people come to the cities with very little money (if any at all!!!!). The skills it takes to grow rice are not very hard so these people come to these cities with few skills that they can market (pretty tough for them to find a decent job). They also have to find a place to live. So these people end up living in shaky homes on the edges of the cities. They make what ever kind of shelter they can with w/e kind of material they can find. They live with no sanitation or clean water. They are disease epidemic just waiting to happen. The local and national governments usually don’t have the resources to provide these people with adequate living quarters, clean water, or money. These slums become a big problem. This world of urban migration in developing countries is a big social problem. If you look at the effects of society with population growth or decline both have disadvantages/advantages. Huge migration is a big problem for cities undergoing industrialization. Disadvantages  This leads to environmental degradation (more people, more pollution).  More people mean more people looking for jobs. This makes it an employer’s market. Workers have to compete with each other. Business owners make more money while workers get very little. The same thing is true for profit.  More people looking for some place to live means higher demand which means prices go up. Advantages  More people mean more goods in demand and services.  This means there is more of an incentive to provide these substances.  You can charge higher prices and those who have the opportunity to make money will do so.  To expand the economy will also wind up meaning more opportunities for each other.  Structural Mobility- people can move up in the economic system because there are more opportunities. More demand means more jobs. It increases the incentive for production but also for innovation (finding newer better ways of doing things). Innovation leads to better benefits o 1) Better extraction of resources through new technology. So if we are talking about non renewable resources innovation does not increase the amount we have on earth, but it will increase the way we can access it (we will be able to get oil better, but it doesn’t increase the amount of oil there is on the earth ) o 2) New occupations, new ways to make a living. Before your economy only let you move up in the social system if someone else moved down. Innovation allows you to not have to wait anymore because there are new ways to move up in society now. Population decline Advantages  Fewer people means you will be using up resources more slowly and creating less pollution.  In the short term fewer people also increase wages.  Fewer people mean fewer workers. Employers have to compete for workers (workers are paid well because if they are not they will leave and go work for someone else who will pay them higher). Disadvantages  In the long run, fewer people mean less demand for goods and services. If your population is shrinking for business owners you have to find new markets. If your domestic market is shrinking you have to find an international market in order to keep your business open. This forces globalization because big corporations set up factories all around the world. There are limits to how much this can be done.  Over the course of time less demands means suppression, people are getting laid off of work. This can increase your domical spiral so now there are even less demands for goods and services because you can’t afford them. This is how we spiraled into the great depression in the late 30’s.  France is undergoing population decline for about 150 years now. So they have a shortage of workers. o How do you get workers? You bring in more immigrants and people from other countries. This shrinking population means less demand, people getting laid off of their jobs. The first people to get laid off are the ones who have been there the shortest amount of time which is all the new workers you have been trying to get to come to your country. So now you have Xenophobia problems (fear or dislike of anything that is different from us, loving one’s own country). Population growth and decline can affect not only the overall equality but also on gender equality. In rapid population growth women are having lots of children (high fertility).  This means there is less time for women to be in the work force.  This makes women economically dependent on their husbands.  Women tend to have low status in these countries. In modern industrial countries whose populations are station or declining it means low fertility.  This means they can spend more time in the work force.  They can make their own money, so they are not finically dependent on their husbands.  They have higher status in these societies. Social Movement and Social Change Social movement is just one cause for social change. Over the last 50 years we have seen many changes in society. We have seen dramatic changes in the way we delivery goods.  Everything is delivered through market, instead of to your home (you go to grocery store to buy milk, whereas it used to be delivered to your home).  Communication has changed as well. It’s only been within the last 20 years that the internet is common. Long ago only certain people have access to the internet. The internet has changed everything! If you want clothes and don’t want to go to the store you can go online and buy them.  We don’t notice most of these changes until we stop and look back or we move away for a while and then come back and realize the changes. Social change- any significant modification or transformation in social structure or social cultural process  If we talk about something having a significant change we mean it has a lasting effect. Some significant and lasting change in the way our societies are how our society is organized, a change in our institutions, or the way we go about doing things, our educational system has changed caused by social changes.  Social cultural process means how people relate or interact with each other. Certainly this is a change in how we relate to each other. Friday, April 27, 2007 Theories of Social Change 1) Social evolution/Social Darwinism - he looked at society like organisms and talked about how society evolved form simpler forms to more complex forms. In this evolution signifies societies abilities to adapt to their environment (more complex=better adapted). They provide not only more control over their social life, but over their physical life as well. It means a steady increase in knowledge. It allows us to protect yourself, feed ourselves, and protect ourselves better from disease. For people who follow this, these changes we have seen represents steady progress. Each society is a better adaptation then previous. There are a couple of downfalls with thinking this way. o Problems : o One this idea of social evolution has been tied with the idea of survival of the fittest. This idea has been used to look at societies with more technology. So it has been used by powerful nations with advanced technology to take over lands and dominant. (sometimes people get killed but they have the idea that it doesn’t matter b/c those people are uncivilized) o If we view human history it doesn’t have to be viewed as steady progress. 2) Karl Marx- Conflict theory and economic determinism - we are in conflict and competition with various groups. Marx ideas is that the economic idea of any society shapes the rest of that societies social structure. Every epic of human history can be marked off by the domination of one particular economic system. Social change comes about b/c each economic system allows a hand full of people to make themselves wealthy by dominating in that society. No matter what economic system a handful of people can use the system to make themselves wealthy by dominating in that society. When that economic system fails they replace it with a new one. It still has the same features, just a different ways. 3) Cyclical Theory-Arnold Toynbee - over the course of human history we have seen many civilizations rise and fall. Certainly the rise of the Roman Empire had declined and disintegrated leading us into the Dark Ages. Europe wasn’t the only area in the world that has seen great societies (it happens all over the world). It is similar human history is not just the stead increase of knowledge. Knowledge can be gained and lost. o Minoa -was a very advanced Greek society. They would trade with neighboring cities. And have very advanced knowledge. We have records that there was a doctor who knew how to cure cancer. It was completely destroyed by volcanic eruption so much of their knowledge went with their society and we are still trying to figure out how to cure cancer. Causes of Social Change 1. Environmental changes- changes in climate, of the things we see is both North and South America and other continents when humans arrive there large mammals disappear (they became extinct). Could be from over hunting, Culture Shock - sometimes a society can go into this when they are not used to something. Back in ancient times there was a considerable amount of cultural diffusion. But there were some major differences with some of the big cultures back then. The Greeks were horrified at some of the things the Portuguese did. They can go into this when you see people doing things you don’t think they should. What will be on the test: Family  Number of rules that different society had about marriage and family. How do you determine your line of decent? Rules about how you can marry. Rules about how many people you can marry. Courtship and marriage  Trend we have seen since WWII in terms of our sexual behavior  Men’s and women’s labor unions, how has that changed over the last 40 yrs. Aging in the life course  Different stages of life some of which were dependent and some of which were independent  The problems with getting old  Problems with caregivers of old people Two different theories  Disengagement theory  Alternative activities theory- focuses on the problems which focuses on the solutions for those problems Population  See lots of questions about population (don’t panic)  Is the question asking about more people- then find a answer that goes along with more people  If the question is asking about fewer people then find a answer that goes along with fewer people  Know the Replacement fertility rate  The connection between mortality and infant fertility  What societies have ideas that having many children is a good thing  The demographic transition o Know what is going on in each of the three parts o And what does it mean for population The Structures of society  Three different population pyramids. Migration  Know push and pull factors Internal migration  Trends seen  Rural to Urban migration in a developing society The effects of population growth and decline  Know the problems and effects of each Social Change  Don’t memorize the term word for word but know the common meaning.  Know the causes of social change  Cultural diffusion  Cultural shock Social Movements  Two different ways in which they start  The life stages of social movements  What determines the success of them