Syllabus

Lecture Outlines

Assignments

Handouts

Reading Points

Online Reserve Readings Available on MyUW

Links to Help With Written Assignments

Homepage of the Writing Center at UW

Homepage of the Dept. of Sociology Writing Center

Citations (The American Sociological Association of America)

Exam Preparation

Course Description

 Individual lives unfold in the context of family. The family is where love, intimacy, marriage, childbirth, childrearing and care work occur. This private milieu is also a public institution interacting with other institutions in society. For example, if the family is able to serve the needs of children it consequently produces healthy and competent workers required for the labor force.  In turn, the labor market provides wages, goods and services needed by families to thrive and successfully meet the needs of its members. This course will examine the family as a private and public institution from the perspective of family sociology, and social demography. As a course in sociology, we will not spend much time on individual experiences or dynamics between relatives. Instead, the course will focus primarily on aggregate patterns, historical trends, and how social class, gender, and racial inequalities are intertwined with family patterns and change. Most of the emphasis will be on the US, with some attention to comparisons to other countries. We will explore contemporary debates over the family in the US, such as the ban on same sex marriage, redirecting welfare funding to marriage promotion, abstinence and sex education for teenagers, taking into account recent research findings and public policy implications.

The specific functions and definition of the family vary across historical and cultural contexts. A major goal of the course is to encourage students to not only evaluate critically their assumptions about family structures and processes, but also the implicit assumptions and evidence presented in scholarly writings, newspapers and other media and political and policy-making arenas. To pursue this goal, students learn the foundations of research methods used by family sociologists, and learn how to interpret demographic statistics. Students are also introduced to the major data used, and are shown the derivation and composition of some key demographic measures.