Constructing American Families

Catalog description

This course considers changes and variations in the forms and portrayals of family and family life in the U.S. across time. Topics under study may include: how gender, race, and class shape family roles and family labor (care work); processes of courtship, dating, cohabitation, partnership, marriage, parenthood, and divorce; multiracial/multiethnic families; gay and lesbian families; and family violence. This course also examines the ways in which U.S. social laws, policies, economy, public opinion, media, religion, and technology work to construct, shape, recognize, and regulate the diversity of family forms that exist. Typically offered Fall Spring Summer. Prerequisite(s): SOC 10000 FOR LEVEL UG WITH MIN. GRADE OF D- Course Learning Outcomes 1. Utilize social science empirical evidence to analyze the shape, form, and structure of families and family life in the U.S. 2. Develop an awareness if the ways in which families are socially constructed in both history and the present. 3. Develop a critical response to the notion that there has been a “golden age” of family life in the U.S. 4. Develop awareness of the ways in which gender, race/ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and other identities intersect to produce and limit possibilities for the formation and success of particular families. View Class Schedule