Sociology 206B

Advanced Topics in Family Studies:

FAMILIES AND ECONOMIC INTERSECTIONS

1

Families and Economic Intersections

Spring 2015

Spring 2015Professor Ana Villalobos

Friday, 9-11:50am, Pearlman 202Office: Pearlman 208

ffice Hours:Tu11-noon

781-736-2645& by appointment

Course Description

Whereas current rhetoric would have the family as a private institution, this understanding is not consistent with U.S. family history in which families have always been deeply embedded within the surrounding economic systems, systems that they both reproduce and resist in various ways. Contemporary U.S. families are likewise are deeply embedded withinthe current economic system of modern advanced capitalism. As men and women are differently integrated into that economic system, market influences on the family are highly gendered, as well as highlyraced and classed. In turn, the gendered nature of families,and especially of parenting, has a profound influence on women’s and men’s work and economic lives.

In this seminar, we will examine several key questions regarding families:

  • What is the relationship between the household division of labor and gendered

hierarchies in the marketplace?

  • How do we view the consequences of family transformation from a producing unit to a consuming one?
  • How does socio-economic class affect families?
  • How have families managed to rear children over time while parents work?
  • How are family structure, love, and the meaning of kinship affected by transformations in the global economy?
  • How do families attempt to privately deal with the public social problems associated with our economic system, and with what effect?
  • And finally, what are some public solutions that could better support families—and thereby society—to thrive and grow?

On the one hand, we will take a critical view in this course. We will study how the family is a site of race, class and gender inequality and an institution that serves the purposes of advanced capitalism, such as through ever-increasing consumerism, or through producing the next generation of acquiescent workers tooled to their class of work. On the other hand, we will study how family can function as a pivotal site of empowerment, resistance, or as an alternative to the surrounding economic ethos.

Disabilities

If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.

A Note on Academic Integrity

Please familiarize yourself with University policies on academic integrity, described in Section 3 of “Rights and Responsibilities,” and if you are in doubt about the instructions for any assignment in this course, please ask for clarification.

Course Requirements*

Weekly Readings and Reading Notes (20%)

Required readings for each week are listed in the course outline below. You are expected to complete the required readings and be prepared to discuss them before the class. In addition, students will post reading notes to LATTE at least 24 prior to coming to classeach week. The reading notes are designed to encourage students to see the readings as a group or “set” in relation to the weekly course topics. Thus reading notes should not merely summarize each reading but should: (1) synthesize and critically evaluate key theoretical and/or substantive contributions of the readingsin relationship to one another, and (2) identify questions that the readings provokeor points of particular interest, concern, curiosity, or confusion to the student. Reading notes should generally be no longer than one or two single spaced typed pages. To facilitate class discussion, prior to the beginning of class, all students should review the response papers submitted by other seminar participants, as they will become the basis for our class discussion.

Attendance and class participation (20%)

Students are expected to attend class and to have completed the reading before the class begins so that we can engage in an intellectual discussion about the current topic. The success of the course in providing stimulating ideas and advances for your graduate workdepends on your careful reading of materials, nuanced questions, and thoughtful contributions to discussions.

Leading Discussion (20%)

Each student is expected to lead the classtwice during the semester. Your main focus is leading a high level discussion based on a close reading of the materials and classmates’ response papers, but you should start with a20-ish minute overview/framing of the topic (likely includingoverviewing either the suggested supplemental readings or other related readings) andpresenting teaching ideas/activities for how one might engage the topic with undergrads (no more than a half hour in length). On the weeks you are scheduled to lead class, I am happy to work with you on your lesson on Tuesdays during my office hours and to coordinate it with my own contributions to the class meeting.

Final paper (40%)

Each student will complete a research proposal, persuasive literature review, or empirical research paper related to the topic of families, with attention to economic parameters such as social class, work in the paid labor market, or the division of domestic labor. Written projectsshould be 15 to 20 pages (double spaced, references excluded).

Research proposals should consist of a statement of the research question and rationale for posing the question, a description of the guiding theoretical or conceptual framework, a persuasive literature review, and a description of the data and methods that you propose to use to study the question posed. Persuasive literature reviews should make an argument that has not yet been fully developed in the literature, and should support that argument using existing theories and empirical work. Empirical research papers should include data (4-6 interviews or other data) and should be written as you would write a journal article with the following sections: introduction, literature review/background, methods, findings/analysis, discussion/conclusion.

Below are deadlines for the final paper.

  1. One page prospectus/project description that describes your research question and its significance (as well as your timeline for data collection if you are doing an empirical paper), or your argument and how you intend to support it. (We may set additional intermediate deadlines for your individual project, in discussion with the professor.)

Due February 6, in class

  1. Final written project (uploaded to Latte AND hard copy in my box)

Due by 2pm on May 4

I encourage you to meet with me individually to discuss your final paper topic.

*note: The course requirements syllabus section borrowed liberally from Sara Shostak’sSOC 218Asyllabus for both structure and wording. The syllabus as a whole also took inspiration from Karen Hansen’s SOC 206B syllabus. Thanks to both of them!

Course Readings

Most course readings (with the exception of the books below) can be found on LATTE,with the supplemental readings available onLATTE, on reserve at the library and/or on Jstor. The following books can be purchased at the University bookstore or on-line:

  • Crittenden, Ann. 2010. The Price of Motherhood. Picador, NY.
  • Dreby, Joanna. 2010. Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and their Children. University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • Hochschild, Arlie. 1997. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. Metropolitan, NY.
  • Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods. University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • Villalobos, Ana. 2014. Motherload: Making it All Better in Insecure Times. University of California Press, Oakland.

Note: Unequal Childhoods is also available electronically through Brandeis’s e-brary.

Course Outline

U.S. FAMILIESINVARYING HISTORIC-ECONOMIC CONTEXTS

WEEK 1, Jan 16 (145 pages)

  • Stephanie Coontz. The Way We Never Were, 30-page excerpt
  • Jan Dizard & Howard Gadlin. 1990. The Minimal Family, 3-24
  • Evelyn Nakano Glen with Stacey Yap. 1994. “Chinese American Families,” Minority Families in the United States, Ronald Taylor (ed.), 115-145
  • Ronald Taylor. 1994. “Black American Families,” Minority Families in the United States, Ronald Taylor (ed.), 19-26, 37-46

Larry Hudson. To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (available on e-brary), “Introduction,” “For Better or Worse: Slave’s World of Work,” “To Love & to Cherish: The Slave Family,” 44-page excerpt

Recommended:

  • NiaraSudharkasa. “Interpreting the African Heritage in Afro-American Family Organization,” Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics, Karen Hansen and Anita Garey (eds.), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 91-104

GENDER

MOTHERHOOD, SECOND WAVE FEMINISM AND PAID WORK

WEEK 2, Jan 23 (105 pages)

  • Betty Friedan, 1963. The Feminine Mystique, 15-25, 338-350
  • Simone deBeauvoir. 1952. The Second Sex, 521-523
  • bellhooks. “Black Women Shaping Feminist Theory” and “Re-Thinking the Nature of Work,” in Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, p. 1-15, 96-105
  • Stephanie Coontz. “Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism & Working Women,” The Way We Never Were, 149-169
  • Sheryl Sandberg. 2013. “Internalizing the Revolution,” “Sit at the Table,”“Don’t Leave Before you Leave,” Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Knopf, NY, 3-11, 27-38, 92-103

Recommended:

  • Linda Hirshman, 2006. Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. Viking, NY. p. 1-25, 33-38, 46-55
  • Denise Segura, “Working at Motherhood: Chicana and Mexican Immigrant Mothers and Employment,” Families in the U.S., 727-744

MASCULINITY AND BREADWINNING

WEEK 3, Jan 30 (128 pages)

  • Joan Williams. 2004. “Is Domesticity Dead?”, Unbending Gender, 13-34
  • Jessie Bernard. 1981. “The Good-Provider Role: Its Rise and Fall,” American Psychologist, 36(1): 1-12 (reprinted in Scott Coltraine, ed., 2004, Families and Society, 243-251)
  • Christine Williams. 1992. “The Glass Escalator.” Social Problems, 39(3): 253-267
  • Gretchen Purser. 2009. “The Dignity of Job-Seeking Men: Boundary Work among Immigrant Day Laborers,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38: 117-179
  • Michael Kimmel. “The Masculine Mystique,” Manhood in America: A Cultural History, p. 261-266, 280-290

Recommended:

  • Joan Williams. 2011. “Masculine Norms at Work,” Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, 77-108
  • Kathleen Gerson. “Dilemmas of Breadwinning and Autonomy,” No Man’s Land
  • Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner. “The New Man and the Mexican Immigrant Man” in American Families: A Multicultural Reader, 342-357

FATHERHOOD THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF DOMESTIC LABOR

WEEK 4, Feb 6 (113 pages)

*Final Paper Prospectus due*

  • Scott Coltraine. “Separate Spheres,” Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework, and Gender Equity, 25-44
  • Susan Walzer. 1996. “Thinking About the Baby: Gender and the Division of Infant Care,” Social Problems 43(2): 219-234
  • Scott Coltraine. 1996. “Managing versus Helping,” Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework, and Gender Equity, Oxford University Press, 73-76
  • Arlie Hochschild. “Male Pioneers in a Culture of Time,” Time Bind, 115-132
  • Ralph LaRossa. 1998. “The Culture and Conduct of Fatherhood,” Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics, Karen Hansen & Anita Garey (eds.), 377-85.
  • BC Fatherhood study
  • “In a Clubby World of San Francisco Mothers, Men Needn’t Apply,” New York Times, April 2, 2011 (2 pages)
  • “In Sweden the Men Can Have it All,” New York Times, June 9, 2010 (6 pages)

Recommended:

  • Nick Townsend, “Marriage, Work and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives,” Families and Society, Scott Coltraine (ed.), 252-260
  • Scott Coltraine. 2004. “Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions and Dilemmas,” Handbook of Contemporary Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future, Marilyn Coleman & Lawrence Ganong (eds.), 224-243

ECONOMIC COSTS OF WOMEN’S PRIMARY CAREGIVING

WEEK 5, Feb 13 (118 pages)

  • Paula England and Nancy Folbre, The Cost of Caring, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 561 (Jan, 1999): 39-51
  • Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood, Intro and chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 (p. 1-44, 65-109, 131-148)

Recommended:

  • Adrienne Rich. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs, Women: Sex and Sexuality (Summer, 1980), 5(4): 631-660
  • Linda Hirshman. 2006. Get to Work, “Homeward Bound,” Viking Press

RACE, CLASS & IMMIGRATION

FAMILY AS SITE OF REPRODUCTION OF/RESISTANCE TO INEQUALITY

WEEK 6, Feb 27 (150 pages)

  • Annette Lareau.Unequal Childhoods, 1-13, 35-103
  • Ellen Lewin. “Negotiating Lesbian Motherhood: The Dialectics of Resistance and Accommodation,”Maternal Theory, 370-389
  • Elizabeth Bruno. 2014. “Her Cape is at the Cleaners: Searching for Single motherhood in a Culture of Self-Sufficiency,” Mothers, Mothering and MotherhoodAcross Cultural Difference, Andrea O’Reilly (ed.), 385-412
  • bell hooks “Homeplace: a Site of Resistance,”Maternal Theory, 266-273
  • Collins, Patricia Hill. 2007. “The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and Black Mother-Daughter Relationships,” Maternal Theory, 274-289

Recommended:

  • Baba Copper. “The Radical Potential in Lesbian Mothering of Daughters,” Maternal Theory, 186-193
  • Noelle Chesley. 2011. “Stay-at-Home Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers: Gender, Couple Dynamics, and Social Change ,” Gender & Society 25: 642-664
  • Patricia Hill Collins“Shifting the Center: Race, Class & Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood,”Maternal Theory, 311-330 (available elsewhere as well)

POVERTY, PARENTING AND MARGINALIZATION

Experiences of urban families, poorfamilies, and/or families in the “system”

WEEK 7, Mar 6(115 pages)

  • Kathryn EdinMaria Kefalas. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, 27-49, 168-185
  • Kathryn EdinTimothy Nelson. Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City, 70-102
  • Nancy Scheper-Hughes. “Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday

Life in Brazil,” The Path Ahead, DeSpelder & Strickland (eds.) (5 pages)

  • “The Case of Marie and her Sons,” NY Times Magazine (15 pages)
  • Amanda Marie Gengler. “Mothering Under Others’ Gaze: Policing Motherhood in a Battered Women’s Shelter,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family, Spring 2011, 37(1): 131-152

THE TIME SPEED-UP

Experiences of Professionals

WEEK 8, Mar 13 (186 pages)

  • Juliet Schor. Overworked American (excerpts), 1-22, 43-50, 68-72
  • OferSharone. “Engineering Overwork,” Fighting for Time,Epstein & Kalleberg (eds.), 191-218
  • Arlie Hochschild. Time Bind. 3-84, 197-238
  • Greg McKeown. 2014. “Why We Humble-Brag About Being Busy,” Harvard Business Review, June 6, 2014 (2 pages)

WORK-FAMILY STRUGGLES AND SOCIAL CLASS

WEEK 9, Mar 20 (116 pages)

  • Poor: Joan Williams. Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict (intro & poor), ii-iii, 1-31
  • Professional: Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy. “Fast Track Women and the ‘Choice’ to Stay Home,” Annals 596, Nov 2004, 62-83
  • Academic: ElrenaEvans & Caroline Grant (eds.), Mama, Ph.D. (selections: “Scholar Negated,” “First Day of School,” “Two Boards and a Passion: On Theater, Academia, and the Art of Failure,” “Lip Service”), 16-19, 63-79, 129-135
  • Missing Middle: Anita Garey. 1999. “Motherhood on the Night Shift,”Weaving Work and Motherhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 108-139
  • “Paying to Work” (2 pages)

TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES

WEEK 10, Mar 27 (229 pages)

  • Joanna Dreby. Divided by Borders.

Recommended:

  • NazliKibria, “Globalization,” At the Heart of Work and Family, Garey & Hansen (eds.)
  • Rhacel Salazar-Parrenas, “The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy,” Global Woman, EhrenreichHochschild (eds.), 39-54

ATTEMPTS AT RESOLUTION

INDIVIDUAL FAMILY SOLUTIONS 1

Intensive Mothering

WEEK 11, Apr 17 (181 pages)

  • Ana Villalobos. Motherload: Making it All Better in Insecure Times, Chapters 1-5 & 8
  • Amy Chua,Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (bear in mind, this is a parody of her own parenting; 6-page excerpt printed in Wall Street Journal, 1-8-11)
  • “Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?” NY Times, 5 pages
  • “Cockpit Parents,” Huffington Post, 3 pages

Recommended:

  • Judith Warner. 2005. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, Penguin Books, NY
  • Frank Furedi. 2002. “Parents as Gods,” Paranoid Parenting, 58-74
  • “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,” Atlantic Monthly

INDIVIDUAL FAMILY SOLUTIONS 2

Expert Advice, andCoping through Purchasing Goods &Services

WEEK 12, Apr 24 (106 pages)

First, alittle taste of popular parenting advise books today:

  • Sears & Sears, The Baby Book
  • Ezzo, Babywise
  • Murkoff et al.,What to Expect when You’re Expecting

Then some scholarly work on families, love, and the market:

  • Allison Pugh. “Consumption as Care and Belonging,” At the Heart of Work & Family, Garey & Hansen (eds.), 217-227
  • Juliet Schor. “Viacom Generation,” At the Heart of Work & Family, 206-216
  • Dizard & Gadlin. The Minimal Family. 197-203
  • Ann Crittenden.The Price of Motherhood, chapters 11 & 12 (on daycare workers), 202-232
  • Arlie Hochschild. The Outsourced Self, 104-115, 119-130, 157-164, 168-171

Recommended:

  • Allison Pugh. “Selling Compromise: Toys, Motherhood & the Cultural Deal,” Gender & Society, Dec, 2005, 19(6): 729-749

Arlie Hochschild. 2012. “Our Baby, Her Womb,” and “My Womb, Their Baby,” in The Outsourced Self, 73-103

COLLECTIVE SOLUTIONS

Restructuring Society & Social Policy

WEEK 13, April 28

***NOTE: THIS IS A TUESDAY!!! (A “BRANDEIS FRIDAY”)***

  • Jennifer Glass, 2000, “Envisioning the Integration of Family and Work: Toward a Kinder, Gentler Workplace,” Contemporary Sociology, special issue on Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century, 29(1): 129-143
  • Evelyn Nakano Glenn.2000. “Creating a Caring Society,” Contemporary Sociology, special issue on Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century, 29(1): 84-94
  • Ann Crittenden. The Price of Motherhood, chapter 10, 186-201

Recommended:

  • Janet Gornick and Marcia Myers. Families That Work, chpt. 9.
  • Ann Crittenden. The Price of Motherhood, Conclusion, 256-274.
  • Nancy Folbre. The Invisible Heart, chpt. 8

TEACHINGTIPS

The following are mostly to help guide your ingenuity as you prepare your brief undergrad lessons for the weeks you facilitate, but may also apply to facilitating the graduate discussion:

➣ Facilitators should read all of the reading responses submitted by the class to the Latte forum. Try to pull out the common themes and issues that sparked students’ interest (or share one particular intriguing response) and consider exploring these in your facilitation.

➣ Use the texts!! Point out or read aloud any moving, intriguing, or confusing excerpts from the readings. Close reading is a very effective strategy for engaging the class.

➣ Try to pull the readings together in an innovative way, like involving your classmates in creating a chart, diagram, table or map of the author’s concepts, perspectives, methods and/or arguments, and how they relate to each other. In some cases you may want to make handouts as well.

➣ Use your creativity! Consider devising a short in-class activity that explores an idea, issue or argument raised in the readings. The possibilities are endless (games, small group activities, role-playing activities, skits, debates, etc)! Jeopardy-style games are not recommended since they are more about factual recall and less about working with the material, taking it deeper or making it come alive.