SOCI 247 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Longitudinal Study, Nuclear Family, Married People
Document Summary
Section i: sociology of the family: the foundations. Defining family : how we know what we know about families. Who should take care of a child: it is how we build our social policy. Times of households found today: traditional families, nuclear with relatives, couples with grown children, quasi families, divorced and widowed persons with children, cohabiting couples. Causation vs correlation: causation: x causes y, correlation: there is a correlation between two variables ex married people are happier than non-married people, doesn"t tell you why!!! Marriage may have nothing to do with the equation: spurious relationships ex: divorce goes up, so does delinquency. Not necessarily related, the mechanism that may be driving both to up could be low income. Just because something varies together doesn"t mean they are related ( spurious relationships) Boating accident and ice cream sales increase (spurious) **summer activities what is causing both to increase. Happy people are married or are married people happy.