SOC101Y1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Social Forces, Parental Leave, Heterosexuality
Document Summary
Contemporary life presents difficult choices for those of us who live in or plan to live in families. Because family life is so familiar to us, we all too easily accept commonsense understandings that portray family problems as personal, private, and attributable to human nature. Commonsense solutions prescribe individual change and ignore the social context. Family patterns that people have created are a response to the problems posed by the needs of daily survival. When you think of family, you likely think of the conventional nuclear family. Whether or not you anticipate parenthood, and whatever the gender of the partner you dream of, you likely envision a relationship in which the work and the responsibility, as well as the intimacy and joy, are shared. Most married women with or without children now have to assume some of the responsibility of breadwinning.