Chapter 18 Assignment: Families Essay

Chapter 18 Assignment: Families Essay

Chapter 18 Assignment Families Essay

Family forms a key structure in many societies globally. However, the question of what exactly constitute the family has elicited controversy in sociology, religion, and politics. While the social conservatives tend to characterize family in relation to structure with every member of the family accorded specific role, sociologists on the their side define the family based on how family members relate to each other on a firm arrangement of status roles. Sociologically, therefore, a family can be defined as an intimate socially recognized group of people that are related by bonds of marriage, blood, and legal ties. Family often creates an emotional attachment and serves as basic economic unity of the society. Besides, family has been a flexible social unit that has survived since time immemorial (Macionis, 2017). There are different types of families and sociologists often recognize them based on how a person enters into them.

Primarily, the concept of family is closely associated with marriage, kinship, and families of affinity. To begin with, marriage can be defined as a social union or legal contract between partners that leads to kinship. The most common type of marriage in many societies is that involving man and woman. However, there are many other types of marriage such as polygamy where a man marries more than one wife at a time and polyandry where a woman has more than one man as a time. Notably, the legal perspective of marriage has tremendously changed and recognizes marriages between the same sexes (Lindsey and Linda, 2015). Sociologically, the relationship between marriage and family is important because families are believed to emanate from marriages and families form the fundamental social units which establish the society (Lindsey and Linda, 2015). Besides, status roles are usually traced to marriages and families, which are endorsed by the society. The other concept is kinship which connotes social bond anchored on familiar ancestry, marriage, or adoption. Besides, families affinity is also associated with the concept of families because it is a way in which people perceives themselves as a family and intends the rest to view them as one.

 

Essentially, the concept of family varies across different societies in the globe. However, the major types of families include the extended family and the nuclear family. The extended family or consanguine family connotes a family that is made up of parents, children, and other kinsmen. On the other hand, the nuclear family or conjugal family refers to a family comprising one or both

parents and their child or children. Nuclear families are the most widespread. Moreover, marriage takes different patterns including monogamy which connotes marriage between two partners, exogamy marriage which involve people between partners from different social categories, endogamy which connotes marriage between people of similar social category, and polygamy which refers to a marriage involving more than one spouse. Polygamy can either take form of polygyny or polyandry. polygyny refers to marriage involving one man and more than one woman. Polyandry on the other side is marriage that binds one woman with more than one man.

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Close to the concept of marriage is the issue of descent system. Descent is defined as a system used by the society to trail kinship over generations (Macionis, 2017). Most cultures worldwide have a broad range of systems to trace kinship either through the father’s side, mother’s side, or both. A descent group can be defined as a social group with members sharing a common ancestry. Fundamentally, the unilineal society is one in which a person’s descent is traced through both mother and father. On the other hand, matrilineal descent refers to a system where an individual’s descent is to the mother’s descent group. The patrilineal descent on the other hand refers to individuals belonging on the descent group of their father. Although the model of nuclear family can be viewed as transient and ego-centered, the descent groups are mostly permanent and considered based on a particular ancestor (Macionis, 2017).

Owing to different sociological perspectives of family, the understanding of what family entails can be explained through different theoretical angles. The first theory is symbolic interactionism and functionalism. According to Thompson et al., (2016), the two theories argue that families constitute a group where the members regard themselves as family members and act so. That is, the idea of families implies that people come together and create a vibrant primary group connection and keep the emotional ties among themselves for a durable period. Moreover, the functionalist view argues that families characterize groups that play crucial roles for the society. Besides, this theory argues that families play important roles of providing members with social, physical, and emotional support. For instance, parents are required to take good care of children until they are independent. In turn, when the parents get old, the adult children are expected to care for their old parents. In short, therefore, interactionism theory strives to advance the personal experience of being part of a family, while functionalism seeks to highlight the different functions of the families and their part in ensuring a rational society. On the other hand, conflict theory advances the role played by power in the family life. It argues that the family absolutely a perfect or a safe place but instead, it is a platform that is often frequented with power struggle. The concept of power mostly emanate from the conduct of family status role. The conflicts that may be involved here include rule enforcement from parent to child, others include domestic violence.

On the other side, families especially the ones derived from marriages occur through different stages including courtship for some societies, settling in which encompasses either ideal or real marriages, child bearing and upkeep, and later in life remaining alone as a couple. However, during marriages a lot of challenges tend to witnessed. They include high divorce rate, remarriage, and family violence especially against children and women. Finally, other than marriage, other optional forms of family include single-parent families, cohabitation, same sex couples, and single parenthood.

In conclusion, the concept of family and marriage has been characterized by drastic changes in the contemporary United States society. There are outstanding incidences of divorce and separations which adversely impact family and marriage institutions. Besides, the society is marred by high incidences of same-sex marriages, cohabitation, and singlehood that essentially influencing the noble ideas of marriages that societies have enjoyed for decades. Moreover, these alternative forms of family also alter the American perspectives of what constitutes a family.

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Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

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Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource