Family Structure Assignment

Chapter 12

1. There are numerous web sites about divorce, most devoted to practical information for people who are about to divorce, in the process of obtaining a divorce, or dealing with postdivorce issues, such as modifying the legal agreement. Balanced overviews are hard to find. In addition to dispensing practical advice, http://www.divorceonline.com/
reprints many articles on divorce-related topics. See also http://www.divorcecentral.com/ for a sense of the issues of greatest concern to people going through a divorce as some of the people doing these site have done. Choose 2 of these issues and write a paragraph on each of them, explaining why they are issues to someone going through a divorce.

2. Go to the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families….
Read it carefully and then described how blended families functioned and how this might be different if these people just cohabitated instead of married.

Chapter 13

Read the following paper on mapping change in global families at

http://worldfamilymap.ifstudies.org/2013/articles/…

Now compare and contrast what we think of as Western Civilization aka Global North – North America, Europe and Oceana (New Zealand, Australia etc.) with the Global South Families in:

⦁ Family Structure
⦁ Living Arrangements
⦁ Marriage and Cohabitation
⦁ Non-marital childbearing
⦁

Chapter 14

1. Go to:
https://www.publicagenda.org/media/childcare

on child care as an issue or

https://www.publicagenda.org/pages/health-care
with healthcare as an issue or

http://www.publicagenda.org/media/social-security-…
on social security or

https://www.publicagenda.org/pages/failure-is-not-…
poverty and education

Chose the 1 topic you wish from child care, health care, social security, or poverty and education to look at and try to put these perspectives into the context of the sociological reading you have done. Which is closest to the conservative or liberal approaches? What issues are viewed differently as problems and what kinds of solutions are offered? Which do you think that Cherlin would be most sympathetic to? Which are you the most sympathetic to?

2. Building on question 1, figure out if you are more conservative or more liberal. With that in mind, think about what Congress has been failing to do i.e. any type of agreement or passing any type of legislation. Taking the conservative or liberal side/viewpoint discuss what solutions you might pose to the issues that are/might be raised for child care, social security, or poverty and public programs. An example might be cutting nutrition programs for child care, or revamping social security or cutting public welfare type programs to help people in poverty. Also try to explain why the divergence in the viewpoints liberal vs. conservative have caused this impasse.

Thanks for help like always..