Family

Being a father is one of the greatest things a man can do. Not every man has what it takes to be a father. God has only granted certain men with this very important job. In a perfect world a man becomes a father when his wife gives birth to a child, but in today’s society it is not necessarily a MAN’s wife that may give birth to his child but a girlfriend. No matter how it happens it all starts out the same way. A man and a woman have sex and then if her egg is fertilized by the man’s sperm she becomes impregnated.

Taking into account that there are no problems with her pregnancy a woman will have a baby in roughly nine months. The woman becomes a mother and the man becomes a father, this does not mean that he necessarily knows what to do but over time he will acquire the knowledge it takes to be a father. God designed for men to become fathers not at an early age but at a later age so they would be knowledgeable and mature enough to be a father. Throughout the Bible there is a pattern of men being the head of the family. This was God’s design and he wanted to make sure it was followed.

It all started with Adam. God first made a man not a woman. This is because it was his plan to make man the head. This pattern continued throughout the whole Bible when God wanted something done he went to men. Such as when he wanted to destroy the earth by water he chose Noah as his man. “13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. 16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee. Genesis 6:13-18″ Noah was the only person whom God gave the instructions to on how to build the ark. God chose to give them to a man. Another example of God choosing a man is Abraham. God needed someone to be the father of his nation and he chose Abraham. “4As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.

Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. 6And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. Genesis 17:4-6″ Abraham was chosen to be God’s man in making sure there was a nation of God’s people. The best example of God choosing men to be the leaders is Jesus. God sent his only son to come to this earth and die a lowly death. God did not have a daughter but if he did he would have still sent his son because God has called men to be leaders not women.

Jesus was God’s son. “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. ” Luke 1:35″ The first father was Adam. Adam and Eve were blessed with many children and Adam became known as the father of all. Adam was not the only father in the Bible. There were many others, most of them being a better example than Adam on how to be a father. Adam was a bad example in that he gave in to temptation by eating of the forbidden fruit. … nd gave also unto her husband with her: and he did eat.

Genesis 3:6 “ There were also many fathers in the Bible that did follow God. One such father was Abraham. “6And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. 7And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. 10And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. As seen in the previous passage God tested Abrahams faith by telling Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham proceeded to do just as God told him which showed great faith and obedience on Abrahams behalf both as a child of God and as father. Although God asked him to do something that would not be in Abraham’s best interest Abraham did it anyway.

That is what all fathers should do but not all of them do it. Such as previously mentioned with Adam, he did not follow God’s command, and as the father of all, all now suffer because of his disobedience. God new Abraham was a good father that is why he made him the father of many nations. “ As for me, behold, thy covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Genesis 17:4″ God would not have made this covenant with him if he was not a good father. Isaac himself was a good father as well.

When he was on his death bed he blessed his son Jacob. 26And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. 27And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed: 28Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: 29Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons ow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

Genesis 27:26-29 “ In Bible times it was customary for a father to bless his son before he died. Isaac was a great father in that he continued this tradition although he gave the blessing to the wrong son. It was not his fault that he gave the blessing to the wrong son, he was tricked into giving it to Jacob. Another example of a great father in the Bible is Laban. Laban met Jacob and decided that his daughter was suitable for Jacob and he arranged that Jacob marry his daughter. and Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me.

Genesis 29:19″ Laban did what every father should do he looked out for his daughters best interest and then made her abide by what he wanted. Many fathers in the Bible showed how to be a father through example one such father is Jerub-Baal. “(For my father fought for you, and adventured his life far, and delivered you out of the hand of Midian: Judges 9:17″ Jerub-Baal led through example, in that he delivered his people out of the had of Midian and fought for the people. He was a father that put others before himself.

This showed his sons that they need to put others before themselves as well. There are many other great fathers in the Bible, but these are the ones that stick out. God’s instructions on how to be a father God throughout his scriptures gave fathers instructions on how to raise their children in God and how to be good fathers. God tells fathers not to irritate their children, but teach them the teachings of God. “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4″ In Deuteronomy God also told fathers what to do if they had a rebellious son. “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Deuteronomy 21:18-21″ These instructions were given so that fathers would know what to do if there son was not obeying them. God also gave fathers instructions on what to do when his virgin daughter gets married and her husband claims she is not a virgin.

If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, 14And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: 15Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: 16And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; 17And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity.

And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. 18And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; 19And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: 21Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. Fathers were also expected, in the Bible, to comfort and charge their children.

“As ye know how exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children,…Thessalonians 2:11″ In this passage Paul was talking to the church in Thessalonica and he was making reference as to how fathers were to deal with their own children. Paul was using this as an example to show how he was dealing with the new church in Thessalonica. Children are gifts from God and should be treated as such. Not everyone can have children, so when someone has children they should be ecstatic and realize that it truly is a miracle. There is a reason for everyone being born into this world.

Every child brought into this world can make a significant contribution. Farrar, 190 “ In his book Point Man Steve Farrar makes a several comments about children being gifts. This first comment reflects on the fact that there is a reason for everyone being born. He also talks about what joy a child can bring to one’s life, especially that of a father. “ If God blesses you with children, you’ll be taking part in one of the most significant accomplishments a man can enjoy. Farrar 196″ He says it is one of the greatest accomplishments a man can enjoy.

He is meaning this in that a father that has a son can look and see himself in that son and realize that it is a spitting image of himself and he can be proud of that. What father would not be proud of his son? A father can also take pride in his daughter because she may share a trait of his such as his eyes, nose or ears. A father truly finds satisfaction in seeing that he along with his wife have created a human being that has his traits. In order to truly be a good father, a father must recognize his children as gifts from the Lord.

The central theme of this essay is empowerment and the roles that parents, schools and professionals take on in the quest for the best educational decisions for those children with disabilities and those children that are gifted and talented. It is important to understand the historical development of family-professional relationships to fully comprehend the significance how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go. In Chapter One, the authors discuss the eight major roles that families and parents have experienced over time.

These roles range from the eugenics movement (1880-1930) which pointed to the parents as the sole cause of a child’s disability to today’s view which states that parents can be the cause of some genetic disabilities as well as those disabilities that are caused by drug use or alcohol abuse, but are not to blame for most developmental disabilities. In any case, blaming parents for their child’s disability causes a barrier that impedes progress when we should be expending energy finding ways to support families.

Professionals should avoid placing blame on parents and instead, concentrate on empathy and caring and providing support. Once parents began to organize because of a lack of professional response to their children’s emotional and educational needs, progress has been made in terms of public awareness of disabilities and educational reforms. Professionals no longer expect that parents will assume a passive role in the decision-making process for their children, as has been the case in the past.

Instead, the authors advocate that an environment should be established where collaboration between parents and professionals create a bond of trust that benefits everyone involved. To create such an environment, it is important for professionals to recognize the important role that parents provide for their children in terms of teaching them, as advocates in the political process, as educational decision-makers and as collaborators. Collaboration refers to the relationship between families and professionals whereby resources are shared and decisions are made jointly, with the child’s best interests in mind.

Recent trends in the collaborative process include input from families, students, classmates, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals and other related service providers. In this way, appropriate decisions can be made that are the result of information gathered from a variety of sources. These educational decisions will be much more likely to be successful when everyone works together for a common goal- that of providing the best educational environment for a particular child.

Chapter two describes the general education reform movement that has resulted in enhanced curriculum for all students. There has been a separate reform movement in special education that has also resulted in restructuring student placement and service delivery systems for these students. Most recently, the two reform movements are beginning to converge. The general education reform was started when a national commission report, A Nation at Risk, recommended educational improvements because U. S. students did not compare favorably in testing results with their counterparts in Japan and Germany.

This has resulted in local school districts taking more direct responsibility for decision-making that would affect all students and has included a stronger parent role in advocating for change. Along with this type of school reform, there has been a focus on schools providing comprehensive services for students and families that face multiple hurdles so that families can have their needs met for social, mental and public health services and coordinated in a single point of entry- the school.

The special education reform movement established a free, appropriate public education for all in P. L. 94-142 (renamed in 1990 to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA). This public law was needed because of the distinct difference between the education of individuals with and without disabilities. Many students with disabilities were educated in separate classes and schools and were excluded in many aspects of education. IDEA mandates that all schools will receive state and federal monies to assist them in the education of students with disabilities. To receive this money, schools must abide by six principles of education for these students.

They are: zero reject, nondiscriminatory evaluation, appropriate education, least restrictive environment, due process and parent participation. The result of IDEA was to provide a partnership between families and educators in the educational decision-making process. The authors expressed concern because this aspect still is the exception to the norm. A second phase of special education reform focuses on more inclusive placements for students with disabilities and more meaningful curriculum. This is taking place through the Regular Education Initiative (REI) and the current emphasis on inclusion.

Inclusion reform believes in providing placement for an individual based on the student’s strengths and abilities. The attempt at merging special and regular education has been a difficult one, and the authors say that more attempt must be made to include parents in the partnership between special and regular education. When speaking about parent involvement in special education, provisions were made in the IDEA for parents to collaborate with professionals to develop an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) from birth to age 3 that documents the family’s resources, priorities, and concerns related to their child’s development.

When a child turns 3 and until they are 6, early intervention services begin in the form of early childhood special education. After the age of 6, the student receives special education services. The child is provided with an IEP or Individualized Education Program which details the services that a child is to receive under law. Parents are encouraged to participate in the development of the IEP, but participation varies widely. Still, schools need to do more to encourage active participation of parents by providing more communication to parents and more opportunities for decision making for them.

Another reform that is attempting to bring together special and general education is referred to as united systems reform. This system is one outcome of the enactment of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act of 1995. With this act, emphasis is placed on improving and assessing student outcomes based on standards, and encouraging site-based management for restructuring of schools. Higher expectations, however, do not ensure that attitudes towards children with disabilities will change. Many changes still need to occur with the increased expectations.

Through the site-based management aspect of this act, schools are encouraged to meet the standards through involvement of all stakeholders including professionals, students, families and community citizens. However, the authors point out that advocacy for students is still a continuing need in the converging of special and general education. The authors stress that it is imperative for collaboration to occur between families and professionals to increase opportunity for student success. School systems need to be flexible in their approach to providing opportunities in order for these partnerships to occur.

As a professional dealing with the school system and the family, I need to be aware of the challenges I will face in creating opportunities for collaboration. Chapter 3 Empowerment The authors define empowerment as the ability to get one wants and one needs. Empowerment differs from individual to individual and from situation to situation. The goal of special educators should be to provide collective empowerment of ourselves and others involved in a student’s education. This comes into play for educators when securing related services for students and communicating with related service providers to ensure success for students.

Also, it is important for professionals to develop techniques that to help families feel empowered in the education of their child. When considering empowerment, the authors have charted a model that illustrates the concept. In the model, they have included the family resources that consist of motivation and knowledge/skills, professional resources that consist of motivation and knowledge/skills, the foundation that signifies the combined collaborative effort of family and professionals called collaborating for empowerment and education context resources that include opportunities for partnerships and obligations for reliable alliances.

When all of these interact, empowerment is the result. In this chapter the authors introduce a third aspect of the empowerment model- that of education context resources. Along with the other two parts of the empowerment model, that of family resources and professional resources, education context resources adds another dimension of support that is necessary for all parts to be able to function effectively. Education support is necessary because it can make the difference for both professionals and family members to function effectively.

Without education context resources, families can becomes overwhelmed by the system and professionals can be stymied in their efforts to provide support for learning and development for students and families. Efforts must be made by all members, especially families, professionals and schools to collaborate in providing the best educational environment for each individual. Schools need to recognize the importance of family members in the educational decision-making process and make every effort to include them in order to best serve the child.

When this collaborative effort happens, the result is empowerment of everyone involved. Chapter 4 Building Reliable Alliances The eight obligations of reliable alliances that are discussed in this chapter are: knowing yourself, knowing families, honoring cultural diversity, affirming and building on family strengths, promoting family choices, affirming great expectations, communicating positively and warranting trust and respect. The first obligation, knowing yourself, is important because the better you know yourself the better you can understand and appreciate the abilities, personalities and behaviors of others.

Because experience and background differ from person to person, there are naturally differences in the way these people interpret the same information. Cultural differences can also add to the perception problem. It is important for us, as educators, to make ourselves aware of the differences that exist culturally so we can better understand our own beliefs and behaviors. Then, we can make allowances for the differences that exist in other people in terms of their beliefs, values and feelings that result in empathy and understanding.

The second area, that of knowing families, is complex because just as each individual is different, so are families. In order to work collaboratively and effectively with families, we must understand these family characteristics and uniqueness. One way to understand the make-up of families that we are dealing with is to get to know each family member and how they interact with each other in order to carry out the responsibilities of family life. Then, we can make decisions collaboratively in a spirit of trust and teamwork. The third obligation is that of honoring cultural diversity. Race and ethnicity are only a small part of culture.

Culture is a broader vision of what makes up an individual’s group identity and can include such areas as religion, income status, gender, disability status, geographic location and occupation. To make it even more complicated, these variables are changeable over a family’s lifespan. In any case, we need to be sure that every individual we work with is treated with respect by becoming familiar with the traditions and roles of individuals within different cultures. In this way, we can collaborate with understanding when dealing with specific issues with families such as developing IEP’s, conducting evaluations and sharing information.

The fourth obligation is that of affirming and building on family strengths. Quite often, school personnel tend to focus on what is wrong with a family instead of concentrating on what the family is doing right. It is important to recognize the strengths of the family unit in order to be able to collaborate effectively with them. All families have strengths, and it might benefit the professional to sit down prior to discussing issues with a family and list the specific strengths of the families they are dealing with.

A focus on family strength would lead to less blame placed on the parents and lead to more trust and confidence on both sides (professional/family). The fifth obligation is promoting family choices and is considered critical because families need to know that their choices will be heard and considered by professionals. So often, parents do not feel that they have a say in the educational issues that affect their child because we make the assumption that only the professionals have the right answers.

In the past, parents very often were expected to play a passive role, and slowly, this role is changing. In the collaborative model, families and professionals work together in a relationship of trust, caring and respect for one another’s views. The sixth obligation is that of affirming great expectations, which has a great influence on motivation on the part of the family. We know from numerous studies that when a family has high expectations for their child, the child responds with higher academic achievement.

The author says that parents of children with disabilities are no different than those parents of children without disabilities- in fact, parents in the first group tend to have higher educational expectations than parents in the second group. Parents need to feel that there is hope for their child in terms of the future. As professionals, we need to encourage this hope because it is the base on which success can be built. One of the best ways to encourage this hope, the author says, is to share with the family the success of other individuals with similar disabilities, and how they compensate for or even overcome their disabilities.

As professionals, we need to look for these opportunities to share hope for the future. The seventh obligation is that of communicating positively between families and professionals. Communicating effectively takes practice, but everyone can learn to apply communication techniques until they become a natural part of communication style. To be an effective communicator, one must be aware of and accept cultural differences and the role a person’s disability plays in their ability to communicate.

Increased sensitivity to these types of issues plays an important role when working with individuals and families. The book gives many examples for facilitating communication that include verbal communication skills (furthering responses, paraphrasing, response to affect (questioning and summarization), nonverbal communication skills (listening and attending), and influencing skills (providing information, support, focusing attention and offering assistance). Along with these areas, communication can take place as individuals confer or when having a team meeting.

Many times, communication skills need to be used when relaying information in crisis or other difficult situations. To communicate effectively, It is important for a professional to be skilled and practiced in all of these areas. The eighth obligation mentioned in the book is that of warranting trust and respect. This is the most important aspect of all because when trust and respect are in place, collaboration and empowerment are enhanced. Professionals need to be sure that they develop a relationship with families based on mutual trust, respect and acceptance.

Perhaps the area that has changed the most for Scottish women in the last century is the family and the home. In the first half of the century the norm was for the woman of the house to “service” the male breadwinners within the home and family and to reproduce as their primary roles in life. This included many tasks including preparing meals for the whole family, looking after the family budget (It was usual for the husband to give his wife his pay packet at the end of the week and she would use it to pay the bills and buy the food.

As well as cleaning the house and the doing the whole family’s washing, which all together usually equated to (or more than) full time work. Women were put under heavy strain due to cultural expectations and norms. They were expected to be under their family’s beck and call 24 hours a day and while husbands could escape household pressures such as screaming children, by going to the pub with their friends, women could never even dream of that kind of freedom.

Although their family was seen as a woman’s main priority in life, many HAD to go out and work, often in factories or working as maids or cleaners (24% of employed women worked in the domestic service). They earned far less than men and were also expected to run the family home single handily. Although the 1911 Census of Scotland reported that only 1/20 of married women worked, the results were mainly linked to the middle class, not the poorer families where the woman was forced to work as their husbands wage wasn’t enough to support the family.

This was not uncommon, especially as in 1911, women who married between the ages of 22 – 26, had an average of 6 children (with 20% having 9 or more). In the first half of the 20th century, Scottish families remained larger than those in England did. One of the theories behind this is that Scotland has a smaller middle class, (who on average, have less children per family) and a higher proportion of Roman Catholics, who do not believe in birth control. Scottish homes were often very small with many children, and it was also common to find many “live-in” relatives in the home too.

Conditions were cramped; in 1911, 50% of the population lived in 2 houses of only 1 or 2 rooms (bearing in mind that the average family size was at least 8). In Wishaw, the average density was 4 or more persons to each room. At the same time almost nobody (including the middle class) had hot water, a bath or a toilet in their home. Even by 1957, 32% still lived in 1 or 2 rooms and 43% had no access to a bath. It was very difficult for women in the first part of the 20th century as they were stuck in the home keeping it tidy and looking after their family, with no leisure time or distractions (unlike men or children).

It wasn’t uncommon for women to suffer at the hands of abusive husbands, but unfortunately divorce was almost unheard of. It is difficult to believe compared to how common it is today, that in 1900 only 142 people sued for divorce in Scotland. However things were made a little easier in the 1920s when “Double Standard” divorce laws were removed, meaning that women could divorce men on the same grounds, and then the divorce act of 1938 introduced a wider range of grounds for divorce, including cruelty.

Another victory for Scottish women arrived in 1949 when legal aid was granted for women in divorce cases (this was previously unheard of). Today divorce is very common, making it a lot easier for women to leave unhappy marriages. However it is only very recently that his has occurred, even in 1961, less that 2000 divorces occurred in Scotland, less than 1/6 of the 12,400 Scottish couples that divorced in 1991, 75% of which were initiated by women. Today life is much easier for women in the home.

No longer are women expected to settle down, marry young, have children and become a “housewife”, although to some extent housework and child rearing is still considered to be “women’s work”, but many labour saving devices such as irons, washing machines and even baby bottle warmers are easily available, knocking hours off daily household chores. Women experience much more freedom in many aspects, are encouraged to pursue careers and aim for the top.

Now, if they are not married with children by the age of 30 they are no longer considered a “failure”, in fact today in Scotland, 29% of households are single person. Many women work because they want to (but usually as well as financially) in order to prove themselves. Many see this as a backlash against women’s lifestyles in the early 1900s. Some women still choose to take on the stereotypical role as a housewife, as they see it as offering stability and it helps them to meet the high domestic values that some of them have, especially the working class. Today 67% of Scottish women work, most of them part time.

In fact since 1945 the majority of part time work has been carried out by women as it still is today, leaving the free to “look after the home and family”, thus proving that the idea of “women’s work” is still present in Scotland, even after we have entered the new millennium. Politically, a lot has changed too. In the early 1900s, women were viewed as “second class citizens” in many areas and therefore not allowed to vote. However by the 1800s both the Conservative and Labour parties were involving women in their campaigns, such as the 1832 reform act thus making them more politically aware and demanding their right to vote.

Many women were against a male only vote, so set out to change the ruling by starting the Suffrage campaign. All political parties were against female suffrage so in 1903 the Pankhursts formed the “Woman’s Social and Political Union” (WSPU) and Flora Drummoned (nicknamed “The General”) and Helen Fraser controlled the Scottish side of the campaign. The campaign for the vote was very important for women all over the country, including Scotland; many things divided women’s groups, so their campaign for the vote was the one thing that would unite them.

In 1908, 4 MPs died and the Scottish by-elections took place, giving Scottish Suffregates a chance to promote their cause. Public displays by women were viewed as “inappropriate” but this didn’t stop the female campaigners producing entertaining displays for the public’s attention. In 1909 the “Votes For Women” newspaper was printed and a huge protest in Hyde Park was organised, but without much success. By this time the suffrage protesters had divided into two sections; the Suffregetes who believed in using action to protest and Suffrigists who were anti-violence and used less severe actions than the suffregetes.

AN example of the suffrigists was the Woman’s Freedom League, who were militant but non-violent, holding the “No Taxation Without Representation” view. However the Suffregetes protests were not quite as peaceful as protests included burning down George Youngers (An MP) house in Scotland. By 1914 there were suffrage groups in every town. When WW1 started women were needed to fill men’s jobs, thus helping their campaign for representation. Another boost came in 1914 when Lord George became PM as he was sympathetic to their cause, but other MPs were still reluctant.

In 1914 after many years of protests (including Emily Pankhurst throwing herself in front of a racehorse) a breakthrough finally occurred; women householders over the age of 30 were allowed to vote, the campaigners pressed harder and in 1921, all women aged over 21 were given a vote. Although they had the vote, women’s issues didn’t get very high on a political agenda until Nancy Astor the first female MP until 1921 was elected in 1919, who remained an MP until 1945. Women’s roles in politics continued to grow until 1979 when Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative MP became the first (and so far the only) female PM.

In the 1800s education, especially university was always considered a “no go area” for women. After all, what use would a degree be to them as a housewife? The idea of women becoming lawyers or doctors was simply ridiculous. In 1892 women were finally allowed into universities, but the focus on male education was much higher due to the Victorian male/female division view, but the numbers of women entering higher education establishments was respectable. However, this ratio of women going to university didn’t remain steady, and fell in the 1930s.

Gender equality in higher education was far from achieved and women’s studies were heavily weighted towards the traditional arts degree. Perhaps this gap was due to male’s education being prioritised over females, especially in areas such as engineering (which it was almost unheard of for women to study) and medicine. In 1935 women accounted for only of all university entrants. Even by 1960 this figure had only risen to 1/3, in fact it wasn’t until the mid-eighties (1986) when women accounted for half (51%) of all students.

However by this time women were also covering a wider breadth of courses, even in male dominated courses. When asked, “Do you expect to attend college or university when you leave school? ” in a Scottish study, 65% of girls replied “Yes”, compared to only 65% of boys. This is a singular example of how women’s expectations and hopes regarding education have grown. Since the mid 1970s girls have been outperforming boys at every level (this applies in every social class), but why?

Is it perhaps a backlash against the education that females received in the past, as today’s women, either consciously or not, drive for equality? It seems that women are no longer regarded as “second class citizens” in Scotland. Although there still remains “massive gaps n our knowledge of the changing patterns and continuities in Scottish women’s lives” it is obvious that women have gained freedom, socially, culturally, financially and sexually that they could never have dreamed possible 100 years ago, thanks to their willpower and determination.

The practice of bearing a child on behalf of another woman. This is surrogate motherhood. Is it considered immoral? By some, yes. In some countries it is bannedand in others it is promoted or up for consideration. In recent days, the issue of “right and wrong” has surfaced in the midst of this argument, sharing different meanings to the opposing sides. To some, it is right only for the woman who brings forth life to raise the child; for it is deemed that she is the only one fit to be the child’s mother. Clearly, we must indeed recognize this side of the argument.

But to those with that viewpoint, that is the end of the argument. They do not see any reason for the issue to be continued further; rather, to end the debate and declare anyone who disagrees to lack morals or values. But have those who preach this anti-surrogate moralism ever experienced what it would be like to be those on the other side of this issue? Suppose, for a moment, that they were the ones who were incapable of having children. Would they condemn themselves the way that they condemn others if they were in another predicament?

It is surely easy to say what one would do in any situation, but one can never know exactly what they would do until that situation comes. How many of you have ever held a small child in your arms and looked into its small eyes and felt the love that you had for it. Perhaps it was a younger sibling, perhaps even a child of your own. You know how much that you love that little one. And of course, you all know how much the child’s mother loves it. What must it be like, I ask you, to be a mother or a father and know that you will never have a son or a daughter to hold and call your own?

Knowing that you will never be able to raise a child and love it must be a terrible nightmare for any caring and decent person who wishes to have a child. What is wrong then, with having a woman give birth to a child that she cannot care for and give it to a wanting mother and father who cannot have a child of their own. What difference is it between surrogate-motherhood and adoption? There is none. Adoption is legal, and is highly respected among people from many walks of life. Pro-choice and Pro-life supporters herald adoption as a way of taking care of children in need.

Why then, should anyone who supports adoption attack another option for a mother that is the same? Surrogate motherhood provides good and decent parents who cannot otherwise have children the opportunity of loving and raising a child and giving it a kind and loving home. Imagine being a woman who has been told that you are no longer capable of having a childyou know that surrogate motherhood is the only way in which you will ever have a child. I ask, What right do any of us have to deny a woman who cannot have a child the right to receive a child to raise and all her own.

I ask, What right to any of us have to deny a man the opportunity to be a father and to raise his son or his daughter. We have no right to deny parents the opportunity to have children! Consider all of the children in orphanages who are alone and feel unloved. What right do we have to deny them of loving parents? And how is it possible that we can allow child-molesters and abusive parents to bear and raise children and deny good unfortunate couples the right to raise a child. Such an idea is ludicrous and insane!

All that we need to do is reason a little to understand that surrogate- motherhood is a perfect way for men and women to raise and love children that it is otherwise impossible for them to have. We have adoption, which is very similar to surrogate motherhood. We have grandparents and aunts and uncles who raise children. Why on earth can’t we allow good and decent people the opportunity to raise and love children as well? It is all perfectly legitimate and decent to allow people to parent and love a child, and who can argue that raising and loving a child is wrong?

What is the term family? What does it mean? Who decides what makes up a family? The definition of family means “a set of relations especially parents and children” (American Century Dictionary 205). This might include anyone related to by blood or by adoption such as: step parents, grandparents acting as parents, and even brothers and sisters sometimes sharing the same household. The term family has been believed to coincide with the word “marriage”. If you were to have a family, you were also thought to have a husband or wife. This was thought to be the norm for many centuries. This was named the “institutional family.

But we have reinvented the word family. A family can consist of single parent family, step family, or a first marriage family. The role of the family is also a key concept in defining the family (Doherty 11). “In all societies the first major agent of socialization for most individuals is the family” (Thompson and Hickey 105). It is the nucleus of American life. The role of the American family is much the same as in any other country. Each family member has to fulfill his or her own part. Being a father, a mother, or a daughter. The mass media will have an influence on the familys role.

For instance, the media has portrayed men to be thought of as the “bread-winner”. To more or less support the family. This family type was atypical of the American family. This was called the “Traditional Nuclear Family. ” This kind of ideology has existed for centuries (Thompson and Hickey 386). But of all family types, single parent families have made the most gains during the past few decades. According to a sociological book called Society in Focus, the definition of a single parent family is “families in which one parent resides with and cares for one or more children” (387).

Researches estimate that a century ago one in three children spent part of their childhood in a single parent home” (384). This estimate is taken during the colonial period of America. More families in the twenty-first century will be single parent. This is because of the factor of people getting married later in life, the high rate of divorce, and the opportunity to gain a career. By view of the social structure, single parenting has changed the views of the way parents treat and raise their children.

By definition, social structure is “the ordered relationships and patterned expectations that guide social interaction” (Thompson and Hickey 142). Even though there has been a decline in marriage, functionalism believes that the family is the foundation of social order. According to the sociologists Talcot Parsons, “any other type of family other than the nuclear family is dysfunctional in society because they are not suited for societys economic needs and therefore may be a potential threat to society” (2). Please do not plagiarism my paper The structural functionalist perspective views society as having a structure of several components.

Family, religion, schools, state, and the economy. Each of these institutions are interrelated and interdependent (Thompson and Hickey 24). For instance marriage. The foundation of functionalism is the family. The family fulfills vital functions for instance culture, support, and status. The institute of marriage is important because functionalism ignores conflict and diversity. So functionalism, encourages marriage. Functionalism does not take into account the reasons why there are single parent families (Mills 2). In the Conflict Perspective, marriage and family do not coincide with one another.

Rather conflict theorists agree that the environment and other forces shape the marriage and family. These powers “are rooted in structures of social inequality” (Eitzen and Baca-Zinn 1987:13). The Marxist view is those who have the means to produce wealth and those who dont. Capitalism is the capitalist class vs. the working class. With the divorce rate so high, single parents dont really affect capitalism. In fact, they might help benefit that economy. “Single mothers can produce cheap labor, social services not amenable to profit making, and new laborers for temporary dead-end jobs” (Thompson and Hickey 378).

From the symbolic interactionist perspective, there are no fixed meanings. Marriage and family do not coincide together like, functionalism. Symbolic interactionism does not force the word marriage with the word family. “Most single parent families are headed either by ex-spouses who have custody of the children and depend on inadequate child-care payments or by unmarried women” (Thompson and Hickey 387). Women feel more independent than they did 100 years ago. Who chooses these decisions to be a single mother or to be a single father?

What laws govern these choices? The choices that were made by these kinds of families fall under a category called social actions. A social action or social act is defined as “behaviors influenced by or shaped by the presence of others” (Thompson and Hickey 143). This means that someone somewhere had to decide that they wanted a divorce or they decided to become a single parent. People began to follow these trends for several reasons. These trends include the possibility of violence in the family, the spouse had died, or the particular idea of being a single parent.

Divorce rates have increased incredibly during the past half-century and now are currently among the highest in the world. “Since World War II, more than 70 percent of single parent families have been created by divorce and separation and the rest by unmarried mothers or fathers who have chosen to raise children by themselves” (Thompson and Hickey 387). “Marriage has been seen as an unbreakable contract and the economic perils of a solo existence made abandoning ones partner difficult, particularly for women” (Kramer 160). Functionalism believes that trends do not exist.

Structural functionalist ignore family violence. Functionalism is made up of institutions, and then again do not believe in the separation of a family. When a victim is beaten, functionalist theorists focused on these family members and recognized their “ability to adjust and reorganize, rather than the need for social change at the macro and extra familial level” (Adams 13). Conflict theorists disagree. If there is battery in a marriage, then the physically abused spouse should leave. In the conflict perspective, the patriarchal family exists. This means the men have the control over the women.

Within the conflict viewpoint, feminism has a strong argument in the social action category, under single parenting. Feminism remarks on how women are in distress and have defined violence as a reflection of the patriarchs power. This might be the cause of so many divorces and in turn, leading to single parenting. Please do not plagiarism my paper Symbolic Interactionism provides a different meaning. Trends correspond along with divorce, single parenting, and individuality. If a family depends on a divorce, symbolic interactionism will allow this to take place, under the laws of the state and the government.

Individuals should be free to enter marriages, as they are free to choose their spouses, that in turn they should be free to eliminate those spouses in a time of urgency. “Today marriages have often become individual endeavors in which partners seek to satisfy their own needs – and can often easily dissolve the marriage when needs are unmet” (Johnson 12). “The family is the toughest institution that we have. It is the institution to which we owe our humanity” (Mills 3). The family can emphasize so many different things. Culture, parental guidance, education, and family history.

The family is so curtail and no other institution can provide like the family can. Functional integration is this basis. The terminology of functional integration is “the integration resulting from the manner in which the different specialized parts of a whole society interact, interrelate, and make reciprocal contributions to each other and to society as a whole” (“Integrative Concept” 1). Functional integration is what makes up the family. It is what keeps the family together in a time of crisis. Functional integration is curtail on providing the role of child bearing, child raising, and adulthood.

Structural Functionalism is the basis here. The norm here is the nuclear family and that family alone. Dorothy Smith comments on how the nuclear family is seen as an ideological code that is “deeply embedded within the discourse of sociology and operates so subtly, that it prevails despite the conscious intentions of the authors” (2). Structural functionalists do not see the single family as a family. Rather they ignore it and believe that kind of institution to be dysfunctional. By Coser, “the family is the most elementary social unit and the prototype of all other human associations, for these evolve from family and kinship groups” (1).

By way of the conflict perspective, conflict theorists view the family as an institution to which we will get all of our knowledge by determination of class. Conflict will acknowledge that all families have an important role in the development in a childs life, depending on the social class of that family. So the functional integration of the single parent family can exist in the conflict theory, but the determination of that childs outcome has its reliance on the social class from whence it came from (Mills 1).

Through the rationale of symbolic interactionism, relies on individuality. The institution of a family in this perspective is important because it can provide the background for culture, humanism, power, and character. Yet, symbolic interactionism does not believe that the institution of the family is the complete basis of all knowledge, but rather “the significance of the relationship to the human conduct is nevertheless a by-product of interaction with others” (Blumer 3).

So parenting, much less single parenting, is an output of social interaction with the children. Power in the family is very important. It stands for who is in charge and who isnt, who has the authority and who doesnt. The sociological meaning of power is “the ability to realize ones will, even against resistance and the opposition of others” (Thompson and Hickey 22). Power in the family is what may make or break the family. Too much power might cause a spouse to move away.

As an institution, polygyny, the social arrangement that permits a man to have more than one wife at the same time, exists in all parts of the world. From our present knowledge, there are very few primitive tribes in which a man is not allowed to enter into more than one union. In fact, ethologists now believe that only one to two percent of all species may be monogamous (Tucker). None of the simian species are strictly monogamous; our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, practice a form of group marriage.

Among the 849 human societies examined by the anthropologist Murdock (1957), 75% practiced polygyny. Many peoples have been said to be monogamous, but it is difficult to infer from the data at our disposal whether monogamy is the prevalent practice, the moral ideal, or an institution safeguarded by sanctions (Malinowski 1962). Historically, polygyny was a feature of the ancient Hebrews, the traditional Chinese, and the nineteenth-century Mormons in the United States, but the modern practice of polygyny is concentrated in Africa, the Middle East, India, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The extent to which men are able to acquire multiple wives depends on many factors, including the economic prosperity of the man’s family, the prevailing bride price, the differential availability of marriageable females, the need and desire for additional offspring, and the availability of productive roles for subsequent wives. Even in societies that permit polygyny, the conditions of life for the masses make monogamy the most common form of marriage. The two variations of polygyny are sororal (the cowives are sisters) and nonsororal (the cowives are not sisters).

Some societies also observe the custom of levirate, making it compulsory for a man to marry his brother’s widow. It must be remembered that any form of polygyny is never practiced throughout the entire community: there cannot exist a community in which every man would have several wives because this would entail a huge surplus of females over males (Malinowski 1962). Another important point is that in reality it is not so much a form of marriage fundamentally distinct from monogamy as rather a multiple monogamy.

It is always in fact the repetition of marriage contract, entered individually with each wife, establishing an individual relationship between the man and each of his consorts (Benson 1971). Where each wife has her separate household and the husband visits them in turn, polygynous marriage resembles very closely a temporarily interrupted monogamy. In such cases, there is a series of individual marriages in which domestic arrangements, economics, parenthood, as well as legal and religious elements do not seriously encroach on each other.

The polygyny with separate households is more universally prevalent. Among the great majority of the Bantu and Hamitic peoples of Africa, where the number of wives, especially in the case of chiefs, is often considerable, each wife commonly occupies a separate hut with her children, and manages an independent household with well-defined legal and economic rights (Pasternak 1976). Where, on the other hand, as among many N. American tribes, two or more wives share the same household, polygyny affects the institution of matrimonial life much more deeply.

Unlike wives in many other African groups who live in their own huts, Ijaw wives have apartments within one large structure and our brought into much more frequent contact with their co-wives (Rosaldo 1974). Various theories have been advanced to explain the cultural endorsement of polygyny. One of the earliest explanations was based on the notion that men have a greater disposition for variety in sexual partners than do women (Tucker). Many ethologists believe that there is a sociobiological imperative for men to have as many sexual partners as possible (Sayers).

While this theory is of historical interest, there exists no empirical support for the greater sex drive of the male, nor is there any reason to expect the male sex drive to vary from one culture to another. Women are just as naturally interested in sex, perhaps even more so. Women can be multi- orgasmic and have a much broader range of sexual stimulation than men. Non-monogamy is reproductively savvy for males in order to spread their genes, and for females in order to improve the hardiness and genetic variety of their offspring (Benson).

It has also been suggested that polygyny as a marriage form evolved in response to lengthy postpartum sex taboos because polygyny provides a legitimate sexual outlet for the husband during this period of taboo (Whiting). Whiting discovered that societies dependent on root and tree crops (presumably low protein societies) are more likely to have a long postpartum sex taboo, and there did seem to be a statistical association between the presence of this taboo and a preference for polygyny.

While men may seek other sexual relationships during the period of a long postpartum taboo, it is not clear why polygyny is the only possible solution to the problem, since the legitimation of sex does not depend exclusively on marriage. The problem could be alleviated by extra-marital alliances or masturbation. The existence of a low sex ratio, a scarcity of men in relation to women, has also been offered as an explanation for the origin of this practice (Pasternak 1976).

Polygyny maximizes the opportunities for females to marry in a society in which adult males are in short supply. The fact that the sex ratio at the same time of young adulthood is numerically balanced in some societies suggests that while a sex ratio imbalance may contribute to the development of polygyny in special cases, it is an incomplete explanation for the existence of polygyny in the majority of societies in the world. For example, plural marriage developed among the Mormons in Utah when, as in most of the western states of the United States, there was an excess of males.

The theory that has stimulated the most empirical investigation links the existence of polygyny to the productive value of the woman. According to this theory, the occurrence of polygyny is positively related to the extent to which women contribute to the subsistence bases of their respective societies (Pasternak 1976). However, further research suggests that the relationship between women’s economic contribution and marriage form is more complex and that there exists a curvilinear relationship between women’s productive value and the existence of polygyny (Rosaldo 1974).

Polygyny has been found to be a feature of economic systems where potential female contribution to subsistence is high (such as in gathering and agricultural economies). In many African communities, the chief derives his wealth from the plurality of his wives, who by means of the produce of their agricultural labor enable him to exercise the lavish hospitality upon which so much of his power rests. The practice has also been found in economic systems, however, where potential female contribution is low (such as hunting and fishing economies).

It has been suggested that multiple wives are valued in the first instance, for economic reasons, while in the latter instance, they are valued for reproductive reasons in that the taking of multiple wives maximizes the potential to produce sons, who in turn make an economic contribution (Malinowski 1962). A multitude of wives, however, may increase not only a man’s wealth but also his social importance, reputation and authority, apart from the influence of the number of his children.

Hence, we find in many Bantu communities of Africa that the desire to have many wives is one of the leading motives in the life of every man; while the fact that in many Melanesian and Polynesian communities, polygyny is a prerogative and therefore the chief testifies to the social prestige attaching to it (Priso). Politically or socially stratified divisions within a society also favor the emergence of polygyny, since economic rights to women can be acquired, and since marriages can be used to create political alliances between unequal groups (Rosaldo).

While polygyny tends to be viewed by Western cultures as an instrument for the domination of women by men, the degree of autonomy experienced by women in polygynous unions varies within and among cultures. The degree of autonomy of each cowife is influenced by the availability of opportunities outside of the home, the degree to which she maintains contact with her family of origin, the availability of gainful employment, the degree of importance attached to the children she has produced, and her life cycle state.

Benefits for the wives also include the sharing of economic and domestic responsibilities, the freedom that derives from living apart from the constant supervision of a husband, and the diminished pressure for constant sexual accessibility. For example in many African polygynous societies women gain economic autonomy through trading. Trading not only gives de facto independence from the husband’s authority (and may ease tensions between cowives), but also brings women together in extra-domestic cooperative groups such as trading associations (Benson 1971).

Paradoxically, polygyny becomes attractive to both parties. For instance, in Africa a man who controls much land may marry several wives to work for him. Since he is providing only about half of their income, even a man of modest means can take several wives. In addition, women find polygyny helps lighten their work burden. In many cases, the first wife takes the initiative in suggesting that a second wife, who can take over the most tiresome jobs in the household, should be procured. In the traditional African setting, marriage is a matter of considerable importance.

It is through marriage that the constituent elements of society reproduce themselves and that groups and individuals further a complex strategy. Women play a crucial role in this process, since they gather and control other women as wives and companions for brothers, sons, and husbands. A husband chooses his first wife with care, since she is responsible for training all subsequent wives and organizing them, older children, clients, wards, and, in the past slaves, into an agricultural work force.

The senior wife is responsible for producing the agricultural wealth of the household, and if her warrior husband is absent or preoccupied for long periods of time, it is she who often functions as the effective head of household. Even though a husband may marry younger, more beautiful wives, he continues to regard his “big wife” with great respect and consideration (Rosaldo). In Mende, the head wife in a large polygynous household is given much religious as well as economic power.

She organizes the agricultural work force, and stores and markets economic surpluses. Because of these roles, Mende head wives are seen as authority figures, and occasionally a chief’s head wife will succeed him in office even though she resides virilocally in his chiefdom and has no genealogical right to rule in the village of his kin (Tucker). Jealousy, while not an inevitable consequence of polygyny, is reported in many polygynous societies.

Tension is common when women are competing for goods and services from the husband and since each wife attempts to build a uterine family at the expense of her co-wives’ children (Rosaldo). Among the Kanuri of Bornu (part of a centralized Muslim state), women are married very young, often to middle-aged men. A woman’s ability to control a husband’s dominance depends on her ability to withdraw food and sexual services. A second wife is a considerable threat to her, resulting in less attention for her as well as for her children, and she loses some of her ability to gain compliance from her husband.

However, Malinowski (1962) notes that jealousy among cowives is more a rivalry to secure maximum access to resources for themselves and their offspring than sexual jealousy. To minimize this conflict among cowives, a set of rules is often established that specifies responsibilities and rights concerning sex, economics, and personal possessions. A Patani man follows a prescribed order of sleeping with each of his wives, as does the Korokorosei husband, but the women differ in the scheduling of their domestic responsibilities to him.

A Patani woman cooks and cares for her husband only when it is her turn to sleep with him. A Korokorosei woman must cook for her husband every day and perform domestic tasks for him whenever he asks. The presence of associations in Patani assists a woman in coping with difficulties in her co-wife relationships. The Korokorosei woman must resolve her own problems (Priso). In group families the predominant themes is not swinging sex, however, the “swinging” label still may persist in areas where polygyny is not so common.

A fundamental problem with parenting in such group’s stems from the social stigma attached to “deviant” life-styles. There are obvious difficulties in raising children in a social environment so extensively criticized or condemned, especially when the parents realize that their children may grow up alienated either from them or from the mainstream culture to which they eventually will be called on to adapt (Sayres). Children in polygynous unions may be reared primarily by their mother, under the supervision of the senior cowife, or jointly with a system of rotation.

Because the economic claims that many cowives make on their husbands are on behalf of their children, one of the advantages of occupying the position of senior wife is that the position carries with it preferential treatment for the offspring. The notion that mothers in polygynous unions develop extraordinary close ties with their children because of the father’s absence is not supported (Tucker). Although an African husband can expect to have his wife or wives supporting themselves and working for him, he has very little claim to his children.

Female farming and polygyny are nearly always coupled with “matrilineal descent,” meaning that heritage is traced only through the mother’s line. Often children bear their mother’s name. The result is that marriages are relatively transient and divorce is common. In African divorce, the husband obtains certain domestic and sexual services from the wife, but her other loyalties and her offspring always belong to her lineage (meaning her natal family). If there is divorce, the lineage will care for her and her children. She is not “absorbed” into her husband’s lineage.

In Stanleyville (the Congo), well over half of those who had been married had also been divorced. According to one calculation, Hausa women (in Nigeria) average about three marriages between puberty and menopause. Eight out of ten persons over 40 years of age in a Yao village (Nyasaland) were found to have been divorced. In the Voltaic group of the Mossi, men who have migrated to neighboring Ghana may establish households with the Ashanti women but avoid marriage because the Ashanti matrilineal descent pattern would not let them take their own children back with them.

In patrilineal or “dual descent” societies, by contrast, marriages are stable. Illegitimacy is also regarded differently since children belong to the mother’s line anyway. Early illegitimacy can even have a positive aspect, since it proves fertility. (Malinowski 1962) Some believe that polygyny is linked with HIV and Hepatitis C. In places like Rwanda and Burundi, polygyny decreases infection by allowing women for whom there are not enough available marriageable mates (due to war, violence, imprisonment, etc. o be married to the few available marriageable men and be sexually fulfilled without having to find sex promiscuously or turning to prostitution to find fulfillment or support themselves.

Those who keep their sexual and body fluid activities within their bonded polygynous marriages do not spread or acquire HIV. The false hope placed in condoms (which have a 20% one-out-of-five failure rate according to the FDA and our Public Health Depts. ) results in far more deaths from these diseases than such deaths from polygyny (Sayres).

Although antecedents to the occurrence and maintenance of polygyny vary from society to society, ideology and customs develop once polygyny is adopted that contribute to its perpetuation long after the original reason for the practice disappears. In traditional societies that have encouraged plural marriages in the past, however, the trend is moving toward monogamy. In some cases, this movement occurs in stages, and in other cases, polygyny is permitted but discouraged by recognizing the first marriage as legal and relegating additional wives to the status of concubines.

The explanation most commonly advanced for this movement away from polygyny is that monogamy is more compatible with industrialization (Benson 1971). Of course, the role of ideology and the banning of polygyny must also be considered as factors contributing to the decline of the practice. Some American men take the position that monogamy protects the rights of women. However, are these men concerned with liberation movements from the suffragists of the early twentieth century to the feminists of today? The truth of the matter is that monogamy protects men, allowing them to “play around” without responsibility.

Easy birth control and easy legal abortion has opened the door of illicit sex to woman and she has been lured into the so-called sexual revolution. Nevertheless, she is still the one who suffers the trauma of abortion and the side effects of the birth control methods. Taking aside the plagues of venereal diseases, herpes and AIDS, the male continues to enjoy himself free of worry. Men are the ones protected by monogamy while women continue to be victims of men’s desires. Polygyny is very much opposed by the male dominated society because it forces men to face up to responsibility and fidelity.

It forces them to take responsibility for their polygynous inclinations, and protects and provides for women and children. The bottom line in the marriage relationship is good morality and happiness, creating a just and cohesive society where the needs of men and women are well taken care of. The present Western society, which permits free sex between consenting adults, has give rise to an abundance of irresponsible sexual relationships, an abundance of “fatherless” children, many unmarried teenage mothers; all becoming a burden on the country’s welfare system.

In part, such an undesirable welfare burden has given rise to a bloated budget deficit, which even an economically powerful country like the United States cannot accommodate. We find that artificially established monogamy had become a factor in ruining the family structure, and the social, economic, and political systems in this country. Polygyny has been practiced by mankind throughout the world for thousands of years. It has been proven advantageous economically and politically for both males and females.

Having other cowives lets women share the economic and domestic responsibilities of the household, it allows independence from the husband, and also the freedom from fulfilling constant sexual needs of the male. In some cases, polygyny allows women to achieve a higher status within her community that she normally could not achieve in a monogamous relationship. Polygamous relationships serve as an alternative to single loneliness, fatherless children, and increasing violence and juvenile crime in families where the father has left. Polygyny has proven itself to be an advantage to a host of societies and cultures.

This essay will begin by describing the three spheres that tie society together. The main institution of society is the family or household which is broken up into thousands of units. Secondly, it will discuss the economic institution and its ties to the family. The use of labour power and how that effects the power struggle with the capitalist marketplace will also be discussed. Lastly, the political institution of government will be shown along with its relationships to the family and the familys ability to create reform and change regulation. One of the main institutions in society in the household or family.

It is here that almost all the consumption in society takes place. It is also here that almost all the labour power in society originates. The make-up of the family is not as “cut and dry” as it once was. The nuclear family is dead and what has replaced it has put all old theories about the family to the test. One major change has been the rise of the dual-earner family. In 70% of households today there is no single breadwinner. Women’s position in the family has been changed radically from that of one-hundred years ago. Three important issues have been raised about women’s position in the family.

One is that the development of gender inequality within the family is a result of the changing economy. This being the extra accumulation of property in private households. The second issue is that capitalism being the only form of economy we are familiar with pushes for the working of every family member to create a strong economy. Lastly, the evolution of the family dispersed from economic development and instead become a more social issue. Because the position of women in the family has been so altered from past history, projections made, even forty years ago, are increasingly wrong.

Though, even with the changing structure of the family the economic labour power has not significantly increased. The role of housewife in the post-industrial age was just as important to women as today’s dual earning household. The housewife was the counter-part to the husbands role of breadwinner. It was the wife who cleaned the husbands clothes, prepared his food and provided emotional support, without which he could not fulfill his role as breadwinner. With the evolution of the labor market and capitalist economy with the ever-increasing consumption of the family unit the homemaker was called to enter the workforce.

In 1901 only 12% of Canadian women were economically active, however, in 1961 there were 29. 5% economically active. This percentage has gotten exponentially bigger with time. In 1981, 54% of women with dependent children were economically active. Another facet of the economic family unit is reproduction. The goal of the family unit is to produce children, which in turn expands the labor force, which creates a larger economic base. In Canadian families the emphasis is on quality not quantity and because of this there are gaps in the unskilled labour force.

It is only through immigration that the capitalist economy has been able to keep up with the demand for cheap unskilled labour. So the value of labor power is determined outside capitalism, in non-capitalist units that maintain and reproduce labor power… families. Corporations produce wealth in the form of goods and services and a can last well beyond an individual life span. Capitalism is a powerful institution with holds on the economy, political state and family as well. The payment of wages allows the corporations to grow and continue to produce goods and exploit workers. (Bailey, 1974:127) Families consume.

In the modern era, most families are not units of production and consumption, mainly just consumption. They do not accumulate wealth, but simply take the wage and spend it on commodities that satisfy their needs. As Karl Marx put it, “if I exchange a commodity [labour power] for money, buy a commodity for it and satisfy my need, then the act is at an end. ” (Smith, 1982:29) Families have a limited life span, related to the cycle of growth and decline of individual family members. The family, unless it has property, will inevitably decline to be replaced or reborn in new formations down the generations.

Wages earned allow families to survive and reproduce labour power, in the form of children. It is the children that will outlive the family and become the new labour power. Working for wages allows those with economic activity to support the non-wage-earning members of the household, young and old, caring and dependent. In the spirit of support the family acts with altruism to aid reproduction and in turn this aids the reproduction of the capitalist enterprise. (Smith, 1982: 105) Marx put it like this : The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, as must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital.

But the capitalist may safely leave its fulfillment to the laborers instincts of self-preservation and of propagation. (Smith, 1982:106) If Marx is correct in his ideology then the family will be forever in the service of the controllers of the economic and political states. Already the family is related to these two institutions in a number of ways. The economy and household/family are separated easily in the modern era. As already stated above, the family of today is primarily a consumption unit, while the economic state is filled with units of production and consumption as well, it produces wages and employment.

Other creations of economy are; capitalist welfare programs (company housing, welfare, pension programs), corporate taxes and employer contributions. (Dickinson/Russell, 1986:13) The familys main tie to the economic state is through labour power. Jack Wayne, in his essay “The function of Social Welfare in a Capitalist Economy” writes: The reproduction of labor power is, however, private; it generally takes place outside the jurisdiction of capital, in families and households, and is separated from the circuit of capital. The use value of labour power is, of course, of interest to the capitalist, but processes and undertakings determine it.

The only point of intervention available to the capitalist is the wage. (Dickinson/Russell, 1986:79) It is the wage that ties the economic state and family together, and allows the corporations or as Marx calls them capitalists to harness the labour power for their own needs. There is only one form of labour that is not totally governed by the capitalist market and that is domestic labour. A very low level of division of labor characterizes domestic labour. The same person (usually the housewife) does a range of activities which, in the social spheres are carried out by specialists.

Some examples of this are catering, education and health businesses. Secondly the products of domestic labor do not have to be sold on the market for the labor to be recognized at useful. This makes domestic labour a non-market production. Lastly the labour-power is not offered on a market and therefor makes up non-waged labour (housework is non-paid). (Gouverneur, 1983:7) Closely tied in with the economic state is the political state. The taxes from the economic market feed the collective consumption of the government and legislation and boards from the government provide occupational health and safety standards.

The government also provides a stabling influence on the changing economy. As far as the family is concerned the State provides redistribution of transfer payments and substitute wage programs. The government also strengthens the social welfare net and provides charity and philanthropy to those in need. Labour market regulation allows the regulation of child labour laws and gives more bargaining power to families and wage earners. One major form of this is the ability to strike and discuss minimum wage legislation.

Dickinson/Russell, 1986: 17) Saskatchewan, under the first socialist government in North America the CCF, was the first to give wage-earners the right to go on strike in 1944. It took Ontario twenty years to give its provincial residents the same right. Households and families units of ,individual consumption, use this increase in labour power to provide more taxes, if not out of the good of their hearts then for government stability, to the political state. Thus, the family unit helps balance the power struggle the government has with the ever increasing economic sphere in a symbiotic relationship.

In “The State and the Maintenance of Patriarchy: A case study of family, labor and welfare legislation in Canada”, Jane Ursel writes: An important role of the state in class societies is to ensure a balanced allocation of labor and non-labor resources between the two spheres of production and reproduction so that the system is maintained both in the long and short term…. The state is the guarantor of the rules of class and the rules of patriarchy and must insure that one system does not disrupt the other. (Dickinson/Russell, 1986:154)

The government uses its control to regulate and perpetuate the status quo and the family is a part of that. However, she does not believe that the patriarchal system is all-bad. She continues to write: Patriarchy is important because the state cannot (inspire of some ill-fated attempts) legislates procreation. It must instead set up a system via family, property and marriage laws, which will serve to translate social and economic requirements into compelling household imperatives. The characteristic feature of familial patriarchy is its pronatalist dynamic.

This results from the nature of the interaction between class and patriarchy which creates a determinant relation between productivity and procreation at the household level. (Dickinson/Russel, 1986:157) the family can change these regulations as well. According to what has been discussed so far the definition of a family would be a non-capitalist unit in which the maintenance and reproduction of labor power takes place. (Bailey, 1974: 34) The Websters Dictionary describes a family as “a group of related things or people”. 990)

However, the Canadian government defines the family as “now-married couple (with or without never-married sons and/or daughters of either or both spouses), a couple living common law (again with or without never-married sons and/or daughters of either or both partners) or a lone parent of any marital status, with at least one never-married son or daughter living in the same dwelling. (Statistics Canada, 1994:10) Because the governments definition of family lets several groups that may still be considered families “slip through the cracks”, this gives bargaining power to the family unit yet again to change government regulation.

The Canadian government still does not recognize it sex couples, three generations living in the same household and individuals living apart from spouses and children. In 1991, 424,950 individuals aged 18-25 lived with non-relatives, in institutions, or by themselves. This represents over 20% of the age group. (Statistics Canada, 1994:19) One aspect of the political sphere that the family continually challenges is gender equality. Starting with the latter part of the nineteenth century where waves of feminist protest egan throughout the western world.

Women organized in groups starting at the family level and gaining support from other women’s groups. One of the first cases early feminists argued before the government was their collective right to vote. As early as 1916 in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba women were given the right to vote, this increased the families power with swaying the political sphere… it essentially doubled it. (Wilson. 1982:119) The women’s movement appeared to lose its momentum after women gained the right to vote.

But although women’s groups were no longer held together by a single goal. They continued to fight for women’s rights on several fronts. The YWCA and Canadian Business and Professional Women remained active in support of women’s issues. However, it wasn’t until the 1960’s that the movement regained its previous strength. (Wilson, 1982:125) Women in families are not the only ones who have argued with the political sphere and won some political rights. Some Gay families or same-sex couples have won the right to adopt children and in some American states get married.

The Modern family depends heavily on the all the institutions of society for support. Where in the past the family was independent, now it needs the bonds created through long access to each sphere either political or economic. The labour power generated by the family unit gives it he bargaining power to compete head to head with the ever growing and dominant labour market and government bureaucracy. But because the family is the smallest group and is based on individual consumption it can seem over-taxed when dealing with mighty corporations and large political states.

However, in the global market-place the power lies in the hands of those that control the labour and the consumption. Currently, the family institution relies on the economy and political state, but as the bargaining for labour power continues the family is emerging as the dominant force. As new evolutions of families are being allowed to participate in our culture, more power will create more labour and more reproduction. It is a basic fact that history repeats itself, maybe the family will gain the dominant role it had before the industrial revolution and mercantilism.

According to Hugh LaFollette in his essay “Licensing Parents,” it is and would be both right and possible to do so. I will attempt to argue LaFollette’s point by using the different scenarios and analogies presented in his essay. I will also be looking at the different objections to LaFollette’s proposal and his rebuttal to each one. I will then show why I am in agreement with LaFollette and his belief that there is a need for some type of licensing program when it comes to raising children.

In LaFollette’s essay “Licensing Parents,” he argues that all people should be required to go through some sort of licensing program before they are able to have children and then raise them. The goal of his essay is to show that it makes perfect sense to instate such a program and that it would actually be possible to put this program into use. The first thing LaFollette does to show that it is logical for a program of this nature to be used is he compares parental licensing to other forms of licensing in use today. “We require automobile operators to have licenses.

We forbid people from practicing medicine, law, pharmacy, or psychiatry unless they have satisfied certain licensing requirements”(LaFollette 522). There is a reason that America requires its citizens to acquire licenses for driving, medicine, and law. This reason is to protect innocent people from being harmed by incompetent people who are not skilled in these areas. “Imagine a world in which everyone could legally drive a car, in which everyone could legally perform surgery, prescribe medications, dispense drugs, or offer legal advice.

Such a world would hardly be desirable”(LaFollette 522). So why, asks LaFollette, should the parenting of a child be any different? If two incompetent people decide to have a baby, doesn’t that baby stand a risk of being harmed by the parents’ incompetence? Parenting, according to LaFollette, falls under the same licensing category as driving and the practicing of medicine. Just like a bad driver who shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle has a greater chance of harming or killing an innocent person, an incompetent parent runs a greater risk of abusing or damaging their child.

A good example of the injury that can be done to a child is explained by LaFollette while he is discussing the general licensing criteria used to license most things under regulation. He states the fact that parenting can be harmful to children if it is done improperly. He then goes on to state, “Each year more than half a million children are physically abuse or neglected by their parents. Many millions more are psychologically abused or neglected – not given love, respect, or a sense of self-worth. The results of this maltreatment are obvious. Abused children bear the physical and psychological scars of maltreatment throughout their lives.

Far too often they turn to crime. They are far more likely to abuse their own children. Even if the maltreated children never harm anyone, they will probably never be well-adjusted, happy adults”(LaFollette 523). If we as a society know these facts, and can see the cycle that is created, why then do we not attempt to correct the problem before it starts? It is much more difficult to fix a problem after it has started and set in than it is to fix it before it even gets started. That is exactly what the licensing program would do; stop the problem before it even starts.

In his argument for the licensing of parents, LaFollette puts forth the criteria that is used in the licensing of any of the above mentioned activities. “Any activity that is potentially harmful to the others and requires certain demonstrated competence for its safe performance is subject to regulation”(LaFollette 522). Since parenting can be potentially harmful to others it meets the criteria for licensing according to LaFollette. Therefore, any person who rejects the claim that licensing parents is legitimate also rejects the idea that any other activity, such as driving, should be regulated by some sort of licensing procedure (LaFollette).

To some people the idea of licensing parents seems either preposterous or just plain impossible. Because of these general feelings many objections to LaFollette’s essay arise. There are both theoretical objections and practical objections to such parental licensing given to LaFollette. Instead of merely dismissing the objections and continuing to give only his side of the matter, LaFollette takes each objection, looks at it, and gives his rebuttal. First, the main theoretical objection to the licensing of parents that LaFollette deals with is peoples’ freedom in such a matter.

Some people who do not buy LaFollette’s licensing program say, “licensing is unacceptable…since people have a right to have children, just as they have rights to free speech and free religious expression. They do not need a license to speak freely or worship as they wish. Why? Because they have a right to engage in these activities. Similarly, since people have a right to have children, any attempt to license parents would be unjust”(LaFollette 524). In response to this argument LaFollette uses the example of slander and human sacrifice.

Slander is a form of speech and human sacrifice is a form of worship in some religions. But this does not mean that they are protected under the first amendment. The law holds these exceptions so that innocent people can be protected from anything harmful. Parenting should follow the same principal. It is a persons right, some say, to have children. But if two people are obviously not fit to be parents there should be some sort of law to stop them from reproducing before an innocent person, the child, is harmed.

Another point LaFollette makes in response to the rights argument is that people do not actually “have the right” to have children. They are able to produce children, but it is more of a responsibility then it is a right of those people. Just as people do not have a right to drive a car or practice medicine until they have proven that they have the competence to do so, so should people have to prove their competence before raising a child (LaFollette)? A second theoretical objection to licensing of parents comes from the amount of intrusion into the lives of potential parents that such a program would cause.

Many people believe that if such a program were to be instated the government would be able to get way to far into many people’s lives. While LaFollette believes that this is a plausible concern, he argues that the process an adoptive family goes through is far more then he is proposing and nobody seems to have a problem with their criteria. When a family wishes to adopt, they are subjected to house studies, tests, interviews, and must wait a certain amount of time before the adoption goes through.

While LaFollette’s program would only call for some type of competence test to rule out only the very bad potential parents (LaFollette). The next thing LaFollette takes into account is the practical objections to licensing. In this portion of the essay LaFollette considers five different objections. “Each objection focuses on the problems or difficulties of implementing this proposal (the licensing of parents)”(LaFollette 525). I will only be writing about the three objections that do not deal with the misuse of tests after implemented.

The first objection discussed in the essay is that if such a program were to be implemented there would be no way to determine what qualities or traits one should look for in a bad parent. To this objection LaFollette acknowledges its logic. But argues his program would only try to weed out the very worst of the potential parents, not find the best possible parents (LaFollette). “The second practical objection to licensing is that there is no reliable way to predict who will maltreat their children”(LaFollette 526). To this objection LaFollette has a couple of rebuttals.

The first being that society does not require that all licensing tests be 100 percent correct in order to achieve a license. Society also recognizes that the tests we use are sometimes flawed in one way or another, yet they are continuing to be used without objection. Testing for licensing of parents also would not require a 100 percent passing score. Another way that LaFollette believes the testing could be done is through “existing tests that claim to isolate relevant predictive characteristics – whether a person is violence-prone, easily frustrated, or unduly self-centered”(LaFollette 526).

With these different possible tests LaFollette believes that society could make a set a standard that could, with near accuracy, determine who would and would not be a good parent (LaFollette). The Fifth and last objection that is brought to LaFollette’s attention is; “we could never adequately, reasonably, and fairly enforce such a program. That is, even if we could establish a reasonable and fair way of determining which people would be inadequate parents, it would be difficult, if not impossible to enforce the program”(LaFollete 527).

To this argument LaFollette really doesn’t have too much to say. He talks briefly about what would happen to people who disobey the law, which there surely would be some of. The only option that LaFollette can think of in this situation is to put the babies up for adoption. He closes his argument by saying, “If it is important enough to protect children from being maltreated by parents, then surely a reasonable enforcement procedure can be secured”(LaFollette 527). Overall I agree greatly with everything that LaFollette wrote in his essay.

I too believe that some sort of licensing system is exactly what America needs right now. Way too often babies are being born into this world to mothers in their teens. In many of these cases the father is nowhere to be found and young girls are left to raise a child. Maybe a couple hundred years ago it was common practice for girls to be married early and having babies before they turned twenty. But that was then, in a time when ones average life span was near 40 years. In today’s society it is almost mandatory to have a high school diploma, if not a college diploma.

I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think to many fifteen year old girls with a baby are going to be able to complete high school, much less college, without any help. Unfortunately that help isn’t always there for many girls in this situation. Another example where a licensing program would be desirable is in the instance of the “crack whore”. In many cities around the country there are women hooked on hard drugs, going no place in life but down. In many cases these women have been known to have more babies in order to receive a larger amount of welfare.

This welfare money is then taken and sold on the streets for “crack” or other drugs. When this happens, the children are often left neglected because the mother is on heavy drugs and unable to care for her children and malnourished because the food money went to buy drugs (A&E). This is definitely a very sad situation, but it could be avoided if there were laws to either keep the woman from having more unloved, neglected babies, or at least take the babies out of the mothers care.

It is cases like these, and I believe LaFollette would agree, that are exactly the reason why a parental licensing system is greatly needed in America. It would help reduce crime, which is often the result of improper upbringing, and reduce number of children that are abused each year. The only argument of LaFollette’s that I thought was a little weak was his rebuttal to the fifth practical objection that the program could never be enforced. To this objection LaFollette really can’t think of anything to say.

His answer is much shorter than the rest of his rebuttals, and really carries no weight. I think he could have come up with a much better answer. In conclusion, LaFollette argues for the implication of some form of parental licensing to reduce the amount of abuse cases and crimes in America. In doing so he touches upon different aspects of his licensing system and fields both theoretical and practical objections to such a system. I also discussed my opinions on the subject of parental licensing and why I believe it would be a good idea to do.

Aboriginal family life has been disrupted and forcibly changed over the last two hundred years, as a result of the many segregation and assimilation policies introduced by Australian governments. Often a combination of the two was employed. The policy of segregation has impacted upon Aboriginal family life, for through this policy, Aboriginals were restricted and prohibited to practice their traditional culture, hence, resulting in the loss of their Indigenous identity and limiting the cultural knowledge for future Aboriginal generations.

The segregation policy also achieved in disfiguring the roles of family members, primarily the male’s role within the family. The policy of assimilation, in comparison to the segregation policies, has also affected Aboriginal family life, because through the removal of children from their Aboriginal homes they to as a result were deprived of their Indigenous identity and cultural links.

However, the policy of assimilation has had far greater an impact upon Aboriginal family life, for it has not only separated families and communities, but denied the parenting and nurturing of a generation of Aboriginal peoples and has also attributed to breakdowns in relationships between the non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal parent. As European domination began, the way in which the Europeans chose to deal with the Aborigines was through the policy of segregation. This policy included the establishment of a reserve system.

The government reserves were set up to take aboriginals out of their known habitat and culture, while in turn, encouraging them to adapt the European way of life. The Aboriginal Protection Act of 1909 established strict controls for aborigines living on the reserves . In exchange for food, shelter and a little education, aborigines were subjected to the discipline of police and reserve managers. They had to follow the rules of the reserve and tolerate searchers of their homes and themselves. Their children could be taken away at any time and apprenticed out as cheap labour for Europeans.

The old ways of the Aborigines were attacked by regimented efforts to make them European . Their identities were threatened by giving them European names and clothes, and by removing them from their traditional lands and placing them on centralised reserves among Aboriginal people from many different tribes. The policy of segregation had an enormous impact on the lives of aborigines. Despite being discriminated against, the aboriginal people were being deprived the right to practice and maintain traditional aspects of their culture, thus their children were being taught to reject their aboriginality.

In turn the rapid decline in population meant that many elders were dead and thus many rituals and traditions were lost . The loss of elders and the prohibition of practicing rituals impacted on aboriginal family life, as a result of being unable to show their children traditional dances, native language and stories of the dreamtime, cultural knowledge was not sufficiently carried on or passed down to the next generation therefore hindering Aboriginal traditional life and depriving Aboriginal children of their indigenous identity. The reserves also held repercussions for the structure and roles within the aboriginal family.

The role and status of men more than women was effected, thus many Aboriginal men, especially unemployed, slipped into aimlessness . Traditionally the male role within the family was that of hunter and gatherer. It was the husband, or fathers role to find and provide food for his family. As a result of Aboriginals being considered inferior to whites, thus acquiring a lower rate of pay, many families became dependent on food handouts provided by the missionaries and reserves, thus the fathers role of gathering for his family was subsequently lost, in turn isolating and alienating him from his family.

Due to what was seen as the Aboriginal fathers inadequacies, despite having been placed in areas where there was little employment, segregation had accentuated assimilation, for the preparation had been adequately achieved. In comparison, to the policy of segregation, the policy of assimilation introduced the separation of Aboriginal children from their parents and the indoctrination of the children into non-Aboriginal ways, thus having a profound influence on Aboriginal family life. The policy of assimilation was officially adopted in 1937; its essence was the concept of one Australian society .

The ideal of the government policy was to encourage the absorption of Aboriginals both racially and culturally, into mainstream white society . The policy of assimilation coupled with the poverty of many Aboriginal families attained from the exploitation of working in the reserves proved to be a double bind. Aboriginal people were supposed to assimilate into the dominant Australian society despite the prejudice and racism, which confronted them. In turn, this failure to assimilate and the impoverished circumstances of many Aboriginal people provided the grounds for the removal of Aboriginal children .

The Australian government believed that although it may have been to late to assimilate adult aborigines into Australian society, that wasnt the case for the next generation of aborigines, the children. It was believed that by removing the children from their aboriginal parents and placing them among other non-indigenous peoples that the process of assimilation would be easier and that over time, indigenous culture and identity would disappear, thus, that it would not be possible to tell indigenous and non-indigenous people apart .

The removal of children from their families had similar consequences to that of the segregation policies in relation to Aboriginal family life. In connection to the impact segregation policies had on Aboriginal family life, the removal of children deepened the loss of cultural knowledge and further hindered indigenous identity. One principal effect of the forcible removal policies was the destruction of cultural links. Culture, language, land and identity were stripped away from children in hope that the traditional law and culture would die by losing their claim on them and sustenance of them .

As noticed in the segregation policies, cultural links were lost, while living in non-indigenous homes the children were discouraged or prevented from seeing their aboriginal families, in turn this denied the child any involvement in his or her traditional origins, thus due to not being able to communicate with elders they in turn did not learn about their spiritual beliefs, ceremonies or traditional song or dance. These children were deprived of their right to the songs, and the spiritual and cultural heritage that was theirs .

The response of some people brought up to be white is to deny their heritage . In turn their descendants are disinherited. This loss of identity, their strong sense of not belonging either in the Indigenous community or the non-Indigenous community, had ramifications for individuals well being and in turn the well being of their families. The other comparison between the segregation and assimilation policies and the impact they had on Aboriginal family life is in accordance with the traditional male role.

Following the removal of their children, Indigenous men generally lost their purpose in relation to their families and communities. Often their individual responses to that loss took them away from their families: on drinking binges, in hospital following accidents or assaults in the gaol or lock-up, or prematurely dead. For Aboriginal boys, the compromise of traditional and contemporary role models resulting from the fathers absence or functional unavailability has damaging impact on the development of male identity .

There is enough evidence, however, to suggest that despite their apparent similarities, the removal of children, thus policy of assimilation, has had a longer lasting affect on Aboriginal family life, as opposed to the segregation policies. As opposed to the policy of segregation, the forcible removal of children has had a far greater impact on Aboriginal family life for it has impacted on the way future Aboriginal generations parent and not only hurt Indigenous peoples, but also non-Indigenous parents who lost their half caste children through the removal.

Most forcibly removed children were denied the experience of being parented or at least cared for by a person to whom they were attached. This is the very experience people rely on to become effective and successful parents themselves, for this reason the assimilation policies have had the far greater affect on the functioning of Aboriginal families. As expressed in the Inquiry into the removal of Indigenous children, this was the most significant of all the major consequences of the assimilation policies .

The fact that many children from the stolen generation missed the experience of being properly parented has widely impacted on Aboriginal family life, for the denial of this experience has resulted in individuals whose ability to parent his or her own children is severely compromised . As a result of being raised were there is no history of family caring or nurturing, which there was a fair degree of in the institutionalisation upbringing, people who were removed dont have the social and emotional skills to cope, thus the child has been deprived of its role models .

In contrast, the policy of segregation separated Indigenous from non-Indigenous, while still allowing Aboriginal families to remain together, thereby in contrast to the policy of assimilation, children were still able to learn from role models and form bonds of affection with their parents, factors that removed children were greatly denied. The other primary factor that distinguishes the impact both segregation and assimilation policies had on Aboriginal family life, arrives from the fact that because mixed race children were particularly targeted for removal, non-Indigenous parents and families also lost children.

This impacted on Aboriginal family life because in some circumstances it led to breakdown in those relationships between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parent. How do you tell your father that its okay: that it wasnt their fault; and that his whiteness and maleness in a patriarchal society that should have been enough to protect any persons family, did no good because of the nature of the relationship with his partner?

As opposed to the policy of removal, the segregation policy discouraged only Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, therefore the children who were born half caste, usually had a European parent who accepted having nothing to do with them. While on the other hand, many whites who had chosen to raise their half caste children only to have them also removed, despite them being white, experienced equally the trauma and grief, capsulated also by the Indigenous parents whose children were also taken.

Despite having no intention of harming non-Indigenous peoples, many were hurt and this impacted on further relations with their children. In conclusion, Aboriginal family life has been widely affected by the combination of segregation and assimilation policies passed by Australian governments. Both policies equally impacted on Aboriginal family life in regards to the prohibition and discouragement of the Aboriginals involvement in their traditional culture.

This in effect, prevented the continuation of an ancient culture, depriving many Aboriginal generations of cultural knowledge and in turn not understanding their Indigenous identities. The segregation and assimilation policies additionally had an impact on the role models and roles within the Aboriginal family. The policy of segregation impacted on the fathers position in the family, for as a result of the exploited labour, many fathers were unable to provide for their families, thus primary provider for the Aboriginal family came from the handouts given by the managers on the reserves.

Despite both policies having an equal amount of impact upon Aboriginal family life in relation to lost cultural links and family members roles, there is evidence to suggest that the policy of assimilation, thus the removal of children had a far longer lasting affect. The assimilation policies not only contributed to the separation of families and whole communities, but also affected both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples and is the result of many inter-generational problems among Aboriginals, such as parenting, thus overall has had a greater impact on Aboriginal family life.

These are the questions that many people in America ask. They battle with these questions everyday when they think about the way their family acts. I have also battle with these questions especially when it comes to my family. My family is one of uniqueness, which causes lots of conflicts. I battle an individualistic sister, a communitarian mother, and a civic republican brother. With all these different personalities in the house it is no wonder it seems like our house is a lifestyle enclave. Looking at my family is like looking at American homes today.

It shows the effect of a society that is all about on the go activities. My sister would be in my own words a perfect example of an individualistic person. She like in the book Habits of the Heart only deals with issues that are important to her. My sister focuses on what can make her life better and if this involves some kind of communitarian activity only then will she participate. She mostly jumps from relationship to relationship because of her need for pleasure. It matters not to my sister what is going on with the world unless it affects her personally.

A good example of this is when my sister and I volunteered at a local shelter for Thanksgiving. This is a ritual that I have keep since my grandfather past away. My sister went to the shelter this year in order to get some volunteer hours for her transcript because she wants to transfer to another college. At the shelter she saw first hand for the first time in her life people less fortunate then herself. This shook her up, and made her think about how lucky she is only then was my sister finally concerned about the homeless problem in America.

Even though, this sound likes a made for television movie they show each year, around the holidays it is true and shows how like my sister the individualistic community of America that we live in. In this way she is a perfect example of individualism in America. Moreover, my mother is on the other end of the spectrum. My mother in her own words Gives a piece of herself to everyone. She is a very good example of a communitarian. The first sample of her kindness starts with her occupation. My mother has been a junior high school teacher for 25 years. During this time many people have realized my mother’s giving and kindness for her community.

She is always willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to help make a difference in a student’s life. However, her occupation is just the start of her giving. She is also a community leader through her second career as a pastor. She has only been a preacher for 6 years however; she has been able to do a lot for her church and her community during this time. She is always bringing her work home. Like a good communitarian she does everything to help better the community. My mother has only three children but has thousands of adopted children. She loves all her children the same even the adopted ones.

A good example of this is what occurred during my last trip home. I came home because of the illness of my grandmother. My mother has to sit up with my grandmother just in case she gets up and hurts herself in the middle of the night. This is a very trying time for my mother however she took a piece of her time to counsel one of her adopted daughters. This girl was on the verge of committing suicide. My mother helped her realize how important she is to the world. My mother gives of her time to help the better of the community without personal gain. This helps show she is a good example of a communitarian.

However, my brother is different from all of us. He is what I call the good American boy. He also is a product of social groups the government made to help kids become aware of what the government is and how it runs. My brother is only 14 but tries to get involved in every political group he can get involved in. He believes without the government in our society our nation would not be as prosperous as we are. It is surprising at a young age how much involved he is in the thought of politics and government in America. He is a good example of a civic republican.

More important, the mix of a civic republican individualistic person, and a communitarian is hard to understand. A lot of times the house feels like a place that these different personalities just stay under due to the fact they are related not unlike a lifestyle enclave. We share the similar lifestyle of being a family but don’t associate with each other unless a family problem comes up. This shows how my family is a good example of a lifestyle enclave. However, my family seems to stay together and survive just like America will survive its individualistic stage of its history, and finally remember caring about community makes us stronger.

One of the main institutions in society is found within the household and is popularly known as The Family. It is here, in the family, where the commencement of society takes place. It is amongst this unit that the origin of womens oppression began with the constant power struggle between man and woman. With the nuclear family slowly being thrown out the window and the new dual-earner family creeping in to takes its place, its no wonder that womens positions have changed radically over the past one hundred years.

The key work here to this being position, because although womens position has changed, their workload has not. With this radical change many issues can be addressed, particularly, to the womens role and how it has remained fairly constant over the years. A closer examination will look at the development of gender inequality within the family as a result of the ever-changing issue. A second issue that needs to be inspected is that the family roles have changed in regards to family make-up as women have moved into the work force.

This growing capital effort to increase standards of living by pushing every family member into the paid labour force has taken a toll on the family unit. The final issue that will be investigated in this report is how the traditional sex roles have remained constant, even with womens ever-changing family position over the years. For decades, commencing back to the time when patriarchy was the norm and women were their husbands property, men have oppressed women. This ideology of patriarchy existed way before it was ever examined by sociologists and it was accepted as a natural or biological way of living.

It wasnt until the 1960’s when feminist groups began to explore patriarchy and at the same time began to exploit it, that patriarchy was established. Feminists at that time, and even still today, believe that patriarchy operates to achieve and maintain gender inequality and is the essential key to womens present subordination. Not only does patriarchy exist in the pubic domain of the paid labour force, but also in the private domain of the household, or better yet, the family.

With patriarchy by its side, gender inequality has developed into one of the biggest controversies amongst sociologists, feminist groups, and women. In modern day society women are working their way into the labour force, and expanding their roles to include working outside the home as well as being wives and mothers (Kaufman, 1999, 440). As women are moving into the paid labour force, they continue to work longer hours than do their husbands on household tasks, and there is little evidence that mens proportionate share of the family work has changed much during the past decade or so (Blair, 1991, 91).

Although women are moving into the paid labour force at a fairly fast pace, according to Kaufman, mens involvement in domestic roles has increased but at a slower pace than womens entrance into the labour market (Kaufman, 1999, 440). Womens entrance into the labour market evolved rather rapidly from approximately less than 30% in the 1960’s to currently more than 45% of women are in the paid labour force (Levin, class note, Womens Studies). There are many reasons for the increase of womens labour force participation.

The main fact being that the North American standard of living has increased drastically in the past decades, and that double-incomes are needed in order to survive. Along with the increase in standard of living, divorce rates are increasing leaving women with children to support on their own, and therefore, women must find outside work. There are also fewer children to raise, therefore, women have more time to work and raise their children. Also, there is a great change in societal attitudes that push women into the work force.

Finally, with pay equity policies having been established, it is much easier for women to find work that will pay enough to support her and her family. Historical factors have weighed heavily on women’s current status. In the nineteenth century, attitudes toward women were very different to the present attitudes placed upon them now. In the nineteenth century, there was a great need for women to work. Working class women had jobs in clothing factories, or worked as seamstress. Their work was more domestic-related. Middle class women were not expected to work. There were some jobs, but they were very limited.

Middle class women were more expected to teach, to support themselves, until they found a husband. During this time there was a lower value place on a womens work than that of a mans. Therefore, women were paid less to do the same work as men were. This lower value on womens work accounted for androcentric biases, which put men at a higher standing in their work. Men were often paid more for dangerous, dirty, and physical work such as mining. On the contrary, women who worked, per say as nurses whom also did heavy lifting and dirty work, were undervalued and underpaid.

These biases brought into play occupational segregation, which implied that men and women tend to do different jobs because of their gender. According to Luhaorg and Zivian, women have remained concentrated in predominately female occupations, i. e. , clerical, sales, and service occupations,… while men enjoy a much more heterogeneous occupational structure; no major occupational category being dominant (Luhaorg, 1995, 608). Luckily for women, in the 1980’s, federal law declared solutions to their two major problems involving the work force.

Pay equity was established to solve the problem of the wage gap, which enforced that people who work the exact same jobs were to earn the exact same pay. The second solution that was established by the government was employment equity, which helped with occupational segregation and gave employers a set of strategies to follow in order to provide women the same opportunities in the labour market as men. With these regulations set into place, women moved into the work force during the 1980’s at full force, and have continued to do so. Not only did this put pressure on the paid labour force, but it also put pressure on the family unit.

In order to carry out its daily functions as a family, the modern family depends heavily on all the institutions of a society for support. Where as in the past, the family was an independent unit that depended on nothing and no one. With this in mind, the family and the fact that the majority of families have both spouses working outside the home means that dual-earners and dual-career families are becoming the norm in American society (Mintz, 1996, 805). Indeed there are many positive outcomes to having both spouses in the paid labour force, but at the same time there are many stresses for these families (Mintz, 1996, 805).

According to Mintz, these stresses usually revolve around balancing the demand of the paid labour and the demand of the family labour (Mintz, 1996, 805). Throughout the years, the family unit has changed drastically. With dual earner families being the most popular types of families. Three types of dual earner family ideologies were identified by Lye. Those three are the Traditional, Modern, and Egalitarian. As the trend of double income family household increases, the breakdown of the traditional system (Lye, 1993, 157) due to women entering the paid labour force has had profound transformation with respect to family life and gender roles.

The Traditional family as identified by Mintz and Mahalik is described briefly as marriage based on a form on benevolent male dominance couple with clearly specialized roles that are assigned on the basis of gender (Mintz and Mahalik, 1996, 806). To further explain this, the traditional family is a women who identifies with her activities at home and the man bases his identification on his paid work. Generally, the wife is to have less power than her husband does in relation to all aspects of their marriage.

The second type of family, the Egalitarian Family, is described by Mintz and Mahalik as a rejection of both of these ideas (Mintz & Mahalik, 1996, 806) referring to the traditional family. Further explained, the Egalitarian Family is the husband and wife identifying with the same sphere, home and work, or identifying with the same balance between the two spheres of home and work. In this family relationship, the power amongst both the man and the woman is to be distributed evenly, and the same value is to be held upon both husband and wifes paid and unpaid work.

The third type of family is the Modern Family. Mintz and Mahalik describe this type of family as representing a middle position within the marriage (Mintz & Mahalik, 1996, 806). The modern family, also known as the transitional family, is further explained by a wife who is to identify with activities both related to paid and unpaid labour, where as the husband is to relate his identification to strictly his paid work. With the explanation of these three types of families, it is easy to say that along with the types of families changing, the roles of the family have also changed.

Taking a closer look at womens roles, and comparing them to mens roles, Lye said that changing family and gender role attitudes are indicative of a weakening of traditional normative constraints that used to offer the well-defined adult roles of husband-father-breadwinner and wife-mother-homemaker so that diverse range of adult roles are now acceptable and coexist. Referring to the different types of families above, Lye clearly explains that it is also possible to have many different types of family roles and expectations working together in the same familial.

Lye also believes that the effects of mens and womens attitudes vary according to their spouses attitudes and to be greater where husbands and wives disagree (Lye 1993, 160). Therefore, men and womens roles strongly depend on the expectations and attitudes that they have set in regards to family roles or gender roles. Having different views concerning family life reduces marital satisfaction of the balancing (Lye, 1993, 183). It is locating an equilibrium that couples find difficult to do in regards to family life and gender roles.

Even today as women are entering the workforce, Kaufman found that wives do four-fifths of the cooking, laundry, and shopping as well as two-thirds of the child care, cleaning, and dishwashing (Kaufman, 1999, 440). For example, Blair & Lichter found that wives perform 96% of the cooking, 92% of the dishwashing, 90% of the vacuuming, 94% of the bed making, and 94% of the diapering of children (Blair, 1991, 93). At the other end of the scale, Blair and Lichter found that husbands performed 86% of household repairs, 80% of the disciplining of children, 75% of the lawn mowing, and 77% of the snow shovelling (Blair, 1991, 93).

These percentages seem rather irrelevant due to the fact that division of household labour is much more than who does what. Blair and Lichter discuss three prominent theories of the division of household labour. They are time availability, power theory, and gender role. The theory of time availability relates to the fact that if a spouse is working full-time outside the home, it is more difficult for he or she to perform the daily household tasks.

Blair and Lichter described this theory as the partner with the most available time presumably will assume the greatest share of household duties. Although this theory seems irrelevant in the explanation of why men do less work in the household, it does not explain why women are still doing the same amount even when she works the same hours as her husband. The power theory is a gender segregated theory that suggests that because women are of lower status to their husband, in regards to paid labour force earnings, the mens paid labour force job is more prestigious than his wifes.

Blair and Lichter raise an issue when they say that family power, which is typically measured by the personal resource of each spouse may also affect the allocation of domestic tasks by reinforcing traditional assignments of tasks by gender (Blair, 1991, 94). Although this theory does make sense, family power is not always divided by who makes more money. The third theory identified by Blair and Lichter is the gender role ideology, and the fact that by nature women are socialised to perform related to tasks to their femininity, as well as men are raised to perform related tasked to their masculinity.

This theory is more related to traditional sex roles of the expressive wife and the instrumental husband. Blair and Lichter report that females are more likely to be assigned to traditional female orientated tasks, such as cleaning, washing, and cooking (Blair, 1991, 94). Whereas men are more likely to perform male dominated tasks such as snow shovelling, taking out the garbage, car repairs, lawn mowing, and household repairs.

Stable, healthy, two-parent families still appear to do the best job of raising kids. But when income and job status are taken into account, children raised by single mothers are nearly as likely to succeed in adulthood, and, interestingly enough, they are even more likely to succeed than children raised in homes headed by a stepfather or a single father. Kids from male-headed households, single dads, do worse socioeconomically than kids from mother-headed homes and also two-parent stepfamilies, said USC sociologist Timothy Biblarz, the study’s lead author.

The study analyzed a survey of 22,761 men ranging in age from 25 to 64. They had been asked to report the occupation of the head of the household in which they grew up and to list their own occupations. All occupations were ranked on a 100-point scale, with 100 requiring the most education and returning the most income. Men from traditional families averaged 42 on the scale, while men in mother-headed households averaged 40, no matter whether the mothers had been divorced, widowed or never married. Children from other types of nontraditional families ranked 35.

Previous studies from the mid-’60s on have presumed that children did poorly in single-mother homes because the structure itself was pathological. Even researchers skeptical about the effects of family structure on children’s development have pushed for policies to bring a man into a divorced home because of his paycheck. They assume if there’s a divorce, you’ve got to have policies to encourage remarriage to get a man back into the household because of added income, Biblarz said. Our findings challenge that to some extent. Most negative effects were due to the greater likelihood that single mothers would be unemployed, Biblarz said.

When you compare two-parent households where fathers were managerial / professional with kids whose single mothers were managerial / professional, there’s not a lot of difference between the socioeconomic outcomes as they get into adulthood. The researchers suspected a stepparent’s extra income may be offset by other issues and problems that can arise, such as a greater emotional distance or uncertainty and more conflict. Bringing a man into the home doesn’t mean kids will get a high level of investment from that stepparent, Biblarz said.

The analysis suggests that, if you want your kid to maintain the same status or class you’re in, having Mom around and plugged into the family is more important than Dad, said Jeffery Evans, health science administrator for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Until recently, however, much more was known about mothers than fathers and the evidence is far from clear yet about which gender parent is more important, and for what at which age, he said. The real question is, to what extent is father involvement good?

It now appears that fathers contribute by helping kids develop street smarts and that they take on a more significant role in the later years of a child’s development, he said. It is also clear that after a divorce, joint custody makes a difference in promoting father involvement–and it is as beneficial to the fathers as it is to the children. After a divorce, he said, You’d hate to see moms cut out, and you’d hate to see dads cut out. The net effect of these studies indicate there’s a price to be paid for deleting one of the traditional pairs, and the old-fashioned notion that it’s good to have a mom and a dad is still a pretty good idea.

The wilsons are what you would call a typical 1950s american family. They consist of the father and husband Frank, housewife linda, oldest child Tommy age 17, Cheryl age 16, Mikey age 10, and Suzie age 8. Thay are a white middle class family that lives in the suburb autside little rock, Arkansas. The neighborhood was modled after Levittown, a famous sururb community outside of New York. Right now it’s monday morning and the wilsons are starting off their week. “Breakfast is ready”, yells linda. She has just prepared pancakes, sausages, and orange juice for her whole family.

Also, she just finished ironing her husband’s dress shirt for work. On her way back to the kitchen, she recieves a huge kiss from her husband, seeing as she felt her identity was riding on him; since she never managed to finish college. “Oh Mother, the food smells so good! “, suzie enthusiastically bellows in excitement. They all sit sit down and happily eat their foos together, while linda goes around and serving them seconds, pouring them juice and cofee, and washing some disshes. Tommy and sheryl finish and are ready to go to school, Central High. “Bye mom and dad, we love you” they both say.

We love you too kids, have a fun day” they replied back Tommy and cheryl getbin the car, and tommy drives them to school. Frank had jus gotten the car from the dealer. It was a 1958 chevelle, with all the luxuries. Frank Wilson could afford it, since he was an executive workng with a prestigious farming products factory; where he worked for the animal feed division. The bank was more than happy to lend him the money for the car, seeing that his job with the factory was stable, the farming industry was growing and he qualified perfectly as an average middle class white man.

He was no different that any of his coworkers. “Jailhouse Rock is really good… By elvis right? ” Asks tommy “Why yes! ” says cheryl. The tune was blasting on a radical radio station playing rock music. It was 1957, the year of the little rock nine. Tommy and Cheryl were rather neutral towards segregation, they had good moral values. They had heard about the incident earlier that year, but they didn’t pay any attention to it. Furthermore, Cheryl brought her slynky along to school. She was one of the first to have a slynky in her group of frineds. It was their favorite passtime.

According to Cheryl, it would be the new Barbie doll, but she was to old for dolls. Tommy had a surge of courage and decided to ask Marie out, on a date. He told her that they would go to the Drive-In that had just opened outside of town. A John Wayne double feature was playing, that’s all tommy cared about. He really liked westerns, since he always satdown and watched it with his dad on TV. The television set was new at the house too. The older model they had burnt out a few months back. Frank decide to get another one just as soon as the neighbors got theirs. It was also a growing passtime in the 50s.

Thay day in school saw the beginning of a polio vaccination campaing led by the county hospital. It was a huge threat all around the US, so the campain proved to be succesful in that area. Tommy and cheryl didn’t really care since they already had a shot a few months back. Nevertheless, they were in awe after seeing the endless line for vaccination. By the end of the school day Tommy had a date for friday with Marie and Cheryl had learned how to wash dishes and bake muffins all at the same time. On the way back home they listened to the new Rock’n roll station earlier mentioned. It was playing James Brown.