According to Thorne and Luria, the aspect of childhood experience that serves as one of the main sources of gender differences are the gendered games and social interactions on the playground, making up gender segregation. Boys tend to play more competitive games and band into large groups to get away with rule breaking. They swear more and are more fascinated by sexuality into adolescents rather than fostering relationships with girls. Girls tend to separate into pairs instead of large groups, usually based on their "best friend" of the particular time. They focus on niceness, thoughtfulness and friendships rather than the competitiveness inherent in boys. Children maintain gender segragation through these social rituals and hence form theirdifferent patterns of bonding-boys share the arousal of rule-breaking as a group and girls focus on the construction of intimacy and romance.
According to Goldscheider and Waite children in contemporary families contribute to only about 15% of household tasks, drastically less than children in previous generations. In general, the bigger the family was, the more housework the children did, and overall as children got older they took on more responsibility in the home. The biggest variance between genders rests on the idea of "female chores". Girls prove to participate in five times more chores than boys of the same age. Children interstingly played a greater role in household tasks when living with step-parents than when living with both biological parents.
According to Annette Lareau, the models of childrearing differ by race and class. Middle class parents, regardless of class, enroll their children in leisure activities and organized activities to help foster their personal development. Working class and poor parents leaned more towards natural growth and personal development, naturally due to their economic situation. Consequently, middle-class children, regardless of race, seemed to gain a greater sense of entitlement from their family life, and thus race had much less impact than social class on childrearing.
The signs of commercialization of childhood presented in Juliet Schor’s article are driven by marketing and adverstising. As children watch more TV they are more greatly influenced by the ads they are bombarded with, and thus at a very young age are already aware of and influenced by brand names and materialism. TV, video games, the internet-all sources of commercialization that impressionable children are surrounded by have affected many parts of their lives, including nutrition, unsafe practices such as consuming drugs and alcohol, and most importantly their values and psychological state, which are now heavily guided by materialism and the idea that wealth will make you happy.

According to Joseph Pleck, the role of fathers has noticeably changed in the United States over time. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the father held the role of moral teacher. It was his duty to teach his children reading and writing as well as to ensure they were educated religiously and morally. He was also in charge of the courtship of his children and arranging their marriages. By the twentieth century, parenting responsibilities became highly gendered and the role of the father decreased significantly. The idea of maternal custody gained importance, and with the influence of the industrial revolution, the father's relationship became increasingly distant from his children. However, he still maintained his duty as moral overseer and established discipline. Today, the dominant role of fathers is that of bread winner, with an emphasis on providing for the family, financially in particular. The ideal of the new father has emerged though and is on the rise, which holds the vision of the father being equally as involved as the mother in day to day child care and raising the children. I see this ideal as the primary expectation of fathers today. Fathers now are expected to be involved in all aspects of their children's lives, both of their sons and daughters, and are expected to share the responsibilities in the household that were typically reserved for mothers in the past. I believe that fathers today are expected to shed the heightened masculine stereotype of being the bread winner and adopt a nurturing and involved role instead.
According to Francice Deutsch, couples with children decide to work alternating shifts mainly for financial reasons, especially influenced by the high cost of child care. Many couples also believe that children should be raised by their family for optimum nurturing and development, and are worried about placing the care of their child in the hands of strangers. The decision based on monetary troubles directly relates to class, as a couple of lower socioeconomic standings often to not have the money to pay for outside child care. Choosing to work alternating shifts for this reason is not limited to lower class couples though, as many couples who could afford child care simply do not want to spend that much money on it. The psychological reasons for working alternating shifts is often attributed to the working class. Traditional gender ideology is more highly supported among the working class, who still carry with them the ideal of traditional family life, where the father goes to work and the mother stays home to care for the children. I don't think that I would select an alternating shift policy when I start a family, as although it is economically beneficial, it sets a very rigid schedule for couples, and I feel like it would allow for very little time for my husband and I to be together. So while we would both be spending important time raising our child, we would be lacking the significant time of raising our child together and interacting as a family.
According to Dorothy Roberts, the societal forces that discourage family participation of black fathers include the cultural acceptance of single mothers, as well as the high unemployment and incarceration rates among black men. The elements of black fatherhood that led to the creation of the myth of the Absent Black Father rests highly on the fact that black fathers were not included in the separate spheres ideology. Black men are stigmatized with the label of not being able to financially care for their families, and are overwhelmingly noticed for the instances of negativity surrounding unmarried black fathers, such as illegitimacy and lack of commitment, rather than noticed for the instances where they actually do contribute to their children's wellbeing. Many patterns of black men's behavior actually contradict this myth, especially the fact that black fathers prove to maintain strong contact with their children even when separated from them, and actually provided more informal care and support than white absent fathers.

I would say in general I come from a fairly open-minded and accepting family in terms of race, gender, class and sexuality. In terms of race, my parents sometimes say racist comments, which although unacceptable, i belief to be simply due to their generation, because in practice they are completely accepting of all races. They had no problem when I dated an African American in high school, and are good friends with individuals from many different backgrounds.
In terms of gender, my mom is the dominant one in the family when it comes to making decisions and organizing our lives, and definitely does not take a submissive role to my father. Though my father respects my mother infinitely and is aware that she holds much responsibility in the family, he still holds outdated views on gender, such as that women should cook and clean and always be there to serve and care for their husbands. I think due to how much his mother spoiled him and his brothers, as well as the strictly stereotypical housewife role she led, my father in some way expects, or maybe even wishes for, my mother to lead a similar role. For this reason he always expects the house to be clean and for dinner to be ready and served to him when he comes home from work. This often causes tension in our home as my mother is very strong and independent and sees her role in the family as far from just cooking and cleaning.
Social class and sexuality show a less prominent impression on my family life as they are equally greatly respected. My parents have instilled in us a respect for individuals of every social class as well as a responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. My family is definitely well off however not overly wealthy, so we have a hard work ethic and an appreciation for hard earned money. Sexuality is definitely a highly respected and conservative notion in my family as well. My father is very aware of being respectful to women, and very against degrading and inappropriate comments or actions toward women. This definitely impacted his strictness on us girls dating and his fatherly-figure over-protectiveness.
In general the views that my family has on these issues seem favorable and honorable to me, and in that sense they seem like the ideal family values and thus have shaped my ideas on families in that way. Any negative views on these issues, including racism, stereotyping, ignorance and degradation, would cause tension in the family and have a negative impact on children and their views. I definitely think that the messages that parents send via their views on such issues shape their children's attitudes and actions.
Accordingly, this will affect my future family life by making sure that my husband and I send open, accepting messages about different classes and genders to our children. I think that even regardless of the views we hold, it is imperative to convey an open-minded attitude to our children. I feel that it is important to avoid creating tension in the home based on these important social issues in order to be sure to maintain openness toward diversity.

According to Hays, there are four historical stages of development in the cultural notions of appropriate mothering in America in 17-20th centuries. In the middle ages, children were viewed as demonic and mothering was viewed as affection mixed with aggression and fear, with mutual obligations mixed with the pursuit of personal advantage. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a value was placed on children, with an emphasis on their innocence, manifested by the separate spaces and activities provided solely for them. This change occurred only in Europe though, as in New England it was believed that mothering should be guided by the Bible, and that children should be shaped by punishment, religious instruction and work. By the 19th century, mothering was influenced by the revolutionary era, and it was believed that mothers should be educated for their role and be "scientifically trained" in reason and overcoming passion, and thus her natural instinct as a woman was no longer adequate for mothering. The last stage, through the early 20th century, shed the idea of rigid scheduling and training, and instead placed emphasis on developing the child's inherent goodness. Mothering focused on developing the child and fulfilling the child's desires.
In Crittenden's view, the main indicators that mothering is devalued in the United States are that stay-at-home mothers are viewed as doing nothing all day long, and their hard work is dismissed as a job in itself. Further, the traditional economic thinking of our society dismisses a housewife's work as she does not bring in any capital, and in every major institution, caregiving on a resume is in fact penalized. Thus, America's business, government and law do not reflect the proclaimed value of child rearing and motherhood. I agree with Crittenden's view that mothering is highly devalued in the US. Mothers who make the sacrifice of quitting their jobs in order to raise a child are later given less societal respect because they "don't work" and "do nothing". While US morals claim to place a huge importance on family values and mothering, the women who do stay at home are seen as inferior to those with jobs that bring money into the home.
According to Collins, the two types of mothering that Black women tend to display are the controlling type and the expressive type. In relation to "motherhood as a symbol of power", the first views motherhood as burdensome and believes it makes them partners in their own oppression by stifling their creativity and ability to work. The latter sees motherhood as a form of self-actualization, and see the values of mothering as a means toward social activism.
According to Edin and Kefalas, the poor women's attitudes on and experiences with marriage and childbearing are that one should wait until they have completed their education and have a job before getting married and especially before having children, with a stress on economic independence as a factor in saving a marriage. However, some of the young poor mothers expressed childrearing as providing them with a sense of purpose in their already spiraling, volatile adolescent lives. Edin and Kefalas state that society must provide these young women with more access to jobs that provide economic independence to lower the rate of teen pregnancy amongst the poor and lift them out of poverty. I agree with this statement, for the lives of these young mothers must be straightened out long before they even become pregnant. None of them wished to have a baby so young, and thus the education system must be fixed, and the women must see their futures as hopeful, with the possibility of acquiring a rewarding job, in order to keep them on track and avoid falling into drugs and early sexual relationships.

According to Hafner-Eaton and Pierce, some prefer to give birth at home with the assistance of a midwife for various reasons. These include the increase in obstetrical attempts to manage childbirth in a "medicalized manner", that home births have lower intervention, complication and mortality rates than hospital births, that midwifes focus on the mother as a whole being, viewing birth as a natural function for a woman, and accordingly that midwifes have a special body of knowledge that obstetricians do not have, achieved through experience and familiarity with the female body. I believe that the best setting for giving birth is wherever the mother feels most comfortable. If knowing that she has immediate medical help in case of a sudden emergency is reassuring to her, then the hospital is probably the best setting, but if comfort, both physical, mental and emotional is more important, then birth at home is the best setting. I was unaware of the popularity of giving birth at home, but now see the appeal in giving birth with the assistance of a midwife instead.
The legal ties between parents and children have changed over time as the law progressively views children more and more as distinct individuals. It still though, views the authority of parents as sacred, and while the law controls education and will take a child away from abusive parents, the general rights of parents are constitutionally protected. Adoption laws have changed starting in 1926 when Parliament in England enacted the Adoption of Children Act; before that, adoption was not recognized. Until 1976, parents with children already were not allowed to adopt. Colonial America passed its first adoption law in Massachusetts in 1851, and by the end of the century adoption laws were recognized nation wide, with little emphasis on blood relations. Historically, the function of adoption was mainly economic-it allowed farming families to pass on their property to their own child, even if adopted; it also allowed for family names to be continued, even if the couple was unable to give birth to a biological child. Today, it is more socially acceptable for a single women who becomes pregnant to keep her baby, yet the desire to adopt is still high, so couples have even transcended stereotypical boundaries of race and are adopting children from other countries.
According to Sharon Hays, the conservative and liberal views of welfare differ vastly. Conservatives stigmatize welfare recipients as lazy, permiscuous and pathologically dependent, and believe that the welfare system perpetuates poverty and promotes the increase of dependence on welfare. Liberals instead argue that any problems of morality within poor families are the result of economic hardship, not the cause, and thus that welfare reform needs to focus on providing better economic care to the poor. The main differences between the requirements introduced by the welfare reform of 1996 and the earlier welfare policies include that earlier policies were marked by the War on Poverty, and the formation of the National Welfare Rights Organization, that equalized aid, created federal poverty programs and Medicaid. 1996 on the other hand, was marked by the renaming of welfare as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the establishment of the Personal Responsibility Act, which demanded that mothers participate in the paid labor force, and was unsympathetic to the idea that women and children deserved any special protection. The two contradictory visions represented in welfare reform are the liberal feminist individualism view (the Work Plan) and the family values view (the Family Plan) of welfare. The Work Plan presents work requirements as a way of rehabilitating mothers into productive members of society, while the Family plan uses work requirements as punishment for mothers who fail to get married and stay married. The contradictions inherent in welfare reform thus tells us that the values of our society are declining in regards to family and community values, highlighted by unsupervised teens, abortion rates, drug abuse and declining civic engagement.
According to Block, Korteweg and Woodward, countries such as Norway understand poverty as caused by economic and structural factors rather than bad behavior, and thus take a more comprehensive government approach to combating poverty. The prevailing theory of why poor people are poor in the United States is that it is due to personal moral failings, and that people can overcome and avoid poverty through hard work alone. This theory operates as a self-fulfilling prophecy because due to our poorly funded programs which only reach a fraction of the poor, those who need the assistance and do not receive it must break laws to keep their families together, and are thus forced to act in a way that makes them appear to "lack moral character". According to the authors, in order to make the American Dream more accessible to the poor, we must recognize that the war on this "lack of morality" violates our society's fundamental values, and must focus on what policy changes will revise the American Dream to apply to all our citizens. We need universal health care and universal availability of quality child care and preschool programs, as well as affordable housing opportunities, and overall create policies that target the poor more directly.
According to Clawson and Gerstel, we can improve the child care system in the U.S by taking cues from the success of the European systems and following their various models. This includes making child care programs publicly funded and universal, as well as available to all social classes, paying staff about the same as public school teachers, making hours equal to that of the school day. Additionally, parents must be given a significant period of paid parental leave, with the option to share it between both the mother and father. I feel these are important changes that need to be addressed, as the short term difficulties and costs will be far succeeded by the long term positive effects on our children.

According to Felson's article, there exist two perspectives to understanding violence against women- the gender perspective and the violence perspective. The first claims that violence is a form of sexism and study violence against women separately from violence against men. They argue that men assault women in order to maintain their dominance and that most women, due to inferiority, do not report the incidents or get blamed in some way for it. The latter sees theories of violence and crime as a better way to interpret violence against women instead of theories of sexism. It says that separate from gender, men who batter their wives typically commit other crimes as well, and are selfish not sexist. Felson uses evidence acquired from surveys that depict husbands are no more controlling than wives and that perhaps women just find other methods to get their way while men typically resort to violence. My view is that violence against women is a combination of the two perspectives and it is not possible to really distinguish the two. While I do agree with the violence perspective a little more, I feel that since gender issues are so ingrained in our society and ideology, sexism does always play a role, even if it is subconsciously.
Jones's answer to the question posed in her title "Why Doesn't She Leave" is that in most cases that is not such a simple solution. In America's judicial system that was organized by men and is mostly run by men, many of the odds work against women who actually try to take legal action against their assaulters. The system, involving hospitals, courts and social services, often does not work quite to systemically, and actually pursuing action in the system to gain justice proves fruitless and worthless. While some may claim that women don't leave abusive situations because of low self-esteem or psychological problems, Jones states that in fact the odds are against women who try to take legal action. I agree with this opinion entirely, for if a women was guaranteed justice in the system, there would be no women still in abusive relationships. The reality is that often times women come out even more vulnerable and marginalized when they try to take action against their assaulter. This definitely relates to the gender perspective cited by Felson, as the sexist ideal that women are inferior is here shown to be evident in the legal system and society in general. Since men know that the system is in their favor, they may be more inclined to think they can get away with abusive behavior and thus see it as more acceptable and not worthy of punishment or blame.
According to Ptacek, their are many denials and justifications that men use to explain their abusive behavior. The main ones include denial of responsibility, denial of wrongness, the socially approved rationalization of violence, and a neutralization of the harm inflicted. Many contradictions lay in the explanations offered by men. These include that alcohol impairment is a legitimate excuse for abuse, that verbal aggressiveness from a women deserves physical aggression in response, that sexual frustration legitimizes violent action, as does a women not knowing when to be silent, and a women cheating. These last three definitely pertain to the gender perspective on violence. Here men are taking a sexist view that they are entitled to sex and submission, and are taking advantage of their greater strength to assert dominance over their female partner. While these men could fall under the violence perspective as being more violent men in general, aside from abuse against women, there is an overarching idea of male superiority in all of the men's accounts.

The egalitarian myth that Hochschild documents in this chapter is the upstairs-downstairs agreement to combat the problem of Nancy doing all the work in the ‘second shift’ at home. It is a delusional system that convinces both Nancy and Evan that their problem has been solved and that their responsibilities are now equal at home. Emotion work is the work of trying to feel the “right” feeling in order to keep everything “fine”. It relates to the egalitarian myth as it is another aspect of the delusional system, and works to pretend that the gender roles and responsibilities at home are equal while masking the gender discrepancies. I definitely see this division of labor in my own family. My mother carries all the responsibilities in the second shift at home, and though she only works part time, she does all the work at home with little if no help from my father.

The “ideology of domesticity” focuses on the language of affect rather than of hierarchy. The three constraints it places on the organization of work in our society include the employers’ entitlement to demand an ideal worker separate from family work, husbands’ right to live up to this work ideal, and the definition of duties of a mother framed around care-giving. This ideal of domesticity existed in both hunter and gatherer societies as well as colonial America, where mothers were expected to raise the children and cook for the family, while men were expected to hunt for food or work and protect and support the family rather than care for it. Under domesticity, personality, emotional expressiveness and market work are all gendered as well.

Williams argues that women’s disadvantaged position in the work force is a result of their self-selection into jobs that require less education and skill. Thus, sex differences in the occupation and wages are not caused by discrimination but by the free choices made by men and women. I do not agree with this argument, but rather that the history of the development of society has created constraints against women in the labor force. While the disparity may not be due to direct discrimination, it is due to the historical long-term discrimination that has been established.

The household division of labor in lesbigay families is much more egalitarian than in heterosexual families. Although a persistent commitment to equally dividing up household responsibilities exists, many studies fail to make a clear distinction between what is considered equal and what is considered fair. Most lesbigay families do though achieve this almost equal distribution of domestic work through a broad and inclusive conception of domesticity. These differences are based on career flexibility, a focus on female-identified professions and specialization in domesticity of one partner.