Most of social life occurs without us noticing. In this course we scratch the surface of how Sociology attempts to uncover the aspects of the social world that we tend to take for granted. To do this, we emphasize the role that structure of social relationships, institutions, and organizations have on how individuals' act in different settings as well as how they perceive themselves and the world around them. For example take the question, Why are you here at BYU? You might suggest that it was because you worked hard as a high school student, studied hard for and did well on the ACT, and ultimately because you chose to—all likely correct and all individualist explanations. A sociologist, while acknowledging your ability to make choices, might suggest a variety of other explanations—because you belong to an institution called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, because your parents went to college and socialized you to value a college education, because you have a middle-class (or higher) background—explanations that identify your location within broad social structures and how that location has organized your life. In other words, a sociologist would focus on the context or environment in which your hard work and studying were done and in which your choices were made. From a sociological standpoint, context or environment or social structure are of primary importance when considering people’s behavior and beliefs.
This course provides an introductory survey of Family Sociology. We will take an elementary sociological approach to understanding the family, which emphasizes social structure and the consequences of structure for individual experience. In other words, we will discuss explanations for family trends that go beyond the typically used “individualist” explanations to understand the context in which individuals live their lives. We begin by attempting to develop a definition of "family"--a task that is harder than it might seem. We briefly reviews central concepts of Sociology--Gender, Class, and Race--before we review research and theoretical perspectives on various family phenomena like sexuality, marriage, divorce, and so on. Armed with some basic understanding Sociological perspective applied to family life, we examine two monographs. The first addresses the question of why do poor women have children before the get married. The second analyzes different aspects of fatherhood and how cultural definitions of fatherhood push fathers in directions that they might not want to go.
An effort is made to place broad social trends and research efforts in context for students of an LDS background.