Sociology Exam 2

What is a median worker?

A “blue-collar” worker, typically someone with a high school diploma but no college degree.

What is the polarization of the labor market?

A growth of job opportunities at the top and bottom of the job market but a lessening of opportunities in the middle.

What is family inequality?

The extent to which some families obtain more income and wealth than do others.

Widespread higher education is a recent phenomenon.

True

The income of families where the head of the family has a (blank) education has risen more rapidly than the incomes of those who are less educated.

College

What has the automation and globalization of production done to jobs?

They have become scarce, especially for those with only a high school education.

What is a “catch-up” marriage?

The trend of fewer college graduates being married at 25, but being slightly MORE likely to be married at 30 than their less educated counterparts.

What is an assortative marriage?

When people tend to marry others similar to themselves. (College-educated people marrying others with college educations and people with high school educations marrying others with high school educations)

College graduates have one of the (blank) rates of divorce.

Lowest

What is a social class?

An ordering of all persons in a society according to their degrees of economic resources, prestige, and privilege.

What are life chances?

The resources and opportunities that people have to provide themselves with material goods and favorable living conditions.

What are status group?

A group of people who share a common style of life and often identify with each other.

What is the ideal type?

A hypothetical model that consists of the most significant characteristics, in extreme form, of a social phenomenon.

What are upper-class families?

Families that have amassed wealth and privilege and that often have substantial prestige as well.

What are middle-class families?

Families whose connection to the economy provides them with a secure, comfortable income and allows them to live well above a subsistence level.

What are working-class families?

Families whose income can reliably provide only for the minimum needs of what other people see as a decent life.

What are lower-class families?

Families whose connection to the economy is so tenuous that they cannot reliably provide for a decent life.

What did Max Weber say about status groups and social classes?

Both should be considered to understand how society is stratified.

What is women-centered kinship?

A kinship structure in which the strongest bonds of support and caregiving occur among a network of women, most of them relatives, who may live in more than one household.

Poor families often depend on what type of kinship?

Women-centered kinship networks because men cannot consistently earn enough to support a family

What do nonpoor families typically center on?

The wife, husband, and children who have obligations to their parents and their grandparents but otherwise independent of kin.

Middle-class parents tend to emphasize…

independence and self-direction in raising children.

Working-class parents tend to emphasize…

conformity and obedience to authority in raising children.

Deaths from substance abuse have increased amongst what group?

Less-educated whites

What is the labor force?

All people who are either working outside the home or looking for work.

What is the service sector?

Workers who provide personal services such as education, health care, communication, restaurant meals, legal representation, entertainment, and so forth.

The percentage of married women who work outside of the home (blank) greatly during the second half of the 20th century.

increased

It is becoming more common for wives to earn more/less than their husbands.

More than their husbands (out-preform)

What is care work?

Face-to-face activity in which one person meets the needs of another who cannot fully care for her- or himself.

What has the “crisis in care” focused on?

The unpaid face-to-face care work/caregiving that used to be done in families by wives who weren’t working for wages.

What does the care work perspective say?

The caring that goes on in families should be considered “work” whether or not the caregivers are paid

Caring labor is done disproportionately by what groups?

Women and members of minority racial-ethnic groups

What are time-diary studies?

Surveys in which people are asked to keep a record of what they are doing every minute during a time period.

Cohabitating and single mothers do less domestic work than what type of women?

Married women

As of 2012, women still spend (blank) the amount of time on housework and childcare in comparison to men.

Twice

What is normal unpredictability?

The pervasiveness of unpredictability in job hours and schedules which makes it difficult for workers to control time

What is spillover?

The transfer of mood or behavior between work and home.

What is a family-responsive workplace?

A work setting in which job conditions are designed to allow employees to meet their family responsibilities more easily.

What is flextime?

A policy that allows employees to choose, within limits, when they will begin and end their working hours.

What is parental leave?

Time off from work to care for a child.

What did the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 say?

Firms with 50 or more employees must allow new parents to take up to 12 weeks of UNPAID leave.

What is telecommuting?

Doing work from home using electronic communication.

What are the two ways parents socialize their children?

• Emotional support

• Exercising control

What is the authoritative style of parenting?

A parenting style in which parents combine high levels of emotional support with consistent, moderate control of their children.

What is the permissive style of parenting?

A parenting style in which parents provide emotional support but exercise little control over their children.

What is the authoritarian style of parenting?

A parenting style in which parents combine low levels of emotional support with coercive attempts at control of their children.

What is a norm?

A widely accepted rule about how people should behave.

What are values?

A goal or principle that is held in high esteem by a society.

What is androgynous behavior?

Behavior that has the characteristics of both genders.

What is intensive mothering?

A style of parenting in which mothers spend a lot of time and energy caring for their children.

What is the parenting style of Conservative Protestant men?

Strict discipline with an involved style of fatherhood

How do fathers DIRECTLY influence their children’s development?

By interacting with them

How do fathers INDIRECTLY influence their children’s development?

By providing financial support and supporting the parenting behaviors of their mothers.

What is multipartner fertility?

Having children with more than one partner during one’s lifetime.

What is mass incarceration?

Extremely high rates of imprisonment, particularly of African American males.

American children experience more instability in parents’ spouses and partners entering and exiting their households than do children in (blank) families.

Western

In comparison to unemployed parents, how much time do working parents spend with their children?

Nearly as much time (the same)

The effects on a child’s development when mothers return to work during the early years of their lives is said to be…

moderate.

What is Gwen’s Law?

 When you are arrested for child endangerment or abuse (domestic violence) or with a firearm, you are going to jail until the judge has a hearing. Guns will be confiscated if convicted. It is not mandatory, but is proven to save victim’s lives.