Draft of second half assessment questions, updated May 25, 2021.
Sample questions for the in-class second half assessment. During remote teaching, the assessment will consist of three essay questions, two of which will be on this list and therefore will be knowable in advance. The assessment is open book, but your answers must be yours and yours alone. The ID questions will not be asked in a remote teaching, open book assessment.
Essays should explain causes and effects, rather than simply providing a laundry list. A careful explanation with a few detailed and carefully considered examples is always better than a long list of examples without sufficient explanation.
Of the 5 possible questions below, 3 will be on the week 10 assessment, and there will be no surprise questions. All 3 of the possible week 10 assessment questions are on this list.
* Describe the feminist critique of the traditional
family (think Friedan, Ettelbrick, Stacey, and Hochschild), and of traditional
family scholarship. How do proponents of the traditional heterosexual married
nuclear family respond to the critique?
* What does social science have to say about children
raised by same-sex couples, and how was the social science consensus reflected
in the DeBoer v. Snyder trial (in Michigian in federal court, 2014)?
* What legal, constitutional, and social issues were at stake in the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court (2015) decision? How did Obergefell v. Hodges build on Lawrence v. Texas (US Supreme Court, 2003)?
* What is the logic of the slippery slope argument, how does it relate to same-sex marriage, who makes the slippery slope argument, and what kinds of responses do others have against the slippery slope?
* How is childhood character shaped by parents, how do we know what parents' effect on children is, and how and why has childhood changed over time in the US?
* How have US popular attitudes towards gay rights changed over time? What evidence do we have that attitudes have actually changed? What explains the change over time in attitudes?
* What is the history of mating rituals in the US, and
how has technology and modernity affected how couples have met? How have the
changing ways partners meet affected who partners with whom? Who is more likely
to meet their partners online, and why? What is the long term trend in parental
influence over their adult children’s choice of mate?
* Why does marriage matter to society, and how has
marriage changed over American history? How does marriage increase couple
longevity? What does the research show about the relative longevity of same-sex
married couples and heterosexual married couples in the US?
* What are the racial differences in out of wedlock
births, and what are the explanations for the differences? How has the rate of
out-of-wedlock births changed since the Moynihan report? How has the Moynihan
report been received by other scholars?
* In what way do different views about the history of the
family inform our different views about the meaning of family or family change
today?
* What is the Second Shift, why does it continue to exist, why is it important, and why is it difficult to study?
Identifications:
Family Government
The Independent Life Stage
Demographic Metabolism
The Defense of Marriage Act (US, 1996)
Griswold v. Connecticut (US Supreme Court 1965)
Loving v. Virginia (US Supreme Court 1967) [didn't discuss this in 2018, won't be on the final]
Bowers v. Hardwick (US Supreme Court 1986)
Lawrence v. Texas (US Supreme Court 2003)
Baehr v. Miike (Hawaii Circuit Court 1996) [didn't discuss this in 2018, won't be on the final]
Perez v. Sharp (California Supreme Court 1948) [didn't discuss this in 2018, won't be on the final]
In Re Marriage Cases (California Supreme Court 2008) [didn't discuss this in 2018, won't be on the final]
Roe v. Wade (US Supreme Court 1973)
In Re Gardiner (Kansas Supreme Court 2002)
Turner v. Safley (US Supreme Ct 1987)
DeBoer v. Snyder (US District Court, Michigan, 2014)
Obergefell v. Hodges (US Supreme Court, 2015)
Alfred Kinsey
Sigmund Freud
Stonewall
Seneca Falls, 1848
Functionalism
Incomplete Institutionalization of Step Parenthood
Original Intent
Matrifocal Family
Coverture