Final exam potential questions, for 2025

Nov 28, 2025

Sample questions for the final exam

Essay questions:

Essays should explain causes and effects, citing back to literature we have read in the class, 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.

* 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? [closely related to a midterm question]

* 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 Michigan 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) and Loving v Virginia (US Supreme Court,1967)?

* 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? (Didn’t discuss this issue in 2025)

* 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?

* What is the history of abortion rights in the US? Explain how Roe v Wade (1973) and Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health (2022) changed the environment and briefly explain the logic of the majority opinions and the court dissenters. What have been the effects of changing abortion rights law? What do we know about attitudes towards abortion rights in the US?

* Why does marriage matter to society, and how has marriage changed over American history? How does marriage increase couple longevity (i.e. reduce couple breakup rate)? What does the research show about the relative longevity of same-sex married couples and heterosexual married couples in the US? [This last part has not been discussed in 2025]

* 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?

* What are the historical and research roots of attachment theory? What are the three types of relationship attachment style according to Levine and Heller, and what are the ramifications of different combinations?

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)

Bowers v. Hardwick (US Supreme Court 1986)

Lawrence v. Texas (US Supreme Court 2003)

Baehr v. Miike (Hawaii Circuit Court 1996)

Perez v. Sharp (California Supreme Court 1948)

In Re Marriage Cases (California Supreme Court 2008) [didn't discuss this in 2025, won't be on the final]

Roe v. Wade (US Supreme Court 1973)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (US Supreme Court 2022)

In Re Gardiner (Kansas Supreme Court 2002) [didn’t discuss this in 2025; won’t be on the final]

Turner v. Safley (US Supreme Ct 1987) [didn’t discuss this in 2025, won’t be on the final]

DeBoer v. Snyder (US District Court, Michigan, 2014)

Obergefell v. Hodges (US Supreme Court, 2015)

Alfred Kinsey

Privacy rights in US law

Stonewall riots and their ramifications

Sigmund Freud

Seneca Falls, 1848

Functionalism

Incomplete Institutionalization of Step Parenthood

Nondisplacing Social Change

Gordon Allport’s Intergroup Contact Theory

Original Intent

Matrifocal Family

Coverture