Updated for Fall, 2025

Sample questions for the in-class midterm exam. This will be a *closed book* exam, no notes, no computers, no Internet access.

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.

Potential Essay Questions:

1) What are the supposed advantages of marriage (compared to unwed parenthood and compared to divorce) for children and society? Use Wallerstein, and Waite and Gallagher. What are the limitations of the methodologies of each scholar’s methodology?

2) What are the racial differences in out-of-wedlock births, and what are the various explanations for the differences? How has the rate of out-of-wedlock births changed since the 1960s?

3) Describe the feminist critique of the “traditional” (husband-bread-winner, mother-home-maker) family. How do proponents of the traditional heterosexual married nuclear family respond to the critique? Use Friedan, and Waite and Gallagher. What does the debate between Stacey and Popenoe add to the debate over feminism and the family?

4) What are the consequences for children of their parents’ divorce? How did Wallerstein study the consequences of divorce and what are the limitations of this methodology?

Short answer Identifications: define the term and explain its significance. Make brief reference back to the literature we have read.

1) Selection Bias

2) The Baby Boom

3) Birth Cohort

4) Functionalism

5) Sex Ratio

6) Incomplete Institutionalization of Step Parenthood

7) Gary Becker’s theory of economic specialization and marriage

8) Seneca Falls, 1848

9) The “Harvard-Yale Study” of female marriage chances

10) Matrifocal Family

11) Coverture