Sociology 206B
Advanced Topics in Family Studies:
FAMILIES AND ECONOMIC INTERSECTIONS
Spring 2015
Friday, 9-11:50am, Pearlman 202
anavilla@brandeis.edu
781-736-2645
Professor Ana Villalobos
Office: Pearlman 208
Office Hours: Tu 11-noon
& by appointment
Course Description
Whereas current rhetoric would have the family as a private institution, this
understanding is not consistent with U.S. family history in which families have always
been deeply embedded within the surrounding economic systems, systems that they both
reproduce and resist in various ways. Contemporary U.S. families are likewise are
deeply embedded within the current economic system of modern advanced capitalism.
As men and women are differently integrated into that economic system, market
influences on the family are highly gendered, as well as highly raced and classed. In
turn, the gendered nature of families, and especially of parenting, has a profound
influence on women’s and men’s work and economic lives.
In this seminar, we will examine several key questions regarding families:
 What is the relationship between the household division of labor and gendered
hierarchies in the marketplace?
 How do we view the consequences of family transformation from a producing
unit to a consuming one?
 How does socio-economic class affect families?
 How have families managed to rear children over time while parents work?
 How are family structure, love, and the meaning of kinship affected by
transformations in the global economy?
 How do families attempt to privately deal with the public social problems
associated with our economic system, and with what effect?
 And finally, what are some public solutions that could better support families—
and thereby society—to thrive and grow?
On the one hand, we will take a critical view in this course. We will study how the
family is a site of race, class and gender inequality and an institution that serves the
purposes of advanced capitalism, such as through ever-increasing consumerism, or
through producing the next generation of acquiescent workers tooled to their class of
work. On the other hand, we will study how family can function as a pivotal site of
empowerment, resistance, or as an alternative to the surrounding economic ethos.
Disabilities
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis and wish to have
a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
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A Note on Academic Integrity
Please familiarize yourself with University policies on academic integrity, described in
Section 3 of “Rights and Responsibilities,” and if you are in doubt about the instructions
for any assignment in this course, please ask for clarification.
Course Requirements*
Weekly Readings and Reading Notes (20%)
Required readings for each week are listed in the course outline below. You are expected
to complete the required readings and be prepared to discuss them before the class. In
addition, students will post reading notes to LATTE at least 24 prior to coming to
class each week. The reading notes are designed to encourage students to see the
readings as a group or “set” in relation to the weekly course topics. Thus reading notes
should not merely summarize each reading but should: (1) synthesize and critically
evaluate key theoretical and/or substantive contributions of the readings in relationship to
one another, and (2) identify questions that the readings provoke or points of particular
interest, concern, curiosity, or confusion to the student. Reading notes should generally
be no longer than one or two single spaced typed pages. To facilitate class discussion,
prior to the beginning of class, all students should review the response papers submitted
by other seminar participants, as they will become the basis for our class discussion.
Attendance and class participation (20%)
Students are expected to attend class and to have completed the reading before the class begins
so that we can engage in an intellectual discussion about the current topic. The success of the
course in providing stimulating ideas and advances for your graduate work depends on your
careful reading of materials, nuanced questions, and thoughtful contributions to discussions.
Leading Discussion (20%)
Each student is expected to lead the class twice during the semester. Your main focus is leading
a high level discussion based on a close reading of the materials and classmates’ response papers,
but you should start with a 20-ish minute overview/framing of the topic (likely including
overviewing either the suggested supplemental readings or other related readings) and presenting
teaching ideas/activities for how one might engage the topic with undergrads (no more than a
half hour in length). On the weeks you are scheduled to lead class, I am happy to work with you
on your lesson on Tuesdays during my office hours and to coordinate it with my own
contributions to the class meeting.
Final paper (40%)
Each student will complete a research proposal, persuasive literature review, or empirical
research paper related to the topic of families, with attention to economic parameters such
as social class, work in the paid labor market, or the division of domestic labor. Written
projects should be 15 to 20 pages (double spaced, references excluded).
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Research proposals should consist of a statement of the research question and rationale for
posing the question, a description of the guiding theoretical or conceptual framework, a
persuasive literature review, and a description of the data and methods that you propose to use to
study the question posed. Persuasive literature reviews should make an argument that has not yet
been fully developed in the literature, and should support that argument using existing theories
and empirical work. Empirical research papers should include data (4-6 interviews or other data)
and should be written as you would write a journal article with the following sections:
introduction, literature review/background, methods, findings/analysis, discussion/conclusion.
Below are deadlines for the final paper.
a.
One page prospectus/project description that describes your research question and its
significance (as well as your timeline for data collection if you are doing an empirical
paper), or your argument and how you intend to support it. (We may set additional
intermediate deadlines for your individual project, in discussion with the professor.)
Due February 6, in class
a.
Final written project (uploaded to Latte AND hard copy in my box)
Due by 2pm on May 4
I encourage you to meet with me individually to discuss your final paper topic.
*note: The course requirements syllabus section borrowed liberally from Sara Shostak’s SOC 218A syllabus for both structure
and wording. The syllabus as a whole also took inspiration from Karen Hansen’s SOC 206B syllabus. Thanks to both of them!
Course Readings
Most course readings (with the exception of the books below) can be found on LATTE,
with the supplemental readings available on LATTE, on reserve at the library and/or on
Jstor. The following books can be purchased at the University bookstore or on-line:
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Crittenden, Ann. 2010. The Price of Motherhood. Picador, NY.
Dreby, Joanna. 2010. Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and their Children.
University of California Press, Berkeley.
Hochschild, Arlie. 1997. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home
Becomes Work. Metropolitan, NY.
Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods. University of California Press,
Berkeley.
Villalobos, Ana. 2014. Motherload: Making it All Better in Insecure Times.
University of California Press, Oakland.
Note: Unequal Childhoods is also available electronically through Brandeis’s e-brary.
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Course Outline
U.S. FAMILIES IN VARYING HISTORIC-ECONOMIC CONTEXTS
WEEK 1, Jan 16 (145 pages)
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Stephanie Coontz. The Way We Never Were, 30-page excerpt
Jan Dizard & Howard Gadlin. 1990. The Minimal Family, 3-24
Evelyn Nakano Glen with Stacey Yap. 1994. “Chinese American Families,”
Minority Families in the United States, Ronald Taylor (ed.), 115-145
Ronald Taylor. 1994. “Black American Families,” Minority Families in the
United States, Ronald Taylor (ed.), 19-26, 37-46
Larry Hudson. To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum
South Carolina (available on e-brary), “Introduction,” “For Better or Worse:
Slave’s World of Work,” “To Love & to Cherish: The Slave Family,” 44-page
excerpt
Recommended:
 Niara Sudharkasa. “Interpreting the African Heritage in Afro-American Family
Organization,” Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics, Karen
Hansen and Anita Garey (eds.), Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 91-104
GENDER
MOTHERHOOD, SECOND WAVE FEMINISM AND PAID WORK
WEEK 2, Jan 23 (105 pages)
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Betty Friedan, 1963. The Feminine Mystique, 15-25, 338-350
Simone deBeauvoir. 1952. The Second Sex, 521-523
bell hooks. “Black Women Shaping Feminist Theory” and “Re-Thinking the
Nature of Work,” in Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, p. 1-15, 96-105
Stephanie Coontz. “Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism & Working
Women,” The Way We Never Were, 149-169
Sheryl Sandberg. 2013. “Internalizing the Revolution,” “Sit at the Table,”
“Don’t Leave Before you Leave,” Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,
Knopf, NY, 3-11, 27-38, 92-103
Recommended:
 Linda Hirshman, 2006. Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World.
Viking, NY. p. 1-25, 33-38, 46-55
 Denise Segura, “Working at Motherhood: Chicana and Mexican Immigrant
Mothers and Employment,” Families in the U.S., 727-744
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MASCULINITY AND BREADWINNING
WEEK 3, Jan 30 (128 pages)
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Joan Williams. 2004. “Is Domesticity Dead?”, Unbending Gender, 13-34
Jessie Bernard. 1981. “The Good-Provider Role: Its Rise and Fall,” American
Psychologist, 36(1): 1-12 (reprinted in Scott Coltraine, ed., 2004, Families and
Society, 243-251)
Christine Williams. 1992. “The Glass Escalator.” Social Problems, 39(3): 253267
Gretchen Purser. 2009. “The Dignity of Job-Seeking Men: Boundary Work
among Immigrant Day Laborers,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38:
117-179
Michael Kimmel. “The Masculine Mystique,” Manhood in America: A Cultural
History, p. 261-266, 280-290
Recommended:
 Joan Williams. 2011. “Masculine Norms at Work,” Reshaping the Work-Family
Debate: Why Men and Class Matter, 77-108
 Kathleen Gerson. “Dilemmas of Breadwinning and Autonomy,” No Man’s Land
 Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner. “The New Man and the Mexican Immigrant
Man” in American Families: A Multicultural Reader, 342-357
FATHERHOOD & THE UNEQUAL DIVISION OF DOMESTIC LABOR
WEEK 4, Feb 6 (113 pages)
*Final Paper Prospectus due*
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Scott Coltraine. “Separate Spheres,” Family Man: Fatherhood, Housework, and
Gender Equity, 25-44
Susan Walzer. 1996. “Thinking About the Baby: Gender and the Division of
Infant Care,” Social Problems 43(2): 219-234
Scott Coltraine. 1996. “Managing versus Helping,” Family Man: Fatherhood,
Housework, and Gender Equity, Oxford University Press, 73-76
Arlie Hochschild. “Male Pioneers in a Culture of Time,” Time Bind, 115-132
Ralph LaRossa. 1998. “The Culture and Conduct of Fatherhood,” Families in the
U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics, Karen Hansen & Anita Garey (eds.), 377-85.
BC Fatherhood study
“In a Clubby World of San Francisco Mothers, Men Needn’t Apply,” New York
Times, April 2, 2011 (2 pages)
“In Sweden the Men Can Have it All,” New York Times, June 9, 2010 (6 pages)
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Recommended:
 Nick Townsend, “Marriage, Work and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives,” Families and
Society, Scott Coltraine (ed.), 252-260
 Scott Coltraine. 2004. “Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions and Dilemmas,”
Handbook of Contemporary Families: Considering the Past, Contemplating the
Future, Marilyn Coleman & Lawrence Ganong (eds.), 224-243
ECONOMIC COSTS OF WOMEN’S PRIMARY CAREGIVING
WEEK 5, Feb 13 (118 pages)
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Paula England and Nancy Folbre, The Cost of Caring, Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 561 (Jan, 1999): 39-51
Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood, Intro and chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 (p. 1-44,
65-109, 131-148)
Recommended:
 Adrienne Rich. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs,
Women: Sex and Sexuality (Summer, 1980), 5(4): 631-660
 Linda Hirshman. 2006. Get to Work, “Homeward Bound,” Viking Press
RACE, CLASS & IMMIGRATION
FAMILY AS SITE OF REPRODUCTION OF/RESISTANCE TO INEQUALITY
WEEK 6, Feb 27 (150 pages)
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Annette Lareau. Unequal Childhoods, 1-13, 35-103
Ellen Lewin. “Negotiating Lesbian Motherhood: The Dialectics of Resistance and
Accommodation,” Maternal Theory, 370-389
Elizabeth Bruno. 2014. “Her Cape is at the Cleaners: Searching for Single
motherhood in a Culture of Self-Sufficiency,” Mothers, Mothering and
Motherhood Across Cultural Difference, Andrea O’Reilly (ed.), 385-412
bell hooks “Homeplace: a Site of Resistance,” Maternal Theory, 266-273
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2007. “The Meaning of Motherhood in Black Culture and
Black Mother-Daughter Relationships,” Maternal Theory, 274-289
Recommended:
 Baba Copper. “The Radical Potential in Lesbian Mothering of Daughters,”
Maternal Theory, 186-193
 Noelle Chesley. 2011. “Stay-at-Home Fathers and Breadwinning Mothers:
Gender, Couple Dynamics, and Social Change
,” Gender & Society 25: 642-664
 Patricia Hill Collins “Shifting the Center: Race, Class & Feminist Theorizing
About Motherhood,” Maternal Theory, 311-330 (available elsewhere as well)
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POVERTY, PARENTING AND MARGINALIZATION
Experiences of urban families, poor families, and/or families in the “system”
WEEK 7, Mar 6 (115 pages)
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Kathryn Edin & Maria Kefalas. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put
Motherhood Before Marriage, 27-49, 168-185
Kathryn Edin & Timothy Nelson. Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner
City, 70-102
Nancy Scheper-Hughes. “Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday
Life in Brazil,” The Path Ahead, DeSpelder & Strickland (eds.) (5 pages)
“The Case of Marie and her Sons,” NY Times Magazine (15 pages)
Amanda Marie Gengler. “Mothering Under Others’ Gaze: Policing Motherhood
in a Battered Women’s Shelter,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family,
Spring 2011, 37(1): 131-152
THE TIME SPEED-UP
Experiences of Professionals
WEEK 8, Mar 13 (186 pages)
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Juliet Schor. Overworked American (excerpts), 1-22, 43-50, 68-72
Ofer Sharone. “Engineering Overwork,” Fighting for Time, Epstein & Kalleberg
(eds.), 191-218
Arlie Hochschild. Time Bind. 3-84, 197-238
Greg McKeown. 2014. “Why We Humble-Brag About Being Busy,” Harvard
Business Review, June 6, 2014 (2 pages)
WORK-FAMILY STRUGGLES AND SOCIAL CLASS
WEEK 9, Mar 20 (116 pages)
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Poor: Joan Williams. Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict (intro & poor), ii-iii,
1-31
Professional: Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy. “Fast Track Women and the
‘Choice’ to Stay Home,” Annals 596, Nov 2004, 62-83
Academic: Elrena Evans & Caroline Grant (eds.), Mama, Ph.D. (selections:
“Scholar Negated,” “First Day of School,” “Two Boards and a Passion: On
Theater, Academia, and the Art of Failure,” “Lip Service”), 16-19, 63-79, 129135
Missing Middle: Anita Garey. 1999. “Motherhood on the Night Shift,” Weaving
Work and Motherhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 108-139
“Paying to Work” (2 pages)
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TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES
WEEK 10, Mar 27 (229 pages)
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Joanna Dreby. Divided by Borders.
Recommended:
 Nazli Kibria, “Globalization,” At the Heart of Work and Family, Garey & Hansen
(eds.)
 Rhacel Salazar-Parrenas, “The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and
Transnational Families in the New Global Economy,” Global Woman, Ehrenreich
& Hochschild (eds.), 39-54
ATTEMPTS AT RESOLUTION
INDIVIDUAL FAMILY SOLUTIONS 1
Intensive Mothering
WEEK 11, Apr 17 (181 pages)
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Ana Villalobos. Motherload: Making it All Better in Insecure Times, Chapters 15&8
Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (bear in mind, this is a parody of her
own parenting; 6-page excerpt printed in Wall Street Journal, 1-8-11)
“Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?” NY Times, 5 pages
“Cockpit Parents,” Huffington Post, 3 pages
Recommended:
 Judith Warner. 2005. Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety,
Penguin Books, NY
 Frank Furedi. 2002. “Parents as Gods,” Paranoid Parenting, 58-74
 “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,” Atlantic Monthly
INDIVIDUAL FAMILY SOLUTIONS 2
Expert Advice, and Coping through Purchasing Goods & Services
WEEK 12, Apr 24 (106 pages)
First, a little taste of popular parenting advise books today:
 Sears & Sears, The Baby Book
 Ezzo, Babywise
 Murkoff et al., What to Expect when You’re Expecting
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Then some scholarly work on families, love, and the market:
 Allison Pugh. “Consumption as Care and Belonging,” At the Heart of Work &
Family, Garey & Hansen (eds.), 217-227
 Juliet Schor. “Viacom Generation,” At the Heart of Work & Family, 206-216
 Dizard & Gadlin. The Minimal Family. 197-203
 Ann Crittenden. The Price of Motherhood, chapters 11 & 12 (on daycare
workers), 202-232
 Arlie Hochschild. The Outsourced Self, 104-115, 119-130, 157-164, 168-171
Recommended:
 Allison Pugh. “Selling Compromise: Toys, Motherhood & the Cultural Deal,”
Gender & Society, Dec, 2005, 19(6): 729-749
 Arlie Hochschild. 2012. “Our Baby, Her Womb,” and “My Womb, Their Baby,”
in The Outsourced Self, 73-103
COLLECTIVE SOLUTIONS
Restructuring Society & Social Policy
WEEK 13, April 28
***NOTE: THIS IS A TUESDAY!!! (A “BRANDEIS FRIDAY”)***
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Jennifer Glass, 2000, “Envisioning the Integration of Family and Work: Toward a
Kinder, Gentler Workplace,” Contemporary Sociology, special issue on Utopian
Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century, 29(1): 129-143
Evelyn Nakano Glenn. 2000. “Creating a Caring Society,” Contemporary
Sociology, special issue on Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st
Century, 29(1): 84-94
Ann Crittenden. The Price of Motherhood, chapter 10, 186-201
Recommended:
 Janet Gornick and Marcia Myers. Families That Work, chpt. 9.
 Ann Crittenden. The Price of Motherhood, Conclusion, 256-274.
 Nancy Folbre. The Invisible Heart, chpt. 8
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TEACHING TIPS
The following are mostly to help guide your ingenuity as you prepare your brief
undergrad lessons for the weeks you facilitate, but may also apply to facilitating the
graduate discussion:
➣ Facilitators should read all of the reading responses submitted by the class to the Latte
forum. Try to pull out the common themes and issues that sparked students’ interest (or
share one particular intriguing response) and consider exploring these in your facilitation.
➣ Use the texts!! Point out or read aloud any moving, intriguing, or confusing excerpts
from the readings. Close reading is a very effective strategy for engaging the class.
➣ Try to pull the readings together in an innovative way, like involving your classmates
in creating a chart, diagram, table or map of the author’s concepts, perspectives, methods
and/or arguments, and how they relate to each other. In some cases you may want to
make handouts as well.
➣ Use your creativity! Consider devising a short in-class activity that explores an idea,
issue or argument raised in the readings. The possibilities are endless (games, small
group activities, role-playing activities, skits, debates, etc)! Jeopardy-style games are not
recommended since they are more about factual recall and less about working with the
material, taking it deeper or making it come alive.
➣ If you do not understand a particular text, your classmates may not fully understand it
either. I highly encourage you to point out what you find confusing or contradictory,
discuss why you find it confusing or contradictory and open up the issue for discussion.
➣ To stimulate discussion, you want to try to ask focused questions – “how” or “why”
questions will elicit much more discussion than “yes”/”no” or recall questions.
Examples: “Why do you think men are often excluded from traditionally femaledominated jobs?” “How does so-and-so’s theory apply or not apply to work today?”
Come prepared with ideas for jumpstarting discussion in case the class falls silent.
➣ Make it personal. People learn best when they APPLY what they learn, and drawing
on examples from students’ personal lives and experiences is one way to bring abstract
materials to life.
➣ Have fun!. The most important thing discussion facilitators can do is to create a space
that entices classmates to share their thoughts and questions about the material so we can
work with them. I encourage you to focus less on impressing, more on encouraging!
YOUR GOAL: GET EVERY SINGLE STUDENT IN CLASS ENGAGED/TALKING!