Mid-term Project – Due 6/11
For this project, you will be getting into groups of 3 people; and within your groups you
are going to discuss your own families within the context of the materials we have been
covering in the 2nd half of our class. In this assignment, I want you to shift gears. Do not
focus as much on your family history as on your contemporary family. Also, feel free to
incorporate you own future vision for your family into this paper. Also, continue to
incorporate your thoughts on how these topics intersect with your own location within
social hierarchies. You will choose one of the sections of material to focus your group
work on:
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Gender, Sex, and Sexuality & Partnerships and Marriage
Pregnancy and Reproductive Justice and The Politics of Birth
The Social Construction of Parenthood and Childhood
Problems with Parenting and Family Violence
This project is similar to the midterm. There are 3 main differences though.
1. After gathering information from your group members, you will have the option
to write the paper as individuals or as a group. Any decision you come to must be
agreed on ahead of time by all group members.
2. You will choose from this list of topics to further focus your discussion and
analysis:
 Divorce
 Feminism
 Sexual Abuse
 Disability and Ability
 Mental Health
 Family Planning (having
kids, when, etc)
 Hooking Up and Dating
 Teenage Parenthood
 Marriage
 Single Parenthood
 Domestic
Violence/Physical Abuse
 Queer Parenthood
 Sibling Conflict
 Coming Out to Family
3. You will be required to have one outside source from the class. It must be a
scholarly source – no websites, newspaper articles, etc. Some examples of
scholarly sources are articles from academic journals, chapters in books written
by sociologists, research papers written by policy institutes.
Your group will submit one 5-7 page paper. It should be double spaced, with Times New
Roman 12 pt. Font. I will subtract points if it is less than 5 pages. No title is necessary.
Please simply write your group members names on the top of the assignment. Citations
are only necessary if you are referring to material outside of the class or if you are
quoting material directly.
Part A: Information gathering
Think about this portion of the assignment as an interview or focus group; except that
you are simultaneously conducting and participating. You and your group members are
going to come up with a set of questions that everyone will answer that are relevant to the
section of class you have chosen. Use the class materials from that section (movies,
readings, and lecture notes) to help guide your questions.
Part B: Analysis and Writing
You can decide as a group how you will complete this portion of the assignment. You
can write the paper individually or you can submit a paper as a group. Whichever you
decide, the page requirement is the same. If you are going to write the paper separately,
then you must follow the guidelines (5-7 pages, etc) and each group member is
responsible for finding their own outside source. If you write the paper as a group, then
you are only required to have one source.
Some pointers:
 Please give yourself and your group plenty of time to complete each component of
the assignment!
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For the midterm, most groups lost points because they did not engage in a
thorough enough analysis. The analytical points that you make should take up ½
of your paper.
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Also, do not just name drop a reading, tell me, in detail, why you think this
reading is worth mentioning in your paper.
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Visit our course website for suggestions on an outline for your paper and
suggestions on how to organize your thoughts on paper. Also, I include
suggestions online for how to divide up the component of the group work.