Family Studies Notes

A Definition of Family

  • Any combination of two or more people bound together over time by:
    • Blood
    • Marriage
    • Adoption
    • Mutual consent

Psychology

  • Focus: The behavior and thought processes of the individual, and the way an individual acts/reacts to other humans and society.
  • Basic Question: What is going on inside a person’s mind that causes them to behave this way?

Anthropology

  • Focus: The physical and cultural development of humans and their societies.
  • Basic Question: What are the cultural patterns that help define these societies and the people in them?

Sociology

  • Focus: Relationships among humans and groups living together in societies.
  • Basic Question: What are the functions of groups in society, and what do people have in common within these groups?

Family Evolution

  • Hunter Gatherer Families → Agricultural Families → Patriarchal Families → Pre-Industrial Families → Urban Industrial Era Families → Modern Consumer Families → Contemporary Canadian Families

Thinking

  • Green Thinking: Instinctive
    • A mix of high quality and low quality thinking that we are often unaware is happening.
    • Spontaneous/Impulsive
    • Uncontrolled
    • Not analyzed
    • Self-protecting and self-validating
    • A mixture of good ideas, plus confusion, stereotypes, and prejudices. We don’t know the difference between high and low quality thought in green thinking mode. It doesn’t assess itself!
  • Red Thinking: Critical
    • Stops and assesses itself before going forward.
    • Disciplined
    • Seeking truth
    • Self-assessing and self-correcting
    • Critical
    • Actively getting rid of prejudice, bias, and dysfunctional thinking from our thinking. We think like intellectuals!

Applying the Scientific Method

  • Five major steps:
    • Observe and Research
    • Develop a Hypothesis
    • Select a Research Method
    • Analyze Results
    • Draw a Conclusion

Hypothesis

  • A good hypothesis is:
    1. Simple & Clear
    2. A Statement
    3. Testable
    4. Establishes:
      • participants
      • variable
      • prediction

Hypothesis Example

  • “Ice cream melts faster than ice” (Simple & Clear, A Statement, Testable, Establishes: participants, variable, prediction)

Research Terms

  • Population: The collection of people from which researchers take a sample.
  • Sample: A smaller collection of people that a researcher studies.

Research Methods

  • Qualitative Research
    • Gathers non-numerical data.
    • Broader hypothesis.
    • Attempts to look at the “whole picture”.
    • Exploratory.
    • Good for early research.
  • Quantitative Research
    • Gathers numerical data.
    • Narrower, more specific hypothesis.
    • Focused observations.
    • Conclusive.
    • Better for later research.

Correlation and Causation

  • Correlation: Certain variables may appear to be linked, but a cause-and-effect relationship has not yet been determined.
  • Causation: If it is observed beyond reasonable doubt that one variable causes another variable to happen, then a cause-and-effect relationship has been recorded.
  • Important! Correlation does not equal causation!

Example

  • Ice Cream Sales lead to Shark Attacks?
    • As ice cream sales increase, shark attacks also increase.
    • Ice cream sales cause shark attacks?

Ethics

  • Ethics: Moral principles that guide and inform the conducting of research or other activities.

History of Ethics

  • Two notable moments that changed the way we think about research:
    • World War II: The Nuremberg Trials
      • Revealed the shocking and often grotesque human experiments that Nazi doctors conducted on unwilling participants.
    • 1930-1970s: Tuskegee Syphilis Trials
      • Experimenters withheld a treatment from African-American participants who had syphilis, even though they knew there were treatments that were effective.
      • Unethical because treatment was withheld.

Current Ethical Principles

  • Voluntary Participation: In order to participate in any form of research, participants must be willing and not in captivity (i.e., prison). Coercion is not to be used.
    • Coercion: Persuading someone to do something by using force, threats, or by offering rewards that are particularly compelling.
  • Informed Consent: Participants must be made aware of the procedures and possible risks of a study and still consent to participate.
    • The use of deception: Participants can be deceived ONLY IF there is virtually no risk in participating and must be debriefed IMMEDIATELY after the study.
  • Debrief: A short interview between researcher and participant after the experiment where the researcher explains the purpose of the study, and the participant is allowed to ask questions.
  • Risk of Harm: Researchers are not to put participants into a position where they may experience harm.
    • Harm can be both physical or psychological
    • Dr. Phillip Zimbardo: Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
      • Very unethical experiment.
  • Academic Honesty: When publishing a study, researchers are required to report the results EXACTLY how they happened, regardless of the outcome.
    • Even if a hypothesis is rejected, the study is still valuable. It means that possible variables affecting a behavior have been narrowed down even further!

Theoretical Perspectives

  • Functionalism
    • Assumes that society runs the way it does to fulfill necessary functions. Institutions work together to allow a functioning society.
    • Looks at status (a position within a social group), roles (a set of behaviors an individual is expected to demonstrate), and norms (the most common behaviors).
  • Family Systems Theory
    • Families have to be looked at as a whole.
    • Families are systems of interconnected and interdependent individuals and must be understood as a whole.
    • Individuals cannot be understood in isolation from one another but rather as a part of their family, as the family is an emotional unit.
    • What happens to one person in the family happens to all of the family.
    • Cake analogy: A cake is a combination of ingredients mixed together to make one thing. It’s not the ingredients individually.
  • Symbolic Interactionism
    • Looks at how individuals behave based on their perceptions of themselves and of others.
    • The meaning that people assign to experiences is more important than facts.
    • Example: Race is believed to be a social construct based off of what people believe to be true, not objective facts.
    • Three main principles:
      1. Individuals behave in a certain way according to their interpretation of the meaning of the word.
      2. Individuals may be influenced by other people’s interpretation.
      3. This meaning is always changing.
      • Example: Sarah and Keith are good friends and both see their relationship as platonic. Rae Ann, however, thinks that Keith has romantic feelings for Sarah, and she tells Sarah as much. Sarah may be worried that something about her behavior has led Keith on, so she becomes more guarded around him and the nature of their friendship changes.
  • Social Exchange Theory
    • Looks at how individuals make choices by weighing the cost and benefits of the choice.
    • Benefits meet specific perceived needs. If the benefit outweighs the cost, or the burdens placed on us, we will feel satisfied with our choice.
    • Example: An adolescent enters into a relationship with an attractive but boring individual. The benefit for the adolescent is a perceived need to boost social status by dating someone attractive. The cost is a lack of interesting conversation.
  • Life Course Approach
    • Also known as Life Course Theory and Life Course Perspective.
    • Looks at behavior demonstrated by individuals or families at various stages in their lives.
    • A life course is defined as "a sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time" (Giele and Elder 1998, p. 22).
    • Example: People who grew up during war time where food was rationed may feel very strongly about their own children wasting food when they grow up. History has shaped the behavior of a large group of people because they lived through shared experiences.
  • Conflict Theory
    • Looks at how societies are held together by power.
    • Conflict exists between groups in society because of inequalities in status, resources, and therefore inequalities in power.
    • Example: Families who have more money are given more opportunities to educate their children. Money + Education = power (privileged) vs. Money + Education = power (underprivileged).
    • Privileged vs. Underprivileged = class conflict → lead to resentment of the poor against the wealthy.
  • Feminist Theory
    • Looks impact of sex and gender behavior.
    • Also looks at the double standards of society for what is acceptable for men vs. what is acceptable for women.
  • Ecological Systems Theory
    • Each system has an impact on the behavior of the individual.
    • Example: A child is raised in a family who values tolerance of all sexual orientations, but the family lives in a country where homosexuality is illegal. The child may grow up to hold personal beliefs that are in conflict with society at large and so will be careful in certain settings.
  • Evolutionary Psychology
    • This view of psychology looks at individuals’ behaviors through the lens of natural selection (Darwin’s Origin of Species).
    • Natural selection: Those who are better adapted to their environment tend to have more offspring.
    • Inherit the unconscious mating rituals of our ancestors.
    • Evolutionary Psychology/Anthropology
      • Mating was done to ensure that offspring would survive until adulthood.
      • Helen Fisher (1992): Identified adaptive behavior for sexual attraction.
      • Women preferred men with enough resources to provide for her and a child. They could not gather enough food and care for a baby.
      • Men preferred women who could bear healthy babies, feed them, and had the intelligence to raise them well.

Theories of Learning

  • 5 Theories of Learning
    • Behavioral Learning: We learn from our environment.
    • Social Learning Theory: We learn by imitation and tutoring.
    • Operant Conditioning: We learn from stimuli.
    • Cognitive Development Theory: We learn as we grow.
    • Sociocultural Learning: We learn from social interaction.

Classical Conditioning

  • Ivan Pavlov
    • Russian Psychologist
    • "Pavlov's Dogs"
    • "Pavlovian Response"
  • John B. Watson
    • Little Albert Experiment:
      • Thought fear could be taught
      • Conditioned Albert to be scared of a rat

Operant Conditioning

  • Stimulus Applied (+) / Withdrawn (-)
    • Increased (Reinforcement)
      • Positive Reinforcement
        • Giving a child dessert for eating her vegetables
      • Negative Reinforcement
        • Allowing a child to leave the table for finishing her vegetables
    • Decreased (Punishment)
      • Positive Punishment
        • Scolding a child for disrupting class
      • Negative Punishment
        • Putting a child in "time out" or making her miss recess for disrupting class

Cognitive Development Theory

  • Jean Piaget
    • Believed there are 4 stages to cognitive development.
    • Each stage is biological (nature) but nurture can change how quickly we progress through each stage.
    • Children learn information like sponges--they soak up all the information around them.
  • Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
    • Sensorimotor: (Birth to nearly 2 years): Experiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping). Developmental Phenomena: Object permanence, Stranger anxiety.
    • Preoperational: (2 to about 6 or 7 years): Representing things with words and images; using intuitive rather than logical reasoning. Developmental Phenomena: Pretend play, Egocentrism
    • Concrete Operational: (About 7 to 11 years): Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations. Developmental Phenomena: Conservation, Mathematical transformations
    • Formal Operational: (About 12 through adulthood): Abstract reasoning. Developmental Phenomena: Abstract logic, Potential for mature moral reasoning

Sociocultural Learning

  • Vygotsky
    • Lev Semionovich Vygotsky
    • Soviet psychologist
    • Believed that children learn from their interactions with others.
    • Cognitive development is influenced by culture and social factors.
    • Comfort Zone: What a child can do without any help
    • Learning Zone: What a child can do with the support of an adult or their peers
    • Anxiety Zone: What a child can’t do, even if they are given support
    • Zone of Proximal Development
      • The ZPD is essentially what we now refer to as scaffolding
      • Scaffolding: The act of providing key support in the learning process when needed in order to strengthen understanding

Social Learning Theory

  • Albert Bandura
    • Canadian-American psychologist
    • Stanford University
    • Believed that learning occurs in a social context
    • Children learn through imitating what they see, and adults teach through modeling behaviour
    • Bandura believed people could imitate:
      • A live model who demonstrates the behaviour
      • Verbal instructions that describe and explain the behaviour
      • Symbolic models (fictional characters in books, films, television, video games, etc.) that demonstrate a behaviour

Family Structures/Marriage

  • Polygamy
    • Polygamy: The practice of marrying multiple partners
    • Polyamory: The practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all the people involved.
    • Polygyny: A man entering into a marriage contract with two or more wives
    • Polyandry: A woman entering into a marriage contract with two or more husbands (less common)
    • From an anthropological perspective:
      • Increases the probability of children, especially males
      • Increase of labor supply
      • Surplus women/Shortage of men
      • Concentration of wealth
      • Greater sexual satisfaction for men (particularly in cultures that prohibit sex for a lengthy time after a woman gives birth)
    • Polygamous unions increase risks of marital dissatisfaction, distress, absent fathers, and domestic violence
    • Distressed spouses = distressed children
    • Older children in particular show more resilience towards risk factors
  • Intermarriage
    • Intermarriage: A marriage between partners who are from different social, racial, religious, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. Also known as heterogamy.
    • Interracial couples typically experience varying levels of discrimination from external parties
      • stems from the belief that people want to raise status by marrying a “more desirable race” or that it is an act of rebellion
    • Children of interracial couples sometimes struggle with having a biracial identity and feeling like it is necessary to choose one identity over another.
    • Interfaith marriage: A lawful union of two individuals with differing religious beliefs. Also known as interreligious marriage.
  • Arranged Marriage
    • Arranged Marriage: Marriage unions that are mutually agreed upon by the families of two individuals.
    • Modern Arranged Marriage: Marriage unions that involve the parents providing a selection of possible partners for their child to choose from.

Psychosexual Stages

  • Psychosexual stages with Erogenous Zone and Activities
    • Oral (Birth-1.5 year)
      • In Mouth
      • Sucking, biting, chewing
    • Anal (1.5-3 year)
      • Anus
      • Anus, Bladder Control
    • Phallic (3-6 year)
      • Genital
      • Genitals, Masturbation
    • Latency (6 - Puberty)
      • Dormant Sexual Feelings
      • Repressed Sexual feelings
    • Genital (Puberty - Adult)
      • Maturing Sexual interest
      • Sexual interest

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

  • Infancy (0-1 year)
    • Basic Conflict: Trust vs. mistrust
    • Virtue: Hope
    • Description: Trust (or mistrust) that basic needs, such as nourishment and affection, will be met
  • Early childhood (1-3 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Autonomy vs. shame/doubt
    • Virtue: Will
    • Description: Develop a sense of independence in many tasks
  • Play age (3-6 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Initiative vs. guilt
    • Virtue: Purpose
    • Description: Take initiative on some activities-may develop guilt when unsuccessful or boundaries overstepped
  • School age (7-11 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Industry vs. inferiority
    • Virtue: Competence
    • Description: Develop self-confidence in abilities when competent or sense of inferiority when not
  • Adolescence (12-18 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Identity vs. confusion
    • Virtue: Fidelity
    • Description: Experiment with and develop identity and roles.
  • Early adulthood (19-29 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Intimacy vs. isolation
    • Virtue: Love
    • Description: Establish intimacy and relationships with others
  • Middle age (30-64 years)
    • Basic Conflict: Generativity vs. stagnation
    • Virtue: Care
    • Description: Contribute to society and be part of a family
  • Old age (65 onward)
    • Basic Conflict: Integrity vs. despair
    • Virtue: Wisdom
    • Description: Assess and make sense of life and meaning of contributions

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

  • (Fundamental biological requirements for survival)
    • Physiological Needs
      • Air, Water, Food, Shelter (e.g. housing, protection from exposure), Clothing, Sleep, Reproduction
  • (Security and predictability in one's environment)
    • Safety Needs
      • Personal Security (no violence, crime, war), Health & Wellbeing, Stable Environment, Financial Security, Safety Nets
  • (Social connection and acceptance)
    • Love & Belonging
      • Family, Friendship, Community, Romantic Relationships, Group Membership, Affection & Intimacy
  • (Recognition, Competence, and Respect)
    • Esteem
      • Self Respect, Confidence, Respect from Others, Reputation, Recognition and Achievement
  • (Realizing one's full potential)
    • Self-Actualization
      • Creativity, Personal Growth, Moral Development, Pursuit of Meaning, Purpose Driven Action, Peak Experience (joy, transcendence, insight)

Carl Rogers - The Fully Functioning Person

  • Creativity
  • Organismic Trusting
  • Experiential Freedom
  • Existential Living
  • Openness to Experience

Daniel Levinson - Seasons of Life Theory

  • DEVELOPMENTAL PERIODS
    • (Child and Adolescence) - 17
    • EARLY ADULTHOOD
      • Early Adult Transition - 17
      • Entering the Adult World - 22
      • Age 30 Transition - 28
      • Settling Down - 33
    • MIDDLE ADULTHOOD
      • Mid-Life Transition - 40
      • Entering Middle Adulthood - 45
      • Age 50 Transition - 50
      • Culmination of Middle Adulthood - 55
    • (Late Adulthood) - 65
      • Late Adult Transition - 60

Emerging Adulthood

  • Jeffrey Arnett
  • 5 Features of Emerging Adults
    1. Age of identity exploration.
    2. Age of instability.
    3. Age of feeling in between.
    4. Age of self-focus.
    5. Age of possibilities.