Deck 11: Families

Question 1

Which statement best reflects how family life is represented in sitcoms, TV commercials, and parenting advice books in the United States today?

A) Grandparents are in charge of children and the second shift.
B) Parenting is a joint responsibility of a mother and father.
C) Women are primary caretakers of the house and children, and dads are backups.
D) Fathers are active and knowledgeable caretakers of children.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Young men and young women can be called egalitarians because they prefer relationships in which

A) they equally value men's responsibility for earning income and women's for child and house care.
B) they both intend to work for pay and forgo having children.
C) they accept that women will only seek paid work when it doesn't interfere with their roles as mother and wife.
D) both partners do their fair share of breadwinning, housekeeping, and child rearing.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

The working poor are people who

A) are paid wages below minimum wage.
B) work 40 hours a week at paid jobs but still live in poverty.
C) are hired for domestic outsourcing by upper-class families.
D) are working toward economic stability.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

What is one reason that divorced women might experience more happiness than divorced men after their marriage ends?

A) Only divorced women are entitled to alimony and tax rebates.
B) Divorced women spend less time on the second shift.
C) Divorced women can now channel their energy toward being a Super Mom.
D) Divorced women rely more on domestic outsourcing than divorced men do.

Question 5

The lifetime effects of lost wages, benefits, and social security contributions that come with taking time out of the workforce to raise children is called

A) wage discrimination.
B) the mommy tax.
C) gender salience of housework.
D) outsourcing care.

Question 6

Since 1950, voluntary unmarried motherhood has increased because

A) divorce rates have increased.
B) having a child out of wedlock has become less stigmatized.
C) parenting is more rewarding than marriage.
D) women want to challenge the ideology of intensive motherhood.

Question 7

The phrase rugrat race refers to

A) escalating competition for even small children to get class advantages by investments of mother's time.
B) the rush by working women to gain tax benefits from the state for childcare.
C) competition in the media to show mothers in paid employment as Super Moms.
D) children being competitive with each other about who gets their mother's attention.

Question 8

Which of the following statements, regarding people who specialize in unpaid household labor, is false?

A) They often feel their partners do not value their contribution toward the household.
B) They experience a loss of bargaining power and status in their relationship.
C) They overwhelmingly had planned to be a housewife or househusband.
D) They experience economic vulnerability.

Question 9

The study of how households with only men divided up their chores found that

A) caring about cleanliness could be masculinized too.
B) doing masculinity meant pretending not to care whether the house was clean.
C) housework was not gendered unless women were present.
D) policing cleanliness can be more important than policing gender.

Question 10

Which of the following is true about the second shift?

A) Single mothers are especially likely to avoid facing this specific challenge of marriage .
B) It is a gender-neutral problem facing all families, solved strategically in different ways.
C) On average, it disproportionally burdens women.
D) Generally, married couples divide housework between them on the basis of who has more time when the first shift of paid work is over.

Question 11

Which of the following statements expresses a major source of the feminization of poverty?

A) There is no 'daddy tax' on fathers.
B) Women are not marrying enough to keep mothers from being found among the working poor today.
C) Women of all races have more precarious and poorly paid jobs than men.
D) Delaying motherhood leads to higher bankruptcy in middle age.

Question 12

What is the best supported explanation for the rise in childlessness in the United States?

A) a decrease in the ideology of intensive mothering.
B) a decrease in the number of men attending college where women can meet and marry them.
C) the lower value of life and widespread abortions by middle-class women.
D) an increased availability of safe birth control options and opportunities to excel professionally.

Question 13

While men and women overwhelmingly want egalitarian relationships, the majority of men's backup plans can be described as

A) neo-traditional.
B) traditionalist.
C) authoritarian.
D) feminist.

Question 14

Which of the following statements is false?

A) Some men and women are traditionalists who hold to family ideologies similar to those in the 1950s.
B) The ideology of intensive motherhood is a dominant model of parenting in developing countries.
C) Women have a more ambivalent relationship to marriage than men.
D) On average, men are more dependent on their spouses' unpaid work and women are more dependent on their spouses' incomes.

Question 15

Couples with class privilege can build and maintain an equal division of labor by

A) remaining childless.
B) outsourcing more household labor.
C) sharing the same traditionalist orientation.
D) specializing in either household or market labor.

Question 16

Domestic outsourcing refers to

A) paying non-family members to do family-related jobs.
B) men being responsible for the second shift in a relationship.
C) grandparents being primary caregivers for grandchildren.
D) upholding the ideology of intensive motherhood.

Question 17

In Gender, Wade and Ferree label work and family as "greedy institutions" because

A) both are expensive.
B) both are designed in ways that enhance national GDP for the good of the country.
C) both make gendered demands for a great deal of an individual's time and energy.
D) both preserve the androcentric organization of economy.

Question 18

Examining the division of labor in gay and lesbian households reveals which general pattern?

A) the uniquely family-focused approach to parenting in same-sex households where it can be difficult to become parents
B) the gendering of tasks and roles regardless of the sex of the person doing them
C) the declining significance of intensive mothering for younger people
D) the opportunities that all families have to disregard gender entirely if they wish

Question 19

In low-income households, mothers will often stay at home because

A) they wish to help nonfamily members in their neighborhood.
B) they wish to please their in-laws by doing more intensive mothering.
C) day care costs more money than they are able to earn by working.
D) building egalitarian relationships requires mutual sacrifice.

Question 20

The ideology of intensive motherhood is reflected in all of the following relationships EXCEPT

A) mothers feel they should never allow anyone else to be an emotionally significant caretaker of their children.
B) child rearing today involves extreme investments of time, energy, and material resources only from the mothers who can afford to stay home full time.
C) maximizing children's educational and career achievement is a mother's primary goal.
D) more personal investment in doing childcare than in housework, especially among upper and upper-middle class mothers who can afford some domestic outsourcing.

Question 21

Some couples choose the breadwinner/housewife arrangement even when they have egalitarian beliefs, often because

A) the alternative of being Super Mom is not practical for women of their social class or race
B) the women have been socialized to accept a move full-time to the second shift and men were socialized to be breadwinners.
C) there is a relatively large difference between what the average husband and wife earns.
D) they know that maintaining care chains helps lower income families.

Question 22

Which of the following is true about the care chain?

A) The chain is based only on a series of unpaid nurturing relationships.
B) The work of care brings more financial returns as you move down the chain.
C) The chain involves both men and women doing care work at the highest levels.
D) The work of care is feminized and devalued, whether it is paid or not.

Question 23

In Gender, Wade and Ferree discuss various ways labor can be divided within families. Pick any three ways, name and define the three you pick, and then explain what factors outside the family make it more or less probable that particular families will choose these specific arrangements.

Question 24

Why do so many wealthy white wives support the ideology of intensive mothering?

A) They want to preserve their social standing by defining their work as valuable.
B) They believe in biological differences emerging in early childhood.
C) The commodification of baby products was enhanced by their position in capitalism.
D) They want to contest the demands of greedy institutions like work and family.

Question 25

Why could outsourcing be called a patriarchal bargain?

A) It helps migrant communities earn a living doing domestic chores.
B) It has to be negotiated to resist the matrix of domination.
C) It does not liberate women as a group.
D) It helps build transnational care chains that reproduce patriarchy.

Question 26

How does the continued feminization of housework and childcare impact gender equality? Explain this phenomenon in your own words.

Question 27

Compare and contrast the specific meaning of the ideology of intensive motherhood and the feminization of housework. Explain how each of these concepts relate to the broader principles of sexism, androcentrism, and subordination that make the gender binary a relationship of inequality. How does the strategy of domestic outsourcing relate to them?

Question 28

Traditional and neo-traditional heterosexual couples share beliefs and practices that distinguish them from other couples. The most central of these would be that

A) they believe being at the top of the care chain will help establish gender equality for their family.
B) they can afford to be pragmatic rather than ideological in their approach toward negotiating gender in heterosexual relationships.
C) they resist the ideology of intensive motherhood in favor of emphasizing women's housework.
D) they resist reorganizing the second shift on a basis other than gender.

Question 29

Name two different ideological barriers and two structures of material opportunity that limit households from carrying out their preferences for a more equal division of unpaid labor. Which of these four explanations would you select as most important for women and men who are like you in their other identities/social locations? Why?

Question 30

The term Othermothers refers to

A) the style of outsourced child rearing found in wealthy communities.
B) unmarried mothers accepting government aid to help support raising their children.
C) women who contribute mothering time and care for children in their neighborhoods.
D) outsourcing the wife-and-mother role in a transnational care chain.

Question 31

Which of these is NOT a reason that family decisions lead to asymmetrical divisions of labor in couples?

A) Economic rationality favors breadwinner men.
B) Having women defer to men's preferences makes sense in a culture of gender subordination.
C) When a child is born, women change their mind about what they want in the long term.
D) Housework is feminized work.

Question 32

In 2012, the birthrate was the lowest recorded in American history. Give at least three potential explanations for the rise in childlessness in United States. What kind of changes in the division of household labor might reverse or at least stop this downward trend in births?