Course Description
This course focuses on families in the contemporary U.S.
It will introduce you to how sociologists study families and along with them, topics that seem very personal, emotional and important to many of us—ideals about love, marriage, gender, parenthood, sex and sexuality—scientifically.
Sociology of the family is a subfield of the subject of sociology, in which researchers and academics study family structure as a social institution and unit of socialization from various sociological perspectives.
It can be seen as an example of patterned social relations and group dynamics.
Drawing on two sociological paradigms, the sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by symbolic interactionism as well as functionalism.
These two theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly.