A Sociology of Family Life. Deborah Chambers

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

      1 (1) Summarize the main critique that Engels elaborates in response to the dominant anthropological studies on mating and kinship from the nineteenth century.

      2 (2) What are the main shortcomings of Parsons’ functional approach for an understanding of intimate lives and gender relations in contemporary societies?

      3 (3) Discuss this sentence from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1972 [1949]): ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’

      4 (4) What are the key differences between the culture of poverty and the strength resiliency approaches?

      5 (5) What are the main contributions of late twentieth-century feminist scholarship to current debates on family and intimate relations? Consider relevant sociological examples.