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social stigma theory
introduction to social stigma
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“At Promise”: Children and Families
When an individual hears the words, ‘at risk’, they immediately think of all the negative characteristics of terminology: teen pregnancy, troubled teens, gang bangers, drop outs, substance abusers, and so on. I know I sure did. In reading Beth Blue Swadener’s article, “Children and Families “at Promise”: Deconstructing the Discourse of Risk”, I’ve learned that there are so much more to labeling at student ‘at risk’. There is actually a history behind the meaning and how ‘at risk’ became such a dangerous label. In rethinking the meaning of ‘at risk’ and changing it to ‘at promise’, places an entirely new meaning and may give hope to those who are lost and forgotten.
There is much of Swadener’s article that I agreed, disagreed, and in some instances, just appalled with. The beginning of her article, Swadener makes the following statement that struck out at me, “…there is an emerging ideology of risk, which has embedded in it interpretations of children’s deficiencies or likelihood of failure due to environmental, as well as individual, variables”. This statement hit me hard because I never thought of ‘at risk’ students as having “deficiencies” or being destined to fail due to variables beyond their control. I may be naïve in my thinking of what ‘at risk’ truly meant but I would have never labeled students as having “deficiencies”.
Swadener continues with some of the child advocacy organizations that work to dismantle the harsh beliefs about children and families living in poverty stricken areas. They create and/or improve governmental policies as well as programs to aid address specific needs of ‘at risk’ students and families. In reading what they do, I was happy to see that the organizations are working to solve the problems rather than pointing the finger at how the students’ lives became to be such a way. Also, I knew that there are programs out to help ‘at risk’ students, but it never occurred to me that families are labeled ‘at risk’ as well. Swadener listed some of the ‘at risk’ programs which I was surprised to see that I am enrolled for most: Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Head Start which is a program that helps pregnant women obtain prenatal insurance before enrolling for governmental insurance such as Title 19, Badger Care, and/or Managed Health. Seeing these programs listed in Swadener’s article gave me twisted emotions.
Albeit the system seems rigged with an unfair advantage to fast food and junk food companies who dominate America’s landscape. In today’s society, if the government sets proportions, adults and children still have the freedom to choose what they consume. Companies are manufacturing to our taste in a series of experiments to find the “bliss” point in which consumers find the products more desirable (Moss 482). The logic is relatable as many businesses strive to appease their customers to return. Subsequently, in agreement with both authors, many adults are enticed by the convenience of these industries. Whether it be they are on the go or prefer not to cook after a strenuous day: the cheap prices and close proximity appeal to their fast paced
In recent years, the number of children whose families fall under the line of poverty has risen at an alarming rate. Crosson-Tower (2013) postulated a reason for this increase when she said, “The recent weakening economy, a higher unemployment rate, unprecedented numbers of home foreclosures and a decline in the safety net for children and their families have resulted in a gradual continuing increase in children living in extreme poverty” (p. 57). Apparently, nearly every aspect of the United States’ crumbling economy affects a family’s ability to meet basic needs. The rise in single parent, mother headed families has not helped poverty statistics because of the lower earning potential of women. A major reason so many children liv...
The pace of life correlates with our endeavor to achieve success and upward social mobility. Every day we put up a fight against the clock as we try to fulfill our daily responsibilities and effectively run all our errands. Rushing to complete an irrational
According to the Children's Defense Fund, 13.5 million children living in America today are poor, and 5.8 million of them are living in extreme poverty, with incomes below half the poverty line. The issues related to poverty -- from substandard housing and malnutrition, to inadequate health and child care services, to severe emotional stress and violence -- are complex and interconnected. Therefore, attempting to understand the problem and propose possible solutions appears to be an overwhelming task. Garbarino effectively provides a lens through which to view the social forces affecting childhood development. Aletha Huston, on the other hand, in her book Children in Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy, proposes a "child-centered" analysis, which focuses on the child's healthy development as "a goal in its own right," rather than as part of a larger social-economic context.
THOSE OF US WHO grew up in the 1950s got an image of the American family that was not, shall we say, accurate. We were told, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet were not just the way things were supposed to be—but the way things were
The United States is divided into three different classes when classifying a group by their income. The classes are the High class, the middle class, and the low class. People who live in the high and middle classes have every day struggles similar to people living in the lower class have; but one thing that fluctuates is the types of struggles people in poorer class have to face proceeding on an everyday basis. For example, not knowing if they will have food on the table for their children, heat for their house in the winter, or have a roof over their head by the end of the month. Unfortunately to every difficulty there is always a gray area over looked. When dealing with poverty, children are often the ones left in that gray area with no
Sometimes, determining when students are at risk can be a difficult task. The term “at-risk” has been used to describe a particular category of students who, on the basis of several risk factors, are unlikely to graduate from high school (Land, Stringfield, 2002). Yet educators are also confronted with children who have other at-risk conditions. For example, educators will be responsible for working with students who are at risk due to health problems, substance abuse, disabilities, socioeconomic status and other various reasons. These conditions can make students academically at-risk, or in danger of not meeting their educational potential. The use of the term “at-risk” to describe learners is often controversial and deserves consideration, as the at-risk label can convey a negative connotation.
The article focused on the question “How well do children fare in remarried families” (Anderson & Greene, 2013, p. 120). Most of the studies compared children in stepfamilies to children living with first-marriage parents. A lot of the research using that approach is criticized for two reasons. This approach pretty much states that first-marriage families are the ideal, perfect family. That idea is not necessarily true. The second reason is because comparing first-marriage families to stepfamilies is not appropriate. This is because children in stepfamilies experience effects on themselves from their parents’ divorce and remarriage. First-marriage family children do not experience these changes. Researchers state that children can be categorized into four groups which include “married, two biological parents; unmarried single mother; married stepparent; unmarried cohabitating” (Anderson & Greene, 2013, p. 120). Studies proved that children living in married-stepfather families were worse off academically than children first-marriage parents. The study also stated that children whom belonged to married-stepparent families were better off academically than unmarried cohabitating stepparents. The type of studies that should be conducted to answer the overall question of children being affected negatively by stepfamilies should study children before and after a remarriage. This type of study is very rare though. Studies proved that children in stepfamilies had no effect on academics, such as reading and math. Research that is conducted on families has three main components: “sampling, measurement, and design” (Anderson & Greene, 2013, p. 121). The two types of studies that are conducted are representative surveys and longitudinal s...
The idea of family is a central theme in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry alludes to the Old Testament book of Ruth in her play to magnify “the value of having a home and family”(Ardolino 181). The Younger family faces hardships that in the moment seem to tear them apart from one another, but through everything, they stick together. The importance of family is amplified by the choices of Walter and Beneatha because they appear to initiate fatal cracks in the Younger family’s foundation, but Mama is the cement who encourages her family to pull together as one unit. The hardships of the family help develop a sense of unity for the Younger household.
Feigning sickness, Gulliver travels with Glumdalclitch and, fortunately, is picked up by an eagle and transported into English waters. By chance, an eagle transports Gulliver back to English waters to be rescued. Upon seeing Englishmen again, he remarks them as being pigmies after being used to seeing Brobdingnagians all the time. Gulliver’s perception of the world has changed during his visit to Brobdingnag. On his return home, it seemed as if he was the giant now. He begins to think of his people as contemptible little creatures just as how the Brobdingnagians thought of him. He even remarks that he could not look at himself while in Brobdingnag. “For indeed while I was in that prince’s country, I could never endure to look in a glass after my eyes had been accustomed to such prodigious objects, because the comparison gave me so despicable a conceit of myself” (Swift 149). Gulliver’s views have started to change, foreshadowing his result at the end of the
There I stand on the Atlantic Ocean beach in Daytona, Florida. It’s 7:49 A.M, June 28, 2015. I feel my size ten feet sink into the frosty sand. With my board in my left arm, and sand covering my body, I seize my direction towards the blue ocean. As I halt at the base of the monumental ocean, I gaze in both directions, not a life in sight. I feel at peace, solitude, in my own meager world. As the crisp ocean mist wipes my sand replete face, I bounce into the ocean with my board under my body, cruising into the profound blue sea.
During Gulliver 's third voyage to Laputa, he meets people that require to be hit by bladders in order to return from their speculations. “It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing (Swift, 246).” The author was concerned with how philosophy can take a person out of reality and as smart as some ideas may seem, it may be likely that it is incoherent and irrelevant to the real-world. Unlike the other places
Interacting with others, in the context of a social institution, is a common phenomenon that takes place every day. Through this socialization, members within society interact and learn about what is expected of them. These social expectations are most commonly communicated through socialization agents, such as the family, media, peers, and religion. To start, the family is one of the social institutions that each individual is born into. By interacting with parents, and maybe even brother and sisters, a baby begins to understand what behavior is and is not normal and expectable. Through the influence of family members and the individual 's interaction with others in society, the individual begins to form his/her own views and beliefs. This view of the family is known as the functionalist theory. When considering whether different age groups agree that it is best for a family if the man is the money maker and the woman takes care of the home and family, it is crucial
Research prior to SEF’s 2013 findings, such as Brook-Dunn’s 1997 work, found that one in five American children were either currently living in families, or had lived in families in which cash income failed to exceed official poverty thresholds. For a small minority of children, 4....
There are several different styles of parenting, authoritarian, authoritative, disengaged, and permissive, according to Diana Baumrind with different characteristics and goals. The two quantifiers of the different types of parenting are responsiveness which is the degree that parents are sensitive to their child’s needs and express love, warmth, and concern for them, and demandingness which is the degree that parents set down rules and expectations for behavior and require their children to comply with them (Arnett, 2016). These different styles of parenting produce children with different outcomes in terms of personality and behavior, and that difference is due to the amounts of responsiveness and demandingness that is present in each of the styles. These outcomes of the children will affect them their entire life, from how they raise their children to how they fit in at school and in their culture to their grades and social life.