Jennifer Chahine, Sociol 242 Final Essay
Goodbye Forty Hour Week
I live in a society that has impacted my family and constrained our household. The society that I am living in today is impacting, shaping, and constraining my family life and household in many ways. The economy has impacted my family throughout my childhood and still is today. I would consider my family to be working class. Both my mother and father work about forty hours a week, plus overtime. With raising three kids, bills, and daily necessities such as food shopping, clothing, etc., it is very hard not to struggle at times. As a child, I was not spoiled with all this new technology and peer pressure. My family got me what they could afford, and I was completely content with
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The article Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood, by Kathleen Gerson relates to my family life and relationship with my father as well. “Yet, even if part-time work were available, involved fathers still needed the earning that only full-time and overtime work could offer. “Days go by and my siblings and I don’t see my dad. He would love to go fishing, hiking, and do adventurous things with me like we used to, that would be so much fun! However, as difficult it is, working full time plus more is what he must do, and why we are so thankful for him. My mom also works around forty hours a week at a local convenient store. Her English isn’t perfect which limits her ability to work where she wants. She has attempted to apply for many other jobs but with her lack on English and United States education, she can never receive a call back. With the culture, we live in today, it impacts many individuals on various opportunities in the work field. By listening to her thick accent, they assume she doesn’t know English, or lacks numerous types of skills. However, back in Lebanon my mom studied psychology, and was also an early education teacher. She is strong in many different skills such as
Having a family of low socioeconomic status inevitably leaves me to reside in a low-income neighborhood which makes it more likely for me to witness the tragedies, adversities and hardships that people go through [not excluding myself]. Being conscious of this kind of environment, and these kinds of events, creates a pressure on me for having the aim to achieve social mobility in order to escape the aforementioned environment so that my own children could witness one less abominable aspect of life. Moreover, my family’s low socioeconomic status does not authorize me the privilege of being raised with the concerted cultivation method that kids of high socioeconomic status are more prone to being raised in. My family did not have the financial resources that granted us access to extra classes or lessons of instrumental classes, swimming practices, karate practices, or any other extracurricular activities that people of high socioeconomic status would be able to afford. This invisible fence that prevents me from these extracurricular activities enables me to having more appreciation towards the hobbies and talents that other people have. Plus, the fact that my family’s low socioeconomic status acts as a barrier from enjoying expensive luxuries in life creates a yearning [in me] to enjoy them later on in my life, in addition to acting as the fuel to my wish of achieving social mobility in anticipation of providing my own children with the luxurious vacations, gadgets, beachhouse, new cars that I could not
Often in today’s society, both parents are required to work full time to meet the needs of and
Overall if it wasn't for my ethnicity, religion, and income I would not be the person I am today with the same values and morals. It is apparent social classes are revolved around income and power and people are born into social class but that does not mean a person has to stay in that social class. As for myself being raised a catholic Latina, with working middle class parents my destiny does not have to be the same. Sociologically, social structure affects almost everything in our life from our ambitions to our social life and the way we interact with others. sociological imagination helps us to understand the effects of social forces on our lives.
When we as human beings are born into this world, there are things that we have control over, and other things that we have no say in. We control what we do with our lives, what schools to attend, what activities to be a part of, and who we marry, for example. This seems to be quite fair, and for the most part, we take it for granted. While we do have these kinds of freedoms, there are other aspects of life that we have no control over. One thing that we are born into, is our social class. No matter who you are, there is a social class that you fall into, and you really have no say in it. The one social class that seems to be the most populated is the middle, or working class. These people usually classify themselves as being as normal, or as ordinary as they come. While that seems to be the common thought, there are plenty of middle class families that aren't as normal as they think. Depending on what class you belong to, your perception of "normal" tends to vary. So what exactly is "normal" to the average, middle, working class family?
I grew up in a two income, working class household with one sibling. Neither of my parents had a secondary education and both worked an average of 45 to 50 hours a week to support the family. During the entire 4 years of high school I cannot recall my mother asking me about one homework assignment, attending one band concert or football game. She didn’t encourage me to be involved in community organizations or civic activities. She did allow me to participate in the activities I chose on my own and for the most part she just left me to figure things out on my own. We also always seemed to live near family that we would gather with and rely on with great regularity and I can’t recall ever looking at a calendar or schedule to determine my future plans. According to Kris Gutierrez, Carolina Izquierdo and Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, authors of the article "Middle Class Working Families' Beliefs and Eng...
...herefore the choice we make as individuals, such as how we spend our earnings, etc. creates the class society place us in. We all desire to keep our family members safe, protected, educated, healthy and happy. The decrease in income may suggest other family members to interrupt their education and seek employment. Income decrease may also separate your family unity, because adjusting to change for some people is unthinkable. If small mid age children are in the family, this may cause them to commit crimes due to materialistic desires. Overall poverty may exist, and there is help for people, but people are in control to their destiny.
The place where I learned about the most about morals and family values came from the supper table. The term ‘Supper’ is the Mainer equivalent for word dinner. Supper has always held a special place in my heart, especially as I grow older. I recognize many families don’t have the opportunity to sit down at the dinner table and spend quality times with their loved ones because of their social class. Sometimes a parent from the lower-class might work late to try to make ends meet, or they just can’t afford to have a big supper every night like mine could. We were by no means in the upper-class echelon of society but, somewhere in the middle-class. I was very fortunate compared to my counterparts that came from low-income families. My social class helped shaped me into who I am. Living in the middle-class has allowed me to place more value on relationships with my family and friends, and place less value on money. I realize that I will only feel rich if I love what I do and surround myself with the ones that mean the most to me rather than materialistic possessions. Money has little influence on my future aspirations and goals. I only aspire to feel happy.
My family has constantly been middle class throughout society with the exception of situational poverty like divorce, widowed, great depression, and repression. Starting on the maternal side with my great grandparents, Douglas Woodard and Anna Williams. Douglas, also known as grandpa on the farm, was employed by the military and also spent his time at home on the farm. Many things have been lost over the years or forgotten all together.
Modern society is much more detached than ancient society, where parents may be far in distance from their children, but only a short phone call away. An example of this can be noted in the provided rhetorical essay, where the author, and mother of a few children, explains how modern society has greatly shifted from the stay-at-home mother who is readily available, to the modern mother who is"involved" and is therefore harder to reach. This detached relationship consequently challenges the already established relationships of nurture and support already seen throughout society. The mother who wrote this essay argues that these detached relationships in families are actually beneficial to the children--where the children are "learning skills they need to succeed in the real world."
The economic class that I was born in was the middle class, which remains the same today. My family is neither wealthy nor poor, which means that we are able to live comfortably and provide each other with basic needs.
Society at large had such a great part to play in my situation. (Mills, 2000) It is the one that had brought this poor state. For instance, the society and the community did not actually realize that most of its people were in need and hence had taken this to be a norm. Working so hard and earning little was the way of life. Therefore, the society had made us feel comfortable in that state that we were in, and I believe that it was how people at some point lived even if they became rich later.
Since the beginning of time, fathers have had a profound effect on their child’s development. Over the years, the norm for traditional family dynamics of having a father figure in the household has changed drastically, and so did the roles of the parents. It is not as common as it used to be to have a father or father figure in the home. In this day and age, women are more likely to raise children on their own and gain independence without the male assistance due to various reasons. The most significant learning experience and development of a person’s life takes place in their earlier years when they were children. There are many advantages when there is a mother and father combined in a
To me, family is the most important thing in my life. They always encourage me to be the best I can be and nothing more. A quote that I think describes family to me is one by Alex Haley that states, “In every conceivable manner, the family is the link to our past, and bridge to our future.” Through the stories I hear from my mother and grandmother, I have a clear link to my families past and the generation of women that led to me. All the values these women held close to them throughout the years have led to the formation of myself and my values. Over the past three generations, the women in my family have overcome oppression. My mother, growing up in a time where women could never have aspirations to be CEO’s or politicians, somehow came out stronger. She saw what she didn’t want for her future, and jumped at the chance to start a new life in America. No single model of family life characterizes the American family, despite ideological beliefs to the contrary (Andersen). My family couldn’t be labeled an “Italian family” or an “American family.” We are a mix of the two cultures and ideologies, which is what makes us different. I am the first women in my mother’s family to be born and raised in America. My great grandmother had a complete different childhood and adolescence experience than I yet we still have a common cultural base. All her ideals were passed onto my grandmother, than all the down to me, a hundred years in the making to become who I am
Parent’s work When I was still extremely young both of my parents continued to work. At just one years old my mom was working as a clerk in a doctor’s office, and my dad worked at the SPCA, while also working 90 hours a month being a reserve police officer. So I spent a majority of my time with my mom growing up. My dad later on became a code enforcement officer, so he left the SPCA, but still continued with being a police officer on top of that. Once my mom became pregnant with my sister, my parents decided that they were financially stable enough for my mom to quit her job to stay home with me and my sister. This allowed me to have a close bond with my mom, but because of how much my dad works, it was hard for me to have an even remotely similar relationship with my
Most family’s feel that both parents need to work today. Society leads one to think it is a necessity for two adults to work to survive. When the decision is being made for two adults to work does the family consider all the cost involved? Two adults working can have a huge effect on a family’s emotional, time, and finances.