Course Focus & Objectives
The central purpose of this course is to broaden and deepen our understanding of marriage and family. The principal but not exclusive focus of this inquiry will be upon the American variations upon marriage and family. Nonetheless, we will incorporate a variety of comparative marriage and family forms as we proceed through the course. Most of the Cherlin text chapters have sub-sections titled "Families in Other Cultures" and these will enrich our analysis of marriage and family phenomena by informing us of cultural alternatives existing in the world today. We will also explore the racial and ethnic variations in marital and family forms that are integral to contemporary American society. The title of the course's main text, Public and Private Families, indicates that there are two divergent perspectives that we will be tracking as we systematically investigate the phenomena of marriage and family. These two perspectives may be summarized most succinctly by these two questions: 1) what do families do that is important to society? and 2) what do families do that is meaningful to individuals? In other words we will be as concerned about the societal implications of marriage and family forms as we will be about the more purely individual implications. And likewise, the title of the course's supplemental text, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Family and Personal Relationships, indicates that we will devoting a substantial amount of time and effort in trying to come to grips some very difficult questions relating to contemporary trends in marriage and family phenomena in America. The course is structured to give the student major responsibility for addressing and helping to resolve the nine controversial issues selected from the Schroeder text (see these issues in the syllabus ahead). For each of these issues students will be assigned to represent the affirmative and negative sides to the question under debate and a separate group of students will be responsible for judging which of the two sides of this debate is the more persuasive. This part of the course will also require that students write short papers on three of the nine issues reviewed in class. Students will be given the choice of which three of the nine issues that they will write upon and these will be graded (as explained next) and will represent the major part of the class participation component. Getting the student to become actively involved in the learning and articulation of these controversial issues is consequently another major course objective that should help to enhance the learning of all students involved in the course.