Application of Course Concepts

            Since my introduction, I have tweaked my assignment a bit.  Originally, I was looking for an extremely specific target for my interview, which was a very difficult process.  As a result, I have decided to broaden my scope of research; instead of searching for an interviewee of atheistic beliefs as well as maintaining a single parent household, I have decided to focus my research solely on the single parent household. While the idea of specifying my objective with respect to religion would be very interesting and beneficial, finding a single-parent atheist was more difficult than expected after inquiring the few atheists that I came in contact with. Thus, I felt that examining the single-parent household was more relatable in my investigation of gender role performance.

            My project will focus primarily on two course concepts: family as a social institution and gender as a social institution.  “By focusing on family as an institution, we make clear how practices that at first glance appear to be innocent, idiosyncratic family traditions are actually contributors to the institutionalization of gender/sex discrimination” (DeFrancisco & Palczewski, 2007, p. 154).  DeFrancisco and Palczewski (2007) identify gender roles as “commonly used to refer to feminine and masculine social expectations in a family based on a person’s sex” (p. 154).  With this in mind, I want to further examine how family as a social institution teaches gender roles, specifically when looking at single-parent households.  As a class we discussed the nuclear family with great detail, but I am curious how single parents compensate for the lack of the opposite gender when teaching traditional gender roles.  Additionally, I’m curious not only how the parent performs gender roles, but also examine how the children’s gender roles are affected by the lack of a parent.   

            The second area of course material I am focusing on is gender as a social institution.  Sociologist Patricia Yancey Martin outlines 12 characteristics of social institutions.  While all of them provide insight as to why gender is a social institution, a couple of them are more applicable to my research: institutions constrain and facilitate behavior and designation social positions characterized by expectations and norms.  Although I have not done my interviews yet, I am interested to see how these ideas appear in their responses.  I am so looking forward to the responses I receive based on these questions and concepts.  I wish to look at least one family where there is a single-father household and one family where there is a single-mother household.  Looking at different genders will help to diminish biased or one-sided answers.