Week 12 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 12 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 85–104 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–20 min total)

• Theories About Family & Marriage: Crash Course Sociology #37 — CrashCourse
• Where does the Nuclear Family Come From? — PBS Origins

① Who counts as family? Family forms and marriage patterns

Chapter 12, Section “Sort the marriage patterns: one spouse, several, inside, outside” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Family forms, kinship, and marriage patterns” · Remember: count the spouses first, then ask whether a marriage rule points inside the group or outside it.

• Theories About Family & Marriage: Crash Course Sociology #37 — CrashCourse — an overview of how sociologists define a family, the names for different family types, and marriage patterns across societies, closing with the three perspectives on what the family does. Use it while working through the Week-12 module overview. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
• What Are Family of Orientation and Family of Procreation? — Sociology Vibes — a short explainer on the family that raised you and the family you form, with everyday examples to test yourself against. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
• Where does the Nuclear Family Come From? — PBS Origins — a history-minded look at why one family form came to be treated as the standard, and how common other forms are; a good companion to the chapter's point that family forms vary across cultures and time. (video, 9 min) (captions: automatic)

② Jobs, power, and meanings: three lenses on the family

Chapter 12, Section “Run the family through three lenses: jobs, power, meanings” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Three perspectives on the family and on one marriage decision” · Remember: functionalism names the family's jobs, conflict theory its inequalities, and interactionism its meanings, and no lens wins.

• 4 Theoretical Perspectives on Families — Dr. Rachel Sociologist — a walk through the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist views of the family, plus a feminist view; as you watch, name the level of analysis each one works at. This builds on Week 11's work on doing gender, now carried into the home. (video, 12 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Homes versus families: reading the household figures

Chapter 12, Section “Read the household figures: 1975 and 2025, four ways” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Household versus family, and the 1975 and 2025 figures” · Remember: a household share counts homes, not people and not families, so say what is counted before saying what changed.

• Median Age at First Marriage: Geographic Variation, 2024 — National Center for Family & Marriage Research — a short data profile that maps the median age at first marriage by state for men and women. It draws on a different Census survey from the chapter's figures, so its national medians differ a little: read each number with its own source and year. (reading, 8–12 min)
• Home alone: More persons living solo than ever before, but roomies the fastest growing household type — Statistics Canada — Canada's census agency on people living alone and with roommates; notice how it counts families separately from households, the same distinction the chapter draws for the United States. (reading, 8–12 min)
• Stages of Family Life: Crash Course Sociology #38 — CrashCourse — the stages a family can move through and the shifting timing of marriage and childbearing; its figures come from an earlier year, so use the chapter's 1975 and 2025 figures for this course. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)

④ Decline or change? Two readings of the same trend

Chapter 12, Section “Weigh decline against change: one trend, two readings” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The decline-versus-change debate” · Remember: the data describe the trend, the two views interpret it, and this course gives no verdict.

• The Changing Landscape of Love and Marriage — Contexts, via PubMed Central — a plain-language magazine article that sets the marital-decline reading and the marital-resilience reading side by side and asks what young adults say they want; read the section on why intimacy matters for the two readings at full strength. Its figures come from an earlier year. Stop here before schooling and religion; next week takes those up. (reading, 12–18 min)
• How the Nuclear Family Broke Down — The Atlantic — one magazine writer's argument that the nuclear family should no longer be treated as the ideal. Treat it as one interpretation to weigh against the others, and check any figure it gives against its source before you use it. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Census Bureau Releases New Estimates on America's Families and Living Arrangements — U.S. Census Bureau — the release behind this week's household shares and median ages; read the opening highlights for the married-couple and one-person household shares and the median ages at first marriage, and skip the detailed tables unless you want them. (reading, 5–10 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com