Why are there inequalities among children?

Nowadays, more and more children are suffering from the inequalities. There's an increasing amount of children have been put in risks, both materially and emotionally.

Why do inequalities happen? As we know the society in no longer as peaceful as we thought, the most commonly form of family is Nuclear Family, which involving mother, father and their children. It seems that nuclear families are disappearing gradually, more children are living with lone-parent family, either living with mother or father. This really does an impact on those innocent children.

Poverty has a significant influence on the inequalities among children. Adults are likely to be at work for most of the time, in order to ensure their current living standard and family income. On the other hand, children wouldn't have enough child-care, therefore children's way of thinking could be isolated or there may be lack of dependency.

Abortion and its impact on families

It is a worldwide issue, abortion is getting in a wider range that nearly 46 million pregnancies are terminated every year; this can be seen as one-fifth of all pregnancies. According to a resource, it says there are some countries allow abortion and some of them are on a limited health ground of abortion.

Of the 133 countries in this study, 49 allow abortion on request or on broad social and health grounds. Only 13 of these nations are in developing regions and include Bangladesh, India, China, Tunisia, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba. Another 40 countries—including six developed countries—permit abortion on limited health grounds. It is quite astonishing when we look at these figures and try to find out the reasons and the motivations of having abortions.

Abortion evolved from those unwanted pregnancy where women would usually take high risks, only to abandon their unborn babies. Whether it is legal or illegal, surely that now has becoming a prevalent trend from careless contraception. Laws are remained to be liberal where health problems should be a significant concern; there's nearly 70,000 women die each year and for sure, this is a quite serious number as there's one die in every 7 minutes.

Here's something that I think is quite important. Restrictive abortion policies mainly affect the poor who rely on the public sector for all their health needs; women who have the means can usually obtain abortions from the private sector. Women are likely to have the priority to obtain their needs from the private sector while the policies have been an influence on poor who can only get helps from the public sector.

How does abortion affect on families? In fact, abortion does not only impact on women but also the family itself. As we can imagine that abortion is a wound of marriage, it means the complicated situations between wife and husband, either conducted by disagreement or fear in misunderstanding. A child is also a human life where has the equal right as everyone else, it's a serious problem to solve and the decision-making is also a dilemma.

If we hypothesise a woman has been insisted to give an abortion by her husband, the possible reaction of this woman would likely to have different attitude towards her view of the family as time goes on. In the mean time, the woman has a child after the previous abortion, it seems to be a replacement of her grief from that unborn child; but actually things are not always this simple. It is interesting yet serious that why women would change their emotion towards this. It might be a feeling of segregated from the first child, feeling alienated and apathy towards the family.

Whether abortion is legal or not, the best solution should always stay on the principle of being more careful on contraception; even it has become inevitably unavoidable, women really need to consider more wisely about the consequences of abortion would brings along.

Oakley's rise of the housewife role

Ann Oakley conducted a research on the housewife role. She has interviewed women who are housewives from the 1970s about how is it like being a housewife.

They work 77 hours for average hours per week, also the interviewees commented on the aspects of their work that they like/dislike. Ann Oakley refers to the social isolation which housewives don't have a chance to interact apart from the children at home. And it's a repetitive nature of having the same housework take in turns. They also commented on the household techonology, how it liberates women from the housework.

However, Ann Oakley made an adjustment on some of the aspects from those housewives that don't really make things any different, and the housewife role is emphasising on women's role as a domestic labourer.

Elizabeth Bott's conjugal roles

Conjugal roles appear when husbands and wives get married and starting to have their own family and house; but this is just the simple way of saying. More in-depth, the conjugal role is a segregation between husbands and wives, results that came from the division of labour in a family. For example, the house keeping between family members, how should it be separated?

In Elizabeth Bott's classic study of Family and Social Network (1957), she gives a observation of one spouse devoted in the financial part of the family, and the other one who keeps those domestic part within the household, such as chores, for instance.

She has studied a more in-depth of 20 predominantly working-class London families. It shows the variable issues among spouses in sharing the same house, interests and outdoor/indoor activities, etc. This is due to the division of labout between husbands and wives. On the other hand, there are also families that shared the common interest and houseworks, which indicates not the whole amount of couples are in the sex role segregation.

Also joint conjugal means that women work on jobs and men are responsible for the domestic tasks.

Nature v.s. Nurture

What does the word 'nature' implied? Some people believe we were born in the way of how we live which means it's the genetic reason influenced us. However, nurture also take a part within this controversial argument, that people are actually affected by the surroundings and what they've learn/seen from others. There's no an absolute answer to this, it will keep staying at the same stage as people always have different point of view towards this.

Comments on ...

1. About the family

According to the resource, we can see that pets are part of the family as well as the children does. What I think is that pets can always be part of the family but in fact, they can never replaced the children because pets arent human being. Although there's a saying that the studies of kinship brings out pets as a substitute of children and providing emtional satisfaction; but what about communication? Does pets and the elder family members communicate in the same way? There was quite an astonishment as I read through it.

2. Goth. Identity, Style and Subculture

Right... Goth? Ive read through the extract but didnt understand well, but basically Ive been thinking that it's about identity, style and subculture, which indicates another important role that could be dedicated outside of a society, perhaps? Ok, I looked at the introduction of that book and it says"From dress and musical tastes to social habits and the use of the internet, Hodkinson details the inner workings of this intriguing group" The author, Paul Hodkinson has made some theory in order to cover all of those he wrote about culture.

3. To but or Not to buy

In nowadays, children has always got the unbelievable power that gradually to tell their parents what they wanted to buy and they must have it, the pester power as we called. Parents might feel quite an absurd that why and how their children arent the same as they were. The qualitative study conducted out a research of children living in families that have a proportional influence building up a dynamic in their contemporary consumer culture. Anyhow I think parents need to be able to keep learning in order to deal with their children.

Sociology experiment

This Sociology experiment is conducted by students of The George Washington University in the US. Basically it's about how people react when a stranger walks right next to them.

Imagine walking on the street all by yourself and suddenly a stranger starts to walk right beside you and wouldnt leave; what would you react? According to this experiment, most people has the similar reaction; at first, they didnt notice there's someone near them but when they gradually find out, some of them confront the guy, some just stared at him, some are angry and some are scared. Although different people have different reaction towards the weird action from a stranger, but their reaction in common is they wouldnt just ignore the stranger.

The Halo-effect

Get to know about the Halo-effect.

The Halo-effect, basically is about what you think about one thing that you could also judge as it's similar with one another.

When reading through those Sociology topics that we are going to be tested on, I found this word in topic 4 which it talks about "Differential achievement" that in terms of social class, why middle-class children do better at school; the Halo-effect is one of those factors.

If applying the Halo-effect on this question, despite all the material things the children could get, how they appeared in front of everyone, even teachers, the possibility of getting better impression would results; meanwhile, the Halo-effect from teachers might cause distort among students where the middle-class children could be easily praised but not the others.

The phrase is also now well-known and being used in the Business world which can be applied on the similar condition.

What is Sociology?

For our curiosity, we've been always thinking about what does the word Sociology mean? Sociology is the study of how society is organized and how we experience life. But is it just that simple? In fact, Sociology is involved in one of several Social sciences, which Social sciences study humans and the social worlds they create; therefore in another words, Sociology is the science of human behaviour as it's coming from a group of people's way of living.

Sociology is define as how we function in everyday life in order to build societies and form different cultures and also it's about the interaction among people who belongs to similar and different part of social structure.

Social structures are made up of arrangements between people within a society. These arrangements include patterns of behaviours that are characteristic of the people involved. As we know people's characteristics and behaviours play an important role of forming social structure, thus it includes people from different societies evolve into different social structure that can be varied in a larger society. For example, the relationship between students and teachers result in individuals' behaviours make up social structures.

Societies are groups of people who share a common culture, also refer to intricately structured arrangements of relationships among people. In nowadays, different societies are formed by many groups of people where they interact with each other throughout
working,learning,social settings,workplace,universities and even fighting; nevertheless, not everyone in a particular society shares the same culture, people participate in cultures different from the larger culture of that society.

When talking about Sociology, we have to get a sociological perspective which is a way of seeing the world. It helps us to understand the social reality in a way of knowing how it get to forms the field of Sociology. People gives out their observation from everyday life.

Also, by talking about societies, it mentioned the word culture, what is culture? Culture is a collection of shared beliefs, behaviours and products of a group of people. We are all having different culture and therefore it build up many cultural events that might specified a particular area; such as Chinese new year, Moon festival, etc.

In order to grasp the complexities of Social Science, we need to think like a sociologist and to be aware of daily circumstances around the society.

How is Sociology Research Conducted?

Source.

A Sociological research is based on 2 principles, Conceptual and Empirical, which is logically accpeted. People usually explain things based on a concept so that others can gradually understand what they are talking about; so does in Sociology, there are several type of norms such as Folkways, Mores, Laws and Values. These norms are trying to explain how things can be allocate to a particular part of concepts where people can clarify them more easily, for instance.

Reasearch based on empirical seems to be necessary as people has the previous knowledge for doing the particular thing; even through active investigation, how people can be affected by media programme and the way of how to interact, etc. It forms a conneciton between itself and and several concepts therefore enabling people to check on the research progress for its logicality.*

*"These twin aspects, the conceptual and the empirical, and the fact that they must be constantly related, make sociology not only a respected academic discipline but also a valuable contribution to other human activities."

Sociology Forums

There are 6 Sociology forums in Chris's blog that I've looked at.

1.The Student Education Forum

This forum is basically more of a asking-and-answering(based on giving opinions) space where people's questions can be solved by others. It's generally talking about Education, such as democratic school, pupil sub cultures, gender gap(i.e. girls versus boys), etc.However there's a topic that attrat me is "What best explain working class underachievement". The top voted reason is 'Material deprivation', which means parents couldnt afford material things like books, computers, etc. for their children; therefore the result of the discussion gives an interesting conclusion, which I think it's quite good for everyone sharing their ideas and thoughts here.

2.The Forum Site

This one is very similar to the first one, but it's talking more about Sociological essay writing or life history, etc. Although it basically talks about everything within the subject Sociology.

3.ScienceCentral.com

It comes up with the title of The Society for Applied Sociology. I've clicked on the Details button and looked through the 4 topics that are shown in another web page, it talks about applied Sociology. This is more likely to be a site for people who wished to know what's in applied Sociology and what is it about, etc.

4.INTJ Forum

This forum, for me, is more formal somehow, although it works based on the same funtion just like the first and second one does.

5. Explore ideas

Does it worth exploring? I dont quite like the layout of the site and maybe it could be clearer with its articles. In fact, I dont really know how to browse the site...

6.The Student Room

This is a suitable forum for students who are studying Sociology. As we can see there are topics like needing help for Sociology essay, different exam board's topic contents, etc; I think it is worth to explore and would get what we wanted to know/learn.