Marriage and the family
SOCI2021
CPD-2.19
10:30-12:20
Thursday
2nd semester
Lecture venue
Lecture time
Offer semester
Patterns of marriage and family formation in the postindustrial world have considerably changed in the past several decades. Fertility rates have declined, age at marriage has significantly gone up, divorce rates have increased, cohabitation rates have increased, and nonmarital childbearing has become more common in most postindustrial settings.
SOCI 2021 [Marriage and the Family] will exposure students to sociological concepts and debates related to these family/marriage issues, focusing on the patterns, causes, and potential consequences of the changing family behaviors and values. While this scholarly exploration will take a global perspective, a particular attention will be given to (1) East Asian societies and (2) cross-cultural differences between East Asian societies and Western postindustrial societies.
This course shall consist of lectures and tutorials. Lectures will cover major themes and key arguments of each week’s course topic, drawing upon multimedia (e.g., local and international news, YouTube clips, movies, etc.) as well as assigned readings. In tutorials, we will not regurgitate materials and contents covered in lectures. Instead, you will read one research journal article that is directly relevant to the lecture topic and discuss about it.
Read and critically evaluate scholarly research on family.
Apply sociological/demographic theories and methods to creatively analyze family issues in both the local and global contexts.
Effectively communicate what you learn about the sociology of family in both written and oral forms.
Tasks
Weighting
Tutorial participation
10%
Tutorial presentation
15%
Reflection memo
5%
Term essay
20%
Examination
50%
In each week, 2 to 3 research articles and/or book chapters are assigned as required readings. The readings consist of both theoretical and empirical pieces. These required readings (along with optional readings) have been uploaded in Moodle as a PDF version. You are expected to read all assigned readings before class. This is critical for your success in this course because class is based on lectures/discussion around the readings.
There is no required textbook for this course. With that said, for those who would want to learn various family-related topics in a systematically arranged way, I recommend one of the following textbooks:
Cohen, Philip. 2020. The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change. (3rd Edition). W.W. Norton & Company. (ISBN: 9780393537321)
Cherlin, Andrew. 2021. Public and Private Families: An Introduction. (9th Edition). McGraw Hill. (ISBN: 9781260813272)
