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Higher Education

Sociology, 4e: Chapter 13

Instructions: For each question, click on the radio button beside your answer. When you have completed the entire quiz, click the Submit my answers button at the bottom of the page to receive your results.

Question 1:

Demographic research indicates that since the 1970s, ________.
a) young people have been getting married at about the same age as their parents
b) young people have been delaying marriage while they gain an education and prepare for paid employment
c) fewer couples now live together without legal marriage
d) couples are having the same amount of children
e) children spend more time with stay-at-home moms than with non-family careers

Question 2:

Nuclear families consist of ________.
a) married couples and cohabiting couples who have lived together for longer than one year, with or without never-married children
b) several generations or adult siblings with their spouses and children who share a dwelling and resources
c) parents and their children sharing a dwelling
d) single parents living with never-married children
e) all of the above

Question 3:

When relatives do not share a household but still rely heavily on one another, they are said to be a ________.
a) modified extended family
b) regular extended family
c) nuclear family
d) census family
e) household

Question 4:

In the 1950s, American sociologists lamented the isolation of the nuclear family, suggesting that extended families used to be more prevalent before industrialization. Since then, researchers have found that ________.
a) nuclear families were always the most prevalent living arrangement in Europe and North America
b) extended families were and still are widespread among certain cultural groups, such as some First Nations peoples, southern Europeans, and some South and western Asians
c) extended families were and are still more prevalent among those with lower incomes, providing low-cost accommodation and practical support for young cash-strapped couples, lone mothers after separation, or frail elderly parents after widowhood
d) all of the above
e) both A and B

Question 5:

Which of the following statements about polygyny, or having several wives at the same time, is NOT accurate?
a) It is practised in some countries in Africa and western Asia.
b) In sub-Saharan Africa, about half of married women aged 15 to 49 were in polygynous unions throughout the 1990s.
c) Poor men are more likely to take on more than one legal wife.
d) Polygynous unions are more common among rural and less-educated women.
e) Polygynous unions are more common among those who do not formally work for pay outside of the household.

Question 6:

Which of the following statements about polyandry or marriage between one woman and several husbands is NOT accurate?
a) When it does occur, the husbands are often not related.
b) The practice relates to the desire to keep family land in one parcel.
c) Most societies prefer polygyny because more children can be born with multiple wives, which could be important if children are the main source of labour for the family or community.
d) Knowing who the father is would be difficult with multiple husbands, so this is not usually an acceptable form of marriage in patrilineal systems.
e) Since most societies have been patriarchal, men have ensured that marriage systems suit their interests.

Question 7:

Which of the following statements about arranged marriage is NOT accurate?
a) Family solidarity, financial security, and potential heirs are more important in arranged marriages than sexual attraction or love.
b) In cultures with arranged marriages, dowries have been used to attract a partner for daughters to cement family alliances
c) If a man has a large dowry, he can find a “better” wife, which usually means one whose family is wealthier, better educated, and more respected.
d) In societies, such as eastern Indonesia, the groom’s family may be expected to pay the bride’s parents a bride price for permission to marry their daughter.
e) The engagement ring and wedding band given to the bride by the groom in free-choice marriages are remnants of a bride price from arranged marriages.

Question 8:

________ refers to a situation where the newly married pair is expected to maintain contact and to participate in family gatherings and could inherit from either side of the family.
a) Patrilineal descent pattern
b) Matrilineal descent pattern
c) Patriarchal descent pattern
d) Bilateral descent pattern
e) Matriarchal descent pattern

Question 9:

According to the box insert on “Internet Dating,” how is Internet dating different from other dating methods?
a) Relationships formed through cyberspace have been called ‘hyperpersonal’ because participants can be less concerned about what they look like and how to initiate a conversation with a potential partner.
b) Participants can easily filter out undesirable candidates with dissimilar interests or values.
c) Because Internet encounters can be ‘disembodied’, at least initially, there is more scope for fantasy, deception, and experimentation, making it possible to explore identities and sexualities.
d) People can alter details about their gender and sexuality and can pretend to be younger or older, more attractive, wealthier, and more successful in their chosen occupation.
e) All of the above

Question 10:

With which of the following statements about families would the political economy approach NOT agree?
a) In the nineteenth century, men’s workplaces were removed from the home, which gradually eroded patriarchal authority and encouraged families to adapt to employers’ needs.
b) In the nineteenth century, families eventually became units of production, rather than units of shared income and consumption.
c) Once the production of most goods and services took place outside the home, people began to see the family as private and separate from the public world of business and politics.
d) The surge of married women into the workforce after the 1960s occurred mainly because the service sector of the economy expanded with changes in domestic and foreign markets, requiring more workers.
e) The creation of new job opportunities after the 1960s, as well as inflation and the rising living costs, encouraged more wives and mothers to accept paid work, which led to new ideologies about family and parenting.

Question 11:

With which of the following statements about families would the structural functionalism approach NOT agree?
a) The family is the major social institution that provides emotional support, love, sexual expression, and children.
b) Social status is largely established and perpetuated through families.
c) The growth of industrialization and the shift to production outside the home encouraged the acceptance of the nuclear family as a living arrangement
d) In the nuclear family, the wife accepts the expressive role, maintaining social relations and caring for others, while the husband takes on the instrumental role of earning household money.
e) The gendered division of labour was maintained throughout history because it benefitted heterosexual men more than others.

Question 12:

Which of the following theorists combined psychoanalysis and feminist theory, showing how unconscious awareness of self and gender, established in earliest infancy, shapes the experiences of males and females as well as the patterns of inequality that permeate our culture?
a) Nancy Chodorow
b) Charles H. Cooley
c) George Herbert Mead
d) Carol Gilligan
e) Talcott Parsons

Question 13:

Which of the following theorists argued in In a Different Voice (1982) that women’s moral development differs from men’s because while men tend to focus on human rights, justice, and freedom, women’s sense of morality is typically based on the principles of human responsibility, caring, and commitment?
a) Nancy Chodorow
b) Charles H. Cooley
c) George Herbert Mead
d) Carol Gilligan
e) Talcott Parsons

Question 14:

________ argue that images of gender and family are shaped by everyday language and policy discourse. They argue that Western welfare systems were premised on the now-outdated ideal of the male-breadwinner/female-caregiver family, but labour market changes and new lifestyle possibilities have encouraged both men and women to question this gender order and “normative sexuality.”
a) Political economists
b) Structural functionalists
c) Social constructionists
d) Post-structuralists
e) Feminists

Question 15:

Which of the following findings is NOT accurate according to research on household work?
a) Most heterosexual couples, especially after parenthood, divide their household labour in such a way that husbands work full-time and perform occasional chores around the house.
b) Most wives are employed for fewer hours per week than their husbands, but they usually take responsibility for routine indoor chores and child care, even when employed full-time.
c) More equitable workloads are apparent among older, well-educated couples with more children.
d) Housework and child care are viewed as low-status women’s work throughout much of the world.
e) More mothers than fathers develop close ties with their children.

Question 16:

Australian research show that adverse infant outcomes, such as pre-term delivery, low birth weight, stillbirth, and neonatal death, are higher among ________.
a) assisted conception
b) hospital births
c) midwife-assisted births
d) surrogate births
e) natural births

Question 17:

Eichler (1997) in her research on reproductive and genetic technologies argues that ________.
a) reproductive and genetic technologies tend to commercialize human reproduction
b) reproductive and genetic technologies blur the role designations of mother, father, and child
c) medically-assisted births and their complications tend to consume greater public health resources and also place financial and time constraints on new parents
d) assisted conception medicalizes the natural act of childbearing, reinforces the pressure on all women to reproduce, and offers costly services that are not available to the poor
e) all of the above

Question 18:

Which of the following findings about divorce and one-parent families in Canada is NOT accurate?
a) Divorce rates began to increase after WWII.
b) Children from one-parent families are more likely than children from two-parent families to have lower educational achievement and behavioural problems, to be delinquent, leave home earlier, and have higher divorce rates when they marry.
c) One-parent families more often experience economic disadvantage both before and after separation.
d) When children are raised in one-parent families in poverty, they are more likely to suffer disadvantages that continue into adulthood.
e) As children grow older, the time they spend with the non-resident parent decreases, and about a third lose contact.

Question 19:

Children of divorced parents ________.
a) are more likely to have poor relationships with their parents and to end their own marriages with divorce
b) are at the same risk of behavioural problems and distress whether they grow up in one-parent households or stepfamilies
c) who live in stable one-parent households are better off than children living in conflict-ridden two-parent households
d) whose lone mothers work tend to accept more egalitarian gender roles because they see their mothers managing tasks previously defined as masculine
e) all of the above

Question 20:

Strauss and Gelles (1990) in their research on marital violence found all of the following except ________.
a) marital violence and reporting increased in the United States throughout the 1980s
b) reports to police were influenced by the women’s movement
c) reports to police were influenced by police campaigns to prosecute perpetrators
d) reports to police were influenced by increasing options for women wishing to leave violent marriages
e) women are as likely as men to abuse their partners, although this behaviour is less likely to be reported to the authorities, is less consequential in terms of physical harm, and often is motivated by self-defence

Question 21:

Policies have now been implemented in most jurisdictions for police to charge men who abuse their female partners. Yet many women remain with abusive partners because of ________.
a) a shortage of affordable housing
b) an inability to support their children
c) a lack of knowledge about where to turn for assistance
d) fear of reprisal from spouses or former spouses who have threatened to kill them if they go to the police or tell anyone about an incident
e) all of the above

Question 22:

Exposure to violence during childhood has been linked to dating violence as well as spousal victimization and perpetration. The ________ theory suggests that solving conflicts through physical or verbal violence is learned from early experiences of witnessing parental conflict or violence against one’s mother or being a victim of child abuse or neglect.
a) feminist
b) intergenerational
c) socialization
d) communication
e) systems

Question 23:

According to systems theory, the solution to marital violence is to ________.
a) offer therapy sessions to improve couple communication skills, to manage their anger, and to become more assertive about their true feelings without resorting to violence
b) focus on improving anger management, self-esteem, couple communication, and parenting skills
c) make sure that more women are working in the paid labour force, so that they will have more power within the household
d) make sure that more women report spousal assault
e) make sure that authorities take women’s reports seriously and provide the necessary protection and social services

Question 24:

Which of the following statements about the future of families in Canada is NOT accurate?
a) Delayed marriage and child-bearing are on the increase.
b) Higher rates of cohabitation suggest greater marriage instability in the future because couples who lived together before legal marriage have a higher probability of divorce than those who have not lived together.
c) Declining birth rates will persist because raising children is increasingly costly and because combining work and family life is difficult when both parents are employed.
d) Young people tend to remain at home with their parents for shorter periods now than in the 1970s.
e) As life expectancy increases and fertility declines, more people will live beyond the age of 75, and more elderly people will require care.