HDE 110 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Child Support, Stephanie Coontz, Sperm Donation
2 Jul 2018
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● Michael Sandel - “The case against perfection” essay
○ “As a society we are concerned about achieving perfection in many spheres of
our lives…”
■ Physical beauty - through surgery and drugs
■ Athletic perfection - substances
■ “Designer” babies - reproductive technologies
○ Pursuit of perfection
● Our society has developed a cultural image of a perfect or ideal family
● “Ideal” family
○ Nuclear family form
○ Dad is breadwinner
○ Mom is homemaker living with the kids
○ Safe suburban setting
○ 2 heterosexual parents
○ Biological children
● Fewer people agree that single- parent families, married couples without children, or
cohabitating couples with children constitute a family
● We are taught by culture and religion that family “should” be composed of a mother,
father and at least 2 kids, preferably one of each sex
●
● “In spite of the current cultural endorsement of the nuclear family as the ideal family
form, this has not always been the predominant family form or the ideal family form”
● “We have constantly reinvented the ideal family form in response to changing historical
circumstances”
● Why is the nuclear family the ideal family form ?
○ “.. although change has characterized families over time, we have chosen a
period in our history that we imagine or recall as being a particularly good period
for families and then used this era as the baseline for comparison with the
contemporary state of the family”
● German grave
○ Grave containing 13 individuals, many of them children
○ One couple was linked with two children
■ Seen as evidence of a nuclear family
○ Small argued
■ “Other 9 individuals underscores the fact that our ideas of the ‘ideal’
family are narrow, and just plain inaccurate”
■ “The 13 bodies in that German grave are there not because they are a
family per se, but because they were important to each other, connected
in some way, either economically or emotionally, because that’s really
what people do”
● Recent ideal of a common family form centered in the 1950’s
● Stephanie Coontz
○ Book - The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
○ Documented that the “ideal “ nuclear family form existed only briefly in the 1950s
and 1960s
■ A wide variety of forms were common in our past
■ Misconceptions
○ “Yes, men worked, women stayed at home and looked after children and divorce
rates were low, but all was not tranquil and peaceful in these supposedly ideal
families”
■ Marital conflict
■ Spousal and child abuse
■ Maternal depression and despair
■ Hardships were masked by public display of contentment and conformity
○ Ex: Nelson family who played idealized nuclear family on TV
■ Later revealed
● Father - son conflict
● Resentment in real life
● Misleading view of an ideal family
● Froma Walsh
○ “Our conception of family is too narrow”
○ ‘Profamily’ - nuclear family
■ Standard for healthy families
○ ‘Antifamily’ - pluralistic view
■ Denounced
● The Evans - “ideal” nuclear family
○ Parents - Heterosexual, married, reside in same household
■ Raised their kids on own - no child care or nannies
■ Both work
○ Biological children - male and female
■ Doing well in school, aspire to go to college and be successful
professionals
Document Summary
Michael sandel - the case against perfection essay. As a society we are concerned about achieving perfection in many spheres of our lives . Physical beauty - through surgery and drugs. Our society has developed a cultural image of a perfect or ideal family. Mom is homemaker living with the kids. Fewer people agree that single- parent families, married couples without children, or cohabitating couples with children constitute a family. We are taught by culture and religion that family should be composed of a mother, father and at least 2 kids, preferably one of each sex. In spite of the current cultural endorsement of the nuclear family as the ideal family form, this has not always been the predominant family form or the ideal family form . We have constantly reinvented the ideal family form in response to changing historical circumstances . Grave containing 13 individuals, many of them children. One couple was linked with two children.
