Based on the readings that discuss issues of marriage and family, why do you think the STATE has such a vested interest in the relationships between people who sleep together and/or people who want to raise
children together? How do social norms reflect the gender regime favored by the State, and how are current events challenging the heteronormative nuclear family as a basic social unit? Finally, when sexual and reproductive knowledge and attitudes change, what happens to laws and codes of behavior in society? If babies can be born to women to whom they are not genetically related, parents can create families using a variety of technologies and tolerance for a variety of sexual orietations increases, how relevant are the old ideas about love, marriage and family?
References:
Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices: Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies, Fourth Edition. Oxford University Press, NY. 2015 (WRWC in syllabus). ISBN 978-0-19-984360-2
WRWC: Chapters 6, 7 and 8
bell hooks, “Feminist Parenting,” Feminism is For Everybody (2000).
Chrys Ingraham, “The Wedding-Industrial Complex,” White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture (2008).
Josephson, Jyl. “Citizenship, Same-Sex Marriage, and Feminist Critiques of Marriage” Perspectives on Politics Vol. 3, No. 2 (2005): 269-284.
Joslin, Courtney G. “The Legal Parentage of Children Born to Same-Sex Couples: Developments in the Law,” Family Law Quarterly Vol. 39, No. 3 (2005): 683-70
Sarah R. Hayford and Karen Benjamin Guzzo, “Racial and Ethnic Variation in Unmarried Young Adults’ Motivation to Avoid Pregnancy,” in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2013, 45(1):41–51, doi: 10.1363/4504113
