Sociology of the Family Final Paper

The following are requirements for your papers:

1. Preferably Microsoft Word.  If you do not have access to this software please speak to me within the next 4 weeks about the software you will be using.  Do not wait until the night you turn in your paper.

2. 5 PAGES MINIMUM

a. Full pages, not 4.25…5

3. The following are the largest margins you should have:

a. Top = 1”, Bottom = 1”, Left = 1”, Right = 1”

4. Font = Times New Roman, 12 point

5. Double spaced

6. Note that ALL papers must be submitted in two ways:

a. First, you will need to bring a hard-copy printout of the paper to the final exam

b. Second, before midnight the night of the exam you need to email a copy to me

i. The name of the file needs to be:

1. LAST NAME - family.whatever software extension

a. EXAMPLE: derr - family.docx

Please note – I will be uploading all papers to Turn-It-In.  Please DO NOT copy them from the internet.

What To Do:

Overall you are recording a life story, which is generally asking people to talk about their lives.  People LOVE to talk about their lives…especially once you get them going.  And on that, maybe you want to use some sort of recording device when doing this, so that you can refer to the conversations when writing your papers…it can make the note taking less intrusive.

There are two general schools of thought on how to conduct these interviews:

1. Free form

2. Structured

When you get good at it, free form is REALLY fun.  Since this is your first go-around, you’ll be doing structured for a couple reasons:

1. It will make it easier to write your papers

2. I want you to put together your “discussion guide” and run it by me sometime in the next ~4 weeks, just so I can make sure you’re on the right path

Discussion Guide:

As the name implies, this will be a document which guides the discussion you will have with your family member, and can quite literally be a list of questions you want to ask them.  Now, here’s the thing – even in a structured interview you will likely diverge from the script.  This is totally fine.  And what makes something like this sort of fun.  You ask your grandmother how she met your grandfather, and she starts talking about 3 guys she dated before him?  Roll with it!

Where will you get these questions?  You’ll make them up!  Now, presumably you have liked some of the topics we’ve discussed thus far in class more than others…or some of them have hit closer to your home life than others.  These are the ones you’ll want to focus on.  For example:

• I want to know what roll class played in shaping my family

That is what is known as your research question.  (And, congratulations, you now know more about research than 50% of my clients!)  You cannot simply go to your mother “What do you think about ‘class’?”  That will get you nowhere!

Instead, you’ll need to ask other questions which indirectly ask the same types of questions:

• Where did you grow up?

• Where did you tend to vacation?

• What was your wedding like?

• Honeymoon?

• What jobs did you/dad have?

You’ll then use THAT information combined with what you have learned in class to talk about your family, and answer your research question.

You may have noticed that many of the topics we’ve discussed also have tended to bleed into one another.  This is due to that pesky intersectionality theory we keep talking about – these topics all DO impact each other.  As a result, your paper could talk about race, class, gender…whatever you want.  Wherever your conversation takes you!

Lot of people probably getting a little nervous about the lack of structure here so far

In writing your paper, you’ll want to begin by introducing us to your family.  PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE TALKING ABOUT ANY OF THIS, PLEASE REFER TO ANY FAMILY MEMBERS BY DIFFERENT NAMES, AND WRITE YOUR PAPER AS THOUGH YOU WERE TALING TO/ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE’S FAMILY.

• What is the structure of the family (can be about a page)

o Who is in it

o Where you are from

• What was your research question (topic) going into your conversation? (0.5 – 1 page)

o Did you wind up talking about OTHER things?

• Then, tell me about your family in sociological terms (this is the meat of it…2-3 pages)

o What did you talk about?

o Feel free to use direct quotes

o As you talked, did anything come up which was interesting in light of the things we discussed in class?

• Finally, some sort of conclusion… (0.5 – 1 page)

o What you learned about your family