In the United States, the "American Dream" family has often been thought to include a heterosexual, two-parent household with 2.5 kids, a house in the suburbs, and a white picket fence. While this is no longer the dominant family form, this "ideal" still holds great symbolic meaning, and non-normative family forms continue to be stigmatized and pathologized or rendered illegitimate and not considered as family. This course will examine the changing dynamics of families in the US and worldwide. We will consider how families function both within and beyond the context of the nuclear family as well as the political, legal, and social implications of who counts as family. We will focus on how race, class, gender, and sexuality shape family life and we will explore themes including marriage promotion policy, the division of household labor, gender inequality, intergenerational families, non-biogenetic kinship, families of choice, and more. Course texts will include sociological, historical, and queer theory approaches, in addition to sources from popular media. Through reading and engaging with literature on diverse family forms, this course aims to use a critical lens to approach the concept of the nuclear family and to consider the future possibilities of the family as a social institution. |