Draft:
Sample questions for the in-class midterm exam. The midterm will consist of essay questions including some of the following. The midterm is a closed- book exam, no notes are allowed.
Essays should explain causes and effects, rather than simply providing a laundry list. A careful explanation with a few detailed and carefully considered examples is always better than a long list of examples without sufficient explanation.
Potential Essay Questions:
1) What are the supposed advantages of marriage for children and society? Cite at least two authors that we have read
2) What are the racial differences in out of wedlock births, and what are the explanations for the differences? How has the rate of out-of-wedlock births changed since the Moynihan report?
3) Describe the feminist critique of the traditional (husband bread winner, mother home maker) family, and of traditional family scholarship. How do proponents of the traditional heterosexual married nuclear family respond to the critique? Use both Friedan and Wilson.
Identifications. In three or four sentences, define the term and explain its significance.
1) Selection Bias
2) The Baby Boom
3) Birth Cohort
4) Functionalism
5) Sex Ratio
6) Incomplete Institutionalization of Step Parenthood
7) Gary Becker’s theory of economic specialization and marriage
8)
9) The “Harvard-Yale Study” of female marriage chances
10) Matrifocal Family
11) Coverture