Single Or Married Stephanie Coontez Analysis

In lecture 8, singlehood stood out the most, due to the different levels of respect that single adults received throughout history. The article “Single or married: Does it really matter anymore?” by Stephanie Coontz, explored how societies viewed single adults. The article states, “In Colonial America, unmarried men and women were never considered full adults, no matter how old they were”, in order to be an adult one had to be married. This type of infantilizing continued onto the 1950s, where psychologists looked down and unmarried men and single women. Psychologists described unmarried men as deviant and pathological, and single women as unnatural and neurotic. It is interesting how singlehood went from being looked down upon, to being a

In a previous class I took, I saw classmates debate whether divorce is good for children or bad for them, but I did not learn much from the debate. The lecture on lecture 9 helped get a better understanding of the outcomes of divorce. I was able to learn that divorce can be good for children; if their parents’ marriage is full of conflict then the divorce has better outcomes for the children. However, if a child’s parents were in a low conflict marriage, then the divorce results in greater difficulty for children. This makes sense, since a child believes that their parents are fine since they barely fight, and then they are filing for divorce at what feels like was out of the

I was able to relate to some of the stories immigrant children shared, but for others their stories were surprising. In the article “Translating America For Parents and Family; Children of Immigrants Assume Difficult Roles” by Chris Hedges, Edda Barros spoke about her experiences translating for her parents. Edda said, “There are times, especially with doctors, when I have no idea what they are talking about”, translating is not always easy. I have been in Edda’s situation before, where I do not understand what I am supposed to be translating and will have to asking what it means. This happens both in person and when I have to read something to my parents. At times they ask me to read mail they receive and translate it, but the language being used is too sophisticated and hard to translate. I also relate to Edda saying it gets tiring, since she has her own work to do and has to stop to help her parents or brother. My translating is not as tiring, since I have never been pulled out of a classroom in order to translate. According to Dr. Gary D. Goldenback, who is the supervisor of the E.S.L. program for Edda’s school, children are taken out of school in order to go with their parents to appointments or do errands. Reading this surprised me, but it was understandable since some immigrant parents rely on their children and even tasks that appear simple to English speaks can be intimidating to them. I