Social Norms In Sandra Lipsitz Bem's An Unconventional Family

Societal Norms Defined

In today’s society, there are many social norms that each individual subconsciously and consciously conforms too. Social norms are defined as rules that are either explicit or implicit that determine what is acceptable in terms of behavior, values, and beliefs within a group, and perhaps without these norms, society would be chaos (Vess, 2016). However, social norms are often just constructs and the concept of gender and gender roles is a social construct that seems almost vital to society, but is it? (Smith, 2016). Sandra Lipsitz Bem’s book, An Unconventional Family, does an amazing job of providing insight into what it looks like when you challenge the social norms of gender and gender roles (Bem, 1998). Specifically,

9). Bem and Daryl decided to go with a traditional Quaker custom where they would marry themselves; being that this was not in line with Bem’s mother’s Jewish background, she was very upset (Bem, 1998, p. 9&10). So, you can conclude that when it comes to something like marriage and the norm being broken, someone is going to be upset, especially when people from an older generation are involved, because often tradition, is very important to them (Helgeson, 2017, p. 78). Cotter, Hermsen, and Vannemam (2011) examined the attitudes of gender roles by distributing a national survey and found that attitudes towards gender roles were more likely to be egalitarian based, between the years of 1974 and 1994, but then the attitudes ended up leveling off after 1994 (Helgeson, p. 78). Since Bem was married in 1965, this research is justification of Bem’s mother’s reaction. Unable to accept the break in Jewish tradition Bem’s mother chose to not attend her daughter’s wedding (Bem, 1998, p.

I myself work with many different types of individuals at Montana State University’s the VOICE Center. The VOICE Center advocates for victims of sexual assault. Unfortunately, there is a stigma that only men commit sexual assault and only women are the victims (VOICE, 2016). Although it is somewhat of a strange connection, if we took more of an egalitarian perspective towards sexual assault, maybe people could better understand that anyone and everyone can be a victim or a perpetrator. It’s important as a society that we realize we all make a difference in preventing interpersonal violence, we must work together and see each other as equals in order to prevent/stop these horrible crimes. Another example in which egalitarianism is relevant to my life and to those I work with is my work with body acceptance. As the Body Project intern here on campus, I work to promote the message that You Are Enough (MSU Body Project, 2016). There are so many pressures in today’s society to be thin, to be beautiful, to be successful, etc., and the underlying message we are consistently given is that you alone are not enough (MSU Body Project, 2016). If everyone could take a step back and see that with all the different shapes and sizes, ethnicities and races, all people are really the same and we face a lot of the same challenges, one of