Summary Of Personal Troubles Of Milieu, By C. Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills explains the sociological imagination works between “the personal troubles of milieu” and “the public issues of social structure” (Mills 2014, 4). Personal troubles and public issues go hand-in-hand, but are yet very different. Troubles have to do with an individual standpoint, and how a person’s immediate relation with others have an effect on them. C. Wright Mills states “A trouble is a private matter: values cherished by an individual are felt by him/her to be threatened” (Mills 2014, 4). Mills uses a wonderful example in the book and explains that if we are to understand these terms we can consider unemployment as an example. We are to take a sample city with a size of roughly 100,000 people, and only one man/women is unemployed

Coontz begins by explaining the couple’s situation and how the woman feels unappreciated because her husband never compliments her on her good dinners or the clean house. The woman’s husbands then rebuttal’s by saying he has never asked for her to clean the house nor make those delicious dinners for him (Coontz 2014,12). Coontz then states, “Perhaps the problem we have here lies what social scientists would call your ‘situated social power’” (Coontz 2014, 12). Situated social power is defined “various groups in society have unequal access to economic resources, political power, and social status, and these social differences limit how fair or equal a personal relationship between two individuals from different groups can really be (Man & Woman)” (Coontz 2014, 12). The article goes on to explain how women always feel less in power, because the male brings in the primary income for the household. Also, most times when women have children, they need to take time off of work. This limits the women’s options once she returns to work, because her previous job may not be an option like it once was. Men are also encouraged to cut off intimacy and are penalized if they let their guards down. This is all a social issue because this is the way society “wants” us to be. Men are to be big, masculine workers; while women are small and petite, and are supposed to stay at home with the children. Coontz suggests “Until businesses and schools adjust their hours and policies to the realities of two-earner families, even the best-intentioned couples are going to have difficult times” (Coontz 14,2014) suggesting that public issues is the best approach to viewing things such as marital