Lecture 23--Research on Family Issues (Part 3)--The Incidence and Causes of Wife Abuse

all right I think it's time to get started we are recording okay so we are um still or finishing up with our discussion of uh family issues I call it family problems and research on family problems and so just to refresh our memory we started with uh a very functionalist look at uh divorce as an issue in families and uh what made it functionist was that it was quantitative looking at lots of data at once looking at the whole family issue for the whole country and trying to uh use you know the research process the quantitative you know scientific method to determine if divorce really caused problems and so for for for young people uh and then we looked at a more symbolic interactionist uh approach to studying family issues and that one was much more focused on a particular local community and neighborhood and trying to understand why people in that Community have a high rate of teen pregnancy and so it was more looking at the meaning that people attached to their actions and why they do what they do not just looking at the numbers and trying to figure out which variables are correlated with which other variables so it was more of a looking at the symbols and meanings that people are uh using and the ways they perform for each other and put on acts as you know in this case as players and try and uh you know as mamas too and so um so that was a very different way of studying people uh going up close and personal and living with them for a year that's very different than crunching numbers in a big database which is what coun did for the first study this third uh and uh and so we learned a little bit too about functionalism looking at families as an institution and trying to look at how they function or not um and symbolic interactionist being more interested in how people think and feel and how they interact with each other so more interested in culture and how it how it develops and what effects it has on people's behavior the third one is from a conflict perspective and it's called the incidence and causes of wife abuse and this one is by Maxine bazin and D Stanley ien so again I'm just trying to not plagiarize I'm sting my sources is there anything in this title as you look at what they've decided to this is the title of one of their articles what about this terminology leads may like might lead you to think that these are conflict theorists not functionalists or symbolic interactionists the incidents and causes of wife abuse my evaluation yesterday they told me to weight monitor for student answers don't just jump in and answer for that's what she observed when she was here that I'm too quick to like tell you the answer anything in there any words jump out again there's no wrong answer yeah um wife abuse okay why does that jump out at you um because they're maybe trying to figure out like like it says right there causes of Life abuse they're trying to figure out but you're but you're focused on these words so what about these words are you're right that that's the tip off that these aren't like other sociologists they're looking at this in terms of conflict theory because women are being hurt are there other words that so what were you going to say oh I say maybe it was like it's conflict between like the husband and the wife so it's two parties like having conflict right I mean are there other ways to describe what this is talking about that would be less like a conflict there is like what else could you call it when a wife is abused are there phrases we use remember one of the ideas of this class was that how we describe things is how we construct them and when we talked about gender for example um the passive voice if you recall from tough guys when you use sort of neutralized terms neutral non-gendered terms then you are looking at the problem in a certain way but that might not be the most accurate so this like you're saying is more gender it's saying there's wife abuse it's not saying husbands are being abused wives are being abused is there a different way to describe that problem that you're aware of like how does the police describe that issue do they call it wife abuse or what do they call it h physical abuse physical abuse yeah but what's the term for that I mean when it's a wife I was thinking of domestic domestic abuse spousal abuse domestic violence spousal violence we hear these terms all all the time but those are what we call gender neutral terms they just make it seem like there's just violence happening it's also called passive voice instead of saying this person is being abused by that one calling it out you're just saying there's abuse happening and conflict arists and other more critical thinking sociologists would say well is that really accurate I mean it makes it sound more objective to say domestic violence but is it accurate like are men as likely to get beat up by women as women are by men are children as likely to beat up their mom and dad as dads are to beat up children I mean according to this conflict theory view if we just call it this you know neutral sounding name we're actually misunderstanding the problem we're deliberately keeping men out of the picture that was how tough guys put it when you don't name the men as the the abusers you're letting them off the hook and making it seem like everybody's equally guilty but conflict there is this one who's going to point out you know who's being abused by whom and try to address it that way not just again a functionalist might be more like there is violence in the home and we need to address it you know more neutral sounding way which again if you're in the powerful group of a society keeping things neutral sounding is one way to maintain your power when you start pointing out well who is doing what to whom you know you could ask the same thing about right now there's protests going on on college campuses and uh some people are trying to paint the students as the ones that are violent on the other hand it's administrators that are sending in cops to arrest people and suspend people and um so you know the way the media describe it is there is violence on campus there is campus unrest you know you use this General sounding term instead of saying administrators are brutalizing students administrators are depriving students of free speech rights they don't put it that way but anyway um so these people do so deta the I and aren't going to dance around the bush beat around the bush and call it spousal abuse or domestic violence they're pointing fingers here and they're saying it's men doing it to women and if we don't acknowledge that right out off the bat in their view we're going to look at the problem wrong like and and tough guys made that point too like if you just say there's violence going on on schools and you start trying to figure out what's causing the violence at schools uh then you look at everything and you're like oh we got to look at video games you know whatever it is but girls play a lot of video games too and they're not the ones doing the violence so are you really finding the cause when you do that I mean if you name the the real perpetrator men then you start looking at what is it about being M male and masculine in our society that's leading men to act that way in the same way they're saying if we call out as wife abuse we're going to look at the problem in a more specific way than if we just call it domestic violence and so they say that to understand domestic violence they say we need to understand that the American family is a microcosm of American society what are they talking about there well what's a microcosm a microcosm m i c r o CM you might know that term that word it means like a smaller version of a larger thing a micro small cosm Cosmos might meaning Universe a small universe so what what are they talking about there well like for example if you have an aquarium at home with fish in it and it might be like a a saltwater aquarium it's like a little mini ocean in your house it's not the whole ocean but it's like in that little ocean you can get the experience of the whole ocean from that little ocean and in the same way they are saying the American Family if you're trying to understand why American families are the way they are you need to understand American society because they're like a little mini version of America all the conflicts going on in America they say you could kind of understand if you look at the American a lot of American households and it's interesting that they call it the American family I mean that again sounds like a functionalist it's it's referring to the family as an institution which they are using that terminology but unlike a typical functionalist they want to really dig deep into the roots of why there is conflict in the home and not just use this sort of neutral sounding language um about it so what is it about American society so that's for them the real question is what's going on in American society that leads so many American Homes to have women and children being beaten up and harmed by the men there what why is that and so they say first of all we have to understand that America is a violent and patriarchal Society that's a new word for us patriarchal patriarchy is a term lots of people use nowadays they didn't I mean when I was in grad school only grad students use that term patriarchy but now I hear it all the time patriarchy means a society run by and for men patriarch means father and not all societ I have been patriarchies there are examples in human history of matriarchies where the women are more in charge of things um some some conflict say that's how it used to be that's the normal state of humans is that you have a tribe of people living together and the men are off off Hunting a lot of the time so the women are really in charge of the campsite and the children and the households and uh it's only in modern society some conflict there is say when men have taken over because of capitalism and tried to use private property this idea that it's my home and my castle that that's that's what led to women being you know losing the power over over communities and their Villages um but uh and so conflict there are saying you know uh so patriarchy to understand why so many men beat up their wives and children they say you need to understand this concept patriarchy and uh and so but what does incidents and causes mean we should think about that for a second incidence means where and when does something happen and so they are approaching this a little bit like a you know a functionalist who studies crime if we look at where and when this thing happens like a crime then try to come up with series about why it's happening there and then and so uh so that's what they mean by incidents where and when and causes they're trying to understand like the scientists as we said you know all scientists whether they're symbolic interactionists functionalists conflict or chemists physicists or whatever kind of scientists they are are trying to understand you know why things happen so what really makes them conflict there is not the incidents and causes but this this ter and so but they start with the causes so we'll get to the incidents in a second but they start with you know to understand and there's by the way isn't really presented as a research study I should mention that as well a research study like we said starts with a research question and trying to answer it and they're not really approaching things that way they're starting with this claim that wife abuse reflects a violent patriarchal society and they want to convince you of that claim so they're presenting evidence to support their argument but that kind of that's what we would call an essay when you write an essay when you try to persuade people that your view of things is the correct one that's an essay a research paper is a different thing that's where you report here's the question I had here was the data I collected here was the study I did so this isn't really a research report this article I'm talking about it's more of an essay and it comes from more of a comp Theory perspective and and that too is kind of typical of conflict theory conflict theory is kind of uh skeptical of Science and saying you know we're not really scientists we're social scientists which means a lot of times we're just trying to convince people of a certain way of thinking we're not necessarily trying to answer questions totally objectively because many social scientists would say it's impossible to be objective about Society because we as human beings live in it it's easy to be objective about frogs or some other things that scientists study that they're not but when humans study humans we are the humans studying ourselves so you can't really be objective about it and so pretending that you're just doing research it's just objective research you know that is a bit of a a pretend thing it's OPP POS that sociologists do conflict are saying we're not pretending we're making an argument we're trying to persuade you that this argument is correct and so they start with the causes what why do they think uh they're so much you know violence in the home it's because we have a violent patriarchal society but what are they talking about specifically there the way they put it is that we have institutionally sanctioned violence institutionally sanctioned violence so what does that means so we'll we'll will help you understand what it means but institution in their term just like a functionalist they're talking about basic institutions of our society like the family the school system the economy the government and they're trying to understand how our institutions as a society actually sanction which means in this case allow or promote or condone that our institutions actually allow and promote and condone violence and they think you know if we we pay attention to that we'll and make it strange you know look at it from here and we can go wait wait why are we doing it that way what are they talking about well for example um for example our laws our legal system itself is one that they think helps sanction violence especially against women and children um our law our legal system is based on what's called British common law so before we had a constitution in this country remember America was founded by the British and they brought their legal system over uh from England and that's what ran the country until we declared independence and won the war and then we created a constitution but our constitution is rooted in British common law the basic ideas of British common law and one of the ideas of British common law is what's known as the rule of thumb you've ever heard that phrase rule of thumb people say oh that's a good rule of thumb oh that's a nice rule of thumb what does rule of thumb mean well rule of thumb is when the term means when you don't know the rule for something like you don't have the rule book in front of you you can use a good rule of thumb that might not always be true or might not be totally accurate but it works like you know a spelling rule of thumb is i before e except after c i me if you really think about English words there's plenty of examples where the E is before the I right but uh it's a good rule of th to say I before E except after C um but it's a rule of thumb but where did the term rule of thumb come from like what does that mean it came from the idea that in in uh in British common law it was okay to hit your livestock you could use uh I mean I should actually mentioned that first of all corporal punishment is one of the laws Corporal means body can you use the person's body as the sight of punishment can you whip them for example can you hit them can you hurt their body and uh and in British common law you could you could you could could use corporal punishment on your livestock for example and by the way in this I should also mention because I'm kind of out of order here sorry in British common law women were defined legally as chatt you know what the word chatt means what does chatt come from chatt what does it sound like do you know any other words that sound like chatt when like out in the farm you have a bunch of cattle cattle and cattle are related words women had the rights of cattle the same rights as cattle so if you were a property owner a male property owner in briish law only males could own property then women in your household were property as well and the cows in your household are your property as well they're your livestock you have dead stock I guess or just property land and then you have livestock like these cows and you have females and they're chatt and so anything you're allowed to do to a cow you are allowed to whip your cow hit your cow with the stick and British common in-law said you are allowed to hit your woman with a stick how big of a stick can I hit her with your thumb about the diameter of your thumb is what the law said so yeah you can use a stick but you're not supposed to use a club and kill her but a stick you can use that yeah learn her a lesson or two with the stick I don't if you find that appalling a lot of people around here I noticed experience corporal punishment themselves spanking from their parents there's a lot of research on that that spanking if you look at spanking as a kid what outcomes does that lead to does that lead to are you a better person in life because you got spanked and if we compare the spanked people to people who never got spanked do we see I mean a lot of people will tell you if you don't spank your your kids your kids are going to end up in terrible situation but the research does not support that at all if we go and look and I can tell you right now if you went to Stanford University right now and asked a bunch of student Stanford University students were you spanked as a kid is that what why you're so successful as a student you were spanked a very high percentage at Stanford say no my parents never spank me never would have spank me if I go up to fulsome prism right now and ask a lot of the guys the inmates there were you spanked by your parents oh yeah all the time really learn me some lessons I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't been spanked see what I'm saying I'm trying to be ironic but fol in prison is not where you want to end up in life but a lot of the people who were a lot of the people who ended up there in life were spanked as kids and a lot of people that end up at Stanford were not so I don't want to if you were spank yourself I'm not trying to tell you you're headed for anything bad but in terms of the statistics of it does banking lead to good outcomes I do want to tell you if you have kids banking is not where you want to be with your kids physical violence on your kids is not the way to teach them anything it teaches them that physical violence is it is a reasonable thing to do to people that's about all it teaches them it doesn't have good record of success in teaching people like good work habits successful studying habits or anything that makes you actually successful and it has a lot of other negative effects it makes fearful it makes them traumatized it makes them under confident all kinds of things that we shouldn't be hurting children or our loved ones our wives and stuff but it was an oldfashioned I would call it brutish idea from like C man days that a lot of people still believe in um America is not the most patriarchal society you know Russia is worse and there's a plenty of societies around the world today where men think it's their job to brutalize women but in the places where people have finally kind of grown up as a society and realized you don't need to do that to get people to act right those places are more successful I'm talking about places like northern Europe you know Scandinavian countries where people there don't believe in spanking and don't believe in forceful methods of raising people and they're much more equality much more equality in those societies with women and men and children with adults and that kind of stuff so anyway uh that's my little sermon on the side don't be spanking your giz it doesn't work and it doesn't get where you want to go and really it's a sign that you failed as a parent if you have to spank somebody then all your other better methods you've given up on and you've gone to that you don't need to spend dogs either and I good good training of dogs doesn't involve inflicting serious pain on them the carrot is much better than the stick as they say rewarding people for good behavior is way more effective if you want to get them to act right then punishing them for not doing right so anyway uh but British common law basically said women are property and men who who rule them have the right to use violence to control them and even though we don't have British common law anymore in our society uh there's still like remnants of it you know um the laws nowadays don't say you're allowed to hit your wife with a stick but there are men who in their mentality still think in terms of that's my right that's my duty She's Mine she's my property she's my be I mean people use negative words when they start possessing somebody like she's my or she's my whatever and if you're thinking of something as a person as somebody you own you know you're not going to necessarily treat them in a humane way their property not a person so they say that's still exists in a way in our society um another uh related thing though is law enforcement laxity so even though the laws have changed our law enforcement as an institution has not always done its job in terms of protecting women from domestic violence and it's partly because of of again patriarchal Notions and practices so for example traditionally speaking the only guys that are cops are men and when they show up to a home you know where there's a domestic situation as they call it they don't always see it as a crime they see it as a domestic situation a guy's beeping with his wife but those same officers if they were to be you know patrolling the neighborhood and they saw two men standing there and one man had a bloody nose and a black eye and the other man had um you know red Knuckles and blood on his shirt are those cops going to see it as a crime scene yeah some assault happened here somebody got bloodied some violence happened and it's our job to enforce the law so we got to find out what happened on the other hand when those same cops show up at a home and find a woman with a bloody nose and a black eye and a man living there with red they don't always see it as a crime they see it as ah this guy's having a beef with his wife and um and even if they don't see it that way or they try to see it that way the way our laws are set up is it's not that easy to charge it as a crime you know part of our laws is private property that's a big big issue here in a patriarchal society private property has always been defined or traditionally was as the man the man owns is it a man's home is his castle as people put it so the idea was I mean that's a telling phrase a man's home is his castle because we live in a democracy not a monarchy so this idea that we live in a Democratic Society but in your home it's a kingdom and in your home the dad is the king and the Dad's Law rules and there is no other law my law is what rules why cuz I said so and what happens when you don't don't want to find out that's not democracy that's a monarchy inside of a Democratic Society and it's almost like the law outside didn't cross your doorstep like I have my own laws in here and if cops won't enforce the law outside in there in your house then yeah then the the dad is the king and he doesn't have to listen to law enforcement and uh and and and private property laws make it hard for law laxity means not really enforcing the law being lazy about it but it isn't necessarily laziness it can be inability to enforce the law so for example to to cross the doorstep you have to have a warrant you can't just as a cop start going in and finding evidence of a crime inside someone's home because our law says P privates sacran it's sacred it's his property the government doesn't get to start nosing around in your house um but that that law protects men who abuse women and children in their home because it makes it hard for the cops to go and find out what they need is the woman to say yeah a crime was committed against me but a lot of women don't want to say that because why because I mean we're going to talk about that but if you think about why would a woman not want to get the law involved in her home there's a lot of reasons why she might not and that doesn't mean that it's okay to beat her up and the children but it means that we need to as sociologists try to figure out what the incident is telling us do we really know who's being beaten up or not um because if people aren't telling the cops which most of them don't then we don't know exactly who's doing it and who isn't so I'm going to get to that point in a second but what are some other reasons other institutional ways that we as a society kind of tell man it's okay it's right to beat up your wives and children our laws seem to say that in some ways um also um our um you know guns we have a gun culture America's very into its guns and very again very into with our legal system this idea that it's your private sacred right to own guns and it comes in a lot of cases from a patriarchal notion that says it's a man's job to own a gun because it's his job to protect the wife and children from all the harms out there but again if we look statistically are you actually safer in your home if there's a gun there and the man has got guns to protect the wives and children are wives and children actually less likely to get shot if there's guns in their home and the answer is by far no by far you're much more likely to get shot by a gun if your man is keeping guns in your house if you have no guns in your house your chances of getting shot are very low so keeping guns in your home doesn't have a very strong record of protecting like somebody tried to get in the home and the man successfully protected his wives and children with the gun there's many more cases of they were kept guns in the home and the man got mad and shot people or the wife found the gun and shot the husband or the children got the gun and shot themselves or shot the dad or shot the parents I mean this idea that you're going to have a gun in your home and you're going to keep all these bad people out I mean it's a nice thought I guess for some men to feel really in charge but again statistically you'd be much safer and a lot of Americans say we don't want so many guns around the guns around are the problem again because guns are super lethal people always get mad at each other but if all you're doing is slapping your wife around she's not to die but if you get out the pistol and shoot her in the head yeah she's not coming back so um so that's why I'm saying guns are part of this violent culture in America and part of this idea that it's it's it's part of masculinity it's a kind of violent masculinity that says it's my job as a man to use guns and I'm not a real man if I don't have guns and those people that don't want guns they're trying to take away my manhood I mean it's that whole attitude that leads to a lot of women and children being killed and men too I mean the number one people to probably the number one person to get shot with the guns that men own is the man himself a lot of suicide by Angry white males these days in America uh and so we might be wanting to know why are they so so unhappy but um and do they really need all these guns but anyway so uh so guns I'm trying to think of some of the other things that are in my notes I'm having a little bit of blank um well media violent Sports which is also connected with this construction of masculinity but they used to say and I don't know if this is still true but if you're looking for the incidence of wife abuse where and when does it happen they used to say Monday night was one of the big nights for domestic violence for wife abuse why Monday night what's on on TV on Monday night football football Monday Night Football and the idea was men watching Monday Night Football having a few beers on a Monday night and their team loses and they you know smack their wives and children around so Monday night had this High incidence of wife abuse and they are saying you know I mean I don't know if it's still true because now they have football on a lot of other nights too uh and other violent Sports and things and so um so not necessarily blaming football but yeah I mean men when they watch sports tend to get you know hyped up and seeing other men brutalizing each other maybe leads men I mean I definitely noticed this with myself and with my children you watch some football or some hockey and then next thing you want to know the kids are wrestling and beating the crap out of each other because it looks like fun or something or it brings out some you know hormones or whatever but uh yeah but again it's part of how we construct masculinity I remember growing up as a young man seeing football guys being uh Heroes because they really like leveled some quarterback and put the guy out knocked him out like wow what a great football player that guy is cuz he like leveled that dude knocked him and my whole childhood all I wanted to do was like knock out some quarterback and I even had a coach want to say I'll give $5 to any player on this team that injures the quarterback on the other team like put him out of the game I mean that's toxic masculinity that's what we're talking about here and a lot of our sports are tied up with that kind of toxic masculinity so they say this is something we need to understand is the way we construct our men and boys in America this the props we give them in their performances like guns and and violence Sports and the way that legally we seem to tell them it's it's okay to do this and that it's right to use people's bodies as the S of discipline aside from these institutional causes what else do bakas in and I and point to as re you know ways to understand the causes they say that's also our family structure family structure in America I'll say American family structure uh encourages conflict so they say if you look at how we structure our families the who has what question when it comes to families they're set up in a way where maximum conflict is kind of predictable and there might be other ways to organize families so that people aren't having conflict with each other what are they talking about well for one thing if you define the well unequal families a lot of families the dad has all the power and the women and children have no power and dad says you know it's my way or the highway what I say goes you all have to follow what I say I'm the king and that is a recipe for conflict again in a Democratic Society where we're telling people everybody has rights everybody has a voice everybody should have equality and then in your household you got some dude saying no that ain't happening in here I mean that's conflict like I all of a sudden you know we're not on the same page and uh and so certainly that's the case that the woman has no power compared to the male but even if uh even if you have uh equal parents that share power if you don't have give kids any power in a household that too is a is a rest beer conflict now again am I saying as a democratic dad I try to have a democracy in my household um what does that entail you know in a democracy do the children have as much say as the parents I mean I I compare it to an American democracy as Citizens we don't have as much say as the president he has more power but we have a say in who the president is and what really rules the president is the law we say we have rule of law so even if somebody has power their power is limited by the law and they can only enforce the law they don't get to be some you know the law itself and uh and so it's possible to have family structures that are more democratic where the children get a say in things they might not have as much power as the parents but they but for example I I'll use one um that just recently happened to me our dog we' got this rescue dog and he keeps fighting people like it's bite of one of our kids' friends so my wife just was like that's enough we've got to give them away and so she like broke the news to me and my kids weren giving that thing away and my kids were mad they're like don't get to say in this you know and I you know we kind of walked it back a little bit and saying okay well let's have a family discussion and you know work it out as a group come to some group consensus but group consensus means you know somebody's ready to get rid of the dog you know they have to be on board with wanting the dog too you can't just we can't just group up against my wife and say you're wrong we're keeping the dog so but yeah it can be hard to come to democratic decision making but it's better than just saying this is what's happening and you have to just accept it because then you have conflict and again with kids I would say if you just try to lay down the rule to them and say this is the rule and you have to follow it and if you don't follow it there's consequences that's what a lot of parents try to do and it doesn't work out that well because what you don't have is consent of the Govern the idea of democracy is the people themselves agree to be governed by the rules and by the people holding the power because they've had some say in the rules and the people holding the power if you get to help vote on the people and you get to help vote on the rules then you're supposed to say well then I accept the rules and the people because I help to make them and if I'm not happy with the current rulers and rules there's a process that I can follow a peaceful one to try and change it I can work on voting I can create an organization I can do other things but I don't have to go get guns and go like attack the capital and kill the president um anyway so that's uh same with the household if if people have some say in the decision making and get to have their voice represented then hopefully they agree and so what I try to do with my kids is get them to agree on the rules so we say yeah you have to have a curfew you can't just like stay out all night right a a patriarchal dad would say your curfew is 9:00 young lady and if you're not home by 900 p.m. there will be hell to pay well that did that method ever work for a dad because girls come up with all kinds of ways to fool you or get out you know so I'd rather say to my daughter what do you think is a reasonable time to come home and if if I say 9:00 they say that's not reasonable how about you know 3 in the morning and I that's not reasonable what's a reasonable time if you can come to some compromise that they go that's reasonable so like 12 midnight is that reasonable for a teen girl 17 years old is that reasonable for a dad to be able to go to sleep with a clear conscience and heart you know if we can agree on what the fair rule is and you've agreed to it and I've agreed to it then we don't have to have conflict all the time over enforcing the rule hopefully we are agreeing to it and you're agreeing to follow it and I'm agreeing to you know not get come down so hard on you and you know there can be times when people miss the rules by a little bit or whatever but unequal families have a lot of conflict and dad is constantly spending all his time making sure everybody's doing what I said and I'm gonna I'm not going to I'm my eyes on you you know it's a lot of work as a dad to have that patriarchal family and it doesn't really work because as soon as they get out of your sight they're going to go do the things you don't want them doing so um it's better to be on the same page let's let's watch it let's watch yourselves because you agree with the rules anyway so uh I'm just again giving you my sermon on how to be maybe a better I mean I think it's same with Management in a workplace a manager who's like you better do it the way I say or else you can have help to pay is not a very good manager a manager who says I want everybody to agree on the rules so that we're all one team working together is a better manager in my view anyway so unequal families are one of the reason another issue is that we Define the family as a private thing thing in America we say the family's private it's my private Affair we say things like don't air your dirty laundry in public meaning don't tell people what's going on in your private home people feel ashamed to say you know things that are going on and how does having this idea that what happens in my home is private and is nobody else's business how does that lead to wife abuse could you think of reasons why that happened they're ashamed they're ashamed so they don't tell anybody so it goes on and on for years and they don't want to tell anybody if you walk by home and you heard you heard sounds like this and people screaming no would you call the cops or would you say to yourself that's not my business that's their business we have this strong feeling like I shouldn't and again though if you saw somebody in the street in public doing that to their kid or their wife you would call the cops but you have this we have this feeling like it's priv I can't do anything about that or I shouldn't do anything about that it' be wrong with me but as long as we Define it that way then again men are free to do things in the privacy of their home that they would never admit to doing in public and that nobody in the household would want to admit um and you know and so uh so that's one reason why you know a lot of women don't want to report it and don't report it and so it stays private and so taking together private families that are unequal that are surrounded by institutions that support the idea that men should be using violence on people that's taking that all together is why they think we have a high rate of of wife abuse but where and when does it happen and how do we know what the rate is and so these are called um correlates or predictors of wife abuse so correlates and predictors we haven't really used that word yet but it's you've already learned about it when you're trying to figure out if x causes y the things that are correlated with Y are the correlates and one way to describe them is as predictors I mean we talked earlier that it's really hard to to figure out if x actually caused y because as we said there could be Z's here there could be a z over here and sometimes we don't need to know the real Ultimate cause of something to address it if we know what predicts it what's correlated with it then we can at least begin to address it in some way so without saying what is the cause of wife abuse we can look at what are the things that are correlated with it and one way to think about correlation in this case is to imagine a street let's imagine a residential street of all these homes people living in homes Tree Line Street we a term we often use in social sciences all other things being equal so if we could imagine each of these homes that are all basically equal meaning equal income like everybody here makes you know around the same amount of money in this neighborhood everybody's got around the same size of family you know everybody's roughly the same class of people um that's it's all basically equal but what are some differences that might we might want to look for that could be that could predict that would help me predict so if I'm walking down the street and I'm trying to predict which house on this street somebody tells me one of these houses has a lot of domestic violence happening of why it's getting beaten up all the time you have to predict which one it is and so you have so this is asking what are the things we would need to know about the houses that would help me predict it and you you have a guess um the house the way the property looks maybe well I'm not talking about those things I'm talking about the variables that can be measured in terms of Sociology like on a survey so if we ask so like the census the census asks things census doesn't ask like is your like the census taker doesn't go it's a well kept home no but they ask like you know how many in your home what race and ethnicity are you what's your income what what's your family history are you an immigrant those kinds of things so what are the things that we can ask like back they're called background variables on a survey that would help us predict which of these households heavy well race and ethnicity for example is correlated so if you're trying to predict which house has wife abuse if you know which house has a Latino family in it you might want to pick that one BBE or a black family because the data tell us the incidents and causes data the incident data seem to tell us and I should call these apparent um the data seem to tell us that if you're black or Latino you're more likely if you're a black or Latino woman you're more likely to experience wife abuse they seem to tell us that but do we know for sure why might it be the case that it's what we could call an artifact of the data artifact of the data means sometimes the data is wrong it's not complete and so the data are creating a a hallucination that's the term they use nowadays with AI sometimes AI doesn't have all the information it needs to give you what you're asking and so it just makes stuff up and in the same way if you're looking at the data on wife abuse and you're trying to figure out who does it to whom the data is not complete so it might make stuff up well who's not calling in so only one third of domestic violence is ever called in we think so 2third 66% of the women getting beat up are not calling it in and only a third R could you think of reasons why black and Latino women might be more likely to call it in than other people not that they're having it happen more often just that they're more likely to report it or a better way to ask the question is are there groups of people that would be very unlikely to report it and so they're not in the data even though it's happening to them um maybe the low income um group of people so who who do you think is less likely to call the police low income people or if you're an upper income woman and your husband's a lawyer oh less likely we're trying to figure out who both both women get beat up some call up and say hey cops I'm getting beat up some don't pick up the phone and we're trying to figure out who wouldn't pick up the phone would it be a poor woman with a poor husband do you think or a rich woman with a rich husband who would be less likely to want to involve the cops in her household Rich turns out and you could think about why I mean if your husband's rich and he makes a lot of money and he's a lawyer and you're like I'm getting rid of this guy I'm do divorcing this guy he beats me up every night calling the cops might not be in your interest because if he loses his Li law you know license to practice law loses his fancy job making money then when you do divorce him you're not going to able to get a lot of money anymore so from her perspective why would I involve the cops I'm going to take handle this myself get out of this situation I'm going to take him for all these wor but so you know it's the Richer women that put on sunglasses and go to work the next day or go to the market and pretend nothing happened but if your husband's unemployed and he's drinking and beating you up you're like call the cops get this unemployed sucker out of here so it's not that black and Latino women maybe are getting beat up more it's that they're more likely to have low-income husbands in our society and so and be low-income themselves and so they have less incentive or less disincentive to call the cops um in other words another big corlet is a uh you know economic uh well let's call it unemployment or financial problems if I don't know anything else about these homes on the street but I know which one of the homes did the Dad recently lose his job I might pick that house I think that's the one that has domestic violence or which one was the one where the guy's in debt and you can't pay off his bills that one that might be the one not that and so uh so what uh so is that a good predictor unemployment financial problems well again yes if your husband's unemployed and has financial problems and he's beating you you might want to call that in but it doesn't it could again be an artifact of the data because what we're not seeing is all the Richer and middle class women being beat up who else might not want to call it in so we're saying richer women might not want to call it in other groups that might not call it in can you think of other reasons why a woman just would not want to call the cops he's beating me up I I can't call the police why would a woman do that and you think of measurable things we could find out about her but that would help us understand that the family like what what kinds of families would kids they don't want want their kids to get in trouble but Are there specific things certain differences you know about people I'm maybe I'm being too vag but like what about immigration St status so for example if you're not a fully documented immigrant and your husband's beating you up you might not want to call the cops because that could lead to deportation of you your children so you might have to just accept a few smacks to the face rather than let the cops come in so immigrant women are one reason we think this data might not be telling us the whole story because there might be a lot of immigrant women not calling it in Asian families and a lot of immigrants are Asian Asian families are even more private so you say what kind of families don't report things well Asian families and a lot of them are even more private than the typical American family so if the man there is beating people up this women are very unlikely another thing is immigrants may come even if they're fully legal in a country they may come from a country where the police are not nice guys I mean if you in some super patriarchal societies and the men come over and the man's beating the wife they're like we we'll join in and so a lot of women are like I'm not I'm getting beaten on my man I'm not going to have more men come to my house with guns is that how I'll feel saved no um so especially they've been taught that you know in other countries the police are not there to help women what about religious beliefs yeah well so that can be another thing that affects privacy and so we just don't know so the that's why we're not sure when it comes to these two correlates of wife abuse we're not sure and bazin anden aren't sure are these actual corelates is it really the case that white women don't get beat up that Asian women don't get beat up or that rich women don't get beat up or is it just that the data is telling us that those are the only people that call it in so what are some correlates that are better predictors more robust that's a term we use in quantitative science robust means strong so a strong predictor like really strongly correlated to the point where we know it is a cause so more robust predictors one is um you know alcohol well alcohol another abuse if you don't know anything else about these families but you know which one the dad's an alcoholic that might be the house where the violence is happening or some other drug addiction I would say meth I'm sure it's probably worse than alcohol for inducing people to be violent uh and so that's a strong predictor we know we know it's not a m the the data isn't pretending that it really is the case now you could get into more theoretical questions about why which men are alcoholics and which aren't and what's the true cause of the alcoholism and maybe there's deeper issues going on about why some men are likely to be alcoholics and others aren't but being an alcoholic is itself a cause a predictor a strong predictor another one is um family history of abuse so again if you don't know anything about else about any of these families but you have some data on which ones of these dads in the house in this community their dads beat up their M if you could somehow have that information you could start predicting I think maybe this is a household because it's what they call Cycles cycles of violence and it's very hard to not repeat anything your parents did to you I mean I always try to be a good parent uh but you end up repeating the things that were done to you almost in unconscious ways and so especially traumatic things that were done to you so people who were beat up by their DS are much more likely to beat up children and W and women in their households as well so there again if we go back to why are some men abusers and others not there's you know deeper causes of that but just in terms of sometimes when you're trying to figure out causes of things the most proximate cause is the you know the best one to focus on the closest one to the actual Behavior you could go back to deeper things but that might not solve the problem if we're trying to protect women you know and we want to go on that street and find the guy who's doing it and stop him then you know alcohol abuse or family history abuse would be very strong predictors of which guy to you know keep an eye on um and so uh where are we on so is that making sense what I'm saying about how the data are kind of unclear mainly the data is unclear because they not enough of it we know that a very high proportion of the domestic violence happening is not being reported um and so the data can be what's called confounding they lead us in a certain direction that isn't exactly accurate maybe but what again what can be concluded from this uh analysis that they give of the incidents and causes um again there's this more of an essay type of conclusion like a lawyer based on this evidence here's what I conclude you know not not like a scientist just answering a research question but they say what what we think is that do that wife abuse is domestic terrorism so now they're giving it even a new word for it not do domestic violence or spousal abuse not wife abuse the term they think we should use is domestic terrorism why do you think they would want to use that word what would what would change if we were to call it that instead of domestic violence or in other words what's what's a different meaning how's that change the meaning of it to call it that what would that mean domestic terrorism oh I'm sorry it's not even domestic terrorism sorry I used the wrong term that would be too neutral they call it patriarchal terrorism sorry yeah no that's their term patriarchal terrorism what's the difference between calling it patriarchal terrorism and calling it domestic violence or calling it domestic terrorism like it would mean more of um like the man AB wife maybe yeah and why I mean what is so it isn't just calling attention to a single man beating up a single wife they're trying to frame this issue as something that's wrong with our society we have a patriarchal society that's the problem and terrorism what's terrorism terrorism is like a tool people use to try and maintain things as they are in other words don't try to change anything or else this will happen or or you better change X Y or Z or else this thing will happen in other words terrorists try to use Terror like explosions or violence um to scare people into not doing something that the terrorist doesn't want them doing and so this idea that men are going around basically threatening women and children don't challenge my power I'm the boss here I'm the king you better not challenge me if you do challenge me you're going to get this or that or that it's just like a terrorist saying you know you better get out of Palestine or we're going to go you kill you and rape you and bomb you or you better get out of Israel we're going to go kill and bomb you both sides are being terrorists in that case um and so they're saying instead of just seeing it as an individual problem and we tend to as a society blame individual people for these behaviors like oh what a he's a wife beater he's a bad guy but they're saying that's the wrong way to look at it because if you look at it that way how would you solve the problem well some people say those guys need therapy if we could just get them into some anger management then they won't be such bad guys anymore and that's treating a social problem as a psychological problem if you're saying we have this domestic vience problem but we're going to help individual men be better individual men well that's not going to really solve your problem because if it's a social problem raising boys every day to be wife abusers then helping them stop being wife abusers once they become one is not a good way to solve the problem you probably want to go to the source of the problem and try to stop people from being trained to be wife abusers in the first place so they say we need to understand that we have a patriarchal society and so what is the solution um more structural and cultural equality for women what this really reflects they're saying is women's inequality if women don't have equality with men if they're not as powerful as them then there are going to be men who use violence to maintain their power over women and the only way to really address that in their view is to make sure women have the same amount of power as men structural again structure is who thinks what and culture is who feels and I mean structure is who has what and culture is who thinks and feels what and they're saying both of those are unequal in our society structurally for example the pay Gap women make less than men still in our society they make about 87 cents the pay Gap says 87 cents to a dollar so the same work for everything men end up getting a dollar an hour for that work and women end up getting 87 cents not just per hour but you know what I'm saying is about 87% of what men make for the same job um women make and you know uh political Gap I mean we don't have as many women with political power we've never had a female president we don't have that many female senators and governers and so these are structural things that if you were to make sure that more women making as much as men more women with positions of authority in our schools our governments then men over time would begin to see women as equal because they are but as long as women aren't equal they're down here they make less they have less power then there's going to be men who think it's their job and right to try and keep it that way culturally too you know more cultural equality that would be things like you know having more you know women's sports being valued as much as men's sports for example I can't believe that the top female basketball player gets $76,000 a year and Kevin herder a player for the Kings who's not really that good he gets like $60 million to play for the Kings and not help our team sorry I used to like but and so uh so this huge pay Gap but it's not just the pay Gap it's the way we devalue and disrespect women's sports traditionally it's changed this year in that women's basketball got really popular and hopefully the culture will be giving women and girls as much reason to believe you can do Sports we like sports we like watching you as men that's the kind of cultural equality I'm talking about having more movies where women are the heroes and the lead characters not just the ones being saved by the men um there's lots of examples we could give of treating women with the same respect so equal respect not just equal pay but equal respect and St to men and so they think that's the way to teach boys and men to treat women with respect is to actually as a society give them the equality that they should have and if they had that equality then there'd be fewer and fewer men each year thinking it was their right their Duty their job to keep women down keep them below them and use violence as the way to do that so again they're giving us a conflict the view of the problem not a psychological uh view that just blames individual men and tries to figure out how we can treat them to be better men but it's looking at our societ it's turning the Ang of the camera away from the individual men who do it and asking America how could you change as a society so that there's fewer and fewer men who end up being patriarchal terrorists so does that make sense yeah um I don't know where we are on time got about 10 minutes that finishes up my uh lecture on sociology of family issues so um next we're going to be turning to Sociology of Education more or less um I do want to let you go a little early but I will just tee up as they say the next topic so that you can think about it before we come back together again um and in the online class I ask students to think about their own educational experiences in America you know what was your Elementary School life what was Middle School like what was high school like what's you College like and what were the good things what were the bad things what were the challenges you faced and where did they come from what obstacles did you face that others put in your way or that you had trouble overcoming and I want you to think about the functions of Education because that was a term we used earlier in the class or it was a question we raised earlier in the class why do we have schools what are what is the point of them and uh just to remind you as we talked about manifest functions are the things you know we we conscious of we aware of they're the reasons you know an average person if you ask an average American why do we have schools and when I say schools and functions of schools I'm talking about the whole education system and that system has a rule that says you all have to go to school in other words it's not a choice in America you have to go to school if your parents if you have a kids and you're not schooling them you're committing a crime and so we say they have to go to school well why why do we say that we talked about this earlier and we said well there are things like the three Rs um we want kids to learn basic skills right why do we want basic skills what's the function of that well like we said economic and Military competition with other societies one reason societies want to have an education system is to make sure that children growing up in it can out compete children from other societies and out compete them economically like with jobs and products they make but I also I'll compete them militarily with you know we weapons and tactics and being smart another thing we talked about was you know like citizenship we we also want to teach people basic things like the history of their country the culture of their country the laws of their country we also talked about things like social skills schools we expect schools to help socialize kids in other words teach them the basic norms and values that guide our society so that they will uphold those and we talked about L functions we said even when schools aren't accomplishing their main goals they still do other things for society and in that sense you know sociologists say even you know even though a lot of Americans aren't happy with their schools if I ask you you know how much good was your schooling and you might have complaints about it and yet we still forced you to go um and you know uh and so we talked about things like you know babysitting that you know when child labor laws were passed not allowing kids to work that's when the mandatory schooling laws also got passed so we was a choice we made as Society we're not going to let kids work and we're going to have them go to school and also low security prison I mean we're trying to keep kids off the street really and keep them from terrorizing the adults so they lock them up in school all day we also talked about the hidden curriculum this idea that schools also teach things they they don't tell you they're teaching but they teach them nonetheless things like subserviant just sit down and do what you're told things like gender like girls don't like sports boys do you know these kinds of things that schools in a subtle way try to you know shape you um you know or the way they make you know non-white students often feel less than because everything's all about the white history and white culture that's another kind of hidden message of the schools or can be until recently anyway so but there's another manifest function that we didn't talk about and that's the one that I want us to begin our discussion of Education with one of the things we want our schools to do is to legitimize meritocracy legit leg imize meritocracy that's a mouth what does it mean to legitimize something well uh there a lot of ways I could say but basically you know humans have a tendency to claim things are true and governments and societies say things are true about them like America likes to say we are the freest Society in the world we are the most Democratic Society in the world we say those things are they legitimate are they really true we like to say we're a meritocracy what's a meritocracy a meritocracy is based on Merit in other words some societies aren't based on Merit Merit is is did you earn what you got some societies you get promoted not by earning it but just by your blood if you're a certain family name or a certain cast you get to rise up and if you're another cast or family name you're down down here that's not a meritocracy those are like other kinds of oces um but our society we like to claim you get where you get in America based on Merit based on hard work in other words that you earn your place in America you don't get to just be president because your daddy was President you don't get to be a sociology Professor just because your daddy was a sociology Professor mine happened to be a sociology professor and that did help me in a lot of ways and often times it is an advantage to go into the same l of work that your dad did but they weren't going to give me a PhD and a job here just because my dad was a sociologist I had to earn it I had to earn a PhD so what I and and so we like to say that where meritocracy but are we really did you have as much chance to be a sociologist as I do maybe not even if you worked harder so what does that mean do we really so it says when we say meritocracy we say any person no matter who their parents were no matter what race religion gender they are has the right to you know go to school and Achieve whatever they want to achieve in America they can be anything they want to be in America and that's what makes us better we like to say then other societies where people are stuck in the class or the the past that they're born into and they have very little chance to to move out of it but we say we have a meritocracy and how do we prove it to the rest of the world how do we make it an act ual fact instead of just a claim it's supposedly our school system that we have free education for all people that now extends into Community College and universities and grad school and so we like to claim as a society if you're willing to do the hard work of educating and going to education you can rise up uh in America but is that true do we do our schools give an equal chance to everybody do you think did you have an equal chance to me to succeed I grew up in Santa barara California I don't know where you grew up and did your schooling if you just think about right now this campus versus the campus in Suter County are you getting as much chance to succeed here at Yuba College in Marysville as the students in Suter County are at their yber college same College different County different buildings are they totally equal have you ever been over to the earth center it's way nicer than this much happier place to be than this and is is I mean it's getting a little nicer on this campus but just the physical surroundings of a campus can harm your ability to learn and be motivated and be engaged but you know if richer kids are getting better schooled with nicer grounds nicer teachers nicer computers and poor kids are getting crappy school to crappy grounds and crappy stuff then we're not equally giving all students the chance to succeed so but those are things to think about and we'll come back on them next week to talk about the American education system and its inequalities and uh yeah all right well have a good weekend

Channel: Marc Flacks

Views: 14

Keywords:

Id: jnAMbXoQfNk

Length: 75min 22sec (4522 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024