Societal expectations - Essay Example

? Sociology This paper will address four questions that are under consideration, in a sequence wise manner. Do societal expectations have any influence upon both children's and adult's choice of career? Discuss referring to gender and role conflict. People living in a society automatically start following a set of norms that prevails in that particular society, which may vary from one area to another. Sometimes these norms are set in accordance with the consent of all the people living with in or these are formed randomly seeing each other practicing certain attributes; but norms are always present. Here, it is important to realize that a society is segregated among genders and the social order that prevails is highly influenced by the presence of both the genders putting up different obligations on both of them. Such a gendered world always existed and literary works started focusing on it from the early 1990s (Sagebiel & Vazquez, pp.4). This is homogenous throughout the world, the degree of which may vary. Keeping in view such a social order, there are separate guidelines and expectations that society put on males and females each and see them as obliged to follow those as part of their lifestyles in order to be socially accepted and acknowledged among them. These guidelines, basically, originate from the stereotypical attitudes of people that may have their origin in the traditional way of living but they are brought forward y people in the modern world too. Since, these are so inherent that they become a mental mode and thus, it is hard to challenge them. However, with the passage of time, such a behavior may have necessary transformations. As discussed, many of the stereotypes are accepted by us automatically as a reality of life without us knowing that we are following something out of choice. Since these are so ingrained people do not tend to question them and thus, these have high influence over our decision-making processes (Sagebiel & Vazquez, pp.5-7). These societal norms or expectations have certain predefined set of sex roles that individuals accept according to their specific genders. Gradually, when a child socializes and grows up, he/she develops a gender identity for him/herself in accordance with the sociocultural and psychosocial factors. There three approaches results in manipulation of an individual’s decision-making process. First is rational decision-making, which means that women and men make final choices according to the value they put to different field of studies based on their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. For example, a woman would prefer to work in a female-oriented field that requires fewer hours of work and that can also complement their family-related responsibilities. On the other hand, a man would prefer working for hours and hours since he is not required to do anything when he goes back home. Secondly, role modeling plays a vital role in making individuals choose a career path for themselves. An aspiring woman would like choosing a promising field if she has such an aspiring women-role model at her home. Thus, family background plays a vital role in shaping the cognition of individuals and putting up expectations over them. Thus, the self-perception, self-identity, and cognition of an individual mold in accordance with the environment they live in along with their family background and values and they tend to follow the same environment whether under pressure, out of will or randomly without realizing that they are actually following a century-old tradition. Moreover, attributes such as aggressiveness, independence and competing power are often used with the masculine gender while care, good interpersonal relationships and child bonding are attributed to the feminine genders, which have a great impact over the individual’s pursuit towards their career (Sagebiel & Vazquez, pp.25-27). Define culture and provide examples. Do one's culture and ethnicity influence one's lifestyle, marriage, career, and child-rearing habits? To what extent? Explain. Many anthropologists and sociologists have defined culture in different ways and contexts, however, the essence of all the definitions revolve around two distinct elements that are, beliefs, and values. A simple definition of the term culture underlining all the examples can be “a complex whole that includes various aspects of way of living of individuals including knowledge, morals, law, belief, art, food and many other habits of individuals that are mutually accepted and practiced by individuals living in a particular society having membership of that society” (Knox & Schacht, pp.8-15). This contains all the theoretical and applied aspects of the term, culture. Thus, all the definitions of this term have a common reference to shared values, customs and traditions, norms and mores. This means that culture is a distinct characteristic that is transmitted from generations to generations by their predecessors to stick to the traditional values and are accepted with certain accepted modifications according to the evolving world. As the paper has discussed earlier that beliefs and values, shape the culture that we have, so these two elements also influence one's lifestyle, marriage, career, and child-rearing habits. For example, as we know that belief is the explanation that we give to something that we perceive is true. A couple who believe that dual-parenting helps the child to prosper and have multiple successes in his/her will make a different child-care plan and decide accordingly than those who think that children learn the best in a day-care environment. In the same way, such parents would make their child-conceiving plans and child-rearing plans according tot heir set beliefs. Moreover, the number of children that they should have would be highly influenced by this belief as compared to those who think that single parenting can do miracles for children (Knox & Schacht, pp.8). Considering values, we may say that it is what we regard as right, wrong, good, or evil and it varies from one individual or one society to another. These values influence the choices that we make in our lifetime. For instance, a woman whose values do not define activities like living with a man before marriage as wrong would practice that freely without doubting what she is doing and it would be inculcated in her lifestyle. In the same way being individualistic or accepting familism are also the attributes that come from the values a person, a family or a society follows. An individualistic person who lives in such a society which does not care about others’ values would make decisions that benefit only him/herself without due consideration to the benefit of the family or the society. Moreover, taking the example of the majority of the citizens living in the United States, we would come to realize that according to their culture and social patterns, they are independent in making decisions about choosing a bride or a groom for themselves (Knox & Schacht, pp.9-10). In the same context, an Asian family migrated to the U.S. would not follow these values according to their differing ethnicity and would teach their family a different set of values that have been transmitted to them. Furthermore, an American young boy, while choosing his friends, might not choose an African-American descendant if he holds prejudices, thus his lifestyle would be different from the rest. In choosing a career path, if a family does not value the profession of Nursing, for instance, as good, it will not allow their children to pursue that profession than those who think it as the noblest profession on the planet. Thus, our values influence our decisions that we make in all the races of our lives. Stereotypes by Americans are phenomena of the past, True or false? Explain. Stereotypes are still present in the context of a society living in the United States. However, their values are evolving and people still are in the transitional stage, which may take up to a couple of years to transform themselves completely as to holding stereotypes. However, at present, one must not say that Americans do not hold to the stereotypical attributes that have been part of the past world. As the paper has talked about gender stereotyping in the earlier part of the paper, it is true that they see masculine and feminine genders separately putting up distinctive expectation on both of them according to the ongoing phenomena. For instance, it is a usual scenario that people call a woman “tomboyish” or “less-feminine” if she pursues a competitive career with male-dominance, such as computer science or engineering. They call such woman like that because society expects them to be pursuing careers in humanities, arts, social sciences or other light subjects that are again stereotypically associated with the feminine gender from traditions. People generally say that these fields “fit in” with girls; however, other science and technology related fields are meant to be pursued by boys. There are, of course, no documented arguments as to why associate different careers for different genres but since it is socially accepted, desired, and expected, one is always seen with suspicious eyes if he/she thinks out of the box or wants to do something different. Likewise, when we talk about nurses, most people think about girls practicing the occupations. However, there is no restriction to boys not to choose that career path for themselves. This is the reason that the term “male nurse” was added since people always thought that nurses are supposed to be girls merely (Sagebiel & Vazquez, pp.26-27). The attacks on September 11, 2001 changed America forever. Is this statement true or false and to what degree? Is this a positive or negative phenomenon? After the incident of September 11, 2011, the feelings of Americans changed for good. Talking about the immediate post effects, fear, aggression, and contempt were the initial feelings that Americans felt at that time. Right after, people were impulsive and wanted to confront and argue and possibly attack those terrorists who attacked their own people. Their love for national interests got alive and they shared mutual emotional attachments with people who were suffered or who were associated with the sufferers. As the Intergroup Emotions Theory suggests, all the Americans felt them as one unit and who were had associations with people who suffered felt these emotions intensely that remained within them for long and is present even now. People who had close proximity to the incident felt a high level of post-traumatic stress and feared if the same kind of incident can happen to them after that. The incident changed America forever, as Americans were terrified to go to their educational institutes, workplaces, and places of worship since they felt themselves as not protective and vulnerable. This was the immediate impact of the incident (Speckhard, pp. 159-161). However, after years of incident, if we analyze the American society as one unit, we will realize that their anger and frustration over the group of terrorist and the place they belonged to remains the same. They feel disgusted about what happened to their loved ones, irrespective of their relationships with them, they still want to avenge what bad happened to them if they get a chance. Thus, their feelings towards a group of people hanged forever; which is very intense. Now, when they know that they are being provided with strong military security and their country is safe from all these terrorists, their fears have transformed into sheer hatred and revulsion. Works Cited Knox, David & Schacht, Caroline. Choices in Relationships. Thomson Learning, Inc, 2008. Sagebiel, Felizitas & Vazquez, Susana. “Stereotypes and Identity.” Meta-Analysis of Gender and Science Research. 2010, pp. 1-94. Speckhard, Anne. “Acute Stress Disorder in Diplomats, Military and Civilian American Living Abroad Following the September 11th Terrorist Attacks on America.” Professional Psychology: Research & Practice. Volume 34, Issue 2, 2003, pp. 151-158. Read More