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Ellen Swallows Richards's Chemistry Lab
After being accepted into MIT, Ellen worked to establish the women's chemistry lab due to MIT not wanting to incorporate more women into their program. She was given a garage and was told it was her space, but she needed to get the equipment on her own. She then went and begged the women's group to sponsor $2,000 so she could go to Europe and retrieve the equipment that was needed. -
Insitution of Marriage
Westermarck described the origin as marriage as "even in primitive times, the habit for a man and woman to live together, to have sexual relations with one another, and to rear their offspring in common, the man, being the protector and supporter of his family and the woman being his helpmate and the nurse of his children. -
Definition of a Family
The U.S. Census Bureau states that " a family consists of a householder and one or more other people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption." This has bee the definition since 1930. -
Managing Family Resources
Home economics, as a discipline and field of study, purposefully began the metamorphosis to better serve the changing needs of its mostly female constituency and the changing social scripts for both men and women during the 1950s and 1960s. -
Changes in the Family
In 1960, 9% of adults had never been married, but by 2012, that percentage increased to 17% for women and 23% for men. Some reasons for this include more people waiting to marry later in life and a rise in cohabitation. -
Family Functions
Talcott Parsons believed that four basic functions were necessary for any system to survive. The functions are latent pattern maintenance, or loyalty; adaptation, or ability to adjust to change; integration of members; and goal attainment, or the ability to mobilize resources. -
Political Model
Pfeffer created the political model of decision making which recognizes that individuals within the unit may have differing interests and acknowledges that conflict is normal or at least customary. -
Bureaucratic Model
Pfeffer's bureaucratic model draws from rules, procedures, and processes rather than the effort to maximize values. It is more appropriate for business decisions, but can be used for more frequent, low-risk family decisions. -
Rational Model
Janis proposes the rational model, presuming that in the process of making decisions there are purposeful goals and objectives -
History of the Family
Anderson speculated that although prehistoric clans were organized around patriarch, agriculture development caused it to become necessary to organize around geographic areas ruled by political figures rather than the head of the family. -
Resources