Free Article Review About Culture

A. Brief Overview of “Is Hooking Up bad for Young Women?”

Several authors look at the sex culture in today’s youths in comparison to the baby boomers. Jessica Valenti(2010) for instance argues that the problem with America today is not the casual sex as it is not new but the moral panic that exists. The mass media has driven sociologists and psychologists to investigate young hookups even more closely. Statistics by CDC and the NHSLS show that young adults today are having far less sex than the baby boomers. Hookups are not free for all as portrayed by the media but is rather a safe manoeuvre by young adults of balancing fun and risks associated with casual sex. The problem with hookups is the double standards where a young lady having sex is branded a 'ho' while a man becomes more of a man the more times he indulges in sex. Relationships are not all that good because they have a dark side too.

Response 1.A

Girls want to be like men in matters of the heart, but they can't even if they tried. Authors such as Jessica Valenti, Ariel Levy(2010) state that young adults indulge in activities focusing less on their sexual pleasures but prefer being labelled as 'hot' by men. The media portrays that there has been a sudden change in the sexual culture in the youth. Stepp's assertion that young adults have abandoned dating is false as sixty-nine percent of senior students have had a relationship of six months or more. Survey carried out in England show that students don’t hook up as much as earlier thought. Additionally the sex in hookup sex is in most occasions light as students are likely to indulge in oral sex or manual stimulation as only thirty percent actually lead to sexual intercourse. Hookups today are adolescent measures to avoid physical and emotional risks that come with relationships. The limited liability hedonism suggests that adolescents see that sex is fine as long as the risks of future jeopardy, STD's, and early pregnancies are avoided. Despite all these inherent benefits of hookups the big problem is the double standards that end up by girls indulging in more of these being called as sluts and no problems is seen for a man who does the same. The dark side of a relationship is that the relationship at one time or another will compete with school-work. Relationships have been guilty of consuming a lot of students time, power inequalities, and control over the other party's social life as well as self-being.

B. Brief Overview of “Resource and Risk: Youth Sexuality and New Media Use”

This article looks at the new technology and how influential it is is for today’s youth and sexual culture. Technology is a big part of today’s youth in terms of their social, romantic and sexual lives. Thus, technology plays an important role in their activities is dating, breaking up and so on.

Response 1.B

This article brings to forth casual tales like that of Jessie and shows how young adults use technology and media in their daily lives. My view is that practices of the youth online are more complex than meeting older adult for sex or cyber-bullying. The youth has today put technology as their servants to their intimate relationships as the sexual practices that the youth engage in are in the context of these social relationships. The anonymous forum today created by the advent of new technology has enabled the youth to manage the inherent vulnerability. Such new media has enabled the youth to talk about sensitive information such as sex and sexuality. The youth are today eager to receive information about sex and relationship and they are turning to websites, text messaging, forums to discuss these topics. It is unfortunate that not all youth have equal access to the new incoming media technologies. The disparities of race, class still define who gets access and participates in such. This articles clearly brings out what the new media is all about from day to day love notes between Alice and Josh to harassment of Jesse that show the numerous avenues of learning outside the walls of a classroom.
C. Brief Overview of “Puberty and the Education of girls”
This article looks into the study of the physiological event 'puberty' and how it's affecting girls education in school. This study has enabled the prevalent possibility of girls dropping out owing to adolescence and the continued poor performance into high school. The psychological risks that confer to girls due to pubertal timing have attracted psychologists into studying youth development, health and education and how they relate and affect each other.

Response 1.C

In my perspective puberty in girls has always had that impeccable timing at which the female youth is at her most vulnerable. Puberty in girls has always come with transitions that the girls have to take incautiously or else everything around her crumbles. Basically, it has come to be noticed that puberty affects education because of depression, premature concepts of oneself, risky behaviour and dangerous peer groups. In order to understand best how puberty affects girls, these variables have to be evaluated. I personally believe there is a strong connection between trajectories of human development and the structural and institutional contexts around the girl child and this can be addressed by researchers. Puberty is a biological event that can disrupt institutional transition if allowed to do so. What can be done to curb or at least reduce this problem is by reduction of girls interaction with boys or older adolescents. This can be done by single sex schools that keep them from troubling influence. Some institutions also have loopholes that lead to the negative effect of puberty on girls solving this problem at the school level would require programs such as media clubs, leadership skills groups and so on.

A. Brief Overview of “Aggression and violent behaviour”

This article reviews the literature of bullies and how the vice can be intervened. The group involvement in bullying is assessed in this articles keenly looking at the motives, why the persistence in bullying.

Response 2.A

Bullying is more of a social role in the school groups rather than a sour relationship between bully and victim. These social roles get worse with time and are always persistent. The most discouraging part is that other non-participating are always on the sidelines laughing at the humiliating moment for the victim. This only gives the bully more motivation to inflict harm on the victim. Many studies ave been made about the bully and the victim in terms of their attitude, social position and intentions, but little has been done to intervene the problem from the group level. In the testing of this researcher have to bring different groups and observe a pilot test of what characteristics of the group are causing the bullying. My suggestion would be to use different groups modes and in order to put the suggested theories to a more rigorous test. Bullies are often seen as popular amongst their peers and are often congratulated by compatriots for their acts. The bullies concept relies very much on the group concept such that classmate who is empathic would shy away from helping a friend because of the influence the bullies have created in the school. This article clearly shows that people have the ideas of tackling bullying but are yet to implement the empirical tests out there.
Despite the lack of proper research in bullies at the group level, there is desperate need to eliminate the precursor of bystanders and how changes in the classroom contribute to the attitudes of bullies overtime.

B. Brief Overview Of “How bullying and abuse May Age children Prematurely”

Alice Park in this article brings for the the results of study as carried out by Research on the effect of violence on the age of of a child. The research was carried out in England on two hundred and thirty six children.

Response 2.B

The studies author Shalev found that exposure of children to violence from either domestic violence, the bully and the victim. The exposure causes the body cells of the children to oxidate, inflate and therefore divide faster. This in effect makes the cells age faster than though of a normal child that has not undergone stress.

A. Brief Overview of “Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender”

A detailed observation into the children's world reveals the salient difference in social context. This observation is best elaborated by the author who looks at a moment in a youth soccer opening ceremony where four and five-year-old children activated and constructed in a natural way. To tell the gender construction at a tender age the author construct a multilevel framework where the children are investigated according to how they do gender at the basic level of performance and interaction, the structured gender regime and the actions of children and their parents and how children immersion into popular gender culture creates or disrupts gender differences. The author also looks at the structure, cultural meanings and interactions are intertwined.

Response 3.A

Boys and girls constitute themselves as different in their sociological world. Thorne's approach to observing the interactionist, structural and cultural looks into why boys and girls are different. Gender is seen as a salient organizing factor o children social life. For instance in the Sea monsters versus the Barbie girls moment where the generation of gender boundaries are structured the basis of sex orientation.
In order to understand best the gender creation in children and under what condition should multilevel analysis be employed I suggest the propositions of interactionist theoretical framework, the structural theoretical frameworks, and the cultural theoretical frameworks. Solitary use of the above theoretical frameworks will lead to limited information, but a combination of all should develop a greater understanding of social construction of gender in the everyday life of a child.
The Interactionist theoretical frameworks in most cases tell of the social agents that do gender and end up creating groups that define boundaries and categorical differences between male and female persons. In this example of sea monsters versus barbie parents and children performed gender by constructing boundaries telling apart boys and girls.
The structural theoretical framework emphasizes more on the construction of gender on hierarchical divisions and how gender and labour activities, gender differences and inequalities. The cultural theoretical framework emphasizes oh how popular symbols I the society are taken up and circulated in toe culture industry. Different institutions in the society dictate hoe these symbols are taken up by the different social agents. In this example the girls team used a big barbie to denote their unity and strength and in some way exhibited their identity. |The boys on the other hand shunned denounced the Barbie and were aggressive and invaded the boundaries of the girls.
A. Brief Overview of “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families.”
Lareau (2002) asserts that the nature of life in a family has an effect on the chances in a child’s life. Many people do not understand the mechanism that parents use to transmit the advantages to their children. The author uses a set of data covering black and white children ethnographically to examine the influence of social class on their interaction within the home. For instance, parents living a middle-class life are often engaged in an attempt to nurture the talents of their children through extensive reasoning and the application of effort. On the other hand, poor parents will cultivate a culture of natural growth among their children. Poor parents also provide the basic needs growth to the children but leave them to formulate and enjoy leisure by themselves. Other external factors also contribute to the manner in which social class affects child rearing. Such factors including the quality and type of education accessed by the child. Variation in the effect of such external factors depends on the type of environment the children are exposed. For instance, rich and poor children are exposed to different environments.

Response 4.A

Childrearing is an uphill that requires a commitment from parents and any other people that may be taking care of the child. Social class affects the ability of the parents to access and maintain resources required to rear their children. However, social class does not have an effect on the fact that all parents are aware of the obligation they owe their children, taking care (rearing) of them. social class affects child rearing due to the different values children are taught based on the perspectives that the parents have. For instance, rich parents will teach their children to value leisure while the poor ones will encourage them to be aggressively conservative when it comes to leisure.
B. Brief Overview of “‘I Need Help!’ Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School.”
Calarco (2011) examines the role played by children in stratification and education with respect to their parents and schools. The author is keen to understand whether children merely receive the unequal opportunities they are exposed to or actively participate in determining their destinies and opportunities. The author uses a longitudinal cross-sectional and ethnographic study in an elementary school that is socio economically diverse to show the effect of social class backgrounds on how children seek help in the classroom. The keywords in the research questions of the author are the classroom, education, stratification, and social class. Many parties do not understand the role played by children besides the fact that they are the beneficiaries of education programs. Several factors such as culture act as intermediaries in shaping the manner in which children contribute to their education.

Response 4.B

Social class affects that type of environment that a child grows in and develops the different aspects of his or her life. These aspects include the language that the child uses in different circumstances. For instance, a child raised from a high social class may not be accustomed to seeking solutions for himself or herself. As such, she is used to asking for help in a polite manner because he or she is accustomed to it. On the other hand, children from a lower social class are used to struggles and unavailability of help and they may find it hard to ask for that help.

A. Brief Overview of “From Mobs to Memorials: The Sacralization of Child Life”

Zelizer (1981) looks to the public change on the outlook of accidents that happen to children in the streets in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The public went through a transformation where it now saw the sentimental worth of children. The view of child mortality was o longer an individual problem but rather a national problem where monuments were constructed.

Response 5.A

According to Zelizer, the changes to the public were widely recognized because of the inherent threat to the middle and upper-class children. The problem was taken more seriously when the economic problems and mechanical problems were felt by the insurance and transportation companies. It is unfortunate that the problems were only considerable and measures taken only when influential people with money. As soon as it was realized that these problems could be faced by people of the high social class programs to curb the problem were developed. It is irritating that politicians use critical social factors such as child mortality rate to gather votes for elections. The mobs in this article should have targeted the truck companies rather than the drivers. The mob mentality in his article was illogical and demonstrated for wrong reasons.

B. Brief Overview of “Play, Supervision, and Pressured Parenting”

Cohen (2011) brings out the fact that the parent in the middle-class social level is more cautious with their children. The parents are characterized by strict supervision of their children and would like a good return from their investment on the children.

Response 5.B

The middle-class parents have always had a concern for children education and how elite they can become. They are control freaks and find themselves running the kids lives without allowing the space to make decisions on what matters most to them. For the society today this is not good as a graduate should be able to make decisions on his or her own and have personal ambitions that one should work towards. Strict parenting has its perk, but too much of it is detrimental to the child as it drills the child into making him or her less self-dependent.
The middle call to high class levels are characterised by wanting to dictate their children’s life and make the most important decision for therm. More often than not this leads top rebellion as the ambitions of the children and not always in line with ambitions of the parent.

Works Cited

Lareau, Annette. "Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families." (0): Print.
Zelizer, Viviana. “From Mobs to Memorials: The Sacrilization of Child Life,” Chapter 1 in Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. (1981). Print
Calarco, Jessica M. "“I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School." American Sociological Review (2011): n. pag. Print.
Cohen, Philip N. “Play, Supervision, and Pressured Parenting,” Sociological Images ( 2011). Print
MESSNER, MICHAEL A. "BARBIE GIRLS VERSUS SEA MONSTERSChildren Constructing Gender." Gender & Society (2000): n. pag. Print.

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