Category: Social Sciences

Step 1: Create a budget (use Family Profile #5 under additional materials)
First, create a complete and exhaustive budget of all the expenses this family would incur throughout a typical month. The budget can be created in any format you wish, but it must be well organized, comprehensive, and straightforward. Use the Cost of Living sheets (provided under additional materials) to create your budget. Use those numbers to create your budget, don’t use make up numbers!

Family Profile #5
Gross Annual Income: $74,109
After Tax Annual Income: $57,305
Monthly Income: $4,775
Assets: $0.00

Family Members: 3 adults
                          1 male child age 10
                          1 female child age 12

Description: Your family lives in a 3 bedroom apartment in a suburb of a large metropolitan area. An elderly relative recently moved into the residence. One adult works full-time as a nurse’s aide in a near-by hospital. Another adult works full-time as a school security guard. The elderly relative does receive social security benefits. There is a metropolitan bus service available nearby your home. The elderly relative is not able to provide childcare.

Step 2: Reflection #1 (at least 1 full page)
After creating your budget, reflect on how easy or difficult it would be for this family to survive or even thrive. Describe the quality of life of this family. What kind of housing do they live in? What are their jobs? What might an average week day or weekend day look for them? What are they able to afford? What are they forced to do without that other more affluent families may take for granted (vacations, eating out, spending money, a second car, etc.)? How might this influence the family?

Step 3: Life happens
Next, you will need to incorporate the two Life Happens cards into your monthly budget. These two cards should occupy separate line items on the budget. If necessary, depending on what life throws at your family, you must modify your budget and clearly delineate (so that it is obvious to me) how these circumstances influenced the budget. The two “Life Happens” are your car needs new tires. Review your budget to see if you can afford $500 for new tires installation. The other one is a flood has hit your town and you need to evacuate your home for two weeks. There is no room at the emergency shelter. Make the necessary changes in your budget to account for hotel and food expenses.

Step 4: Reflection #2 (at least 1 full page)
Explain what happened to your family by way of life events, how they dealt with those events, and how it impacted the family. Did the budget change significantly? If yes, how so? If not, why not? What decisions had to be made? What might be the repercussions of these decisions?

Step 5: Conclusion (at least 2 full pages)
What does this exercise demonstrate to you regarding social class and the family? What do you think are the most important ways in which social class influences family life in the United States? How is the family, as an institutional arena, influenced by other institutional arenas like education, law, the economy, medicine, and others? How are the childrens lives affected by living at this particular level of the social strata? How might the familys difficulty (or ease) in meeting basic needs translate into access to opportunities (education, jobs, health care) for the children later in life? How does your familys social class affect how they experience every facet of their lives? What sorts of stressors might your family face given its social class? What do you think are the most important ways in which social class influences family life in the United States?

The Reflections and Conclusion must, in total, be at least 4 full pages. Clearly delineate each section with a heading for Reflection #1, Reflection #2, and Conclusion where you will reflect on that section of the project using (but not limited to) the prompts I provide above. It must be written in Times New Roman font, 12 point font size, double-spaced, with 1 inch margins.

Step 1: Create a budget (use Family Profile #5 under additional materials)
First, create a complete and exhaustive budget of all the expenses this family would incur throughout a typical month. The budget can be created in any format you wish, but it must be well organized, comprehensive, and straightforward. Use the Cost of Living sheets (provided under additional materials) to create your budget. Use those numbers to create your budget, don’t use make up numbers!

Family Profile #5
Gross Annual Income: $74,109
After Tax Annual Income: $57,305
Monthly Income: $4,775
Assets: $0.00

Family Members: 3 adults
                          1 male child age 10
                          1 female child age 12

Description: Your family lives in a 3 bedroom apartment in a suburb of a large metropolitan area. An elderly relative recently moved into the residence. One adult works full-time as a nurse’s aide in a near-by hospital. Another adult works full-time as a school security guard. The elderly relative does receive social security benefits. There is a metropolitan bus service available nearby your home. The elderly relative is not able to provide childcare.

Step 2: Reflection #1 (at least 1 full page)
After creating your budget, reflect on how easy or difficult it would be for this family to survive or even thrive. Describe the quality of life of this family. What kind of housing do they live in? What are their jobs? What might an average week day or weekend day look for them? What are they able to afford? What are they forced to do without that other more affluent families may take for granted (vacations, eating out, spending money, a second car, etc.)? How might this influence the family?

Step 3: Life happens
Next, you will need to incorporate the two Life Happens cards into your monthly budget. These two cards should occupy separate line items on the budget. If necessary, depending on what life throws at your family, you must modify your budget and clearly delineate (so that it is obvious to me) how these circumstances influenced the budget. The two “Life Happens” are your car needs new tires. Review your budget to see if you can afford $500 for new tires installation. The other one is a flood has hit your town and you need to evacuate your home for two weeks. There is no room at the emergency shelter. Make the necessary changes in your budget to account for hotel and food expenses.

Step 4: Reflection #2 (at least 1 full page)
Explain what happened to your family by way of life events, how they dealt with those events, and how it impacted the family. Did the budget change significantly? If yes, how so? If not, why not? What decisions had to be made? What might be the repercussions of these decisions?

Step 5: Conclusion (at least 2 full pages)
What does this exercise demonstrate to you regarding social class and the family? What do you think are the most important ways in which social class influences family life in the United States? How is the family, as an institutional arena, influenced by other institutional arenas like education, law, the economy, medicine, and others? How are the childrens lives affected by living at this particular level of the social strata? How might the familys difficulty (or ease) in meeting basic needs translate into access to opportunities (education, jobs, health care) for the children later in life? How does your familys social class affect how they experience every facet of their lives? What sorts of stressors might your family face given its social class? What do you think are the most important ways in which social class influences family life in the United States?
In the Reflections and Conclusion

Write a 7 pages essay on ONE of the following topics:

Write a 7 pages essay on ONE of the following topics
Globalization is an uneven process. It creates pockets of wealth and sites of violence in various parts of the globe. In discussing this statement, explain how globalization policies impact womens and men by focusing on one of the

followings:
gender roles and gender relationships
LGBTQ+ issues
Structural adjustment programs
Gender and migration
Sweat shops/Human trafficking
Gender and armed conflict
Social Change and transformation

Film Review Assignment:
Film: Dam/Ages https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qlyZofTmUO4

Essay Requirements:

Focus on women or gender
Select any country (of your choosing) as the focus of your essay
You should make specific reference to *at least* 6 references (4 from the class readings + one of the course documentary films) in your essay.  Please find 2 other scholarly references (of your choosing) to help with your selected country topics.
The essay should be 7pages, doubled spaced, 12 point font– please do NOT use bullet format.
You must use MLA citation.
Please check the attached grading rubric.

In answering any of these questions, students should examine both:

a) The challenges facing women (men and children if applicable);

b) And, examine men/womens strength and ability to overcome these challenges.

the writer can choose the topic and can choose any 3 of the reading attached bellow.

Important note: Please check the essay grading rubric that is attached to this learning module before submitting your essays.

Final Project Research Essay —–As a culmination of your work in this class, you will analyze a contemporary (current) issue/social problem and how social inequality plays a role. Once you have made a topic selection, find a related media source from https://www.ted.com/talks (Links to an external site.)  or a podcast from https://www.npr.org/podcasts/ (Links to an external site.) to use as a point of initial reference. Then, you will analyze, compare and/or contrast your chosen issue using at least two (2) sociological perspectives from this course (structuralism, conflict, symbolic interactionism, feminism).

This essay should be no longer than 3-4 pages, double spaced, 12-font, and Times New Roman and set 1 margins for top/bottom/left/right. All films, books, peer-reviewed articles, documentaries, podcasts and course materials must be referenced on the reference or bibliography page and cited within the essay text when referred to using proper ASA, APA or MLA formatting. I require the use of a title page, running head, pagination, in-text citations and a reference page that includes the course text.
Once you have selected your topic and media reference, you will begin to organize your essay by addressing the following:

Brief introduction of your topic, a statement of the problem/issue and why it is relevant for this course. Why is this topic important to you and relevant to a sociology course?
Provide a brief overview of the history of the topic including relevant people, places, events, policies, statistics, etc
Discuss the current status of the topic, interesting statistics, and include which theories from this class (Structural Functionalism, Conflict Theory, Symbolic Interactionist Theory or Feminist Theory) have strong contributions to this topic.
Summarize with brief thoughts on where this topic/issue/social problem is going. Support this summary with your sociological knowledge learned during this course and include course concepts such as social inequality, social stratification, ethnocentrism, racism and discrimination.
Integrate key terms and concepts from the course material and always use proper references in ASA, APA or MLA format.
This is a professional college essay and you should not use I or first person throughout your paper, with the exception of recommendations in the conclusion section. The paper must reflect a proper sociological approach and therefore you should not write opinions as to the right or wrong nature of your topic. Your work should be more of an academic examination of the various sociological positions of your topic. However, you may include your sociological opinion in the conclusion.

Technical Guidelines for writing assignments:

The essay should flow and make logical sense with the use of proper transitions and the grouping of similar concepts. This will strengthen your essay.
You will be graded on grammar, form and organization.
You must include your name in the upper right corner of the first page. You do not need to include an abstract.
Please include a title-page and a reference page.
If you use an idea that is not your own, you must reference in ASA, APA or MLA Style.
Using someone elses work or ideas that are not your own is plagiarism and is a violation of College policy.
Late assignments are not recommended and points may be deducted for late submissions.
Name your attachment to coincide with the assignment. However, do not use symbols, instead use only letter and/or numbers (FinalEssay) or (CourseEval) or (ExtraCredit).
If I cannot open a submission, I will contact you or the assignment could be assigned a Zero. Submitting early can help avoid this. Be sure to only use Microsoft Word or PDF no other formats are accepted.
Save all your course work to a hard drive, a flash drive, cloud, Google or in email storage. This will ensure that you have a record of all your work in case there are any computer issues. I practice these precautions too!