From Outlaws to In-Laws: Gay and Lesbian Couples in Contemporary Society

This article by Robert-Jay Green is about the similarities and differences between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples. It also explains challenges same-sex couples face as well as many forms of discrimination towards same-sex couples.


This article explains the "cost of being gay." It goes on to explain how the supreme court decision affects gay couples. These decisions are in favor for same-sex couples.

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-cost-of-being-gay/


This article is about the different health risks that are associated with homophobic people as well as the limitations that gay and lesbian people face.

http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Gay_and_lesbian_issues_discrimination


This website includes selected abstracts from papers that range from homophobia, attitudes towards gay and lesbian couples, and prejudice issues.

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/bibabs.html

This article from the Williams Institute describes the future impact of same-sex marriages from a legal perspective.

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/marriage-and-couples-rights/the-future-impact-of-same-sex-marriage-more-questions-than-answers/

 

Briefing Paper: How Do They Do That?

In this chapter by Patrick Heuveline, the statistic of divorce and the reasons why are stated and deliberated throughout. Heuveline explains that using the ratio "for every 100 weddings there were 57 divorces" is not very useful because it divides apples by oranges. He goes on to say that there are many different factors that constitute a divorce and the statistics for those are all very different.


This article is about the various reasons for divorce and the statistics surrounding first time and second time marriages.

http://www.divorce.usu.edu/files/uploads/Lesson3.pdf


This website explains all different kinds of statistics for divorce and other factors that contribute to it.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-wales/2011/sty-what-percentage-of-marriages-end-in-divorce.html


This pdf from the center of family and demographic research compares divorce in middle and later life including background, rationale, an analytic sample, divorce trends, etc.

http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/cas/file94173.pdf


This article from Council on Contemporary Families interviews Heuveline about statistics on divorce.

http://contemporaryfamilies.org/marriage-partnership-divorce/tricky.html

This article is called "Briefing Paper: Marriage Reduces Social Ties" by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian. They address that married couples tend to isolate themselves from other people in ways that pose long-term problems both for the couple and for society as a whole. Gerstel and Sarkisian explain why marriage isolates people, why it matters, if there are alternatives, and how we can help.


This article explains how relationships can be healthy or unhealthy. Including health behaviors, mental health, physical health, and mortality risk.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150158/


This site clearly explains why it is good to be single for life. It states that you don't have to be married to be happy because marriages reduce social ties, single people are just as happy, etc.

http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/love/package.jsp?name=fte/staysingle/staysingle


The Huffington Post suggests that getting married may result in the loss of friends. Sandy Malone explains the difficulty with maintaining friendships after you get married.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sandy-malone/why-getting-married-means_b_1576082.html


This magazine article is about a woman who claims getting married killed her friendships. She experiences condescending comments from her friends as well as less friends who reach out to her and her husband.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/sex/columns/mating/11646/

This article is called ‘Betwixt and Be Tween: Gender Contradictions among Middle Schoolers’ by Barbara J. Risman and Elizabeth Seale. The topic discussed in this chapter is about middle school boys and girls “doing gender” amongst their friends and peers. Girls have a lot less pressure to engage in male activities than guys participating in feminine activities. It comes across as “gay” for guys but is constituted as normal for girls without being teased. For boys, homophobia is alive and well in middle school. This chapter touches on research on gender and youth, contradictions and equality rhetoric, the difference between tomboy and girly-girl, and homophobic taunts and enforcement of masculinity.

This blog is about a woman who explains how people learn to do gender. She explains who influences our opinions and why it is such a popular topic today.

 http://janice-mylifeorsomethinglikeit.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-do-people-learn-to-do-gender.html

This article is about the aggression toward gay men as gender role enforcement: the effects of male role norms, sexual prejudice, and masculine gender role stress. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2754233/

This newspaper article stresses the issue of homophobia and why it is a problem. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hayley-rose-horzepa/the-problem-with-homophobia_b_1173586.html

This article discusses the conversation between girls and boys have about girls' physical activity behaviors. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430756/

Briefing Paper: Unmarried Couples with Children

This article is about Unmarried Couples with Children; why don't they marry, and how can policy makers promote more stable relationships by Paula England and Kathryn Edin. Some studies have shown that when unmarried couples there is a high chance that they will marry sometime in the future and an even higher percentage of fathers expected to marry the mother of the child. But, in reality, most of these couples did not marry. The rest of this article answers why couples do not marry, why couples do not use contraception, why couples break up, as well as policy implications.


This article is about how being an unmarried couple and living together is better tax-wise than being married and living together.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/living-together-book/chapter4-6.html


This newspaper article is about how more and more unmarried couples are having babies. They are unmarried but both parents are present. There has been a substantial increase over a short period of time of unmarried couples having children together, but no reasons can be provided.

http://healthland.time.com/2012/04/13/more-unwed-couples-are-having-babies/


This article is about how Christians view cohabitation between unmarried couples and the resulting in childbearing. It is assumed that with the constant growth of unmarried cohabitation over the year, that in the near future it will be more common than marriage.  "The change in social attitudes about unmarried cohabitation may be due in large part to a change in perception of what it takes to have a successful marriage."

http://christianfamilylawassociation.org/unmarried_cohabitation 


This article is about initiatives in reducing unwed childbearing. Several factors are listed as to why this is important.

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2006/04/childrenfamilies-kane

Domestic Violence in Heterosexual Relationships

This chapter is called 'Domestic Violence in Heterosexual Relationships' by Rhea V. Almeida. It explains what domestic violence is and a model for working with couples in which domestic violence occurs. She lists tools and techniques to include the pursuit of justice at every level including, how "normal hierarchies of power, privilege, and oppression perpetuate suffering." She aims to bring light of the lies different cultures have acquired throughout the years regarding domestic violence.

This article is about knowing the signs of abuse and abusive relationships and understanding domestic violence and abuse. 

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

This article is about the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and how it partners with celebrities to help generate awareness for domestic and sexual violence.

http://www.ncadv.org/

This article is about the early signs of an abusive domestic relationship and the questions you should ask yourself as well as solutions to help you if you think you are in an abusive relationship.

http://www.psychiatry.org/domestic-violence

This article is all about how to reach out to someone and support groups you can join if you are looking to get out of an abusive relationship.

http://www.hendersonhouse.org/?page=programs

This article is a list of statistics involved with domestic violence.

http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/domestic-violence-statistics/

This is another article containing domestic violence statistics and it goes into detail the personal accounts of domestic violence over the years.

http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html 

 

The title of this article is called "Why is Everyone Afraid of Sex?" by Pepper Schwartz. The main point of this article is to show how society portrays sex in the media and in education and why everyone is "afraid of sex". Schwartz argues that people aren't necessarily afraid of sex, rather they are uninformed and the media and schools aren't doing a very good job at informing students. Society is more sexually constrained than liberated. There are many points Schwartz gives in this article to explain why there is fear about sexuality. A few of these are, religious indoctrination and tradition, association of sexuality, diseases, and death, and finally, fear about sexual acceptability and competence.

This article is about why abstinence works and describes the ways in which is positive in the education system.

http://www.abstinenceworks.org/

This video is from the abstinence works website and stresses the important of abstinence education in schools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZqELOFw_i4&feature=player_embedded#t=161

This article from Focus on the Family is about two extreme education system's approaches on sex education. There is still conflict about the focus of sexual education in schools and at what age it should begin.

http://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/social-issues/abstinence-education.aspx


This article is stressing the importance of a sex education course in schools, not just an abstinence only education course. This relates to the part of the book in which people are no longer educated about the truth about sex, instead they are only taught how to remain abstinent until marriage.

http://advocatesforyouth.org/publications/409


Here is a quote from Families As They Really Are and a correlation to another book I am reading:

“A well-done and well-publicized 2001 study by Bearman and Bruckner looked at data on 20,000 students who had taken abstinence pledges and found that only 12 percent kept their promise” (Risman, 122). This correlates to a section in ‘A Year of Biblical Womanhood’ where Rachel Held Evans talks about her encounter with giving an abstinence pledge in middle school. She gave the same statistic as stated above, “the youth leader said he planned to hang the cork board in the hallway outside the sanctuary so that parents could marvel at the 75 abstinence pledges he’d collected that night. It was a pretty cheap way to treat both our bodies and God, come to think of it. Studies suggest that only about 12 percent of us kept that promise” (Evans, 103).