Deck 9: Change

Question 1

Why has technological change created incentives to have fewer children?

A) People can't afford more children because each child requires expensive electronics.
B) People preferred to spend their time watching TV, rather than having sex.
C) People got access to cheap and effective means of contraception.
D) People had to pay for more expensive technologies in hospitals to give birth.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Feminists in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to changing the rules of marriage by

A) emphasizing that both women and men were morally and legally responsible for housework and had to negotiate who would do what.
B) insisting that every woman should be employed full time her whole adult life whether or not she had children.
C) claiming that women who were sexually active should be legally entitled to avoid pregnancy whether or not they were married.
D) All of the above.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

What does the "gendered love/sex binary" refer to?

A) Love and sex are binary aspects of relationships.
B) Sex is not only for reproduction, but for mutual affection as well.
C) The masculinization of love and feminization of sex
D) The idea that women are motivated by love and men by sex

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Why did enslaved Africans during the colonial period engage in premarital sex?

A) Because they had more opportunities to socialize across gender lines than whites did.
B) Because they did not restrict their own sexuality as severely as did whites.
C) Because they had more sexual desires than whites.
D) Because most could not legally marry.

Question 5

What best describes the gender relations of 1950s?

A) They were unusually family focused.
B) Achieving the "American dream" put more financial strain on men than ever before.
C) It was a decade of increased interest in feminism and sexual liberation.
D) Men and women grew increasingly tolerant of homosexual behavior.

Question 6

Why would anyone call World War II a "nationwide 'coming out' experience"?

A) Because homosexuals were mobilized to the war effort even if they openly declared their sexuality.
B) Because putting so many young men together in same-sex environments offered them opportunities for homoerotic encounters.
C) Because people in the United States finally recognized that homosexuality is an identity, not only an occasional practice.
D) Because gays and lesbians in the U.S. military pushed for visibility and accommodations.

Question 7

Why has urbanization created incentives to have fewer children?

A) because moving to cities made people less religious
B) because raising children in cities was more expensive
C) because more men than women lived in cities
D) because cities were less safe for children

Question 8

Feminists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to changing the rules of marriage by

A) claiming that women were entitled to say no to sex even with their husbands.
B) insisting that women should have the legal right to control the income they earned and children they bore.
C) emphasizing that men and women should be loving companions to each other.
D) All of the above.

Question 9

Which of the following definitions best describes a patriarchal marriage?

A) Men are heads of the household and women are their property.
B) Men as fathers have control over their daughters' but not their sons.
C) Men receive a family wage to support women and children.
D) Because men are breadwinners, they are the decision makers in both the public and the domestic sphere.

Question 10

The increasing importance of the cosmetic industry from the 1920s to the present has reflected how

A) purity, domesticity, and romance were increasingly separate ideals for women to pursue.
B) courtship based on "dating" and "treating" have become less important.
C) women's investments in their appearance became strategically important.
D) women's sexual activities depended on their having the money to invest in these new goods.

Question 11

The "good girl/bad girl dichotomy" refers to which social idea?

A) Poor women usually are bad girls, and upper and middle class women are good girls.
B) Good girls are mothers, and bad girls are not.
C) Women who limit themselves sexually are worthy of respect, and women who have sex with "too many" men are not.
D) Modern women, unlike the chaste women of the Victorian era, are interested in having sex.

Question 12

The idea of a family wage is meant to

A) encourage everyone in the family to work to support each other.
B) enable some men to earn a wage sufficient to support a nonemployed wife and several children.
C) ensure that all men were paid more than women.
D) defend the idea that housewives should be paid for the work they did to take care of a home and children.

Question 13

How is female prostitution related to early capitalism?

A) Early capitalism made it easier to buy and sell sex on the market.
B) Prostitution was a means of economic survival for poor women.
C) Capitalism inspired perverse inclinations in men.
D) Early capitalism created a double standard of morality for male sexual behavior.

Question 14

The "cult of domesticity" refers to which of these ideas?

A) People should value domesticity over other forms of labor.
B) Women as devoted mothers and wives should make home a "heaven on Earth."
C) Women and men should have leisure at home rather than work extensive hours.
D) People should marry for love rather than for passing on property.

Question 15

What did college students in the 1920s mean by 'smashing'?

A) breaking rules
B) having heterosexual contacts
C) finding someone very attractive
D) having a same-sex crush

Question 16

Which of the following characterized the 1950s?

A) Divorce rates increased.
B) The age for marriage and motherhood rose.
C) Fertility rates remained steady.
D) The education gap between women and men increased sharply.

Question 17

How might the fact that 1957 saw the highest rate of teen pregnancy in American history best be explained?

A) Working class teens in the booming economy had little incentive to complete their education.
B) The cultural emphasis on family and children led to a drop in the age of marriage, so women were married and had their first child as teenagers.
C) Going steady led young people to fall in love and accelerate their sexual experimentation over time.
D) Laws prohibiting statutory rape were not yet in place, and men took advantage of the lack of parental supervision.

Question 18

Which of the following is true of sex and marriage in the 1950s?

A) City jobs for both young men and women proliferated, providing new venues for urban youth to engage in sexual encounters.
B) Unavailability of contraceptives kept young couples only 'necking' and 'petting' rather than 'going all the way.'
C) Conservative interests drove the marriage age down, thereby 'sparing' young couples from the need to engage in premarital sex.
D) The rise of suburbs and availability of cars gave youth more opportunity to socialize without parents' or neighbors' supervision.

Question 19

What does the concept of commodification convey?

A) exchanges between productive labor in factories and reproductive labor at home
B) the advertising that is used to sell things
C) goods and services being brought into markets to be bought and sold
D) making useful things at home.

Question 20

Which of the following definitions best describes a breadwinner/housewife marriage?

A) Women are legally subordinated to men.
B) Women offer men domestic services and men support them financially.
C) Women marry by choice and expect love in their relationship.
D) Women can only meet the expectations of their role by staying at home full-time nurturing children.

Question 21

A friend of yours argues that it is important to respect 'traditional' marriage? Why is her statement meaningless in historical perspective?

Question 22

What impact did the publication of the Feminist Mystique have on U.S. gender relations?

A) It revealed how many American teenagers were breaking gender-specific sexual rules and thus challenged the double standard.
B) It showed that Americans of all ages were breaking the sexual rules and began to normalize same-sex relations.
C) It showed that middle-class women were frustrated and unhappy with breadwinner/housewife marriage.
D) It revealed how unhappy both women and men were with the division of labor in the breadwinner/housewife marriage.

Question 23

The ideology of separate spheres caused women in the 1950s and 1960s more strain than it had in earlier decades. How would this increase in strain be best explained?

A) Their husbands were working longer hours than ever before, so they had to do much more housework than before to balance this.
B) As a group, they had higher levels of education and work experience before marriage, so housework and childcare did not feel like it was using all their abilities.
C) They had such large numbers of children that they lost all opportunities to do anything other than childcare.
D) The breadwinner/housewife ideal was being questioned, and feminists made their commitment to housework seem foolish.

Question 24

The lives of men and women have changed dramatically in America's short history. Give an example each of a technological, economic, political, and demographic change and describe how it shifted gender relations.

Question 25

Marriage has been socially organized under three models. Explain each model, the reasons they emerged, and why they fell apart.

Question 26

Which of the following statements reflects change in the twentieth century ?

A) Poor women and women of color entered the wage economy after middle-class white women.
B) Marriage bans ensured that only white married women could get jobs, not unmarried women or women of color.
C) The family wage was not extended to most men of color or immigrant men.
D) As soon as more educated white women entered paid work, women started to have access to better paying jobs.

Question 27

The breadwinner/housewife model did not offer women economic equality because

A) the money women earned at home was less than what men earned at work.
B) working-class women and women of color could not legally work in factories, unlike men of these groups who held these industrial jobs.
C) access to a living wage came through men, and the work women did in maintaining a household was no longer recognized as work.
D) men did not really depend on women's cooking, cleaning, shopping, and childcare.

Question 28

The 1920s were a watershed period in young people's sexuality. What new opportunities did women and men encounter? What were the costs and benefits for each gender?

Question 29

How did Playboy challenge the gender norms of the 1950s?

A) It violated the idea that heterosexual men would inevitably want to marry and have children.
B) It extended the scope of hegemonic masculinity to include sexually active Black men and older white men.
C) It began to privilege the heterosexual male gaze.
D) It catered to a range of sexualities.

Question 30

What is sex for? Over the course of American history, people have had different ideas about what sex was for. Using American Indians, the Puritans and Victorians, young people of the 1920s and the 1950s, and Americans today, trace the shifting ideas about the purpose of sex and the cultural and institutional changes that led to those shifts.

Question 31

What has been the statistical trend for age at first marriage for women?

A) Between 1920 and 1940, it rose. By 1950, it dropped substantially. From the 1960s, it began rising again and hasn't stopped since.
B) It has been rising since the 1900s along with women's education.
C) Between 1900 and 1950, it rose. By 1950, it dropped substantially, and it has been dropping ever since.
D) Between 1920 and 1940, it rose. Between 1950 and 1970, it dropped substantially. After women's liberation in the mid-1970s, it began to rise again.

Question 32

The term 'marriage-go-around' was used to refer to what American social practice?

A) High rates of premarital cohabitation among younger generations of Americans.
B) Higher rates of both cohabitation and marriage among Americans compared to other countries.
C) Higher rates of both divorce and remarriage among Americans compared with other countries.
D) Higher rates of cohabitation, marriage, and divorce among Americans compared with other countries.

Question 33

Which of the following describes the changes in the U.S. population ?

A) Marriage rates have been dropping consistently since the end of World War II.
B) Almost every American alive today has had a cohabiting relation with someone without being married to them.
C) Almost half of all American children today are born to an unmarried mother.
D) Almost half of all black children are born to an unmarried mother.

Question 34

Which of the following statements best defines a partnership marriage?

A) Women and men have equal legal rights and obligations and base their relationship on companionship.
B) A marriage that is based on civil union laws instead of marriage laws.
C) It requires one man and one woman to commit to each other as partners for life.
D) Women and men commit to dividing their paid and unpaid labor exactly equally.