Family History Paper
The assignment is to write a paper of 6 – 8 page paper reporting the results of family history
interviews and linking them to course content. This is not a library paper and you need no
citations beyond some references to course readings and lecture notes.
The course has stressed changes in family roles, norms, structures and functions. Your task is to
ask whether your interviewees’ experiences illustrate or contradict the sociological
generalizations presented in the lectures and readings. If I were you, I would reread all the
lecture note handouts first and make marks for the concepts might apply to your family so that
you can ask about those. Then look at your underlines in the readings. Doing those tasks will
remind you of parts of the course that you may have forgotten and that might apply to your
family.
The most fundamental thing I am looking for in this paper is how many course concepts you
bring up and how well you relate them to your interview material. I expect to see sentences like:
“As we learned in class, people in the 1950s and 1960s married relatively young, and my
grandparents were no exception.” Here’s another of the type of sentence I’d like to see:
“According to the “Bridal Wave” reading, the bridal industry has created the image of the perfect
wedding as being about consumerism. My interview with my mother showed that when she
married in 1985, consumerism was not important to her and the total cost of her wedding was
about $300.” In both those cases, you could then go on to give more details from your family’s
personal history, which will make the paper interesting for both of us. In your hurry to get to the
facts about your family, though, don’t skip the link to course content. Don’t tell a family story
without linking it to course content. The story from your family is an illustration of exactly
which point from class? (Your citation to the point from class can be as simple as “As we learned
in class, . . .” or “As the Week 12 handout described, . . .”) You may not find that that your family
story corresponds to what the course leads you to expect. That’s fine. If what you find seems to
contradict course generalizations, speculate on why that might be so.
Who to interview?
Your goal is to find course themes. How many of our themes can you tie in to your family
stories? The more generations you interview, the more course themes will pop out. It is optimal,
then, to interview people who’ve lived in different eras. Grandparental, parental, and your own
generation would be great, although that may not be possible. But the more generations, the more
you’ll have to write about. This course has been historical: clan, patriarchal, nuclear, and postnuclear. Even though I attached long-ago dates to some of these eras, elements of them dragged
out into this century. So the farther back you go generationally, the more you’ll find to write
about.
For example, if you have grandparents or even parents from another country or maybe from rural
areas of the U.S., you could very easily have some patriarchal elements: children are useful,
wives are more like servants than life companions, couples were driven by survival issues rather
than by finding happiness with each other.
If you’re African-American, African-Caribbean, Asian, or Hispanic you may see a clan element:
reliance on extended kin for practical reasons, such as helping with a business or helping raise a
child. You might also see indications of kin being more important than the husband-wife
relationship.
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But, for the most part, grandparents are going to be nuclear. The separation of spheres will
probably be operative: Stay-at-home moms (unless you’re African-American or working class)
and breadwinner dads. But if not, that’s great. Do your best to explain why the circumstances in
their lives caused them to differ from the generalizations I made in class.
The parental generation will probably have elements of nuclear AND post-nuclear. They have
lived through a culture change. Did they change with it, or did they maintain strict nuclear family
breadwinner-homemaker roles? If they changed with the times and became post-nuclear, on
which particular post-nuclear dimensions—mothers working, dads doing childcare and
housework, divorce, stepfamilies, having just 1 or 2 children, cohabiting, marrying later in life
(e.g., late 20s)?
Then there’s your generation, which is likely to be post-nuclear. You could interview a friend or
a sibling or even write about yourself. Are they trying out different, post-nuclear approaches to
relationships—perhaps contemplating cohabitation or a bearing a child outside of marriage, or not
having a child, or living with someone of the same sex?
Most people choose to interview their own relatives because they are interested in the
information, but you can interview a friend’s relatives, coworkers, or anyone else.
Topics you may want to design questions around
Write up about 20 questions before going into the interview. Look at your class notes and
highlighted readings and the concepts below to figure out what to ask Some of your questions
will be “clinkers” that get no response, but that’s all right. Just move on. Others will elicit
stories. As I say below, what you want from the interviews are tales, stories, and examples.
Changes over the lifecourse
You might ask about childhood. Do you see any elements of “phase 1” childhood, where
children are expected to be useful and where they don’t get lots of toys or even much attention?
(This is more likely to be true in farm families or in families in other countries). Or were your
interviewees raised according to “phase 2” principles? For a brother or sister you might see some
“phase 4” material.
You could move on to adolescence by asking about courtship (what did you do on a typical date,
how many people did you date before marriage, what characteristics did you look for in a
wife/husband, how long did you date before a proposal, etc.).
Then you could go on and ask about role changes of early marriage and parenthood. Who
worked outside the home? Don’t assume men worked and women didn’t. Often in the nuclear
era, women worked while single, then quit when they married, and women of color were more
likely to work than white women. If women did continue working after marriage, why? Always
ask how they felt about such and such. For example, if a woman went to work even though she
had a small child, how did she feel about that? If she stayed home and didn’t work, was it hard
being home alone with a baby—if so, how did you cope, did you go back to work when the kids
were older, etc. You could ask about the household division of labor and how she or he felt about
it. You’ll probably hear different answers to these questions from the grandparental generation
and the parental generation.
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For people of your parents’ generation, you might ask about men’s and women’s responsibilities
for home and work tasks and how these have changed, since they have feet in both eras—nuclear
and post-nuclear. Does your mother work for pay? Is that what she had planned to do when she
was growing up? If not, what changed? How does she feel about it? Does she wish this for her
daughter? Did your father grow up expecting to do no housework and few diaper changes? Did
this expectation bear out? If not, how did he feel about it? If he did end up doing very little
housework, how did his wife feel about it? If he is the sole breadwinner, does bearing this
responsibility worry him? More generally, how do/did your parents manage to balance work and
family? Were their jobs accommodating to their family needs?
Was death more prevalent than today, and how did it affect the family economically? Did they
take in borders (this is more likely for the older generation)? Did they ever have to use any
government supports (e.g., food stamps, AFDC/TANF)? Who took care of the elderly?
How the economy affects family life
You have learned that economic conditions shape much about family life. Often families fall in
and out of poverty, so don’t assume that people who are middle class now never struggled.
People who experienced poverty may have stories about how it affected their parents or
themselves.
You will learn in this course that poverty is very hard on families. But when you ask about it,
you may want to say something like “Did you ever experience hard times economically?” rather
than asking about “poverty,” which might embarrass them. How did the family survive—any
reliance on extended kin, such as perhaps moving in with them? Welfare (receipt of which is
much more common than you may think—about ¼ of families have used it at one time or
another)? Charity? Did people pick marriage partners partly based on how secure they were
financially? Was there fighting about money? Did the mid-1970s (when the economy tumbled
and a lot of women entered the labor force) create any changes in your family?
How other “macro” events affect family life
Geographic moves: Most people move because of “push” factors in the old place (things they are
fleeing) and some people move because of “pull” factors in the new place (opportunities that
attract them), or both. These two things will explain moves from other countries and moves
within the US. Migration within the US has always been high: why did people leave the farm, or
why did they leave the city for the suburbs? Was there a “return migration”–where the move
doesn’t work out and the family goes back to the old place?
For African-Americans, there was a huge migration from the south to the north in the middle of
the 20th century because of the failure of the cotton crop and the lack of basic human rights
(“push” factors) and because of job opportunities in northern cities (“pull” factors). Your family
reasons may be different from these or the same. For Jewish families, pogroms (extermination
programs) in Eastern Europe sent many to the US. For Latin families, there will be a lot of
variation depending on whether they moved here from Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, etc., so you
will need to ask about exactly why they left.
For everyone who moved from one geographic area to another: How were they treated in the
new place? Did they send money back home? Did they help other new arrivals from the old
place? Did they become part of a mutual aid group? If so, which of the 4 family types is this
reminiscent of? In general, how did the move affect family life?
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Wars: Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, the Iraqi War, the Afghan war. Did these events lead people
to make family decisions—like marry spontaneously, or not marry, or divorce? If there were
children, who cared for them during deployment?
Household composition (who lived there)
We’ve developed a theme in this course about the increasing isolation of the family. Did the
community (perhaps the church community, or the farming community) pry into people’s private
lives, as was the case in the patriarchal era? Does the number of people in the family shrink
between the grandparents’ childhood households and your own How important were kinfolk like
grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins? Did the family recognize fictive kin (they won’t know
that word, so explain that it’s people referred to with family words, like “uncle” or “sister,” even
though they aren’t really related)? Did elderly people live with them? If so, how did having
extended kin around affect family life? Did (do) adult children live at home, and if so, why, and
what was (is) it like?
Technology
How has changing technology affected the family? When and how did such things as cars,
refrigerators, telephones, radios, vacuum cleaners, televisions, microwave ovens, Facebook,
Skype, and cellphones come into use and what impact did they have on family life? You will
probably hear about the effect TV and computers from a parent or aunt/uncle, and social media
from a sibling or parent. Make sure you address the affect these things had on family life—did
they bring family members closer together or make them further apart? For example, in the
1960s, families would gather to watch TV together, but perhaps now family members use
technology alone, and if so, perhaps it hurts family closeness (although Skype may be a
technology that unifies families). Just be sure to link technology use to how it affected family
life.
How did families form and dissolve?
Did dating mean an intention to marry? Did the couple cohabit? Did they have large weddings
where the whole community was invited? How were divorced people treated? Who initiated the
divorce, and how difficult was it? What reasons did couples give for a divorce?
Tips on Conducting an Interview
Most of these come from the book, Your Family History by Allan J. Lichtman.
Treat it as a special occasion. It is to them. The thought that you care about them and your roots
will make them feel good.
Set up the interview a week or two in advance. Conduct the interview in the interviewee’s home,
if possible. They will be more comfortable and may produce pictures or other artifacts. Don’t try
to hold the interview right before or after a big family gathering; it’s too distracting. Set up a
separate time where you can be alone with the person. Do not let other people sit in—it will
totally change what the interviewee will say.
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You are taking on a new role: Sociologist/ethnographer. Listening is very important. You must
listen much more carefully than you usually do. Good listening encourages open communication.
It will also help you ask intelligent follow-up questions.
Insert very little of yourself. Interviews aren’t about you and your reactions. Listen attentively
and don’t interrupt with expressions of shock or outrage. Don’t judge. Resist the inclination to
argue with the person or correct their memories.
They may want to give their opinions on society today, like divorce, hip-hop music, etc. This is
not information you can use. Steer them instead to talking about their lives.
You should expect the interview to be full of anecdotes and tangents about family experiences.
You need to be ready to shape the responses by following up on unexpected answers or asking
the person to expand on a response. If someone says something unexpected and it’s relevant,
don’t just move on to your next question! Ask more about it.
Props can be helpful. You could have the person relate the history of a letter, a family heirloom,
or an old photograph. This will help jog memories and may give you unexpected information.
(And feel free to include a picture in your paper, too! I always enjoy them.)
Don’t do a rapid-fire interrogation. Give people time to think about their answers before they
respond. Don’t jump in because you’re nervous about silence. Pauses of 20 to 30 seconds are
normal—let them happen. People need time to collect their thoughts.
When approaching an older person for an interview, don’t imply that you want to talk about their
memories before they die. Just say that you are very interested in their life and times. If they
resist, explain that you want some help in understanding the family history and that you will not
be judging them.
Don’t start an interview with a string of dull, factual questions. This will get them used to giving
“yes, no” response because they think you want that. Always word your question to get away
from such answers. YOU WANT STORIES. I have found a couple of questions useful in
interviews I do: “What did you like best about that? Least?” Or “What were your chief
satisfactions in . . .” and “What were your chief dissatisfactions in. . .?” Here’s one from the film,
Women’s Double Burden, that I like but haven’t yet used: “If you could go back and change one
thing, what would it be?”
Respect the person’s right to confidentiality. That means that you should not tell anyone about the
contents of the interview, especially the parts that might be sensitive.
An interview with an older person (grandparents’ generation) should last about an hour and a half,
and they can go a little longer for younger people. Interviews can be quite tiring. When you have
finished an interview, try to linger and chat for awhile. This will contribute to an overall good
feeling about the interview. Lay the groundwork for a later phone call in case you need to check
something out.
Taking notes during the interview is essential. But don’t get so buried in your notes that you
seem to be ignoring the person. Jot down key words and phrases. These notes will be very rough
and full of abbreviations, sentence fragments, and personal codes. Use them for writing up a
more permanent account of the interview. DO THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Do not go to
sleep until you’ve written up an interview. It is amazing how easily you forget things you think
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you’ll never forget. In this write-up you can expand on your notes with your impressions that
you got from nonverbal cues. This is not anything you turn in to me. This is the basis for your
paper, not the paper itself.
How to organize the paper?
It’s up to you; there isn’t a right and wrong way. An organizing system that has worked well in
the past is to organize it by person, starting with the oldest person you interviewed, with a
heading identifying the person and the year they were born (to give me a sense of the era). You
would have one major section on each person, each with a bolded heading.
Within each section, you could organize by their lifecourse, so that your first paragraph could be
about their childhood (linking it to a course concepts), and the next one about their courtship
(linking to course concepts), the next about the childrearing early years of marriage (ditto about
course concepts). If you don’t have good interview material for some lifecourse event, then don’t
write about it. You could have other sections about other themes from the topics above and from
the handouts.
For example, the first heading might be about your grandmother, and you could call it Themes in
Gertrude’s Life (born 1944), which includes course themes related to her life. The next heading
might be Themes in Paul’s Life (born 1966) (where Paul is your father, say), followed by Themes
in Teresa’s life (born 1990) (where Teresa is your sister). In Gertrude’s section, you would have
sentences like this: Just as we learned was typical in the 1950s and 1960s, Gertrude married
young, at age 19. [good! a family fact linked to a course concept!]. But she only had one child,
when we learned in class that most women then had 3 or 4 [good! fact + course concept]. I think
the difference stemmed from her husband’s diabetes, which made it hard for him to hold a job
and support many children, as was expected of men at the time. [good! Got at what was expected
of men and linked it to a family story] Gertrude said he felt very bad about not being able to
support the family. That reminds me of how we learned in class that the contribution of men in
the nuclear era was as breadwinner and if they couldn’t fulfil it, they felt ashamed, like we saw in
the film about the African-American man who could not find work after he was fired from the
sawmill [good! A family story linked to a course concept!]
Grading, Formatting and Style
The main thing I look for while grading is how well you link material from interviews to course
content. You should read the Grading Rubric on the last page of the syllabus. Here’s the rubric
description of a perfect paper: “Thesis is well developed and clearly focused. Supporting
evidence or arguments are thorough and relevant. Conflicting evidence or arguments are
consistently acknowledged. Appropriate sources are cited to support statements. The
paper is well organized, with correct grammar and spelling. The paper closely adheres to
the assignment.”
Those items seem self-explanatory except perhaps for “conflicting evidence” and the
“appropriate sources.” If your family conformed to what we learned in class, you won’t
have any conflicting evidence, and that’s fine and won’t hurt your grade. But if it
differed, you need to talk about why that might have been the case. As for appropriate
sources, you will not be doing formal citations, and you do not need a reference page. It is
appropriate to refer to course materials informally (e.g., In the “Betwixt and Between” reading
about middle-school children. . . or In lecture, Dr. Jones said. . .).
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Paper can go up to 10 pages (no longer) if you want to go beyond the 6-8 page requirement.
Make sure your paper has a short introduction and a short conclusion.
Papers should be double spaced, with page numbers, one-inch margins, and no extra spacing
between sections. Be sure to include a title, your name, and the date.
Use headings (and subheadings, if you want) to separate sections.
Use topic sentences. What that means is you deliver your punchline as the first sentence in a
paragraph. Don’t meander up to your main point and deliver it in the final sentence. Start with it.
Use the first person.
Don’t call interviewees by pet names (e.g., Grandma). They are people in their own right and
don’t exist just in relation to you!
*FINAL PAPER MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 5PM ON FRIDAY
NOVEMBER 20TH.
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General Rubric/Guidelines
KEYWORDS
25+ keywords == up to 30 points
15-24 keywords == up to 20 points
10-14 keywords = up to 10 points
5-9 keywords == up to 5 points