Hello world!
18 05 2009I’m Kelly and I am 22! I live in Newport News, VA and have the coolest apartment with my roommate from college, Laura. I graduated from CNU in 2008 where I majored in Sociology and minored in Anthropology. I am currently working in Hampton as an Enforcement Specialist for the Division of Child Support Enforcement. I have always wanted to go to grad school, but ultimately decided to continue my education the day after my college graduation when I was reading a book and realized I would never take another test, write another paper, or do any kind of research in Sociology. I decided to go to Longwood because my sister is a student there. I am hoping to graduate the same day as her in 2010, when she will graduate with a Bachelors in Criminal Justice and I will (hopefully) graduate with my Masters in Criminal Justice. I guess we both get our love of the justice system from our dad, who also graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice!
My family is really close and means the world to me. I have a puppy named Zip who is crazy but makes my heart so happy every time I am near him. My sister, Katie, is my best friend in the whole world and we are complete opposites, yet exactly the same…it’s weird but if you have ever met us, you would understand. I love archaeology, and being an archaeologist would definitely be my dream job. If I had enough money to support myself, I would travel the world excavating and exploring old cultures. My number one goal in life is to discover Atlantis. I love Greece, and I want to go there more than any other place in the world.
I am really excited about this course because I absolutely love writing. I could write about anything but I love researching, reading articles and incorporating them around my own ideas. I have never taken an online class (nor have I ever even had a blog) so I am really excited to this new approach centered around technology.
As for my research paper, I haven’t had much time to think about it. I guess I would like to do mine on the division of household labor because I have always been interested in the different roles couples take on in the household (breadwinner, homemaker). And I would like to see how these roles affect marital satisfaction.
This is really long and my life is actually quite boring, but I like boring.
If you read my profile on Blackboard, you know that I too have a dog. His name is George and he’s a 5 year old Westie. He’s adorable, generally well behaved, but gets into just enough mischief to keep us laughing. I’m a big dog lover. I would be a cat lover too, except that cats generally don’t like me at all. I love dogs because no matter what they are totally excited to see you and they aren’t ashamed to show it!
Your paper topic is right up my alley, as they say. I did my PhD dissertation on Dual Career Couples and the emotions they experience balancing work and family. I went into the research thinking that women feel more guilty and torn than men about meeting the demands of these multiple roles, but what I found was men really also feel torn. However, they don’t use the same language to express their emotions. Instead of saying they felt “guilt,” they talked about feeling “frustrated” about not having enough time to do either role to their satisfaction. I concluded that men and women don’t necessarily feel differently about the strains of work and family; instead, in our culture, men and women are socialized to use a different vocabulary to express their emotions.
Anyway, that was a walk down memory lane! Ok, so you are on the right track for a topic. You have identified two areas where there are TONS of literature: family roles and marital satisfaction. You want to know how “family roles” influence “marital satisfaction.” Marital satisfaction can be defined in many ways, but there’s a boatload of literature on many different variables that influence marital satisfaction. I don’t think you’ll have trouble finding sources–really good scholarly journal sources. I think what you need to do is frame the “independent variable” (in this case, “family roles”) a little more clearly. You mentioned “breadwinner” and “homemaker.” Does that mean that you want to look at marital satisfaction in couples that have traditional gender roles (e.g., breadwinner/stay-at-home homemaker)? Another way to frame the question would be to compare marital satisfaction in traditional couples with that in dual career couples. That will get you into another little dilemma–which is, would you want to examine “dual career,” “dual income” or “dual worker” couples. You could use all of those terms in keyword searches, but typicall the term “dual career” refers to couples in which both partners are professionals and are well paid and have high levels of education. “Dual worker” typically refers to couples where partners may be in more working class type occupations; they often are paid hourly, have little control over their work, and are not well educated. “Dual Income” can refer to both types of couples.
I hope I’ve given you some “food for thought” on your topic. I’m looking forward to seeing what topic you settle upon and helping you work on this paper.