The egalitarian myth is described in this article through the lens of Nancy, a full time social worker and mother of one. She describes herself as a feminist, and in theory believes in a 50-50 split of housework. However, due to problems with her husband sharing it, has to give up more and more to stay happy, or to at least keep from becoming resentful. She describes her husband as cleaning the downstairs and she does the upstairs...which sounds even. However, when you look at the amount of work that goes into each task...she is clearly getting the shaft. Emotion work, or a mans emotional commitment to a marriage, is very important. The closer a couple is to a 50-50 split of house work, the more likely they will be in a happy marriage.

The Holts situation is not atypical. My own family was very similar in that my mother, who earned less, would do the majority of the housework. My father would cook a lot, but when it came down to cleaning...it was mostly the kids or my mother. However, general car and house maintenance were always handled by my father, (and there was a lot of it) so there was almost a 50-50 split of house work.
The ideology of domesticity, or the dynamics of a household (more specifically a biological unit, places 3 major constraints on the division of work in our society. There are that:
1. An employer has the "right" to expect the ideal worker.
2. A husband must live up to this expectation.
3. A wife is delegated extra work because the husband must live up to this expectation.

SO did this exist in previous times? I woud say no. IN class, we discussed how the family unit was one based on survival. There was security in a household. It was even suggested that homosexuality didn't exist in the capacity it does now BECAUSE of the immense importance placed on marriage and the family. The expectation of an ideal worker has nothing to do with survival.

The sex discrimination arguments are interesting, specifically when “free choice” is brought up. Free choice assumes that males and females have these gender roles simply because they choose them. According to the article, many have claimed that women do not have as high of an interest in “traditional male positions,” and therefore do not pursue them.. The same can probably be said about men in female positions. I know being one of only a handful of males in the elementary ed program at BC that there these just isn’t the same interest.

The division of labor in lesbian and gay couples is remarkable similar to that of heterosexual couples. Both have underlying, though often invisible, ties with domesticity. As Carrington puts it, monitoring the cleanliness of a house, the supplies in the storeroom or even the birthdays of a calendar are big signs of domesticity. Yet they often go unnoticed. The biggest difference though between homo and hetero couples is the construction of gender and gender roles within the family. In fact, Carrington points out that the development of gender identity is of major concern for homosexual families. In the situation of Andrew, a school teacher, he even said he developed a “summer wife stint”, because he had summer off.(93)… It is rather interesting to me that Carrington would use this example and relate it to gender identity, especially after the previous article had described “free choice”.

According to Risman and Schwartz, the most common claim about teenagers engaging in sexual behavior is on the decline. They assert however that these claims can be exaggerated a bit. IN their research, the incidence of teen pregnancies and STD transmission has gone down. This has lead many to believe that abstinence only sex ed is actually working. In a way, this may be correct. The number of teens that report having engaged in sexual activity has in fact fallen. However, the incidence of pregnancy and STD's has fallen at a significantly higher rate. This would suggest that although fewer teens are having sex, those who are being safer when they do.
England and Thomas looked at college students and the increasing prevalence of the "hook up" as opposed to traditional dating. They found that both boys and girls in college date FAR less than in the past, though hooking up (defined throughout the article as some kind of sexual contact) is on the rise. They also noted that this doesn't seem to have affected how many college students are in exclusive relationships, just how they get there. Instead of dates, multiple hookups may lead to relationships.
Both articles compare males to females. Risman and Schwartz, in looking at teenage sexual relations, found that the decrease in boys having sexual encounters is falling faster than girls. They contributed this to the sexual revolution in part, with girls having much more say in what goes on. England and Thomas pointed out differences in actual sexual experiences between genders. They went into great detail of reported “orgasms” and the discrepancies between the genders of who actually gets to experience them. (In a not so shocking analysis, boys may think they bring girls to orgasm far more times than they actually do.)
It is difficult to compare much of what was addressed in these articles to my own life. The emphasis on the heterosexual relationship disconnects me from much of it. As for the college hookup culture, it seems like it stretches across lines of sexuality. Though since most of my college life was spent in a relationship that was maintained from high school, it might be harder for me to judge.

In D'Emilio's article about sexual deviancy, he describes much of how people dealt with it in uncomfortable detail. The basic idea of their control was that of punishment. Those who violated rules were generally forgiven if they accepted their punishment. This is not to say that some punishments were not severe. D’Emilio describes some situations where people were executed for the sexual crimes. In cases of bestiality, he even describes the executions of animals, as well as people.
Young people we often exposed to these punishments, so there views tended to be towards marriage, family, and sex only for procreation as opposed to sex for “carnal pleasure”. In addition, the article describes situations where children were often put in the position of hearing or seeing adults in sexual situations due to lack of space in farming communities. From this, to the teachings of the church, young people were exposed to sexual behaviors all the time. With so much control, society could maintain the system of marital and reproductive sexual behaviors easier.

D’Emilio’s second article is interesting in that it brings up capitalism, family, and a gay identity and ties them all together in a way that I never would have thought to do. The point that less children are needed to maintain a family economically and the need for a nuclear family to exist to function economically is something I have given thought to before. What I did not do was tie the shrinking need for more children to the rise in more people having a “gay identity”. Identity, D’emilio points out, is not to confused with desire. He is not claiming that homosexuality did not exist in the 17th and 18th centuries, only that because capitalism and the family have a contradictory relationship. When one thrives, the other falters (or changes)