The average person lives too narrow a life to get a clear and concise understanding of today's complex social world. Our daily lives are spent among friends and family, at work and at play, and watching TV and surfing the Internet. There is no way one person can grasp the big picture from their relatively isolated lives. There's just not enough time or capacity to be exposed to the complexities of a society of 310 million people. There are thousands of communities, millions of interpersonal interaction, billions of Internet information sources, and countless trends that transpire without many of us even knowing they exist. What can we do to make sense of it all?
Psychology gave us the understanding of self-esteem, economics gave us the understanding of supply and demand, and physics gave us the Einstein theory of E=MC2. The sociological imagination by Mills, gives us a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), a contemporary sociologist, suggested that when we study the family we can gain valuable insight by approaching it at two core societal levels. He stated, "neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both." \({ }^7\) Mills identified personal troubles and public issues as key principles for wrapping our minds around many of the hidden social processes that transpire in an almost invisible manner in today's societies. Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified the fact that we function in our personal lives as actors who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. We have a degree of influence in the outcome of matters within the personal level. A college student who parties four nights a week, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. But, when \(50 \%\) of all college students in the country never graduate we call it a public issue.
Public issues lie beyond one's personal control and the range of one's inner life. These pertain to society's organization and processes. To better understand larger social issues, let us define social facts. Social facts are social processes rooted in society rather than in the individual. Émile Durkheim (1858-1917, France) studied the science of social facts in an effort to identify social correlations and ultimately social laws designed to make sense of how modern societies worked given that they became increasingly diverse and complex. \({ }^8\)
The national cost of a gallon of gas, the War in the Middle East, the repressed economy, the trend of having too few females in the 18-24 year old singles market, and the ever-increasing demand for plastic surgery are just a few of the social facts at play today. Social facts are typically outside of the control of average people. They occur in the complexities of modern society and impact us, but we rarely find a way to significantly impact them back. This is because, as Mills taught, we live much of our lives on the personal level and much of society happens at the larger social level. Without a knowledge of the larger social and personal levels of social experience, we live in what Mills called a false social conscious, which is an ignorance of social facts and the larger social picture.
A larger social issue is illustrated in the fact that nationwide, students come to college as freshmen illprepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven't often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed as college students. Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video or online games, hangs out at the mall, watches TV and movies, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigors of selfdiscipline required to transition into college?
In a survey conducted each year by the U.S. Census Bureau, findings suggest that in 2006 the U.S. had about an \(84 \%\) high school graduation rate. \({ }^9\) They also found that only \(27 \%\) had a Bachelor's degree. \({ }^{10}\) Given the numbers of freshman students enrolling in college, the percentage with a Bachelor's degree should be closer to 50\%.
The majority of college first year students drop out, because nationwide we have a deficit in the preparation and readiness of Freshmen attending college and a real disconnect in their ability to connect to college in such a way that they feel they belong to it. In fact college dropouts are an example of both a larger social issue and a personal trouble. Thousands of studies and millions of dollars have been spent on how to increase a freshman student's odds of success in college (graduating with a 4-year degree). There are millions of dollars in grant monies awarded each year to help retain college students.
The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how you and I learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. Once we do that we can make personal choices that serve us the best given the larger social forces that we face. There are larger social trends that will be identified in this course. Some of them can teach you lessons to use in your own choices. Others simply provide a broad understanding of the context of the family in our complicated society.
In this textbook you will find larger social evidences of many current United States family trends. Some changes were initiated in the Industrial Revolution where husbands were called upon to leave the home and venture into the factory as breadwinners. Women became homemakers and many eventually ended up in the labor force as well. The trend of having fewer children and having fewer of them die in or immediately after birth is directly related to medical technology and the value of having smaller families in our current service-based economy. The trend of lowering our standards of what exactly a "clean house" means is an adjustment that arguably needed to be made; post-World War II marketing campaigns had convinced women that a spotless house equaled a good woman. Today, good women have varying levels of a clean house.
Of concern to many are the continuing high rates of divorce. By studying divorced people we can learn how to prevent divorce and enhance the quality and satisfaction of marriage. Simply studying something does not imply that you agree with it or support it for yourself or others. Learning about something makes us better able to understand and defend our own views and values.
As mentioned above, the Industrial Revolution changed societies and their families in an unprecedented way, such that Sociology as a discipline emerged as an answer to many of the new-found societal challenges. Societies had change in unprecedented ways and had formed a new collective of social complexities that the world had never witnessed before. The Industrial Revolution transformed society at every level. Look at Table 4 to see pre- and post-Industrial Revolution social patterns and how different they were.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, families lived on smaller farms and every able member of the family did work to support and sustain the family economy. Towns were small and very similar (homogamous) and families were large (more children=more workers). There was a lower standard of living and because of poor sanitation people died earlier. After the Industrial Revolution, farm work was replaced by factory work. Men left their homes and became breadwinners earning money to buy many of the goods that used to be made by hand at home (or bartered for by trading one's own homemade goods with another's). Women became the supervisors of homework. Much was still done by families to develop their own home goods while many women and children also went to the factories to work. Cities became larger and more diverse (heterogamous). Families became smaller (less farm work required fewer children). Eventually, standards of living increased and death rates declined.
Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Pre-Industrial and Post-Industrial Revolution Social Patterns. 11
| Pre-Industrial Revolution |
Post-Industrial Revolution |
| Farm/Cottage |
Factories |
| Family Work |
Breadwinners/Homemakers |
| Small Towns |
Large Cities |
| Large Families |
Small Families |
| Homogamous Towns |
Heterogamous Cities |
| Lower Standards of Living |
Higher Standards of Living |
| People Died Younger |
People Die Older |
It is important to note the value of women's work before and after the Industrial Revolution. Hard work was the norm and still is today for most women. Homemaking included much unpaid work which is not as valued as paid work. These pre and post-industrial changes impacted all of Western civilization because the Industrial Revolution hit all of these countries about the same way, Western Europe, United States, Canada, and later Japan and Australia. The Industrial Revolution brought some rather severe social conditions which included deplorable city living conditions, crowding, crime, extensive poverty, inadequate water and sewage, early death, frequent accidents, extreme pressures on families, and high illness rates. Today, sociology continues to rise to the call of finding solutions and answers to complex social problems, especially in the family.
Footnotes
7. Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination page ii; Oxford U. Press
8. Durkheim, E. (1982) The rules of the sociological method. (Steven Lukes, Ed.; Halls, W.D., translator) New York: Free Press.
9. http:// www.factfinder.uscensus.gov; see table R1501 at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet...o_id=01000US&- _box_head_nbr=R1501&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-format=US-30
10. http:// www.factfinder.uscensus.gov; see table R1502 at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet...o_id=01000US&- _box_head_nbr=R1502&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-redoLog=false&-format=US30&-mt_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_R1501_US30
11. © 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
