communities and support
The approach that Bott took in associating the type of social networks that married couples have, and how in turn, this is related to the type of interaction that they have between themselves was very interesting. The fact that her data supported the hypothesis that “the degree of segregation in the role-relationship of husband and wife varies directly with the connectedness of the family’s social network” (349) seemed, at first glance, seemed controversial to me. I initially thought that, if two people have a segregated marital relationship, then these people would turn to other, differing people for social and emotional support, which would increase their respective social networks, but not have these two intermingle. However, then these would mean that husband and wife would be bridges between these two differing networks, which, according to Granovetter, it isn’t possible since husband and wife would be strong ties.
As I read on, it seemed that the location in which the marriage lived in, and whether they had traveled around a lot or not were strong variables that played in this relationship that Bott proposed. The small 20 London family sample that she studied could have undermined the importance of this variable, but she even pointed out in her paper that the families that seemed to have traveled a lot turned to each other for support, which decreased segregation, and thus, decreased the connectivity of the marriage’s social network. Then, based on the data collected by Bott, could a new hypothesis be stated which included this variable as well?
Fischer’s work was easy to read, and he touched into many different social networks. His results, especially those based on kin and non-kin greatly resembled those found by McPherson et al. However, the twist that he gave to his work, especially on the kin part was very touching. To say that it isn’t that people are decreasing their interactions with their kin, but that it is a possible increased kin selectivity what is causing what others call a possible breakdown of the family, and that this is in turn suggests stronger ties between those kin that we actually interact with, seems a little ideological. (Not that I would like to think of it this way!)
While reading Kalmijn’s work, I must admit that his results that the longer a couple stayed together, the fewer friends they were able to keep were very disturbing. The strong ties in one’s lives seem to decrease considerably as people spend time with a significant other, and these ties, in turn, merge as one gets older. The sample size that he studies is large enough that makes the results even more disturbing. However, I have to wonder whether there might be a cultural factor playing a part here. The study was conducted in Netherlands, so would the results be replicated in North America?
Also, Kalmijn’s work does not involve/touch upon weak ties. If Burt and Granovetter are right, it seems that the weak ties are the important social ties that we should be worried about, so the fact that long term couples are losing friends wouldn’t be a big deal to them. It would have been interesting to have asked Kalmijn’s sample about their weak ties as well, and seen whether these also decreased in number as the couple spent more time together.
Wellman and Wortley did a great job in analyzing the community ties in relationship with the different “dimensions of support” that people receive from others. It seems that these dimensions have always been implied in other studies, such as the McPherson et al, but they had never been formalized. Wellman and Wortley say that gender was the only personal characteristic to affect emotional support: women were more likely to provide emotional support. Gender, especially women, seem to play different roles in many different social settings. Kalmijn says that women “are socially less dependent on the marriage than men” (347), and McPherson et al found that women do tend to maintain both kin and non-kin ties more efficiently than men do. Could this be related to the sociological theory that states that women have multiple jobs in the present society?