Issues Of Small Families, Religious Differences, Prejudices And Discrimination, Gender Inequality, Capitalism And Socialism, And The Impact Of Social Media And Technology

Reasons for Small Families

Write about the Social Trends for Journal of Conflict Resolution.

In the present generation, couples are preferring to remain childless or are welcoming only one child in their family. The first issue is mainly due to change in the lifestyle of the present generation where females are more prone to engage themselves in their professional life that takes away the potential time for nurturing and mothering to little children. The females of the present generation are seen to be more career-centric that had resulted in contributing to development of small families with only one child or even no children at all.  The second issue is that many researchers are of the  opinion that the wide spread availability of birth control pills, the development of health promotion programs spreading the significance of family planning and other advancement in modern medicinal field had helped individuals in effective family planning and developing families according to their own will (Garbarino 2017). The third issue is that that huge increase in the number of people seeking for jobs have lowered the salary system given to particular individual when the expenditure on regular products in family household have remained steady. Therefore, only supporting the family by only one member is not sufficient to develop good quality life for the family. Therefore, both members need to work and work pressures make them take decisions of having only one child or being childless as they do not have time of the financial ability to develop more than one child in a luxurious way. The fourth issue is that costs associated with raising a child has increased to a large extent over the decades and therefore families are opting for only one child as that would help them to keep up with the luxuries that tend to afford. Researchers have also found out that children in smaller families and specially the first one have better high schools achievements than children of larger families (Hakim, 2016). Therefore, the social trend of smaller families has developed over the years. The fifth issue is that present day parents have realised that it is more important to give all forms of care to their child as emotional, physical, financial, mental support and that sharing these with more than one child may result both of them to not get their expected portions fully. Therefore, more parents are trying to focus completely on one child leading to their excellent development than partitioning their care for more wards.

Beliefs and Practices of Islam and Christianity

The belief of god is one of the most important features that vary between Muslim and Christian. One example is that Muslims believe in one god form that is Allah whereas Christians believes in holy trinity that is father, son and Holy Spirit. The place of worship is another feature where difference is both the religion is observed. Muslims worship in Mosques and Christians worship in church. The third interesting feature is the utilisation of images and statues for worshipping in both the religions (Borman, Cederman & Vogt, 2017). While Muslims do not support worshipping of images of god or prophets, it is seen that Christians support worshipping of statues as well as images of Jesus. The fourth aspect of this is marriage. While the Christians consider it as a holy sacrament, Islam has quite different idea of marriage. Islam is totally opposed to the concepts of monasticism and celibacy. They believe that marriage is an act of sunnah and is strongly recommended in the Islamic religions. Another important feature is the virtue on which religion is based upon (Carol et al., 2015). The Christians believe that their religion is based on virtue of love. The Muslims believe that their religion is based on “Tawheed” which mean oneness of god. It means peace of God. The use of food and drink is also regulated by the religions (Eisendet, 2017). The Muslims are only allowed to take meats that are done by halal.  Christians do not follow such rules.

Prejudice can be defined as the unjustified as well as the baseless attitude that is developed towards and individual only because of that person’s association or membership within a social group. On the other hand, discrimination is not the attitude but an altogether unjust as well as negative treatment of a person or group of persons from other groups because the former belongs to a particular class, category or groups. Therefore, prejudices can be considered as an abstract misapprehension that stays only in mind that is only a belief.  Discrimination is an expression of prejudices that mainly refers to an action and not just a belief (hogg, 2016). The nature of the former is non-conscious and is caused by stereotyping. The nature of discrimination may be both conscious and non-conscious and is caused by any prejudices. The components of prejudices are affective and cognitive and legal action cannot be taken against it whereas that of discrimination is behavioural and legal action can be taken against it (whitely & Kite, 2016). For example, I am a Muslim and in our society, women rarely get encouraged to undertake education and similar situation is seen in Malaysia. Women are not allowed to take topmost position in corporate as well as in political powers. Another important example of prejudice is the racial discrimination that is faced by the aboriginals of the Australia. The non-natives of the land discriminates them due to their culture, lifestyle, habits, education and many others. The native people do not have proper access to healthcare and live poor quality lives.

Prejudice and Discrimination

There are gender inequality issues in the nation of Malaysia and the government had already stated the absence of women in the decision-making positions and inclusiveness in the corporate sector. The government had given a target of increase of women in the decision-making positions by 30% in the present generation in the corporate industries (King, 2016). Moreover, social strategies had also provided a good example of gender inequality in the nation where they have stated that Malaysian women are also lacking in political representation. Women have only taken advantage of only ten percent of the total number of Members of parliament that indeed shows the inequality faced by women in the nation. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other nations of the world do not allow women to participate in the same activities as that of men thereby categorising them as individuals who should be staying at home raising children whereas the males would be working and supporting the family financially. Not only that, the workplace of United States as well as Australia and many other developed nations also have gender inequality in workplace whereas the female members are never given the managerial positions or the leadership positions due to a stigmatisation that they have divided attention towards their family and the organisation. All these result in gender inequality.

Capitalism can be defined as the economic system that is entirely based on the features of corporate as well as private ownership for the two aspects of production as well as distribution of goods. Those nations that are capitalists are mainly seen to favour an economic system of free enterprise. This actually means that government would never interfere with the economic features and decisions; it also states that the law of supply and demand will be responsible and making sure that economy runs efficiently in way that could meet the needs of the patient (Mosco, 2014). Capitalism can be characterised by competition in which there is rivalry in supply as well as getting an economic service or goods. Sellers compete with other sellers to make profits and buyers try to get the best possible deal to buying goods. For example, United States, Canada as well as Great Britain are seen to follow capitalist economy system.

Socialist economic system is mainly based on the economic theory or an idea that mainly states the fact that the government or the state would be mainly responsible and be the in charge of the entire economic planning as well as production and distribution of goods. There is marked difference with capitalism where free markets are mainly seen to predominate and property is privately owned. Socialism mainly favours cooperation whereas capitalism is based on the foundation of competition. For example, China, Cuba and North Korea are following this form of economic system.

Gender Inequality

Social media and technology has made communication much easier nowadays and helps information to be passed on and received at lightning speed. Moreover, it is also seen that it helps individuals to remain connected with each other even when they are present globes apart. Moreover, technologies .like tablets, smart phones as well as huge screen televisions have helped in improvement of home entertainments where individuals watch sports with a feeling of sitting in field, playing videogames, watching films, listening to music and many others even without proper preparation as it only needs to download the files from internet at any instance. Modern technology has developed housing and living with the use of air purifier, vacuum cleaner, automated door-locks, security cameras, lighting controls and many others. Moreover, the modern technologies have also helped in the improvement of healthcare industry with electronic health records, tele-health, medicine reminder and many others (Bunce, 2014). This had helped the aging population to overcome their barriers of carrying huge distance to get access to care. Both social media and technology have been boons to the students and others for education and travelling. They can access wide amount of information on any subject and may connect with their friends and professors whenever they need help with their subjects. One example can be used here to show how social media has helped many organisations to prosper. Grant Thornton is one of the renowned organisations who had developed a social media site called the Jam where not only employees interact but even employers also communicate with employees. It helps in developing the morale of the employees, resolves their query, and helps to increase productivity and many others. Nowadays, different education centres are also using the social media and technology for distribution of information among students, allocating them assignments, submitting of assignments and many others. In many of the multinational organisations, with the help of cloud systems, video chatting systems, Skype and others, people can chat overseas, handle meetings, conferences, seminars and others. Therefore, it has helped to bring the whole world within a room.

References:

Bormann, N. C., Cederman, L. E., & Vogt, M. (2017). Language, religion, and ethnic civil war. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(4), 744-771.

Bunce, V. (2014). Do new leaders make a difference?: executive succession and public policy under capitalism and socialism. Princeton University Press.

Carol, S., Helbling, M., & Michalowski, I. (2015). A struggle over religious rights? How Muslim immigrants and Christian natives view the accommodation of religion in six European countries. Social Forces, 94(2), 647-671.

Eisenstadt, S. N. (2017). Multiple modernities. In Multiple modernities (pp. 1-30). Routledge.

Garbarino, J. (2017). Children and Families in the Social Environment: Modern Applications of Social Work. Routledge.

Hakim, C. (2016). Key issues in women’s work: Female diversity and the polarisation of women’s employment. Routledge-Cavendish.

Hogg, M. A. (2016). Social identity theory. In Understanding peace and conflict through social identity theory (pp. 3-17). Springer, Cham.

King, D. K. (2016). Multiple jeopardy, multiple consciousness: The context of a Black feminist ideology. In Race, Gender and Class (pp. 36-57). Routledge.

Mosco, V. (2014). Political Economy. In The Routledge Companion to Global Popular Culture (pp. 35-44). Routledge.

Whitley Jr, B. E., & Kite, M. E. (2016). Psychology of prejudice and discrimination. Routledge.