According to society, I am not a very deviant person. I am white, middle-class, and educated. I am not one to break the rules or do things that I am not supposed to do. However, I am a woman. Therefore according to society, I am incompetent. I am not as good as a man at anything I do. Is this true? Well of course it is if society thinks this way. But in all reality no, it is definitely not true.
Since I do not go against the rules, according to our textbook “Readings In Deviant Behavior” by Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers I would fall under the conflict theory, more specifically commitment. Commitment control theory happens when “men” (once again I am not good enough to be considered in this theory) “obey the rules simply from fear of the consequences” (Thio 2010: 31). If I were to ever consider participating in deviant behavior I would have a whole laundry list of things to go through to make sure that if I did participate in that behavior it would not hurt the things in life I am proud of. For example, if I was considering participating in a deviant act, I would have to think about the education I want to achieve, my future career, my friends and family, and so on. It would never just be a spree of the moment thing.
Because I am white and from the middle-class I do not have to worry about affording college as much as someone who is not white or from the middle-class. However, let’s say there was no way for me to pay for school, I could not get any scholarships and the FAFSA just was not enough to cover a semester. What would be my next step? Suppose I had had enough of not getting what I thought I deserved (which would be education) and decided to take things into my own hands. I decide to commit a crime and rob a convenient store, or any store you want to imagine. This would be an example of strain theory. It would be innovation strain theory because I would be working toward my goal of going to college, but I would be going against all of the institutionalized means of getting there (Thio: 24).
For my deviant act this week I decided to pretend I was pregnant and walk around the mall. Even though I am 20 years old and no longer a teenager, I look like I could be 17 or so to many. Therefore I wanted to play out the teen pregnancy role. To get started I taped a pillow to my stomach and wore a sweatshirt so it would stretch over my big belly. I predicted that I was going to get stares and probably a few snide comments and I was right. As soon as I got into the mall everyone that I passed looked at me with either sympathy, such as “you poor thing” or with disgust, “you slut”. It made me feel so uncomfortable that every single person who saw me walking was staring. It was sad that everyone was judging me based on the size of my stomach. As I was purchasing something at one of the stores, the woman at the counter asked when I was due, and I made something believable up. Then I could see it in her eyes that she felt sorry for me. I can only imagine that those teens who are actually pregnant would get so sick of everyone either thinking they are a slut or feeling sorry for them.
The theory that I thought of is the labeling theory (Thio: 39). As soon as people know that you are pregnant at such a young age you automatically get a label of teen mom or slut or anything else you can think of. This will last most likely your whole life. You get the stigma of being a bad mom because you are so young. Everyone thinks that you are probably uneducated because you had to drop out of school to raise your child.
I didn't record my experiment, but this is pretty close to what I did.
In all reality, yes there are some pretty bad teen moms out there. But there are also some really good ones! So don’t judge their parenting skills on their age, but base it on who they are as a person!
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Thio, Alex, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers. Readings in Deviant Behavior. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2010. Print.
Because I'm forced to do a negative response (blah!), I will point out that you mislabeled 'control theory' as 'conflict theory' in your blog. To be honest, I believe it wasn't an intentional mistake, and they're easy to swap out for each other since the names are similar. But as it stands, it is control theory that tells us that "delinquent acts are the result of when an individual's bond to society is weak or broken" (Hirschi, 1969), which also corresponds to 'commitment' (which you attributed to conflict theory).
ReplyDeleteI really liked your idea of a deviant act. People that have pregnancies young are heavily stigmatized in American society, which is extremely unfortunate. These are the people that need our help and guidance the most. We spend so much time arguing about whether or not a fetus is a kid, and a lot less time actually trying to help young mothers raise kids once they're born.
Hirschi, Travis, Causes of Delinquency (1969) Berkeley, CA, University of California Press
Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI think your blog is great. There were a few grammatical errors and words that could have been avoided. But for the most part it was good. I did my deviant act at the mall also. The looks and reaction I received were not that pleasant. It is very unfortunate that this society judges and makes assumptions about people without taking things into consideration. At least you were brave enough to go through with it. I think your theories were good. Conflict theory by Richard Quinney is a reasonable example for the point you are trying to make. Labeling theory definitely fits into your experiment as well.
Good job,
Rod