family

Despite growing research that people are having less sex in the United States, the perception that “everyone is doing it” persists, especially for young people. In a recent article, The Atlantic asked social scientists why young people aren’t having more sex.

Lisa Wade, author of the book, American Hookup Culture, says that one of the reasons for is that young people are more likely to have sex within relationships than in hookups, and always have been:

“Go back to the point in history where premarital sex became more of a thing, and the conditions that led to it…Young women, at that point — [the 1940s and 50s] — innovate ‘going steady.’ If you [go out with someone for] one night you might get up to a little bit of necking and petting, but what happens when you spend months with them? It turns out 1957 has the highest rate of teen births in American history.”

Part of the reason young people today are having sex more in relationships than in hookups — at least for women — might be that they are avoiding bad sex. According to Paula England, women report sex in hookups is less pleasurable than sex in relationships. Based on recent trends, it appears as though fewer young people are actually having relationships at all, marriage or otherwise. And the rise of online dating apps means that people meeting online are marrying more quickly, which might mean they are dating less overall, according to Michael Rosenfeld.

Despite a decline in sex overall for young people, this decline likely does not affect all young people equally. Since research shows that a good sex life appears to contribute to happiness and other health benefits, this also means that those who do not have a fulfilling sex life also do not reap those benefits. The article’s author, Kate Julian, concludes,

“Like economic recessions, the sex recession will probably play out in ways that are uneven and unfair. Those who have many things going for them already — looks, money, psychological resilience, strong social networks — continue to be well positioned to find love and have good sex and, if they so desire, become parents. But intimacy may grow more elusive to those who are on less steady footing.”

Despite the longevity signified by the phrase, “till death do us part,” many American marriages are not so permanent. The statistic that half of marriages end in divorce has been cited for decades, but research by Philip Cohen shows that divorce rates have been falling for the last few years, even after accounting for demographic changes over that time. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Andrew Cherlin provides an unromantic explanation for the recent trend: “In order to get divorced, you have to get married first.”

In other words, declines in divorce are more driven by who is getting married than increased marital stability. Historically, divorce rates have been highest among Americans without a college degree. However, this group is now more likely to delay or forego marriage than they were 20 or 30 years ago. Victor Chen suggests that one factor responsible for marriage declines among people without a college degree is lack of jobs. Well-paying jobs for the less educated have become sparse as the American economy has transitioned away from manufacturing. Without stable employment, it is harder to maintain long-term romantic partnerships.

Another factor could be a rising acceptance of cohabitation, which has decreased the pressure for couples in their 20s to marry. Delaying marriage has benefits for marital quality. Cherlin explains:

“If you’re older, you’re more mature … you probably have a better job, and those things make it less likely that you’ll get into arguments with your spouse.”

However, declines in marriage do not necessarily mean that Americans are getting better at long-term partnership. Rather, relationship volatility is moving from the context of marriage to cohabitation, where it is harder to measure. These falling marriage rates among the less-educated parallel a growing gap between the richest Americans and everyone else. College graduates, who are more likely to marry, are better positioned to endure economic uncertainty and build wealth through their pooled incomes. This leads Cohen to conclude that marriage is “an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality.” In other words, while declining divorce may look like a positive trend at first glance, it may speak more to growing inequality than it does enduring love.

All parents want the best for their children, but what happens when the best for their own child means disadvantaging many more? In an article recently published in The Atlantic, sociologist Margaret Hagerman shares the story behind her new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America. She spent two years interviewing and observing upper-middle-class suburban white families in a midwestern city in the United States with one goal: to find out how white children learn about race. Hagerman spent a significant amount of time with 36 children between the ages of 10 and 13, and analyzed how homework, games, and conversations with friends and family members influenced their interpretations of race. Hagerman says,

“One of the things I was really struck by was how frequently some of these children used the phrase That’s racist or You’re racist. They were using this word in contexts that had nothing to do with race: They were playing chess, and they would talk about what color chess pieces they wanted to have, and then one of them would say, “Oh, that’s racist”—so things that had to do with colors, but also sometimes just out of the blue, instead of saying, “That’s stupid.” These kids have taken this phrase, That’s racist, and inverted it in a way such that it’s become meaningless.”

Hagerman also observed affluent parents calling schools to demand the best teachers in certain topics and pulling their students out of a public school to enroll them in a private one after a “racist incident.” These actions serve as reinforcing agents, propagating the idea that “your own child is the most important thing”—a belief that Hagerman thinks should be reconsidered by all.

“When affluent white parents are making these decisions about parenting, they could consider in some way at least how their decisions will affect not only their kid, but other kids. This might mean a parent votes for policies that would lead to the best possible outcome for as many kids as possible, but might be less advantageous for their own child…I don’t have any grand answer, but I think people could think in bigger ways about what it means to care about one another and what it means to actually have a society that cares about kids.”

While the catastrophic flooding by Hurricane Florence made recent headlines, the emotional trauma it caused — particularly for children — may be overlooked. A growing approach to natural disasters as “social phenomena” with social consequences sheds light on how storms, earthquakes, and wildfires impact the emotional health of young survivors. In a recent article in The Atlantic, sociologist Alice Fothergill discusses her research on the emotional turmoil caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Fothergill finds that lack of communication with friends and family during a storm leads to tremendous anxiety for children. However, children who stay together with family in unsafe conditions also suffer. She explains,

“In a lot of studies, we find that kids who experience the intensity of the event do have a harder time coping. It really is important to evacuate and not be in it. Being with family is important, [but so is] not feeling like they’re in a life-threatening situation.”

The good news is, emergency responders are learning. Fothergill notes that during Hurricane Katrina, many kids in foster families and their biological parents completely lost contact and family records were destroyed in the storm. However, during Hurricane Sandy, the Department of Children and Families in New Jersey was able to learn from these mistakes.

Fothergill says one of the best things to do is to allow children to help prepare for the storm — for example, let them have a say in what comes in the car and what stays at home — so they feel like they have some control over the situation. While Fothergill notes that children are especially vulnerable to trauma, they are also very resilient; for this reason, showing them how to prepare and rebuild after a deadly storm can make all the difference.

Few would disagree that the internet — through online dating apps and websites — has significantly changed how people meet romantic and sexual partners. Sociologists have been on the forefront of studying how online dating has changed relationships, and sometimes even working for the companies behind this change. A recent article in The Economist explores some of this research.

Using online dating apps, individuals are able to choose which commonalities they want to share with a partner, while searching through a more diverse pool of applicants than they might find at their neighborhood bar. And research by sociologists, Reuben Thomas and Michael Rosenfeld, shows that this really matters — married people who met their partners online reported significantly higher relationship quality than those who met their partners offline. Jess Carbino, the in-house sociologists at Bumble, explains why this might happen:

Offline, people meet others who are like them in various ways—who know the same people and work in the same places. Online they can meet people not like them in those ways, but like them in other ways that may matter more. You can meet people who aren’t like you and select those who are.

However, not all online daters benefit equally. Research by Elizabeth Bruch and Mark Newman shows that women are generally more desirable than men, but women’s desirability drops with age and the more degrees they have, while men’s desirability generally increases with age and education level. And certain groups — especially Asian men and Black women — get fewer responses than others.

In short, while the internet has increased the diversity of the dating pool for many — and with it, relationship quality — it still reinforces many of the same sexist and racist patterns we see in other forms of dating.

Pregnancy can be risky and expensive at any age.  But for those who can afford the costs, holding off until an older age can be advantageous. A recent article in The Atlantic describes how first-time moms over 40 tend to have greater education and financial stability. Drawing from a national fertility study, sociologist Karina Shreffler finds that half of women over 40 had to pursue expensive treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) in order to get pregnant. Older women are also at higher risk for various medical conditions. However, more affluent women have the financial ability to bear these expenses. Shreffler discusses numerous advantages that accompany this choice:

“People who are pursuing college are more likely to create this broader life plan: when to time their education, when to form their families, when to go for the promotion…We just don’t see that to that extent with women who don’t have college degrees.”

Waiting to have children can lead to more financial success and additional career opportunities, benefiting the children of older moms. Sociologist Karen Guzzo explains,

“These women are aware that, the longer they work before having kids, the more established they’ll be when they need to take time off — and the more valuable they’ll be to their companies.”

But again, these benefits are contingent upon the economic ability to bear the added costs that come with waiting to have children. As long as affluent, educated women are better equipped to benefit from late motherhood than women without college degrees, these benefits will perpetuate inequality.

What is your least favorite household chore? According to a report from the Council on Contemporary Families, recently profiled in NPR and The Atlantic, washing dishes is a common answer — and how they end up getting done could be affecting your relationship.

Dan Carlson, the study’s lead author, told NPR,

“Most research sees housework as an omnibus thing, but it varies in qualities: how pleasurable or unpleasurable, how often it needs to be done, how gendered it is.”

The team’s research considered whether sharing household tasks within heterosexual couples changed over the past few decades. They found that younger couples share more of the routine household tasks, especially dishwashing and laundry, than couples a decade prior. How couples divide the household labor strongly affects relationship quality — for better or for worse — among couples in the more recent cohort. And doing dishes was more likely to affect relationship quality than any other chore.

Both in housework and in the labor market women have often done the jobs that involve cleaning up after someone else — and doing the dishes can be an especially gross job. As more couples share housework, women who feel like they are stuck doing the undesirable chores are more likely to feel disrespected. As Carlson notes, “The more often a task is shared, the worse it is for you not to share it.”

The relationship consequences of dishes aren’t going away, but then again neither are the dishes.

While U.S. society often valorizes the nuclear family — two-parent households with children — many families do not fit this model. In honor of Mother’s Day this past weekend, Ms. Magazine highlighted the long history of collective mothering in the United States. Social scientists demonstrate how the individualized, biological model of mothering emphasized in the United States can be a problem:

“Many feminist sociologists have pushed back against narrow understandings of parenting. Sharon Hays argues that pressures for mothers to “do it all” though intensive mothering styles alienates and emotionally depletes women…Sharing care-work can alleviate some demands of what sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild calls the ‘second shift,’ or the household labor usually left to women after the formal workday ends.”

Further, certain groups rely more heavily on collective mothering. For African Americans, collective mothering has been important for survival:

“Patricia Hill Collins describes how blood mothers, ‘other mothers,’ grandmothers and community mothers have collectively cared for Black children since slavery, playing integral roles in Black community survival. The mainstream media tends to associate these mothering practices with working-class and poor mothers of color, but Collins points out that Black middle-class mothers also rely on community mothering to protect their children from everyday forms of racism.”

Mothers who immigrate to another country for work also depend on collective parenting — often by family and friends — if their children remain in their country of origin. While many Native American families rely on collective child-raising practices as well, the U.S. government rarely recognizes them as valid forms of parenting. Social workers have taken away thousands of Native American children and placed them into mostly White, nuclear families.

So, when we celebrate Mother’s Day, we must keep more than individual mothering in mind.

Even with gender-equality movements today, marriage proposals seem to be backtracking — becoming even more spontaneous, elaborate, and sensational. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Ellen Lamont and Judy Chu explain how marriage proposals often perpetuate traditional gender roles and may be a poor foundation for a stable marriage.

Lamont argues that traditional marriage proposals — where a man asks a woman to marry him — are symbolic acts that sustain particular gender norms.

“Now that we expect women to be equal to men, women [and men] are looking for ways to distinguish gender in their lives. Within heterosexual romantic relationships, there is still a strong sense that women and men want different things and, by extension, should behave in different ways. As more women assume traditionally male roles at work, the traits that distinguish men and women in relationships become harder to see. A symbolic act, like a proposal, is a way to reenact those differences.”

For men, Chu suggests that elaborate proposals may actually be a socially acceptable way for men to express profound feelings for their significant other — something that may be difficult in societies that do not value emotional expression from men.

Social media may also add to the need for elaborate proposals. During interviews, Lamont found that most women felt they “needed a story to tell their friends” about their engagement. In other words, elaborate proposals can provide the perfect proposal picture to post to Facebook or Instagram.

Regardless of why marriage proposals have failed to modernize, their consequences include tremendous social pressure and a potentially rocky foundation for a marriage. In Lamont’s study, women admitted they only said “yes” because they feared saying “no” would translate to “saying no to the relationship.” Perhaps moving away from proposals that reify traditional gender norms could be a key first step to healthy marriages.

Parents of all backgrounds want their children to receive the best education possible, but what sets wealthy “helicopter parents” apart is that they have the resources to ensure it happens. A recent article in The Washington Post describes the role of “college concierges” — affluent parents that meticulously map out important college opportunities for their child — in widening the gap between their own children and children from working-class families, whose parents may not know how to guide their child through the college process.

The article draws from a study by social scientists Laura Hamilton, Josipa Roksa, and Kelly Nielsen about the role parents play in college students’ lives. The authors find that female students from wealthy families graduate at a rate of 75 percent, while their counterparts from low-income families only graduate at a rate of 40 percent. To explain this discrepancy, the authors give an example of two students interested in dentistry — one from a wealthy family accepted into her top-choice dental school, and the other from a poorer family who was not admitted. 

“[The] one from an affluent family…had reviewed applications years earlier and knew what she needed to do to get in…. [The other student’s] parents didn’t know what was required — such as job shadowing — nor did they realize her slipping grades would disqualify her from getting admitted. She ended up as a dental assistant making $11 an hour, a job that didn’t even require a bachelor’s degree.”

Instead of criticizing affluent parents’ behavior, the article’s author suggests we should direct our energy towards providing guidance to students without it, in order to close success gaps like the one illustrated in this study. 

 “Simply providing more aid or more help in getting admitted isn’t enough…. Schools also need to put in place programs — and pay for them — that help middle- and lower-income students find the right mentors, get spots in study-abroad programs and internships, and navigate the often confusing and tricky journey to graduation.”