Can you to imagine a world without care, a world without teachers, nurses or childcare workers? Caring for others is a crucial part of society, and care workers are in fact essential for its functioning. At the same time, the devaluation of care work pervades our society. Care work carries little prestige and economic rewards, and tends to be dismissed as not really work. Women and women of color have long been the ones providing care to others, in and out of the workforce. However, past research has shown that women experience major declines in their wages after having children, the so-called ‘motherhood penalty’. This is especially the case in highly skilled/high paid jobs and in professional occupations, such as among doctors or lawyers or business professionals. Researchers often explain this phenomenon by pointing to the expectations that employers have about who makes the most ideal worker. In their eyes, this ideal worker is typically a man with no outside responsibilities such as caretaking. Men, in fact, tend to experience a ‘daddy bonus’, with higher wages for fathers compared to men with no kids. Furthermore, the wage penalties are less harsh for women of color, though they typically start with lower wages than white women do. Fathers of color do not experience the same boost to their wages as white fathers do.We wanted to explore whether this penalty existed in other fields. Specifically, we wanted to look at care work, a field that both employs great numbers of women and mothers, but also typically expects the same traits from workers that society expects in mothers. In previous research, researchers found that even though caring work requires similar levels of education and skill as professional occupations, is underappreciated and devalued because it is done by women. Employers believe that since women are naturally good at care work, work that value traits such as caring, love, and selflessness, don’t need to be paid as much. However, we were interested in seeing whether this devaluation has held true, even with advancements in gender equality. We thought that since care work employers value the same skills valued in mothers, one’s parental identity might lead a worker to receiving a wage boost. We also expected that mothers of color would receive even greater boosts as employers expect them to possess caring traits in more abundance.

In our study, we drew on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which collects work and family related information from a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. We analyzed data on over 805,786 care workers between the ages of 18 and 37, collected in the years 1980, 1990, and then yearly from 2000 through 2018 . We looked at jobs such as nursing, health care aides, K-12 teachers, social workers, childcare workers, and religious clergy members. Our findings are straightforward and reflect how gendered work and society is today. We show that wages for mothers are more than 12% lower than wages for women without children, accounting for factors like education, region, and work experience. This confirms that the motherhood wage penalty found for professional occupations also holds for care workers. We find that, within care work, this penalty is strongest for white women, although women of all races experience a decline in their wages after parenthood. However, we need to keep in mind that women of color tend to have lower starting wages compared to white women and men. We also find higher wages for fathers compared to men without children; however, that is not the case when accounting for work and personal variables—such as education level, marital status, and race—and actually Black fathers see a slight decline in wages compared to men without children. This may suggest that fathers of color continue to be seen as unfit or not appropriate for caring occupations, despite their fatherhood identity.

Overall, our research shows that in care work being seen as appropriate often doesn’t result in wage advantages. Instead, organizational practices and culture perpetrate disadvantage for mothers and people of color. Work and society today are still deeply gendered. The belief that mothers are better at caring and the fact that caring labor is devalued continue to disadvantage mothers and mothers of color alike, reinforcing gender inequality.

Overall, we think that these findings indicate that the beliefs that mothers are better at caring and that caring labor is devalued are pervasive and continue to disadvantage mothers and mothers of color alike. As Anne-Marie Slaughter, in her book Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family said, “If we’re going to get to real equality between men and women, we have to focus less on women and more on elevating the value of care.” As it would seem, motherhood is rife with more than just one type of labor pain.

Alyssa Alexander is a lecturer in sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Anna Manzoni is a professor at North Carolina State University. You can follow Anna on Twitter @theitalianna

The COVID-19 pandemic was a period of immense change. We all remember the fear and uncertainty of the early stages of the pandemic, and how we adapted to handle new domestic tasks such as disinfecting every surface and helping children with remote schooling. After the abrupt and sweeping changes of the early lockdown period, we faced more disruptions. Through cyclical spikes in COVID cases, we dealt with the uneven reopening, and periodic closing, of schools, workplaces, and social gatherings, leading not only to new challenges managing work and family obligations, but also the stress of uncertainty. 

Research highlights lasting impacts of these fluctuating conditions, such as the increased prevalence of remote work and continued learning losses among children due to educational disruptions. Yet, despite an emphasis on the increased burdens of domestic work and subsequent stress placed on mothers early in the pandemic, there has been relatively little discussion about whether the pandemic has had a lasting effect on parents’ divisions of housework and childcare. Has greater access to remote work helped fathers to remain more involved in domestic labor as they were during pandemic lockdowns? Or did the increased burdens on mothers during the pandemic exacerbate gender gaps in domestic labor?

In a recent study published in Demographic Research, we sought to understand how parents’ divisions of housework and childcare changed throughout the pandemic. Using novel data from the Survey on U.S. Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19, we examined trends in parents’ divisions of domestic labor from prior to the pandemic (March 2020) to post-pandemic (October 2023). In doing so, we are the first to examine patterns throughout the duration of the pandemic in the U.S., enabling us to assess the extent to which the pandemic had lasting changes on domestic divisions of domestic labor.

Surprisingly, we find that most U.S. parents maintained the same division of housework and childcare throughout the entire observed period from pre- to post-pandemic. Despite all of the changes that occurred throughout the pandemic, gendered patterns of domestic labor remain remarkably stable. Among parents who did experience changes, we observed that parents were much more likely to shift to fathers taking on equal or greater shares of childcare than to shift toward a more traditional division where mothers perform more childcare than they previously did. However, parents were equally likely to shift to a more traditional division of housework as a nontraditional division (i.e., equal sharing or fathers doing more). We find that fathers’ remote work and mothers’ employment were key factors in promoting a shift to a more nontraditional division of domestic labor.

The relative stability of parents’ divisions of housework and childcare illustrates how embedded these gendered norms and practices are within American culture. However, results from our study suggest that some changes have occurred, particularly in regard to long-term shifts toward more nontraditional divisions of childcare. Fathers increasingly want to be more involved in their children’s lives, and the pandemic provided an opportunity for fathers to be more fully engaged dads due in large part to more flexible work options. The continuation of flexible work combined with increased employment opportunities for mothers moving forward present opportunities for continued (albeit slow) progress toward greater gender equality in housework and childcare.

Daniel L. Carlson is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. He is a sociologist and family demographer studying the gendered division of labor. He serves on the board of directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. You can follow him on X @DanielCarlson_1.

Richard J. Petts is a Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. He also serves on the board of directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. You can read more about his research at www.richardpetts.com and can follow him on X @pettsric.

Take a moment to imagine the kinds of people who live in a mixed-income neighborhood.

In your mind, do you envision kids of all backgrounds playing together in the local park? Rich and poor neighbors working together to throw block parties? Low-income and wealthy people chatting casually in the local coffee shop?

Sadly, many mixed-income neighborhoods do not work like this.

Rich and poor residents of mixed-income neighborhoods often avoid each other in local parks, schools, and eateries, and these lines of separation may be drawn more thickly when residents are doubly diverse in terms of race, sexuality, or recency in the neighborhood.

Even more, many privileged residents surveil their neighbors through the use of apps like Nextdoor, and they work to hasten gentrification so that their poorer neighbors are forced to leave.

In an article I recently published in Socius with co-authors Chris Hess, Ian Kennedy, and Kyle Crowder, I show how members of the real estate industry can contribute to this process.

Landlords, realtors, and others who advertise rental properties in mixed-income neighborhoods are disproportionately likely to mention that the advertised unit comes with a home security device. This finding is driven by mentions of home security methods such as door attendants, access control systems, and concierges—all of which are commonly found in upscale apartment buildings in gentrifying areas. To demonstrate our finding, we applied a combination of computational text analyses and regression-based methods to over one million Craigslist rental listings posted in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in July and August of 2019.

By emphasizing home security when advertising rentals in income-diverse areas, real estate actors reinforce a message that mixed-income neighborhoods are places to be feared rather than embraced.

People frequently assume that someone is a criminal if they are in poverty. And in many of the neighborhoods we studied, income diversity continued to be associated with mentions of home security even after accounting for the local crime rate. Therefore, members of the real estate industry may have the capacity to shape home seekers’ perceptions of safety in mixed-income neighborhoods regardless of whether crimes are actually happening on the ground.

Even more, given that home security was mentioned in many ads for upscale apartment buildings, our findings suggest that members of the real estate industry may use home security as a signal to potential gentrifiers that they will be safe if they move into a neighborhood where poor people live.

The emphasis on home security, in fact, may be a key ingredient in how neighborhoods become gentrified. In mixed-income neighborhoods, a landlord may bring in a wealthy renter with the promise of home security, after which more wealthy renters move in until the neighborhood becomes homogeneously wealthy rather than income-diverse.

Our study was cross-sectional, meaning it was conducted at one point in time and unable to track trends in neighborhoods over time. The link between our findings and the gentrification of neighborhoods is consequently speculative. Our study also could not causally establish that potential renters take into consideration how frequently they see mentions of home security in ads in mixed-income neighborhoods.

Nevertheless, a growing number of studies highlight ways in which residents of diverse neighborhoods use home security to segregate themselves and police their poorer neighbors. Coupled with other actions taken by wealthy residents of mixed-income neighborhoods, such as marginalizing low-income parents’ concerns in schools and alienating low-income members of local civic groups, the emphasis that real estate advertisers place on home security in income-diverse neighborhoods can further divide rich and poor neighbors and facilitate neighborhood change.

There are lessons from my study for academics looking to connect the dots between income diversity, home security, and local communities. There are also lessons for practitioners looking to build stably mixed-income neighborhoods.

For academics, it is common to examine how members of the real estate industry use practices such as racial steering or the sorting of poor tenants into substandard housing to discourage diversity in neighborhoods. It is far rarer for academics to investigate the techniques that real estate actors use to persuade people to move into diverse neighborhoods. I hope my study inspires others to think through the dynamics that attract home seekers to move into rather than avoid diverse neighborhoods.

For practitioners, members of the real estate industry should reflect on the marketing strategies they use when selling or renting homes in mixed-income neighborhoods. Some real estate actors deliberately coopt local community organizations to encourage divisions within the community and undermine resistance to gentrification. Practices such as these may help turn an economic profit, but in terms of social costs, there is a heavy price to pay.

As suggested by scholars who examine stably racially integrated neighborhoods, income diversity can be maintained in communities that are willing to earmark funds to encourage it. Places that invest in homes of diverse sizes and densities are much more likely to attain stably income-diverse communities than are those places that use the heavy hand of zoning to keep poor people away.

As income inequality grows worse in cities and towns across the United States—not to mention the rest of the world—it is necessary to understand how neighborhoods become diverse and stay diverse.

Life’s no fun if the kids avoid each other at the park, the block party excludes many neighbors, and the patrons of the local coffee shop sip in silence. That’s not the way our communities should be.

Mahesh Somashekhar is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. You can follow Mahesh on Twitter @msomashe

Emily K. Carian is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Irvine. She studies why gender inequality is so persistent by examining masculinity, male supremacism, and cultural processes at home and at work. Her most recent research appears in Social Problems, Men and Masculinities, and Sociological Perspectives. Here, I ask about her new book, Good Guys, Bad Guys: The Perils of Men’s Gender Activism, which is now available from NYU Press. You can learn more about Emily at her website. And you can follow her on Twitter @emilycarian.

AMW: How does the desire to be perceived as “good men” motivate men to engage in gender activism?

EKC: I interviewed two groups of men: those who identify as feminists and those who identify as men’s rights activists (members of an antifeminist social movement). Both groups do gender activism to feel like and be perceived as good men. Their trajectory into gender activism begins when they become aware of the feminist claim that men are privileged because of their gender. Believing that others see them as privileged and thus immoral, they experience a threat to their sense of self and negative emotions, like discomfort or anger. Both groups of men seek what I call privilege renegotiation strategies, or ways to navigate negative emotions and moral identity threat given their privileged place in the social order. Gender activism is a privilege renegotiation strategy. By identifying as feminists, men can feel like they are exceptions to the rule that men are the bad guys. Because the men’s rights movement claims that men are disadvantaged by feminism, becoming a men’s rights activist allows men to portray themselves as victims and thus morally blameless.

AMW: How do even self-proclaimed feminist men inadvertently perpetuate gender inequality through their attitudes, behaviors, and relationships?

EKC: In the book, I focus on how feminist men’s motivation limits what they can accomplish for the feminist movement. Feminists want to recruit men to the movement so that men can contribute their labor, resources, and power toward feminist change. The feminist men I interviewed are genuinely interested in making society a more equitable place, but they are also motivated subconsciously by a personal, almost self-centered reason: they are using feminism to remake their own identities as good men. Unfortunately, that means they often prioritize identity work that makes them look like good guys over the real work of activism.

One example from the book is Theo, who was a thirty-something professional working at a university. Theo told me about his discomfort with his own privilege as a straight, white cisman. Feminism was a way for him to deal with that discomfort and see himself as giving up privilege. He designed events for men students to talk about masculinity and work together to make their campus more equitable and inclusive. In one of these workshops, a student recounted how his boss had asked him which of the women interns the student would like to sleep with. The student didn’t know how to respond; he didn’t want to engage in sexist talk but also didn’t want to risk retaliation from his boss. The student did nothing, which is understandable given his subordinate position, but also objectionable given how egregious the sexism was. Theo didn’t push his students to see how their inaction in situations like these make them complicit. Their conversations never moved beyond how men can deal with the tensions and difficulties of being feminist allies. That’s because Theo’s activism is borne out of his concerns about his own identity and so centers the feelings and challenges of people like him, not women, trans men, non-binary people, people of color, or queer people who would benefit most from dismantling privilege. Theo’s approach to activism and feminism is mirrored in the stories of the other feminist men I interviewed.

Additionally, feminist men often relied on women to teach them about gender inequality, particularly through women’s stories about personal experiences with sexism. While these lessons were helpful to men’s awareness, it also required the women in their lives to make themselves vulnerable and expend emotional energy. Some feminist men also held defeatist attitudes about gender inequality—for example, claiming that people of different genders would never be equal because of entrenched sexism. While gender inequality is undoubtedly a complex and difficult problem to solve, this attitude excused feminist men from engaging in meaningful activism. Indeed, only about half of the men I interviewed (all of whom identified as feminists) did any activism.

AMW: Why do some men become feminists while others become men’s rights activists?

EKC: Men’s trajectories into these two different movements are sparked by their exposure to the idea that men are privileged. The way they react to this idea—which movement they choose as a privilege renegotiation strategy—depends on their social contexts. Men who became feminists were more likely to describe close relationships with women peers (e.g., classmates) than men who became men’s rights activists. They learned about gender inequality and privilege from women that they liked and respected, which tamped down feelings of moral identity threat. Men who became men’s rights activists, on the other hand, were more likely to learn about male privilege outside of their relationships with women and the context of women’s lived experiences—for instance, through solitary reading or social media. Men who became feminists were also more likely to understand gender in a way that aligned with the social movement frames used by feminist organizations on college campuses—the sites where most feminist men were first exposed to the movement in a serious way.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog and serves as Senior Fellow with CCF. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

JPB Gerald is a Black neurodivergent adult educator who received his doctorate from CUNY – Hunter College in Instructional Leadership. He works in education management and curriculum development at a nonprofit and is an adjunct professor in his spare time. His scholarship focuses on language education, racism, and neurodivergence and he lives with his wife, young son (with another on the way), and dog in Yonkers, New York (on unceded Munsee Lenape/Canarsie territory). Here, I ask him about his new book, Embracing the Exceptions: Meeting the Needs of Neurodivergent Students of Color, which is out now from Routlege. You can find out more about JPB Gerald at his website. And you can follow him on Twitter @JPBGerald

AMW: How are neurodivergent students of color often overlooked? And how does this impact their classroom experiences?

JPBG: Generally speaking, the “symptoms” of neurodivergence are visible movement, issues with eye contact, and other quite noticeable things. But, as with most stereotypes, this is based on a “norm,” which in this case is white boys. If you’re anything other than that, it’s quite common for these behaviors to be socialized “out” of us, whether or not we would naturally make these choices. Accordingly, we often internalize our reactions, which means that our neurodivergence often manifests in inward shame, or emotional reactions that are borne of the former. Yet all that teachers can see is this end result, and we can often be tagged with “disruptive” (and other derogatory) labels. I think you can follow where this would lead for students’ trajectories, even before considering the school to prison pipeline.

AMW: How is your book unique?

JPBG: The fact of the matter is that there aren’t a lot of books about this; in fact there really aren’t any. I couldn’t base this book on all that much existing qualitative research neurodivergent students of color, because it wasn’t out there in great quantities. Ultimately, as someone who likes stories more than numbers, I thought it would be more impactful to really base the work in our lived experience. So, the book is mostly just our stories, what we went through, what we felt, what made us struggle but also succeed. Reading the book will allow people to hear from us directly in a way that hasn’t happened before.

AMW: How can we help teachers reach all students?

Many neurodivergent students of color are not diagnosed. So my advice is broadly for teachers who do not have a mandated roadmap such as an IEP (individual education plan), not that all IEPs promote equity. Ultimately, as hard as it can be to do (and I fully understand having been an educator for 16 years), we need to release control to gain control. We have to let go of assessing based on methods if the student is finding their way to the ultimate destination. We need not to restrict unless absolutely necessary. And we need to praise and validate for students’ attempt to communicate and reach our goals. Too much of education is centered on carrots and sticks with an emphasis on the sticks. We need to accept our students the way they are and help them find their way within their actual worlds and not just the ones we want them to be in.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog and serves as Senior Fellow with CCF. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Nicole Bedera is a sociologist and sexual violence researcher. She studies how our social structures contribute to survivors’ traumas and makes sexual violence more likely to occur in the future. Her scholarship has influenced anti-violence programming across the country, including for Planned Parenthood, and her work has been featured in many popular outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, Time Magazine, and Teen Vogue. Nicole is an Affiliated Educator at the Center for Institutional Courage. She puts her work into practice as a Co-Founder of Beyond Compliance Consulting. Here, I ask her about her new book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors, which is out now from University of California Books. You can find out more about Nicole at her website. And you can follow her on Twitter @NBedera

AMW: How do universities protect perpetrators and their own reputations at the expense of survivors?

NB: There is this general perception that the Title IX process is “neutral” and “fair”—or perhaps that “the pendulum has swung too far” and survivors are now favored. It just isn’t true. We have data that demonstrates the average university expels one perpetrator every three years. We know that this number has dropped even lower since Obama left office. Our schools protect perpetrators (and, in some ways, themselves) by failing to hold wrongdoers accountable, even when they have obviously violated school policy and pose an ongoing violent threat to the campus community.

Something that can get lost in this discourse—a discourse that mostly focuses on how to treat perpetrators—is that the failure to intervene hurts survivors. Most of the time, survivors who turn to Title IX are still in danger and hoping their school will step in to keep them safe. Or they’re coming forward because their perpetrator’s behavior is interfering in their capacity to do well in school. A university that refuses to take action isn’t just failing to deliver justice. They’re causing harm and keeping survivors from accessing the education that brought them to school in the first place.

A simple example might be useful here. Early in the book, I tell the story of a survivor named Brie who had enrolled in the same class as her perpetrator. The class covered material on sexual violence, which was unthinkably difficult for Brie to navigate with the man who had violated her sitting a few seats away. When Brie turned to her school for help, they couldn’t offer her a single solution that would allow her to stay in class. Instead, administrators focused on her perpetrator’s “due process rights” and encouraged her to drop any class he enrolled in. So she did. And in the process, Brie learned that her education was less valuable to her university than her perpetrator’s.

In the book, I get into a lot of other specific institutional mechanisms that prioritize the protection of perpetrators over the safety and education of survivors. But in each example, the overarching theme is the same: perpetrators were shielded from the consequences of their actions and survivors were expected to bear the burdens of the violence and their school’s decision to protect and empower their perpetrators.

AMW: How does the Title IX Office intensify rather than address gender inequality?

NB: There are a lot of ways to answer this question, but I want to focus on two.

In my interviews with Title IX staff, I was struck by the hostile attitudes they had toward women who filed complaints. Feminist researchers and activists have long-established the kinds of rape myths survivors encounter when they come forward, but I was still surprised by how little had changed. The staff has received trauma-informed crisis counseling certifications! They worked at a university alongside nationally-renowned sexual violence researchers! Their explicit goal was to promote gender equity on campus! And still, they repeated the same gendered stereotypes and wove them into their decision-making in cases.

For a lot of people who entered the Title IX Office, this meant Title IX itself became a second site of gendered harm. A victim of sexual harassment would be expected to endure more sexual harassment in the form of an investigator making off-the-cuff comments about how men and women should behave in an educational or professional setting. A victim of stalking would be expected to endure more stalking as investigators pried into their social media accounts to find evidence to discredit them, often without the victim’s knowledge or consent. And sometimes, these acts of violence escalated. All but one victim advocate at the university had a story to tell about Title IX staff sexually harassing or assaulting them.

If survivors spoke up about this gendered mistreatment, they worried it would affect the outcome of their case. So they endured their institutional betrayals as the Title IX Office retraumatized them.

This bring me to my second point. If Title IX is working as the law intended, then it should be a given that engaging the Title IX Office should make it easier for a survivor to do well in school. But I actually found the opposite. Survivors found that reporting a sexual assault to their school made their education even harder.

Obviously, a piece of that difficulty is the retraumatization I described. But not all of it. Title IX investigators made survivors jump through a series of hoops to prove they were “credible” victims. And often, those tests required sacrificing educational opportunities for the sake of their investigations. Survivors were chastised for asking to reschedule meetings that would interfere with their classes. They were expected to stop studying during finals week to review evidence on an investigator’s timeline. If they failed to sacrifice enough, then their cases were closed.

And, remember, their cases almost always ended in institutional inaction. All of the sacrifices ultimately offered survivors nothing except damage to their educations.

AMW: What is a path forward that reclaims the mission of Title IX?

NB: As it stands, our national Title IX approach has been to hand power back to schools to decide how—and if—they want to comply with the law. It is obvious that we can’t trust them with the task. It’s a conflict of interest. Survivors’ needs often directly contradict institutional objectives and, overwhelmingly, schools prioritize themselves.

We need independent third parties to take the reins. And it isn’t unprecedented. In 2022, California made campus victim advocates employees of the state. They still work in campus offices and provide direct services to students, but they are no longer hired or fired based on their willingness to put the school first. Instead, they can prioritize victims in accordance with the fundamental tenets of victim advocacy.

There have been other benefits too. California set state-wide standards about things like how many victim advocates there should be per student and the kinds of services that must be funded. On a lot of campuses, this meant developing a victim advocacy program for the first time or offering services that had never been available before—like legal support for students who want to sue a school that infringed upon their rights.

There are a lot of third parties I would trust more than our schools. Rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and other gender equity-focused organizations have proven track records supporting survivors. There are plenty of people prepared to answer the challenges of this particular moment. We just need to give them the resources to take action.

For educators who want to assign On the Wrong Side to their students, Nicole created free teaching resources, including syllabus statements, lesson planning ideas, and an article on trauma-informed pedagogy.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog and serves as Senior Fellow with CCF. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Michelle Janning has been writing about the intersections of family life and spatial and material culture for more than two decades. She has published numerous books and articles about the sociology of homes, social research methods in architecture and design, love letters as family story memory objects, and material and spatial dimensions of family relationships and life stage transitions. Janning is a frequent public speaker, consultant on projects that intersect sociology and design worlds, and community-engaged sociologist. Her work has appeared in prominent media publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and NPR. Here I ask her about her latest book, Investing in Enchantment: Memory, Market, and the Family Vacation Home, which is a qualitative multi-method and multi-year study on family vacation homes. Her research, writing, and public-facing work is elaborated on her website. 

AMW: In your book, you don’t necessarily use fixed formal government classifications such as “investment property” and “vacation home” to examine family vacation home properties. How did you make this decision and what methods did you use to figure this out?

MJ: I examine the perceptions and practices of homeowners who use their vacation homes for personal family use, who rent their homes to others, or both. As I started to talk with people about their second properties in the early stages of my research, I realized that the formal classifications of properties based on taxes, zoning, mortgages, and governmental definitions based on homeowner occupancy were useful, but were definitely not how people actually used or attached meaning to their homes. Formal classifications don’t uncover subjective meanings that may vary based on time, social context, and family circumstances. That’s why my project is qualitative, took place over several years, and contains attitudes and behaviors from lots of different kinds of stakeholders involved with the family vacation home industry: five years’ worth of homeowner interviews, ethnographic research at hospitality and vacation rental conferences, media analysis of vacation home real estate shows and newspaper articles from amenity-rich locations, and examination of expert advice for families wondering if they should rent their vacation homes to other families. 

AMW: How do family vacation homes defined with your classifications — used by families, rented to others, or a bit of both — tell the story of what’s actually going on with families today? 

MJ: The homes featured in my book were not only hard to classify because sometimes people didn’t want to classify them (to save money on taxes, for example, or to not have to report a property as an investment property in any official way); they were also hard to classify because their use and definition changed, even for the families themselves. During the time frame of my research, some families were actually in the process of deciding whether to increase the amount of time they were renting out their vacation home because it wasn’t being used by family members as much as they had hoped. Some were shifting the use of an investment property to be a vacation spot for their family to use more often. Some were using portions of their primary residence to rent out as a vacation spot for other people. Some rented their vacation homes to families once or twice and then switched to long-term rental, or the other way around. Others had no idea what the legal or taxation classifications were supposed to be for a property, since they had inherited the property from parents or even grandparents and other family members managed the financial aspects of the property. And still other elements of my research shifted because people changed how they used their homes (and other people’s homes) for leisure and paid work during COVID-19 lockdowns. 

So, that Airbnb cabin your family rented for vacation? That counts in my research. That family cabin you’re considering listing on Airbnb (or at least charging a cleaning fee to friends who stay there) but don’t want it classified as an investment property? That counts. And the cabin you cannot bring yourself to sell or rent to others because it contains so many treasured family memories, even though your kids and grandkids say they don’t want it? That definitely counts. Formal classifications can’t help us understand how the meaning of these homes may be socially constructed by families in response to contemporary patterns in the sharing economy, generational shifts in homeownership and geographic mobility, and highly variable regulatory practices at the local level.

My book tells the story of how vacation property ownership, location, and use may vary from family to family and person to person. But my findings also paint a picture about how family roles and relationships impact the story and point to many shifting family patterns in the United States: increasing geographic mobility among younger generations, generational shifts in beliefs about whether family spaces should be used to make money, a desire to create memorable family moments for people on vacation, changing work and family roles during marriage, and reconsidering of family rituals in light of changing life stages. Add to this the highly variable ways that neighborhoods and communities respond to any kind of family vacation homes, and it becomes clear that time, geography, and familial context make formal property classifications insufficient if we want to understand property use and meaning. 

AMW: Why is the word “enchantment” in your book title? Is this about fairy tales? 

MJ: Despite some group differences related especially to controversies in communities about short-term vacation rental regulations, the three property groups — those who used family vacation homes for their own families, to rent to others, or some combination of both — really had more in common with each other than not. The findings pointed to a central finding: family vacation homes are supposed to be magical places removed from the harsh worlds of markets, inequalities, and community controversies. In fact, they are also supposed to be removed from stresses of everyday life in a family’s primary home. 

Family vacation homes are enchanted. Maybe even fairy tale-like. Enchantment, or more accurately disenchantment, is a concept that has filled the minds and writings of sociological thinkers since Max Weber elevated it within the social sciences as Entzauberung, a word that translates from German to English as “de-magicization.” I have stumbled upon two seemingly contradictory things about how people think about family when it comes to vacation homes. First, home is still supposed to be a location where romance, magic, and fairy tale-like expectations about families are alive and well. At the same time, people know the fairy tale is not real when it comes to their everyday family lives that take place in their homes. They understand that there is no such thing as enchantment when capitalism governs all social life. Homes are locations where violence, trauma, and pain are present. People across many walks of life have increasingly recognized that home lives are not necessarily enchanted havens from a stressful world, because they carry their own stresses, a realization made especially clear during the COVID-19 pandemic amid housing and economic crises that disproportionately affect low-income families and families of color who cannot afford to buy or keep a home. 

But, despite being actual homes and containing actual families, family vacation homes are framed differently by homeowners and other stakeholders in the family vacation home industry. They are magical, rising above the realities of everyday family lives in primary homes. Despite the fact that they are places where families gather, they are part of the deeply entrenched cultural story of the romanticization of American family life, a romance with more and more revelation of the real hardships of contemporary family life. We succumb to the powerful cultural value of the enchantment of the family vacation home even as we increasingly realize that family life is far from a fairy tale. Family memories and nostalgia become social strategies meant to “enchant” the family vacation home as a magical place removed from both the marketplace and the headaches of everyday work, family, and politics. They are a bastion of (sometimes artificial) relief from stress that is not just about our paid work lives, it is also stress related to our home lives. This is especially vivid when homeowners reframe the labor attached to maintaining a vacation home as leisure. If it is to be a magical place for one’s own family or for other families, it is not supposed to reveal hardships that threaten the fairy tale.     

Why does this happen? It’s often about nostalgia. The word “memory” is also in my book title. As a result of the precarity of family continuity (including a squeeze for enough time to spend together in the hectic calendar of daily life), ritualized family events and special occasions—and their accompanying photographic and material souvenirs—are more prominent than ever. Family vacation homes feature prominently in these kinds of projects. To create treasured moments for the family requires joy. Happiness comes from turning family stress and labor into clear success stories and mementos to signify that success. To have priceless family memories is to personalize the experience out of love, to make it all magical. Thus, the family must be enchanted in order to preserve its story and to protect it from the harsh and impersonal realities of labor and the marketplace. But, of course, it takes work (and often purchases) to create this kind of joy. So, investing in projects meant to make memories that younger generations will look back upon with fondness is a means to enchantment. People have turned to vacation homes to create a physical repository of shared memories of generations that are increasingly geographically dispersed and busy with the daily grind of moving from home to work and back home again. Family vacation homes require people to pause, create memories, and retain the magic. But all of this requires participation in the real estate marketplace, which of course is not a very enchanted place to be. And someone has to wash the dirty bedding. So families mask the money and labor matters and focus on the memories instead. That classification of memories as priceless, by the way, can make some family members have a hard time wanting to sell the family cabin. 

This brings me to shifts in the marketplace. Airbnb, Vrbo, Vacasa, HomeToGo, and other similar online companies are vivid examples of new marketplaces that allow ordinary people to dabble in business ventures by renting out their primary or second residences or portions of them. Owners and renters serve as “co-creators” of value in the global travel service marketplace, since the economic exchange occurs between peers, not between a person and a company. This exchange is part of a rise in what sociologist Juliet Schor terms “connected consumption,” often referred to as the sharing or gig economy. For families that opt to rent out their homes to other vacationing families, the focus on the money-making aspect runs counter to enchantment. Family memories are meant to be priceless, after all. For this reason, the vacation rental industry is rife with advice on how to redefine a space meant for making money into a place for family memories. That the memories are for someone else’s family is downplayed in order to lift up the cultural value of family vacation home spaces as enchanted for any family. 

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog and serves as Senior Fellow with CCF. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Gretchen Sisson is the author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood. She is a sociologist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health in the department of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, where she studies abortion and adoption in the United States. Her research was cited in the Supreme Court’s dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and has been covered in The Washington Post, The Nation, TIME Magazine, All Things Considered, New York Magazine, VOX, and other outlets. . Here, I ask her about her new book, Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood which is out now from Gallery Books. You can connect with Gretchen on Instagram and Thread @gretchen.sisson and Twitter @gesisson

AMW: What myths are we told about adoption? What is the reality?

GS: In the United States, we have a lot of cultural ideas about adoption that are not rooted in the realities of those who are impacted.

First, we believe that we need more people to adopt babies. Within the context of private adoption, we have many, many more prospective parents who want to adopt than we have children available. While we don’t have good data on the number of prospective adoptive parents, the best estimates suggest there are up to 45 would-be adoptive families for every infant that is available. We have very, very high demand for children, and very low supply. Thus, you have agencies, attorneys, and other adoption facilitators (including for-profit brokers) that are motivated to find more babies that can be made available for adoption. We see this through aggressive targeted advertising and manipulative and coercive practices.  So often adoption is not about finding families for children who need them, it’s about finding children for would-be parents who want them.

Second, we have the idea that people weight adoption against abortion when making a pregnancy decision. This frame has never really been true. Adoption is and always has been a very common reproductive experience: between 25-30% of American women will have an abortion at some point in their reproductive lives. Adoption relinquishment is rare: only about 0.7% of American women will ever relinquish an infant (and that estimate is likely high). We have plenty of data to show that 1) people who want abortions are uninterested in adoption, and 2) most women who relinquish infants for adoption did not want to have an abortion. Most relinquishing mothers preferred to parent, and only turned to adoption when they lack the support to do so. Even when women are denied access to abortion, over 90% will choose to parent, because they do not consider adoption to be a desirable option.

These specific misunderstandings feed general social myths about adoption as altruistic, as beautiful, and inevitably and enduringly good for the adopted person, as a necessary social good. The realities are far more complex and uncomfortable: adoption is a market-based system that commodifies children and is premised on inequality, that is – deeply – a reflection of whose parenthood we choose to value and support.

AMW: How is adoption a path of constrained choice for those for whom abortion is inaccessible?

GS: Of the mothers I interviewed, very, very few had adoption as their first choice when they found out they were pregnant. The majority of them wanted to parent their child, and they continued their pregnancies with that hope. However, they would come to a point in their pregnancy where parenting felt impossible: their partner left, or their own parents weren’t supportive, or they lost their housing, or they were too sick to continue working, or any number of setbacks that would push their (often already fragile) parenting plan to the point of untenability. Most relinquishing parents are in a hard place; in one larger-scale data collection, I found that 65% of relinquishing mothers had less than $5,000 in personal annual income, and most were already parenting other children. It doesn’t take much to derail their hopes to raise their child. (Even for those mothers who framed adoption as their first choice, they acknowledged that if they could have changed the other circumstances in their life: if they could have had more money or a better partner, for example, they would have parenthood. They didn’t inherently desire to relinquish their child, they just became resigned to their constraints very early on.)

For the minority who wanted to have an abortion, adoption became the lifeline when they either could not afford or could not legally access an abortion. As one participant said after being turned away from the abortion clinic: “adoption was the best and only option I had.” (As mentioned above, she was in the minority on this, too: most people denied abortion will parent.) But by stressing the “best and only” framing, it shows that adoption is an expression of having already been denied reproductive autonomy.

Thus, adoption is so often a reflection of constraint by virtue of resourceless or lack of control over broader circumstances – I found that it was most frequently a reflection of the failures of our social safety net, and our societal design to fail to care for people. The same challenges that make parenting difficult for so many millions of American parents made it impossible for this narrow subset.

AMW: What is the built-in contradiction that exists in the ideology of adoption? 

GS: There are many cultural contradictions inherent in adoption: that adopting is altruistic, even within a system designed to privilege adoptive parents as consumers; that it’s an expression of reproductive choice, even as it’s rooted in violations of reproductive autonomy; that adoption is intrinsically good for adopted people, even though the system hold virtually no accountability to adoptees. However, one contradiction that I find most interesting is the ways in which relinquishing mothers are framed as unworthy as mothers until the relinquish. We judge mothers harshly for being poor or young, or, in more profound circumstances, for being mentally ill or addicted or incarcerated or homeless, even though we do not provide the opportunities for them to achieve stability, security, or well-being. Yet, by relinquishing their children, these mothers become heroic: they are selfless, brave, loving. In a way, they become the perfect mother. By relinquishing their child and their motherhood, they affirm themself as worthy as a mother, and are placed on a pedestal by those who believe the mythologies of what adoption can accomplish. As one of my participants said, “The more they say we’re heroes, the more I know they hate us.” The more soaring the rhetoric around the good of relinquishment, the more likely the orator would have been to condemn the same mother for wanting to raise her own child. 

To me, all of these contradictions are examples of how our conversations about adoption are so often about politics, conservative values, the surveillance and policing or family, and the privileging of motherhood, rather than about how we find ways of supporting families and caring for children.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog and serves as Senior Fellow with CCF. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) continued to spread worldwide without significant slowing until January 2023. Following the World Health Organization’s declaration of the pandemic, governments around the world implemented measures to mitigate the risks associated with COVID-19. Measures included the closure of schools, cinemas, and theaters, along with a temporary lockdown. These restrictions led to increased time spent at home for children, resulting in changes to family dynamics and children’s behavior. Studies examining children of various ages, from infancy to adolescence, have reported effects such as disrupted sleep patterns, increased screen time, and heightened dependence on parents, along with behavioral changes like inattention and irritability. Especially in urban areas where access to outdoor spaces is limited, parents bore the primary responsibility of supporting their children through these challenges during quarantine.

Given that mothers often serve as primary caregivers, the pandemic may have exacerbated their burdens. Some argue that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women, potentially setting back progress toward gender equality. As parents spent more time at home during lockdowns, some also had to balance remote work with increased domestic responsibilities. A study of Canadian parents found that factors like having more time available and transitioning to remote work may have led to greater involvement of fathers in household and childcare tasks, especially as they became more aware of caregiving needs they previously overlooked. Comparing perceptions of household labor before and during the pandemic, researchers noted a slight move toward a more equal distribution of tasks during the earlier stages of the pandemic. However, research from cultures with more collectivistic values suggests that the gender gap in household labor either persisted or widened during COVID-19. Despite initial shifts seen in some places, the overall trend in these cultures was toward traditional gender roles remaining dominant, with women shouldering a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities.

While factors like work conditions influence fathers’ engagement in childcare, research emphasizes the significant influence of mothers as gatekeepers in father-child relationships. Maternal gatekeeping involves mothers’ preferences and efforts to control fathers’ involvement in household and childcare activities. Mothers may either encourage (gate opening) or discourage (gate closing) fathers’ participation through their attitudes and behaviors. Maternal encouragement of paternal involvement is vital for fostering father-child bonds, while maternal behaviors that restrict father involvement can create barriers. Despite the growing emphasis on the significance of father involvement for children’s healthy development, domestic tasks, including childcare, are still primarily seen as women’s responsibility, ingrained in traditional gender roles.

Our study with 91 Turkish couples with at least one child between 0 and 5 years old showed that mothers spent more time on housework and childcare activities compared to fathers during the second wave of COVID-19, regardless of whether they worked from home or not. While some research suggests that women spend more time on domestic tasks when working from home, our findings suggest that other factors, beyond work contexts, drive the gender disparity in household responsibilities.

In collectivistic cultures like Turkey, certain social roles are deeply ingrained. These roles lead to anxiety about meeting family expectations, even when circumstances allow for redefining parental roles. Despite women’s increasing participation in full-time employment, mothers still prioritize childcare and housework, often to protect their investment in their children and maintain their position in marriage. In other words, women sometimes compensate for being the primary breadwinner by taking on more domestic tasks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave in Turkey, both mothers and fathers spent more time on childcare when both parents worked from home. While mothers spent less time in childcare activities when only fathers worked from home, fathers maintained or increased their work hours. Also, fathers perceived higher levels of maternal gatekeeping than mothers, consistent with previous research in Turkey. This suggests that women’s responsibilities in household and childcare tasks remain consistent, regardless of their employment status. These perceptions were less affected by the fathers’ work context.

Encouraging greater father involvement in childcare and housework is crucial for children’s development and promoting gender equality. Understanding the barriers to father involvement, including maternal attitudes and behaviors, is essential for informing interventions and social policies aimed at promoting more egalitarian family dynamics.

F. Kubra Aytac is a PhD candidate in Psychology at The Ohio State University. Her primary research interests are adult attachment, coparenting, couple relationships, and mental health.

The study discussed in this blog is published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies. I would like to recognize my advisor and co-author, Dr. Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan.

There are two distinct variations of The Talk. There is The Talk about sex and The Talk about racism. Regardless of the variation, Black families are bound to have both discussions with their children. The Talk about sex is the most known of the two discussions as it applies to all racial and ethnic groups, aiming to educate youth about sexual development and provide precautionary lessons to avoid sexually transmitted infections and prevent pregnancy. Parents generally have this discussion with their children at the onset of puberty. In contrast, The Talk about racism is a social and cultural phenomenon that has existed within Black families dating back to the days of chattel slavery. Similar to The Talk about sex, Black families typically have The Talk about race and racism with their children at the early onset of adolescence but may have this discussion with their children sooner due to the adultification and criminalization of Black youth. The Talk is a racial socialization practice that Black parents use to shield their children from the threats and dangers of racism.

The Talk is directly associated with the racial etiquette that was enforced on Black Americans during the days of Jim Crow. During those times, Black families would instruct their children to adhere to Jim Crow laws and social norms, such as stepping off the sidewalk when White men and women were passing and drinking water and using the restroom before leaving home to reduce temptations to use White-only water fountains and restrooms while away from home. Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, gave him The Talk prior to his trip to Money, Mississippi by warning him to follow the racial etiquette of the South to ensure his safe return to Chicago. Tragically, Till would not return alive. The prevalence of racism and incidents of racialized violence such as the murders of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ahmaud Arbery, Jordan Davis and countless others has maintained the relevance of The Talk.

As the world grappled with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it also witnessed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin, an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The video footage of Floyd’s murder went viral, sparking widespread discourse surrounding race and racism, leading to massive protest and what many perceived to be a racial awakening. One of the many discussions focused on The Talk and how Black parents discussed racism and safety. Despite The Talk being a practice that Black parents have used dating back to the days of American chattel slavery and it becoming a discussion that has filtered its way into the homes of the general public, there still remains few scholarship that explicitly explore The Talk.

            As a family and fatherhood scholar with a particular interest in Black fatherhood, I aimed to explore the perspectives and lessons that Black fathers instilled in their children when having The Talk. I chose to use a modified version of photovoice that allowed my participants to use their cell phones and photos found on the internet. What I found was that The Talk was a practice that was a practice that involved immediate family members, mentors, and other community members.

The fathers reported The Talk being an emotional discussion for both them and their children, and often initiated after an incident of experienced racism. Interestingly, all the fathers in the study shared experiencing some form of racism in elementary school, mirroring the experiences of their own children. One of the participants shared the following about having The Talk with his sons:

“There’s a range of emotions for me, you know, it’s always an emotional conversation because you start to question your skills as a father, because now I have to have this conversation and I’ve sworn my life to protect you.”

It was also found that cell phone use and social media influenced exposure to racism and how soon the fathers had The Talk with their children. One of the fathers discussed his children seeing and hearing about protest and the murder of George Floyd by way of social media and the news. He disclosed the following about his experience:

“I’ve always been a little apprehensive about these topics. Because there’s a part of me… that just don’t want to take the innocence away from the kids. Like, you want them to still be kids… [My eldest daughter] is so innocent and emotional. She would literally go out the door and walk with the weight of the world on her shoulder because she’s so caring of other people no matter the color of your skin.”

The fathers in the study expressed including lectures about driving while Black (DWB), equality, use of the N word, navigating racism, police encounters, code switching, activism, history, and what it means to be Black. However, The Talk that these fathers provided varied based on the gender of their children. The lessons that the fathers taught their sons were centered around safety and protection, while the lessons for their daughters focused on exceptionalism and beauty, such as hair and complexion.

There were a few participants that expressed gratitude at the end of the study. One of the participants shared:

“I appreciate all the comments. Man, I’m sitting here full. I feel like I’ve gone to church. I want to thank you for this. This has really been inspirational. It’s been insightful, and it has been powerful. And I want to thank you thank all of you for allowing me to be a part of this today.”

The exploration of The Talk and the involvement of Black fathers in such practice is important to further explore, as both areas are limited in existing research. Additional research should examine how men and women of other racial and ethnic groups have discussion surrounding race and racism with their children. Parents of all genders, racial, and ethnic groups can find resources on how to discuss race with their children by visiting the American Psychological Association’s website.

Conial Caldwell, Jr. is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He can be reached at ccald@umbc.edu. You can also follow him on Instagram at @conial_c and LinkedIn @Conial Caldwell, Jr.