What does it mean for survivors of the Shoah and their children to be “at home” with the Holocaust? Of course, this question does not suggest that survivor-families lived comfortably with or found a sense of refuge in the memories, stories, or traumas from the Holocaust post-1945. For survivors and their children, those known as the second generation, this was most certainly not the case; these two groups, affected both directly and indirectly, were not uncommonly traumatized by the murderous events that took place during Hitler’s reign between 1933 and 1945. This question of being “at home” with the Holocaust instead refers to how the memories, stories, and traumas from the Shoah took up residence, abided with, and haunted survivors and their children alike in their homes for years to come. For both groups, their domestic lives were in significant ways shaped by the Holocaust; it came home with them, so to speak, darkly coloring how they interacted with and inhabited their domiciles. Being at home with the Holocaust thus denotes a state of domestic existence that was (and is) imbued with the enduring legacy of the Nazi regime.

My new book, At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers University Press, 2025), examines the relationship between intergenerational trauma and domestic space, focusing on how Holocaust survivors’ homes became extensions of their traumatized psyches that their children “inhabited.” Analyzing second-generation (and, to a lesser extent, third-generation) Holocaust literature—such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Sonia Pilcer’s The Holocaust Kid, Elizabeth Rosner’s The Speed of Light, and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated—as well as oral histories of children of survivors, my research reveals how the material conditions of survivor-family homes, along with household practices and belongings, rendered these homes as spaces of traumatic transference. As survivors’ traumas became imbued in the very space of the domestic, their homes functioned as material archives of their Holocaust pasts, creating environments that, not uncommonly, second-handedly wounded their children. As survivor-family homes were imaginatively transformed by survivors’ children into the sites of their parents’ traumas, like concentration camps and ghettos, their homes catalyzed the transmission of these traumas.

At Home with the Holocaust’s examination of the literature and oral histories of children of survivors gives voice to a number of interrelated themes and phenomena, including how members of the second generation’s relationships to their homes reveal their relationships to themselves, their parents, and the Holocaust; how their homes and material belongings contained therein spatialize, temporalize, express, and shape their inherited traumas; how survivor-family homes paradigmatically shape subsequent domestic spaces (along with space and place in general); how the home, often in complex ways, stands for the self in second-generation Holocaust literature and oral history; and how notions of home(lands) are complicated for descendants of survivors. An exploration of survivor-family homes as represented and narrated by members of the second generation moreover sheds light on how the affective impact of survivors’ memories—as expressed in their verbal and nonverbal communication—manifest, invade, and permeate their and their children’s domestic lives. It is these emotional intensities that radiate from survivors and are perceived by their children as both parties navigate time and space in their family homes. Second-generation authors and narrators give expression to this affective transmission, particularly in and through their narratives about their homes.

But although survivor-family homes are markers of haunted pasts, they are also markers of separation from those pasts—those which symbolize a severing of continuity. They stand for new starts, New-World beginnings, ruptures from the Old World, and archival containers of that which occurred after the catastrophic years of 1933–1945. Holding within them both traumatic pasts and the severing of those pasts, survivor-family homes represent the second-generation paradox: They are not only intimately connected to and gripped by the past, but they are also emphatically distant from the Shoah. This proximity and distance—this simultaneous connection and disconnection from the Holocaust—defines many second-generation lived experiences, certainly within the home but also, no doubt, without.

Throughout the literary representations of survivor-family homes and homelands analyzed in At Home with the Holocaust, along with selected oral-history discussions of domestic space, it becomes clear how space speaks. As survivors’ traumas and experiences of the Holocaust were imbued in their homes, such traumas and experiences were expressed in and by the emotional space of the second generation’s childhood and adulthood homes. Surrounded by their parents’ Holocaust pasts that found emotional, material, and spatial expression in their domestic milieus, children of survivors became aware of and subject to their inherited traumas of the Holocaust. Survivor-family homes were and are integral actants that emotionally speak to the second generation about their parents’ Holocaust experiences. This specific sort of speaking—this type of emotional, material, and spatial communication—typified and, in many cases, continues to typify many survivor-family homes, wherein the second generation have found themselves, in complicated and complex ways, at home with the Holocaust.

Lucas F. W. Wilson is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga and was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary. He is the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy (JKP Books, 20205), and he is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers University Press, 2025), which received the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. He is also the co-editor of Emerging Trends in Third-Generation Holocaust Literature (Lexington Books, 2023). His public-facing writing has appeared in The Advocate, Queerty, LGBTQ Nation, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. He is currently working on an edited collection about queer experiences at Christian colleges, universities, and seminaries. You can follow him on Twitter (@wilson_fw), Instagram and Threads (@lukeslamdunkwilson), and Bluesky (@lukeslamdunkwilson.bsky.social).

On International Women’s Day, as we celebrate the achievements and contributions of women worldwide, it’s also a time to reflect on the silent, unpaid work many women do every day—relational management. This involves managing not just their own emotions but also anticipating, soothing, and supporting their partners’ emotional needs. It’s a burden too often seen as “natural,” but it’s time to acknowledge it and work toward balancing the load.

If you’ve ever had to remind your partner to call his mom, notice his bad mood before he does, or listen to him unload about his day while silently setting your own emotions aside, congratulations, you’re familiar with relational management. It’s a job you probably didn’t apply for but inherited thanks to social norms, gender expectations, and a culture that grooms women to take on the emotional heavy lifting in relationships.

What is relational management? I coined the term to describe the work women do in heterosexual relationships to help their partners manage their emotional lives. It involves actions like checking in on his feelings, soothing his bad days, and providing the praise and validation he craves.  While men often see this as a natural part of relationships, women often feel the weight of constantly being responsible for their partner’s emotional needs.

The Burden of Relational Management

Let’s be clear: relational management isn’t about managing your own emotions. It’s about taking responsibility for someone else’s emotional well-being. It’s about noticing when they need support, even if they don’t ask for it, and they often don’t. Women have been socialized to intuit what their partners need emotionally and deliver it seamlessly, whether it’s offering a pep talk after a bad day or absorbing their partner’s frustration so he can decompress. Over time, this constant vigilance can become exhausting.

Why do women end up doing this work? Because society positions them as emotional caretakers from a young age. Little girls are praised for being nurturing and empathetic, while boys are told to toughen up and suppress their emotions. As a result of that socialization and insistence that men not express their emotions, by adulthood, many men lack the tools to process their feelings independently, and women are left to fill the gap. It’s no wonder relational management becomes an unspoken requirement in many marriages.

What Happens When Women Stop?

When women withdraw from relational management, it often causes tension in the relationship. Men may interpret this as a sign that their partner no longer cares about them, even if the withdrawal is an act of self-preservation. In my research, men frequently expressed frustration when their partners stopped checking in on their emotional well-being or offering validation. They felt unseen, undervalued, and hurt, but didn’t recognize their own role in creating that dynamic–because they expected their wives to provide relational management as part of their role of “wife.” In my research, when men felt their wives were no longer providing the emotional attention they needed, they often sought it elsewhere through affairs. They turned to outside partners to get the support, validation, and emotional connection they believed their wives had withdrawn. This outsourcing of emotional care highlights how deeply ingrained the expectation is for women to provide relational management–and how destabilizing it can be when that expectation isn’t met.

One man in my study described his primary partner as “self-absorbed” because she no longer asked about his bad days. But here’s the catch: he never told her he needed that support. Instead, he expected her to notice on her own, a common expectation rooted in traditional gender roles. Women are supposed to just know when something is wrong, right? Wrong. This expectation burdens women with the responsibility of being mind-readers, an impossible task that leads to resentment and burnout.

The Cost of Gendered Expectations

This isn’t just a personal issue. It’s rooted in systemic gender norms that dictate who should take on emotional caretaking. U.S. cultural norms have long positioned women as emotional caregivers, whether within families or romantic relationships. The result is an imbalance where women carry the weight of ensuring their partner’s emotional stability while men often take this labor for granted. Over time, this creates cycles of frustration for both partners.

For women, constantly performing relational management can lead to burnout and a sense of being undervalued. For men, the expectation that their emotional needs will be met without communication stunts their emotional growth and places their self-worth in the hands of someone else. Both outcomes can damage relationships.

How to Share the Load

1. Acknowledge the Work: Talk openly about the emotional tasks each partner is doing. Many men don’t realize how much relational management their partner handles until it’s pointed out. Men typically don’t recognize relational management as work. They simply see it as something a woman does when she cares about you.
2. Share the Responsibility: Both partners should be encouraged to take turns checking in on each other’s emotional well-being and creating a system where emotional care is not one-sided. This could include setting aside regular time to connect or alternating who initiates conversations about feelings.
3. Address the Stigma Around Mental Health Help: Encourage open discussions about mental health without shame. Men often avoid seeking help because of societal stigma, but therapy, support groups, and emotional resources should be normalized as part of maintaining well-being, just like physical health.
4. Encourage Emotional Growth: Men need space to develop their own emotional coping mechanisms. Encourage them to seek support outside the relationship, whether through friends, family, or therapy.
5. Socialize Boys and Young Men Differently: We need to start teaching boys from a young age that emotions are not a weakness and that it’s normal and healthy to express and manage them. By providing boys with tools like emotional literacy, conflict resolution, and self-awareness, we give them a foundation for healthier relationships in adulthood.

Why This Matters

Relational management isn’t just a quirk of modern relationships. It’s a reflection of deeply ingrained gender norms. As long as we continue to socialize boys to suppress their emotions and girls to nurture everyone else’s, this imbalance will persist. But change is possible. By challenging these traditional roles and fostering emotional equality, couples can create partnerships that thrive on mutual support, not one-sided labor.

Relational management reflects a larger societal issue. One that leaves women drained and men without essential emotional tools. We must empower both men and women to recognize and value relational management as a shared responsibility. By doing so, we create healthier relationships where neither partner feels overwhelmed or neglected.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: What Practitioners can teach Everyone about Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Reprinted from Scholars Strategy Network

The COVID-19 pandemic upended American lives in many ways. Schools and offices closed; childcare centers shut down; many workers suddenly found themselves working at home while others had to decrease their hours or lost their jobs entirely; and many families were unable to leave their homes for months, producing isolation from friends and other relatives. While devastating in many ways, this unprecedented situation also provided an opportunity for heterosexual couples to examine their household dynamics and rearrange their daily patterns. 

Gender continued to provide an organizing framework for how most couples divided domestic labor. Women continued to, on average, do more domestic work—including cooking, cleaning, mental labor, and childcare related tasks—than their male partners. Despite this general trend, our study made it possible to examine what factors prompted some couples to divide household labor more equitably and what prevented other couples from doing so. 

Pandemic Workplace Changes & the Division of Domestic Labor 

Changes in workplace policies during the pandemic mattered because they allowed couples who desired more egalitarian partnerships to create them. Our study found that major shifts in the organization of work and caregiving institutions—such as the rise of remote work and the move of schooling and caregiving into the home–did not by themselves reduce inequality in domestic labor for most parents. While most of our participants were concerned that the closure of both day care centers and schools increased the burden of caregiving, only those who reported that both members of the couple held egalitarian aspirations responded to these constraints by creating more egalitarian relationships. 

Among the small number—just 10 percent in our study—who were able to enact a preference for more equal sharing, changes such as shifting to working at home or a different work schedule, combined with preexisting feminist beliefs, prompted a more equitable division of labor. Since their prior workplace arrangements and schedules had prevented them previously from achieving more equitable partnership, this shift in the organization of work allowed them to enact a set of practices that more closely resembled their preferences. Had the pandemic not allowed a convergence between their desires and the organization of their jobs, a move toward more egalitarian practices would likely not have occurred.

The Persistence of Unequal Burdens

The persistence of beliefs that women should take primary responsibility for caregiving and housework prevented most families from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by working more flexibly from home. When a relationship relied on a traditional view about the proper allocation of domestic labor, parents were unlikely to report a reallocation in their work or caregiving demands. Indeed, even when mothers espoused an egalitarian view, a partner’s reluctance prevented a move toward equality. Such women  noted that their partners lacked the “initiative” to take on additional tasks and expressed frustration that the work of organizing caregiving and domestic work remained invisible even when their partners were increased their time at home. Despite pandemic-related shifts that moved both work and caregiving in the home, these parents were unable to veer away from arrangements that had taken root long before the pandemic began.

Our analysis of the pandemic experience suggests that reducing gender inequality within families depends not only on transforming the organization of work and caregiving—specifically creating greater workplace flexibility for all parents—but also on supporting norms that stress the importance of equal sharing in relationships.  

Policy Recommendations

Now that most families depend on the earnings of breadwinning women, achieving fairer and most satisfying work and family arrangements depends on melding supportive institutional practices with ideological commitments that together reinforce egalitarian principles. 

To achieve this end, we suggest four policy interventions: 

• Legislation that guarantees the right to flexible work arrangements would promote organizational changes that permit couples to adopt more egalitarian practices
• Expanding childcare support would enable parents to better balance work and caregiving responsibilities
• Comprehensive family leave policies for all parents, including fathers, would strengthen norms that stress the importance of equal parental involvement
• Continued promotion of the need for women’s rights contributes to organizational and normative changes that increase the possibilities for gender egalitarian partnerships

Golda Kaplan is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at New York University. Follow them on Twitter @golda_kap

Michelle Cera is a PhD Candidate in Sociology, New York University. Follow them on Twitter @michellejcera

Barbara J. Risman is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Follow them on Twitter @bjrisman

Kathleen Gerson is a Collegiate Professor of Sociology at New York University. Follow them on Twitter @KathleenGerson

When young Americans leave home to build their own lives, many are also leaving behind their family’s religious traditions—but not necessarily their spirituality. Our decade-long study reveals that as young adults establish independent identities, many break free from religious institutions while crafting more personalized spiritual lives that better align with their evolving values about family, relationships, and individual expression.

Religious Change in Early Adulthood

The religious landscape is dramatically shifting. The proportion of religious “nones” has grown from just one in twenty to more than one in four Americans in just a few decades. But beneath these numbers lies a deeper story: as young people transition into adulthood and separate from their families of origin, they often reconsider inherited religious practices and especially institutions.

This transformation happens during a crucial developmental period. Whether they attend college or enter the workforce, many young adults experience a similar religious trajectory as they establish independent identities. They’re not simply drifting from faith—they’re actively choosing spiritual paths that feel authentic to their emerging adult selves.

When Family Religious Socialization Backfires

Interestingly, those raised in the most religious households often show the steepest declines in institutional involvement. The very intensity of religious upbringing can sometimes plant the seeds of later disaffiliation.

Chris, who grew up in a devout Catholic family in rural Pennsylvania, attended church weekly throughout childhood. By his twenties, he had distanced himself from the institution while maintaining personal faith. “I was tired of going to church and hearing about politics,” he explained. “For a church that says they’re accepting, we pride ourselves on being holier than thou.”

Despite leaving the institutional church, Chris maintained a belief in something more, showing how religious disaffiliation doesn’t necessarily mean secular materialism. This pattern of rejecting institutions while preserving at least some elements of personal spirituality appeared repeatedly in our interviews.

The stories of the young people we followed illustrate how rigid religious socialization can sometimes produce the opposite effect parents intend. Young adults often seek spiritual paths that honor both their upbringing and their evolving identities—even when that means leaving behind family religious traditions.

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Transformation

The cohort we followed from adolescence into adulthood from 2003 to 2013 came of age during a period of rapid change in attitudes toward LGBTQ+ rights, culminating in the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage. This shift profoundly influenced how many young people viewed religious institutions.

Our data shows that supporters of same-sex marriage disaffiliated from religious institutions much faster those who opposed it. For many, the perceived conflict between institutional religion and their deeply-held values about inclusion and equality became simply untenable.

Daniela’s experience exemplifies this tension. When she joined her high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, she encountered confusion from her religious peers: “When someone found out I was in the GSA, they were like, ‘But you go to church,'” she recalled. “And I’m like, ‘I’m a Christian who thinks it’s okay [to be gay]… I don’t see a contradiction.'” Despite her initial attempts to reconcile these perspectives, Daniela eventually left organized religion altogether, like many others who supported same-sex marriage.

Similarly, Claude, a Methodist from South Carolina, struggled with his church’s stance on sexuality. After losing a close friend to an anti-gay hate crime, his religious participation declined significantly. “The Bible says being gay is wrong, but I don’t personally believe that,” he reflected. “You’re born how you are.” For Claude and many others, religious institutions’ positions on sexuality directly contradicted their lived experiences and deepest values.

Reimagining Family Values

The term “family values” has often been associated with traditional religious perspectives on marriage, gender roles, and sexuality. But young Americans are redefining family values to emphasize authenticity, inclusivity, and personal fulfillment over institutional rules.

This shift mirrors broader changes in the family as an institution. Just as Americans increasingly form families outside traditional pathways, they’re crafting spiritual lives outside traditional religious institutions. The same values driving both transformations: authenticity, self-determination, and inclusivity. Similar to how young people are reimagining family as an institution especially as it relates to patriarchy and heteronormativity, they are doing the same thing with religion.

Even during this reimagining they’re seeking to keep, and amplify, love as a core element in both family and in religion. As one participant put it: “I still really believe in the core beliefs, in God… living in a way that pleases God is important. And that to me is—beyond just following rules—is a way to show that you love God. But also by sharing love, and being a servant to people around you.”

Supporting Authentic Faith and Family Development

For parents hoping to pass down religious traditions, these findings suggest considering not just what beliefs they transmit, but how they do so. Religious socialization that leaves room for questioning and personal interpretation may foster more lasting connections to faith than rigid approaches demanding unquestioning acceptance.

Faith communities seeking to reach younger generations might consider creating spaces that honor both tradition and individual authenticity, the golden rule and its implementation—which, for emerging generations, includes considering issues like LGBTQ+ inclusion and women’s equality.

This DIY approach to spirituality reflects broader shifts in how Americans approach all institutions, from marriage to work to education. The challenge—and opportunity—is creating new forms of family and community that support individual flourishing while still providing the belonging and connection that humans fundamentally need.

Landon Schnabel is Associate Professor of Sociology at Cornell University, where they study religion, gender, sexuality, and social change. Their forthcoming book with Oxford University Press is titled Is Faith Feminine: What Americans Really Think About Gender and Religion. Follow them on Bluesky or Twitter @LandonSchnabel.

Brigid Schulte works at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change to ensure that all people have the opportunity to life a rich, full and wholehearted life. She’s an award-winning journalist, think tank program director, keynote speaker and author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life andthe New York Times bestselling book on time pressure, gender and modern life, Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time. She was an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine and was part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She serves as the director of the Better Life Lab at New America, using the power of story to reimagine better work, family, gender, and care. She hosts the Better Life Lab podcast on Slate. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Guardian, Time, Slate, U.S. News & World Report, New York Magazine, Fast Company, CNN, and many others. She is a frequent television, radio and podcast guest and has been quoted in numerous media outlets. You can find out more about her on website.

Haley Swenson is a research fellow for the Better Life Lab. Swenson was the deputy director of the Better Life Lab from 2020 to 2022. Swenson directed major research projects for the Lab, and led the team’s editorial and impact strategy. Swenson has also directed multiple reporting grants and story series, editing and writing pieces that have landed in the Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, and at Slate. She is an expert on the relationship between gender inequality at work and gender inequality at home, as well as their intersections with racial and economic injustice. With Brigid Schulte, she helped create and manage BLLx, a distillation of research-based experiments on better sharing the work of family and home life. Swenson earned an MA and a PhD in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from The Ohio State University. Her dissertation was titled Reproducing Inequality: Cooking, Cleaning, and Caring in the Austerity Age. Swenson came to New America in 2017 as an ACLS/Mellon Public Fellow and edited the Better Life Lab at Slate. She and her family live in Salt Lake City. You can find out more about her on her website.
Here, I ask them about their new study, A Glimpse of Stability: The Impact of Pandemic Aid on Families in Poverty.

AMW: In your recent study, A Glimpse of Stability, how did the pandemic-era government relief packages, such as rental assistance and expanded Child Tax Credits, directly impact family financial stability during the pandemic?

Brigid: When you think back to 2020 and the early days of the pandemic, with a deadly novel virus spreading quickly and leaving people sick or dead in its wake, it was a terrible time for families. Child cares and schools shut down. Businesses closed or went out of business. At one point, 20 million people were unemployed. And no one knew when it would end. Economists were predicting a “financial apocalypse” that would send millions of families spiraling into poverty and hardship. Instead, Congress and the first Trump administration and later the Biden administration responded with a robust set of public policies and investments — the largest outside of wartime — that really worked to make people’s lives better. Economists found that families’  financial well-being actually improved, even in such a turbulent and unstable time.

In our work, spending more than two years intensively listening to families living in poverty or on low wages across the country, what became clear is that a handful of these policies made a real difference.

• Mortgage forbearance, rental assistance and eviction moratoriums kept families in their homes rather than out on the streets, which is critical for stability, especially for healthy child development.
• Giving families cash without all the usual punitive rules restrictions (you can’t buy diapers with food and nutrition benefits, for instance) made an enormous difference. The expanded Child Tax Credit, for instance, brought the U.S. child poverty rate down to its lowest recorded level. That and stimulus payments empowered families to make their own choices about what they needed. Research shows families spent most of the cash on food, housing, basic necessities and paying off debt.
• Expanding access to food and health care was a life saver for many families.
• Expanding unemployment also made a huge difference keeping families afloat as they sought work.

What we found lacking, however, was real investment in child care. Families across the socio-economic spectrum really struggled to work and pay bills without stable child care. And though Congress did infuse some funding to keep the child care system afloat, it wasn’t enough. The system was underfunded and dysfunctional to start with. One single parent, a nurse, wasn’t able to work and care for her four children at the same time, and wound up being evicted several times, despite the moratorium, and spiraled into poverty.

Haley: I just want to add one thing here. The pandemic was a catastrophe for many families. One case study I wrote was of Chantel Valdez’s family in Blanding, Utah. She and her two children lost their main support network, two elders, Grandma Mary and Uncle George, who loved them and cared for them. They both passed away from COVID in 2020. There were some pandemic losses that can never be undone and never be made up for. But at least while they grieved and recovered over the next year, Chantel continued to receive income because she qualified for unemployment after the schools she worked for closed. They had good, wholesome food, because of SNAP. They had safe and stable housing, because of emergency rental assistance. They were able to access mental health services because they had access to Medicaid for the first time.

Think about any family going through the worst things that have ever happened to them, harder experiences than they could ever imagine, all at once. For a brief moment during the pandemic, our society and both political parties decided families shouldn’t have to cope with all that on their own. It was a real moment of crisis for so many families. I can’t help but think about how many other crises families encounter every day, and because it’s no longer considered a public health crisis, they are, effectively, on their own.

AMW: In your experience, how did the narratives surrounding poverty shift during the pandemic, and what role did government assistance play in changing those narratives?

Brigid: It’s so interesting how the narrative of “deservingness” shifted during the pandemic. You heard from conservative lawmakers that they’d support family-supportive policies and investments because people were out of work “through no fault of their own.” The implication is that, outside the pandemic, if people live in poverty it must be their own fault?

I think, like how the Great Depression began to shift mindsets about the powerful role public policy and investments can make in making all people’s lives better, we began to see some shifting. That policymakers can choose to invest tax dollars to create an economy that works for all people and where all families can thrive.

But, as the new Trump administration and GOP-led Congress seeks to decimate the civil service and slash family-supportive policies, you see those hardened “deservingness” narratives arise again. On X, the social media platform Elon Musk owns, the billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE leader, called people who rely on public aid “parasites.” Other GOP leaders want to put work requirements for anyone receiving public support.

All of that ignores reality: One in three Americans rely on at least one of 10 public support programs. Unlike the false and racist stereotype of “welfare queens,” more than 40 percent of those who receive public benefits, by far the majority, are White. And one Government Accountability study found that the majority of those who receive food or health care public assistance, are already working full-time. Those that aren’t working are children, the elderly or those with disabilities.

So the real story is not that people in poverty aren’t working hard enough. The real story is that business and political leaders have allowed an economy that creates jobs that don’t pay enough to support people’s lives.

We also produced some creative multimedia products designed to dispel these persistent yet false narratives and help people better understand the complexity of living a life in poverty, and all the barriers that can get in the way of just trying to get to the end of the day:

A photo story, Why Cash Matters, chronicles a day in the life of the Johnson family. Like 52 million households, about 41 percent of all households, the Johnson’s make too much to qualify for public support, but not enough to live on. We show how an ongoing $500 a month Guaranteed Basic Income pilot, started with federal American Rescue Plan Act funds, and continued by the city of Alexandria, Virginia, has been a lifeline for them.

We also created a choice-based interactive experience or game, “something else came up.”  Readers/players are confronted with the same set of choices that one of our case study participants, Kiarica Schields, faced one morning trying to get her son off to child care in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The goal was to give people more insight into her experiences, and explore the widespread impacts of poverty and systemic barriers to family well-being. As we explain in an accompanying blogpost, Why did a think tank make a text-based game, “while the choices appear abundant, your environment and material circumstances create seemingly infinite barriers. Navigating around these barriers is time-consuming and reduces access to opportunities to build a better life.”[1] 

AMW: What lessons do you think policymakers can take away from this moment, particularly regarding how support programs could be structured to help families in the long term, beyond the pandemic?

Brigid: The real lesson here goes to the heart of what has been a widening ideological and political gap over the past several decades: the role of government. Conservatives argue that the federal government should be small, businesses unregulated, and that markets should be allowed to run free. But what the pandemic experience showed is that the federal government can and must play an enormously important role in using tax dollars wisely, making investments, setting policies and reasonable regulatory guardrails to ensure the health, wellbeing and quality of life of all people, families, communities and the economy.

Haley: If you look back to 2020 and the policies that followed the start of the pandemic, they showed us unequivocally that government and public funding can make people’s lives better. The stories research participants so generously shared with us show that to be true, but those policies were time-capped and did not last long enough for some families. We need robust policies serving whole families with long-term funding, that don’t set arbitrary limits on support or require them to jump through bureaucratic hoops. I think the key to achieving that is to start by believing these families matter and that they deserve our collective support.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: What Practitioners can teach Everyone about Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Report

A briefing paper prepared by Jeff Hayes, Women’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor^[1],  and H. Elizabeth Peters, Urban Institute, for the Council on Contemporary Families symposium The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Gender Equality (PDF).

Many workers will provide care for a newborn or for a family member with a serious illness and will experience the challenges of trying to manage the competing responsibilities of working and caregiving. Indeed, increases in the labor force participation of women, the increasing number of single parent families (and families where the female is the primary breadwinner), and changes in the nature of work (e.g., the 24/7 economy) have contributed to greater work-family conflict. The consequences of managing these dual responsibilities are also unequally experienced across gender, race/ethnicity, age, and socio-economic status. These challenges were exacerbated when the COVID pandemic severely limited the availability of the formal care infrastructure (e.g., childcare and school), and families had to increase their caregiving activities.  Policy makers and employers have attempted to support working caregivers by developing policies such as paid family leave and paid sick leave – including increased access to paid leave during COVID – but access to these supports are not equally distributed.

Some employers provide paid leave as part of an employee benefit package. The proportion of workers who have access to employer-provided paid parental or family leave varies across different surveys. The National Compensation Survey tends to report the lowest numbers (24% of private industry workers with access to paid family leave in 2022) but a greater percentage of workers in other surveys of workers report being able to take paid leave  for family and medical reasons These types of benefits increased early in the pandemic, declined in the second and third years of the pandemic, and have started to increase again in 2023. But, they are still more likely to be available to those who work full-time, have high wages, and are highly educated.

For more than 30 years, most employees have been protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) when taking leave from work to care for themselves, for a new child, or for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent. FMLA provides the right to job-protected, unpaid time off to eligible employees. While FMLA was a major first step in public leave benefits in 1993, FMLA’s protections are not equally available to all workers – only 56% of employees are eligible – and lack of pay puts leave taking out of reach for many. Yet, these protections are crucial for employees and working families. One in five Black (21%) and Hispanic (20%) employees without FMLA protections report that taking family and medical leave resulted in losing their job – higher than reported by those covered under the FMLA (6% and 16%, respectively).

To address disparities in access to FMLA and lack of paid family leave more generally, since 2002 fourteen states, including the District of Columbia,  have adopted public policies that provide paid family and medical leave benefits when workers need time off for covered purposes. These state policies also cover a broader set of workers than the FMLA by including those working in smaller businesses and those with shorter work experience. The primary inequality in these laws relates to geography—only workers living in these states are covered.

One other type of inequality relates to differences in access to paid leave for new parents compared to access to paid leave for family caregiving. Until recently, most of the attention and research on paid leave focused on new parents; yet as the population continues to age, the need for eldercare and for supporting those who provide that care will only continue to increase. There is a similar disparity in access to paid leave for eldercare providers compared to parental leave. One study shows that 53 percent of fulltime workers report that they have access to paid leave for parental leave versus only 42 percent reporting access to paid leave for elder care of other types of family caregiving, and these disparities have been corroborated in other studies as well.  Studies have also found that the take-up rate for family care benefits is also much lower than for parental care, and that some of this difference has been attributed to a lack of awareness about these types of benefits. This discrepancy in availability between parental and family paid leave is also seen across OECD countries: while 37 countries provide paid leave for new mothers only 32 provide paid leave to new fathers. For family care, 35 provide paid leave to parents caring for children with health needs and only 25 provide paid leave for caregivers of a family member who is not a child. Among the OECD countries that do have family caregiving leave, that leave is often less generous than what is available for new parents.

The benefits of paid family and medical leave are supported by research on existing state programs as well as international evidence. Positive outcomes for paid parental leave include two-generational benefits from improved birthweight outcomes, increased breastfeeding, and lower infant mortality. The introduction of paid family leave in California led to more fathers taking leave, and taking longer leaves, both of which can have long-term impacts on father involvement. For those with aging parents or spouses in poor health, living in a state with paid family leave increases labor market attachment as well as an increased likelihood of being a working caregiver and a decline in reports of being depressed or in poor health. Moreover, evidence shows that paid family leave programs can help reduce inequality in access to leave. Indeed, simulation models suggest that a public program does increase paid leave benefits for lower wage workers and lower income families. Data for Washington, the first combined paid family and medical leave program to provide benefits contemporaneously, shows that benefits from the state program are disproportionately reaching women and workers of color needing medical or family leaves.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made the overall lack of support (and the disparities in that support) for working parents and family caregivers impossible to ignore. Workers needed paid leave when they were sick with COVID, when they were required to quarantine after being exposed to COVID, or when they needed to provide care for sick children or family members, or provide care when schools or child care providers were closed. The US federal government responded to this crisis by passing the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which required certain employers to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. The FFCRA broadened the allowable reasons for taking paid leave to include not only workers’ own health needs, but also to meet family caregiving needs from both illness and mitigation efforts such as school and child care closures. However, exemptions in the FFCRA meant millions of workers were not covered. The policy was only in place temporarily and expired on December 31, 2020. Data on take up of the FFCRA benefits provided as tax credits to employers is sparse, but GAO has reported that employers’ low awareness or understanding and lack of administrative report for accessing credits may have reduced usage of the credit based on interviews with business representatives and payroll or tax professionals.

In addition to the federal COVID paid leave response, 10 states and 22 cities and counties enacted paid sick leave policies that exceeded FFCRA requirements. Examples of these extensions included allowing paid leave to be used to obtain a vaccination, extending eligibility to gig workers, and covering leave for those who were not actively sick, but who had been exposed to COVID and needed to quarantine.  Many of these responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have since expired, but several states explicitly recognized the possibility of future health public health emergencies, and put in place policies that would provide additional paid leave supports when such public health emergencies were announced.

The COVID-19 pandemic served to highlight the challenges that families face in managing the dual responsibilities of work and caregiving, and served as a warning of how unanticipated events such as a public health emergency could completely undo the plans that families had developed for addressing such challenges. Research has documented the importance of paid leave in reducing the spread of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic. Emergency policies were able to reach lower-wage service workers, reduce inequality in access to leave, and increase vaccination rates including among socially vulnerable populations. A great deal of suffering and lives might have been saved if such policies had been in place and familiar to workers at the start of the pandemic. Given the ongoing circulation of new variants and the threat of what a next virus might bring, COVID-19 strengthened the case for a national paid leave policy to protect workers and their families in health emergencies. Such a program should be broad, comprehensive, progressive, and responsibly financed. Based on existing state-level policies, a national policy should cover a wide range of family needs, provide leave for care needs across family types, provide adequate benefits to underpin family security, and protect jobs and workers from any retaliation for taking leave. It should also be structured to ensure that workers who need it most — low-income workers, workers of color, and other marginalized groups — can use it. This will require thoughtful design, outreach, and administration.

About the Authors

Jeff Hayes is a Survey Statistician with the U.S. Department of Labor Women’s Bureau. He can be reached at jeffrey.a.hayes@gmail.com.

H. Elizabeth Peters is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington DC and a Professor Emerita in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. She can be reached at epeters@urban.org.

Across the United States, thousands of mothers of newborns are fighting a common enemy: postpartum depression. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control found that 23% of pregnancy-related deaths stemmed from worsened mental health conditions, making them the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths. Postpartum depression is so much more than a phenomenon known as the “baby blues.” The American Psychiatric Association classifies the “baby blues” as lasting one to two weeks with symptoms of restlessness, irritability, anxiety, and crying for no reason. While the “baby blues” typically resolve itself, postpartum depression takes professional intervention to improve the mother’s mental health. This information is especially prevalent given the rise in postpartum depression diagnoses and how postpartum depression affects some demographics of mothers more than others.

In a recently published study, a research team led by Khadka explored trends regarding postpartum depression, or PPD, over the past ten years, emphasizing trends between demographics of race, ethnicity, and body mass index. Analyzing 442,308 pregnancies occurring from 2010 through 2021 with still- and live births occurring at least 20 weeks into gestation, the researchers give critical results into staggering trends in diagnoses and patients with postpartum depression. Here is what the researchers found.

Startling General Trends

Of the 442,308 individuals included in the study, 61,556, or 13.9%, were diagnosed with postpartum depression, prescribed antidepressants within a year of childbirth, or both. Rates of postpartum depression increased nearly 10% (from 9.4 to 19.0%) over the ten years of the study. 

Several distinctions appeared when comparing the individuals diagnosed with postpartum depression and those without diagnoses. When compared to those without postpartum depression, those diagnosed were likely to be older mothers, ranging in age from 30 to 40. Diagnosed individuals had a higher likelihood of being non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black. This group was found more likely to have not given birth for the first time and showed higher rates of obesity. Individuals with postpartum depression were also found to be more likely to smoke or consume alcohol at some point during their pregnancy. The distinctions of age, consumption of alcohol or smoking, and body mass are particularly interesting, as they could all contribute to additional physical stress on the pregnant body. 

Disproportionately Affected Races & Ethnicities

While rates of postpartum depression increased for all ethnicities and races from 2010 to 2021, some groups had a greater likelihood of being diagnosed than others. Relative to their population size, individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander descent saw the highest increase in postpartum depression in the ten years, with diagnoses increasing 10.2%. Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic individuals saw the second and third most increases relative to their populations in the study, with diagnoses increasing by 12.8% and 9.9% among the respective groups. Those belonging to multiple ethnic and race groups (including Native Americans and Alaska Natives) saw an increase of 7.8% and non-Hispanic White individuals saw an increase of 8.3% relative to their populations. The largest overall increases were seen in Asian and Pacific Islander participants and non-Hispanic Black participants, with the former seeing a 280% increase and the latter seeing a 140% increase. 

Body Mass Index: Playing a Factor

The body mass index (BMI) of an individual also plays a factor in the likelihood of a postpartum depression diagnosis. Individuals across all five BMI classifications (underweight, normal weight, overweight, class I obesity, and class II/III obesity) saw an increase in diagnoses of postpartum depression. Similarly to the data on races and ethnicities, specific BMI groups saw an increase in diagnoses of postpartum depression. Individuals classified as being “obese” (class I BMI) or “morbidly obese” (class II/III BMI) saw particularly high rates of postpartum depression. Throughout the study, class I individuals increased from 11.0% to 21.2% in rates of diagnosis, and class II/III individuals increased from 14.9% to 24.4%, meaning that those with the highest body mass index experienced the greatest rates of postpartum depression diagnoses. When viewing the interaction between delivery year, race and ethnicity, and body mass index, the increasing trends across different BMI classes are similar across the race and ethnicity groups. 

What Action Must Be Taken

Across the ten years of this study, individuals across all ethnic and racial groups, in addition to all categories of body mass index, saw significant increases in diagnoses of postpartum depression. This rise in diagnoses of postpartum depression could, at least partially, be attributed to improved practices in psychological screenings and proper diagnoses. However, the burden that postpartum depression places on mothers highlights the ever-increasing need for better forms of mental health treatment to ensure improved outcomes in the mental health of mothers. This ever-increasing need is also extended to equitable treatment needs across different demographics of individuals. Postpartum depression’s impact on the well-being of both mother and child could be mitigated if efforts are steered toward addressing the mental health needs of certain groups with considerable risk, like women with greater body mass index. Alleviating health disparities based on race and ethnicity should also be of top priority if healthcare professionals want to see a decrease in postpartum depression diagnoses. This study stresses how closer monitoring and continued research on postpartum depression is necessary, providing great insight into how to shape public health initiatives regarding the well-being of mothers and children.

Sawyer Wampler is a senior at the Honors College of Missouri State University. They are double majoring in Political Science and Communication Studies while also serving as a research assistant for Dr. Alicia M. Walker in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Gerontology. You can follow them and their academic/professional pursuits on Twitter/X at @wampler_sawyer

Reprinted from the Council on Contemporary Families Brief Reports

A briefing paper prepared by Daniel L. Carson, University of Utah, and Melissa A. Milkie, University of Toronto, for the Council on Contemporary Families symposium The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Gender Equality (PDF).

The COVID-19 pandemic was a stressful time for American adults. Indeed, rates of clinical depression and anxiety were 300% higher in the early days of the pandemic than they were the previous year. Not only was there substantial concern and worry about the virus itself, but social measures to stem the virus spread (i.e., lockdowns; school closures) created work-family stressors for many adults, parents especially. Like other impacts of the pandemic, work-family stress was not distributed evenly as US mothers’ mental health appeared most negatively affected. Given pre-existing gender disparities in psychological well-being, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated gender inequalities in mental health. This brief focuses on gender differences in psychological distress and its links to work-family stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight how the pandemic may have magnified existing differences in well-being between mothers and fathers and conclude with a discussion of interventions that are needed to reduce these inequalities.

COVID and Mental Health

In addition to its obvious costs to life and physical health, the COVID-19 pandemic took a big toll on psychological well-being. In the United States, estimates from the US Census Household Pulse Survey indicate that one-third of the adult population suffered from clinical levels of depression and anxiety during the early days of the pandemic. In contrast, estimates indicate that only 10% of US adults reported clinical levels of anxiety and depression in 2019. Worse yet, the number of depressed and anxious adults increased as the pandemic persisted, rising to more than 2 in 5 by the end of 2020. Today, psychological distress remains elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels. Estimates indicate that as of June 2023, nearly one-third of US adults still suffered from clinical levels of anxiety and/or depression.

Work and Family Roles and Psychological Distress During the COVID-19 Pandemic:

One of the primary reasons psychological distress increased during the COVID pandemic is that it created a great deal of stress in people’s work and family roles. Social distancing measures designed to stem the transmission of COVID (e.g., closures of schools, childcare centers, non-essential services, and changes in work conditions) had numerous impacts. First, many people experienced a reduction in social integration, social support, and loss of potentially valued identities – all of which are central to mental health. Indeed, loneliness and job loss were two of the strongest predictors of mental health during the pandemic. Job loss also threatened mental health through financial hardship.

Second, roles and their responsibilities became increasingly overwhelming, particularly for mothers, due to the loss of childcare, school, and informal parenting supports. Both men and women increased their time in housework and childcare during the pandemic, though women continued doing the majority share of these tasks. Time in both physical and mental domestic labor during the pandemic was positively associated with increases in psychological distress, but primarily for women. Yet, at least for a time, fathers increased their relative share of domestic labor, particularly when they were able to work from home; this increase in equality was associated with perceptions of better relationship quality among mothers. Occupational changes occurred too, with some jobs becoming potentially better due to remote work and less commuting time, and other jobs largely populated by women such as essential service, teaching, and health care work, becoming increasingly difficult due to potential virus transmission, staff shortages, and other problems.

Third, at least in the early days of the pandemic, conflicts between work and family obligations for US parents appear to have worsened, on average. Among those who remained employed during the pandemic, increases in distress were limited largely to parents and tied to work-family conflict and adjustments to paid work schedules. Parents who were essential workers had to worry about facilitating virtual school or arranging care, while remote-working parents faced with the blurring of boundaries between home and work, had to juggle paid work while simultaneously monitoring and educating children. In the US at least, psychological distress was tied especially to interference of domestic responsibilities with paid work and the associated guilt of not meeting obligations for one’s job. Nevertheless, when push came to shove, many parents, but mothers especially, cut back on paid work during the pandemic – likely to alleviate work-family conflict. Alas, altering paid work schedules was also associated with higher levels of distress.

Exacerbated Gender Disparities in Stress and Mental Health?

Gender disparities in mental health in the US grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to steeper declines in women’s mental health than men’s. This is likely due, in part, to the fact that women reported more feelings of social isolation, more job loss, more work-family conflicts, and are more susceptible to the negative effects of domestic labor on mental health than men. Though gender inequalities in mental health increased in the US, this was not the case everywhere. Indeed, cross-national examinations of psychological well-being reveal possible reasons why inequalities increased in the US and not in other places and also suggest interventions to protect mental health and reduce mental health disparities moving forward.

Studies from the US, UK, Canada, and Australia reveal that gender disparities in mental health grew in the US and UK but not in Canada and Australia. Moreover, the pandemic appeared to affect mental health to a lesser extent in Canada and Australia than in the US and UK. One reason for these differences is better government and worker supports in Canada and Australia. Though public policies to deal with job loss (e.g., unemployment insurance) were universally generous cross-nationally and appear central to limiting family financial loss, access to supportive leave and care policies varied. Compared to Canada and Australia, parents in the US and UK had no guaranteed access to paid parental/childcare leave, leaving parents in these countries potentially more financially, emotionally, and psychologically distressed. Domestic responsibilities increased broadly in all four countries, yet in the US and UK especially, parents had fewer resources to help them handle the increase in care and educational responsibilities.

Another reason for increased mental health disparities in the US appears to be individual and cultural beliefs about gender, work, and family. Ideal worker culture is particularly intense in the US compared to many other countries. As such, the existence of family-to-work conflict and family-to-work guilt and its ties to US parents’ distress during the pandemic is unsurprising. Additionally, though both men and women increased their performance of domestic labor during the pandemic, this increase was associated largely with increased distress among mothers only – which may be owed to persistent external and internal pressures toward intensive mothering. Indeed, in the US, beliefs in intensive mothering coupled with a lack of comprehensive public policy to limit the transmission of COVID, placed mothers at the forefront of protecting family health. Worries over COVID were especially associated with maternal stress in the US.

Discussion: What about gender inequalities in mental health beyond pandemic times?

Though the WHO declared an end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency in May 2023, levels of stress and distress in US society are as high today as they were in 2020 when the pandemic started. Questions remain, therefore, as to the long-term impact of the pandemic on mental health and gender disparities in psychological well-being. While the jury is still out as to the full impacts of the pandemic for men versus women, and the longevity of some of the changes and their sequelae, research provides a potential roadmap for how to protect mental health moving forward, especially for parents, and reduce gender disparities.

Given the centrality of work to mental health, job losses during the pandemic likely had significant, long-term impacts. Mothers in less resourced positions may have been the worst off. Women’s labor force participation rates returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023, though the most disadvantaged mothers lagged behind as of 2022. Efforts to return mothers to the paid labor force, and avoid penalizing them for interruptions to paid work during the pandemic, are essential to promoting gender equality moving forward.

Though rates of labor force participation have returned to normal, one change that is proving to last is remote work, as a much larger portion of workdays are currently done remotely compared to pre-pandemic times. Yet, whether the new climate of remote work reduces or exacerbates gender disparities in mental health may depend on how it is used and by whom. Prior to the pandemic, a substantial proportion of parents reported elevated levels of distress linked to time deficits with their children. During the pandemic, parents were able to spend more time with children in part due to remote work, suggesting that remote work may have somewhat protected mental health, at least for mothers. Potentially, valued time with children could continue in some form post-pandemic for those with increased access to autonomy, remote work, or other expanded control over paid work commitments, leading to improvements in well-being.

At the same time, working mothers managed homeschooling much more so than fathers and were overloaded due to stretched roles of supervision and care while children were locked down. Women experience more work-family conflicts due to high expectations at home and job characteristics (i.e., less autonomy) that don’t provide them enough or the right kinds of freedom or resources. Though being home has benefits by potentially providing more parental fulfillment and easing of managing home demands, remote work by mothers coupled with primary responsibility for domestic labor, without partners also stepping up, would likely exacerbate gender mental health disparities. In contrast, remote work by fathers could reduce gender disparities broadly, including in mental health. Not only does domestic labor have little impact on men’s mental health (vs. the negative effect for women), but men who work remotely also do more domestic labor. This was true both before and during the pandemic.

In all, the pandemic allowed us to see more closely the problems with work roles, family roles and connection between them that undermine mental health in the US. Both structures and cultures need to change in order to better people’s, especially women’s, lives. Structurally both government and workplace policies matter; the exacerbated gaps between U.S. mothers’ and fathers’ mental health that emerged due to overwhelming demands in roles and work-family conflict could be mitigated by policies such as paid parental/childcare leave, increased autonomy, remote work, low-cost quality child care, a 4-day workweek and so on. Additionally, direct child credits, as well as guaranteed paid time off and vacations could go a long way to reducing work-family conflicts and stressors through provision of financial supports. Yet, despite the pandemic creating a great reflection about our values around time, relationships, and work, the culture of ideal workers and intensive parenting that contributes to higher work-family conflict and pushes mothers out of paid work may be harder to change. Regardless, more awareness and social change toward “work-family justice” is possible. Nonetheless, the conversation surrounding work-family justice and gender equality must also include a discussion of parental well-being. Parents’ mental health is important not only in its own right, but also through those they care for – our future generations. The tolls of the pandemic on mental health and gender disparities in mental health cannot be ignored.

About the Authors

Daniel L. Carlson is Associate Professor of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah and Treasurer of the Council on Contemporary Families. He can be reached at daniel.carlson@fcs.utah.edu. You can follow him on Twitter at @DanielCarlson_1.

Melissa A. Milkie is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the graduate department at the University of Toronto. She’s also Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, and she served recently as President of the Work and Family Researchers Network. Professor Milkie can be reached at melissa.milkie@utoronto.ca and you can follow her on Twitter at @melissamilkie.

Nicholas H. Wolfinger is Professor of Family and Consumer Studies and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah. His previous books include Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda (edited, with Lori Kowaleski-Jones; Springer, 2005), Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (with Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden; Rutgers University Press, 2013), and Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Children, and Marriage among African Americans and Latinos (with W. Bradford Wilcox; Oxford University Press, 2016). Wolfinger is also the author of about 40 articles or chapters, as well as short pieces in The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and other outlets. His edited collection Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations will be published by Academica Press later this year. Matthew McKeever is Professor of Sociology and Department Chair at Haverford College. His research focuses on the structure of social inequality within a variety of institutional, cultural, and regional contexts, from the U.S. and Europe to South Africa and Asia. This work examines different theories regarding the distribution of education, occupation, and income, and how processes that determine the distribution of these resources vary regionally.   Before coming to Haverford he was at Mount Holyoke College, teaching in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.  He has also taught at Rice University, University of Houston, University of Kentucky, and Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA, and his B.A. from Haverford. Here, they talk to us about their new book, Thanks for Nothing: The Economics of Single Motherhood since 1980.

AMW: How has the profile of single mothers changed from the 1980s to today, and what impact does that have on poverty rates?

NHW & MM: In 1980, families headed by single mothers were five times as likely to be poor as two-parent families. Forty-five years later, single mothers were still almost five times as likely to have incomes below the poverty line. How can that be, given the gains in education and employment women have made over the past few decades?

Our book shows that the answer to this question stems from changes in the kinds of women likely to become single mothers. In 1980, most single moms were divorced women; by 2025, the majority are women who had children out of wedlock. On the basis of over 130 charts, we establish that there are profound differences between the two kinds of single mothers. On paper, divorced mothers look a lot like married mothers. The primary difference lies in the absence of a spousal income.

Never-married mothers are a totally different story. To be sure, they have less education and other forms of human capital than do divorced mothers, but their disadvantage is much more pervasive. Even when they do get college degrees, the pecuniary returns are much smaller than they are for divorced mothers (let alone married mothers). We also show that this disadvantage is multigenerational. Never-married mothers are themselves more likely to come from single-parent families. Indeed, they’re less likely to grow up in households with library cards or newspaper subscriptions.

So that’s the science behind the book: a deep dive into the ecology of poverty over the past few decades.

AMW: Why did you frame your research around Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Sara McLanahan’s work, and what did their ideas contribute to your findings?

NHW & MM: Our research connects directly to the work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Sara McLanahan, two figures whose ideas have shaped how scholars think about family structure and poverty. In 1965, Moynihan’s report about race, poverty, and single motherhood sparked widespread controversy. Many came to see the report as blaming the victim, and academics studying the family spent the next decade running away from the idea that family structure was something that merited scholarly inquiry (these academics also ignored Moynihan’s structural explanation for poverty, his call for massive investment in disadvantaged communities, and later his proposal for a universal basic income). This was the state of affairs Sara McLanahan encountered as a postdoc (and a single mother) at Madison in 1980. She set out to prove Moynihan wrong, thus launching a very accomplished career as one of our foremost scholars of family structure and poverty (it seemed almost anticlimactic when Sara and Christopher Jencks published an article in 2015 titled “Was Moynihan Right?”)

When we first started thinking about single mothers and poverty way back in the 1990s, Sara McLanahan’s work was the single greatest scholarly influence. As we finished up the book decades later, we realized that we’d come full circle, right back to where Sara McLanahan had started: Daniel Moynihan and his 1965 report.

AMW: How do your findings address conservative claims about welfare disincentivizing work and provide evidence that social programs improve economic outcomes?

NHW & MM: We’d start by pointing out that the majority of people in single-parent families are children, and thus fall victim to benefit cuts predicated on how their parents are supposed to behave.  Our data analysis shows that government transfers comprise an ever shrinking pool of economic benefits for these families—average benefits have fallen, and while they remain an important source of funds for the poorest families, they go to fewer and fewer single mothers. And notice the broader trend: cash welfare gradually disappeared over the same years that the rate of nonmarital births skyrocketed.

Our book challenges the conservative assertion that public aid undermines work by highlighting evidence from programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC). These initiatives have demonstrated that direct cash transfers reduce poverty without discouraging labor force participation. For instance, the expanded CTC during the pandemic lifted millions of children out of poverty, and studies revealed no significant decline in maternal employment. About 90% of the CTC funds were spent on necessities like food and housing, showcasing its effectiveness in ameliorating the consequences of poverty​.

We thus contend that welfare is not a disincentive to work (or, for that matter, to get married), emphasizing that providing financial support does not deter work but instead helps families maintain stability. These arguments align with the observations of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The federal government is good at redistributing income but little else when it comes to families. In particular, it is singularly ineffective when it comes to changing cultural attitudes, such as those surrounding marriage.

This leads us to argue that those concerned about American families and children should support bipartisan proposals like the Romney-Bennet bill in 2019, which would have funded universal cash transfers, regardless of recipient income. A government initiative like this could sustainably alleviate economic hardship. These programs counter poverty without the stigma or fecklessness of marriage-promotion policies, focusing on empowering single mothers and thereby improving the lives of their children. These are objectives best accomplished through economic stability rather than cultural engineering.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: What Practitioners can teach Everyone about Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

American attitudes toward marriage and divorce are changing. In a recent survey, 40% of Americans said they were pessimistic about the future of marriage and the family, and only one-quarter said that having children or being married was very important to having a fulfilling life. Indeed, only about 10% of Americans think that getting married or having children are extremely important as a milestone for adulthood. Americans have held tolerant views of divorce for a while, and a recent Gallup poll shows that 81% of Americans think that divorce is morally acceptable.

Given these shifts in attitudes, we recently conducted a study of attitudes towards marriage and divorce when children are involved. We use data from the American Marriage Survey, conducted across the United States in late summer 2021. The survey includes 2,789 American adults. We created an attitudinal measure to see whether people hold one of the following views:

• Pro-institutionalization attitudes: those who agree that couples who have children should get married and should try to stay married for the sake of their children.
• Marriage deinstitutionalization attitudes: those who do not agree that couples who have children should get married but agree that people should try to stay married for the sake of their children.
• Divorce deinstitutionalization attitudes: those who agree that couples should get married but do not agree that people should stay married for the sake of their children.
• Transformational deinstitutionalization attitudes: those who do not think people should get married or stay married for children.

What do Americans think about marriage and divorce?

A majority of Americans (55%) disagree that people should get married and stay married if children are involved. A little more than one-fifth of Americans (22%) think that couples with children should get married but also think that people don’t need to stay married for their children. Only 16% of Americans are what we might call “traditional” in that they think people should get and stay married for the sake of their children. All in all, people are generally okay with the idea that marriage is not really necessary even when children are involved.

Who is more likely to think people with children don’t need to get married or stay married?

• Women – cis women are 2.7 times as likely as men to think that people with children don’t need to get married or stay married (a similar pattern exists for trans and nonbinary individuals, but it was not significant).
• LGB adults – gay and lesbian adults are 2.4 times as likely and bisexual and pansexual adults are 3.7 times as likely as heterosexual adults to think that people with children don’t need to get married or stay married.
• People who are not married – those who are cohabiting are 1.7 times as likely and those who are divorced or separated are 1.5 times as likely as married individuals to think that people with children don’t need to get married or stay married.

What are the implications of these findings?

We provide evidence of transformative change in Americans’ views as not only do a majority of people support divorce, but this coexists with attitudes that are supportive of not marrying even when children are involved. Attitudes are often linked with behaviors. While there has been a lot of attention to the prevalence of divorce over the last few decades, the concern over declines in marriage may rise as fewer people get married. According to the American Community Survey, 25% of 40-year-old Americans have never married. The US has historically attached many benefits to marriage related to tax, social security, insurance, and public assistance. With clear evidence that people do not feel the need for marriage even when children are involved, there should be more attention paid to policies that provide benefits regardless of marital status. Families come in all shapes and sizes, and there is greater need for policies addressing health care, housing, and multi-parent custody. Finally, there should be consideration of access to legal status and connections that may tie people together outside of the traditional confines of marriage.

Gayle Kaufman is the Maddrey Professor of Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Davidson College. They study gender, sexuality, and family attitudes, marriage, fatherhood, work and family, and LGBTQ+ families. You can follow them on Bluesky at @gaylekaufman.bsky.social.

D’Lane Compton is a Full Professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans. Their research focuses on sexual, gender, and family inequalities through social psychology and demographic analysis. You can follow them on Bluesky at @drcompton.bsky.social.