Ashton Applewhite is a Council on Contemporary Families expert and has been recognized by the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. Her new book, “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism,” was just published in April 2016. She blogs at “This Chair Rocks,” where you can follow her ongoing insights, speaks widely, and is the voice of “Yo, is this ageist?” Ashton’s work is a call to wake up to the ageism in and around us, embrace a more accurate and positive view of growing older, and push back. She agreed to answer a few questions for us:
Q: First, a challenge: what’s one single thing you “know” with certainty, after years of research into modern families?
AA: One of the biggest obstacles to the well-being of modern families is the all-American myth of self-reliance—that people can and should “go it alone”—and we don’t call it out enough. That myth, which equates needing help with physical frailty and weakness of character, serves none of us well—least of all caregivers, people with disabilities, and older people (increasingly overlapping circles on the Venn diagram of life).
The myth exacts an immense personal cost: it downplays life’s challenges, it needlessly exhausts, and it shames us when, inevitably, we fall short. The social cost is high too: a culture that idealizes self-reliance serves the anti-welfare agenda of proponents of small government, because it silences and deflects questions about the structures that strand us. This go-it-alone ethic is one reason that care for the very young and very old is not publicly funded, which typically leaves family members holding the bag. Another reason is ageism, the last socially sanctioned prejudice, which disproportionately affects people at either end of the age spectrum.
Q: Give us the “Twitter” version of your current research — in 140 characters (give or take), what are you working on now?
AA: I’ll give you two tweets worth: I’m an author, speaker, blogger, and activist working to make discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of prejudice. It’s time for a radical age movement, and I hope my new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, will help catalyze it.
Q: How would you encourage a scholar of family life to work to get their research into public life, affecting policy and challenging assumptions about “average families”?
AA: Consider self-publishing. Jane Friedman’s site is a good starting point. I’ve been published by four of the big five publishers but elected to bring this book to market myself, partly because of their general cluelessness about the new digital landscape and partly because of my subject matter. Self-publishing means more control, more work, and more reliance on the network of friends and colleagues that social media enables. Like many of your publications, my book is a call for progressive social change—in this case to mobilize against ageism as we have against racism, sexism, and homophobia. Hence my slogan: Self-publish together! It’s different, and a lot more congenial, to ask for help from readers who share a goal that benefits many. People respond to a persuasive case that an issue requires collective action. I’m getting real traction, and I think many of my CCF colleagues would too. Self-publish together to change the world!
Molly McNulty is a CCF public affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a joint Sociology and Education major.
When academics focus on a concept that is rooted in a fundamental human experience, they often retreat to detached and aggressive scholarly postures. This natural defense against graying the lines between personal and professional can lead to the driest literature. The authors included in New Maternalisms clearly reject this approach, choosing instead to get their hands dirty while grappling with the sticky task of conceptualizing motherhood. Contributor Isabel Sousa-Rodriguez defines maternalism as a field of study, that ‘strives to explain the complexity of “mothering” – subdividing motherwork according to biological and social reproductive functions.’ This definition contrasts with that of the OG political movement , lending double entendre to the concept of a ‘new’ maternalism. Despite its jargon rich title, this collection of essays is personal and accessible.
The editors, (former CCF Boardmember) Roksana Badruddoja & Maki Motapanyane note academia’s historic failure to recognize the voices and agency of mothers. In response, they bring together a diverse collection of essays that explore the ways in which societal structures and culturally grounded ideologies prescribe definitions of good mothering and limit women’s agency. In turn, these works illuminate the perspectives, strategies and resilience of marginalized motherhood.
The list of authors could be considered a list of invitees to a maternalist scholar’s dream dinner party. Layering the voices of emerging scholars, expert practitioners from the field, and skilled theorists the collection of essays reads like a conversation among kindred spirits across disciplines. The editors’ openness to including scholars with diverse academic experience and personal backgrounds is a kindness not only to the emerging scholars included in the collection, but to the reader. At times fearlessly raw, the authors admit to and struggle with the limitations to their own views of mothering while exploring examples of motherhood across a diverse array of cultural contexts. The effect is refreshing.
The contributions challenge both patriarchal and feminist concepts of mothering. They do this by presenting the realities of mothering within the contexts of marginalized demographics (e.g. mothers who are undocumented, same sex, homeless, indigent, and/or who have disabilities) and marginalizing experiences (e.g. mothers who carry genetically engineered children, work in the sex industry, have their children conscripted as soldiers, or feed their babies formula, as opposed to breast feeding). The issues raised are at once timely, given recent Supreme Court cases (e.g. constraints experienced by mothers living in mixed immigration status families and mothers in single sex marriages) and timeless, such as mothers struggling with identity after the loss of a child.
In short, the editors give us an education in what Badruddoja names in her own contribution to the collection, “the unschooling that is deeply needed around our cultural imaginations of motherhood”. Transitioning through the chapters, I found myself relating to, sympathizing with, and being irritated by the authors. In other words, I found the collection both engaging and challenging. Based on my, admittedly, limited experience as an educator – and my shamelessly extensive experience as a student – that is what I’d call pedagogical gold.
Amy Thompson is a recovering policy wonk and a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. She is currently immersed in her comprehensive exams on the development of agency in migrant children – some of whom are mothers (biological and/or structural).
What’s going on in the South? First a “religious discrimination” bill passed both houses in Georgia (not signed by the Governor), then North Carolina passes HB2 sold as a “bathroom bill” but allows discrimination against LGBTQ people all over the state. And now Mississippi passes a “religious freedom” bill that includes the right to discriminate not only against LGBTQ folks but also fornicators, those radical people who have sex outside the bonds of marriage (you know, the rest of us, at least sometime in our lives). Is there a contest for which Southern state can be most crazy?
North Carolina and Mississippi have suddenly become states to avoid if you care about human rights, if you are LGBTQ people, or if you know or love someone that is. Are there any Americans who shouldn’t be thinking of boycotting these states?
You might think that these new laws passed hurt transgender people only, but you’d be wrong. These laws allow discrimination and legitimate harassment against anyone who doesn’t follow the typical expectations for how we look, or how we hold our bodies, or who we love, or who or whether we marry. These concerns about looks and bodies relate directly to what sociologists refer to as how we “do gender.” These laws try to impose one fixed and “normal” way to “do gender,” along with whom to partner and how. But over the past 30 years that I have written about gender, I have seen dramatic changes to what is considered “normal” and whether sex outside of marriage is a crime or just another recreational activity that feels good. Many more people are open about their gender identities, and express them in a variety of ways. Our categories have changed and moved beyond a simple binary where “boys will be boys” and “girls will be girls.”
The dramatic change has been especially clear in research for my new book on Millennials. The changes in how people “do gender” pushed me to write a book I had never planned to write. Indeed, after teaching a graduate seminar where the students and I collected over a hundred life interviews from young adults, I was startled to see the dramatic diversity, and increasing confusion, around gender and sexuality among Millennials.
I talked to two groups of young people who will be much hurt by a law that allows anyone to police who can use what bathroom, or who can love whom and when. Transgender people of all ages will be hurt. In my research, every transgender respondent had stories about the trouble they had going to the bathroom, even in states without laws that require gender discrimination. One transman told me that he often leaves an event and travels a long way home on public transportation before going to the bathroom. As he told me about life as a transman he said “I wait until we get home. We call it the trans bladder. We can wait for hours before going to the bathroom.” Think of the physical pain, holding back the release of urine and excrement to avoid being bullied. And now realize that the states of North Carolina and Mississippi have just more than legitimized such harassment, they have required it by law. What kind of rude culture legitimates bullying? Is this the new meaning of southern hospitality?
Another group of research respondents will also suffer and have thus far remained invisible in the conversation, young people who reject the binary rules of gender. In my interviews I met people who identify as genderqueer: they do not want to be the opposite gender. Instead, they reject the label given at birth entirely as they reject the categories male and female which are irrelevant to their identities… Most, but not all, of these genderqueer young people grew up girls. They are often mistaken for men, but many continue to identify their sex as female, and their gender as queer. They too report already being hassled in restrooms. Many avoid bathrooms. One genderqueer respondent told me that she often faces uncomfortable interactions. “Usually they look at me trying to figure out if I am a boy or a girl…they’re like ‘I can’t tell cause she’s got short hair and she wears boy’s clothes, but those lips look kinda feminine. I think she’s got tits under there.” Another person quoted RuPaul “you’re born naked and the rest is drag” as the basis for androgynous self-presentation consciously designed to be neither masculine or feminine.
RuPaul’s view of the world is good sociology. Gender identity is very powerful but how we use gender—dressing or carrying our bodies–to present how we identify ourselves is complicated, ever changing, and culturally specific. How we choose whom to love, and whether or not they have similar genitals seems the most intimate of decisions, and not good fodder for public policy. It takes very intrusive big government to want to judge intimate relationships. To legitimate harassment of people because of their gender expression hurts not only transgender and genderqueer people, it hurts us all. To legitimate harassment and discrimination on who you love, and whether or not that love is legally sanctioned by a marriage certificate, is not religious, it is hateful. Why should any couple be subject to questioning about their marital status? Why should anyone have to dress conservatively enough to assure vigilante enforcers that they are indeed male or female? How feminine must I dress to look like a woman?
As President of the Southern Sociological Society, and a woman who raised her child in North Carolina, I am proud that my professional association has voted not to meet in any state that discriminates against any of our members. I hope many more businesses and organizations join the boycott. If anyone is at risk for discrimination, we all are.
Barbara J Risman is currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at CASBS. She is a Senior Scholar at the Council on Contemporary Family and is on-leave from University of Illinois at Chicago.
All mothers—single, married, and working—are spending more time with their kids than stay-at-home mothers did in 1965. Even fathers are doing three times the amount of childcare that they used to.
Couples who have egalitarian relationships have better sex and happier marriages than those who have a more “traditionally” gendered division of labor, which was not the case in the past.
Along with these good-news stories, media covered some persistent problems, including the 17 percent child poverty rate and increasing economic inequality facing American families. Even that narrative has a curious positive spin: We’re so late to the game that other countries have provided a blueprint for how to fix these age-old problems. They have done so, according to Coontz, because “political leaders in those countries try to deal with present-day realities instead of blaming their citizens for abandoning a largely mythical Gold Age of family life.” Several Scandinavian countries, for instance, have child poverty rates at one third of America’s at the same time that they have more diverse families than in America.
“You can’t make America great ‘again,’ a la Donald Trump, if you are clueless to what work life really looked like for most of the 20th century… You can’t restore traditional family values, a la Ted Cruz, if you start with an interpretation of family that never existed in America… And you certainly won’t resonate as a ceiling crasher for women, a la Hillary Clinton, if you continue to encourage policies and business structures that promote inequality between men and women and high- and low-wage workers.”
America’s increasingly diverse families have been incredibly resilient even though family policies still cater to the mythical “traditional” family. So instead of being blind to the progress that families have made in the past few decades, why not recognize the benefits of America’s diversifying families and support policies that build on the trajectory illustrated in Coontz’s brief report and her new, revised book? The coverage of Coontz’s new work points in that direction, and her brief report and book provide even more material to stoke imaginations and policy.
Braxton Jones is a graduate student in sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and serves as a CCF Graduate Research and Public Affairs Scholar.
Since 2002, federal and state governments in the United States have spent over $1 billion from the welfare budget on marriage and relationship education programs through the Healthy Marriage Initiative. This federal policy seeks to encourage marriage and the many social and economic benefits the government claims are associated with it—less poverty and domestic violence, better physical and mental health, higher academic achievement—by helping couples develop relationship skills focused on improving communication and resolving conflict. The federal agency in charge of overseeing healthy marriage funding recommends that curricula used in marriage education programs address how couples think about gender, specifically their beliefs about differences between men and woman and what they expect spouses to do based on gender. Many marriage education curricula address these topics because gendered expectations often influence how couples experience marriage and what they commonly argue about, namely housework, childcare, and earning money.
To understand how marriage education programs funded by the government teach about gender, communication, and power within marriage, I analyzed twenty curricula approved for use in healthy marriage programs and participated in a training session, workshop, or class for eighteen of these same curricula. I specifically wanted to know if and how the curricula reinforced or challenged stereotypes of gender responsibilities—such as the beliefs that women should be caretakers and men should be family breadwinners—and whether the programs taught couples about how social inequalities between women and men shape couples’ abilities to share power and family labor.
I found that some programs assumed men and women are fundamentally different in how they think, feel, and communicate, and recommended that couples use relationship skills to overcome these differences. For example, the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program, the most commonly used marriage education curriculum in healthy marriage programs, noted that men are more likely to pull away when couples argue, while women want to talk through disagreements. In discussing how women and men often act differently in romantic relationships, these curricula did not acknowledge how men’s greater power outside marriage often gives them more power to withdraw from conflict within marriage.
Other programs, however, taught couples to question the belief that men and women are fundamentally different and to avoid gender stereotypes in expectations of how their spouses should think and act. The African American Relationships, Marriages, and Family curricula emphasized that gender stereotypes can be harmful to relationships and that couples should learn to be flexible when dividing work and care responsibilities. Another program, The Third Option, taught couples that they should “redefine the power struggle” within marriage by prioritizing cooperation over competition, as in a doubles game of tennis where spouses are on the same team. By focusing on fairness, equality, and shared power, many of the curricula provided limited tools for challenging gender difference and power within marriage by teaching couples strategies that privilege individual abilities, inclinations, and availability regardless of gender.
Nevertheless, the strategies for verbal negotiation taught by these programs did not address how gender inequalities—such as women’s overall lower pay—often create a power imbalance between husbands and wives tilted in favor of men, even when couples share egalitarian gender views. Gendered power exists in the broader society through unequal opportunities for women and men—or what sociologists call institutionalized gender inequalities—not just between two people in a couple. Government-sponsored marriage and relationship education programs therefore have contradictory implications for promoting greater gender equality. They encourage couples to question how narrow ideas of gender “roles” shape marital conflict and unhappiness. Yet, they are funded with money diverted from welfare programs that primarily support single mothers and children, while they teach that gender is a set of individual inclinations to be discussed and negotiated rather than a relationship of power connected to larger systems of inequality and state action.
As a case of what I call interpersonal gender interventions, healthy marriage programs focus on teaching individuals that gender equality primarily lies in developing and negotiating more egalitarian gender attitudes. Yet, interventions that promote ideas about equality will have limited utility if individuals learn to develop more egalitarian beliefs in the absence of institutional changes that enable them to act on these values. Policies need to do more than help couples redefine the marital power struggle through relationship skills; they must promote equitable access to education, employment, and stable earnings that allow partners to create fair, safe, and loving relationships. Only then will partners have truly equal power to express, pursue, and achieve their interests within marriage and family relationships.
Jennifer Randles is assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Fresno. Her article, “Redefining the Marital Power Struggle Through Relationship Skills: How United States Marriage Education Programs Challenge and Reproduce Gender Inequality,” is published in the April 2016 30 (2) issue ofGender & Society. To view the article, click here.
Celebrity lives are central to much social media. All aspects of the lives of celebrities including the good, the bad, and the ugly are on display. And there are patterns. Race, gender, and privilege are part of the cultural logic that sneaks into the coverage. Recently Joanna R. Pepin highlighted this in an examination of domestic violence coverage. Joanna Pepin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Maryland who studies romantic relationships and inequality.
In a recent paper, Pepin analyzed a sample of 330 news articles from between 2009 and 2012 that were written about 66 celebrity men. Forty-seven were black and 29 were white. She limited her sample to include only news articles about men because of the much greater frequency and severity of men’s violence against their partner. She also restricted her sample to only include black and white men because other races were not represented with sufficient frequency for the period she was studying. Lastly, she limited her search to include only professional actors, musicians, and professional sports players, thus excluding reality television stars, and college athletes. She used a sample of articles that were published online and that were within six months of the report of domestic violence.
Pepin wondered if there were systemic patterns in intimate partner violence reporting by the media related to white and male privilege, and that is exactly what she found. Men’s violent incidents tended to be portrayed in such a way that minimizes the responsibility of the man and excuses them for their behavior in general. However, black men were more often depicted as criminals while articles about white men contained more excuses or justifications for their actions. She derived three important observations about male privilege, and two other key points about white privilege.
Male Privilege: Minimizing the seriousness
Pepin reported that more than 50 percent of the articles minimized the seriousness of the domestic violence. For example, when male celebrities’ domestic violence was discussed it was often done so in a way that used softer language, such as by saying argument, dispute, altercation, or incident. This leads the reader to believe that the violence was simply a bad argument, or a common disagreement between a couple. The news coverage instead profiled men in a way that highlighted their successes, as well as being framed as a good guy.
Male Privilege: Underreport of sanctions
Pepin looked at underreporting of sanctions; that is, did the articles talk about the impact that the violence had on his job, the accountability of the celebrity, and the legal consequences? She found that only 8 percent of the articles included information about how the celebrities’ actions impacted their work, only 4 percent included statements from the journalist about how the action of the celebrity was unacceptable, and only 7 percent of the total articles mentioned legal consequences.
Male Privilege: Misplaced responsibility
Pepin defined misplaced responsibility as when the victim is described as being responsible, or deserving of the abuse. Misplaced responsibility was in evidence when the journalist interviewed the abuser and their representatives instead of interviewing advocates of the victim, law enforcement officials, or scholars. She mentions that the second most cited source in these articles was the abuser. Overall, she found that misplaced responsibility was apparent in 24 percent of the articles and that 13 percent focused the incident on the victim and blamed her for the abuse.
White Privilege: Criminal Framing
According to Pepin, the abuser was framed as a criminal in two-thirds of the articles that were about black celebrities, but only in about one-third of the articles that were about white celebrities. The articles about black celebrities were also two times more likely to include arrest information, three times more likely to talk about the charges, and two and a half time more likely to reference legal documents or law enforcement officials, than articles about white celebrities.
White Privilege: Excuses and justifications
Articles about white celebrities were also more likely to include excuses or justifications for their actions. Results revealed articles were framed in a justifying manner two and a half times more often in the articles about white abusers. She also found that the abuse was framed as a mutual argument—a feature of minimizing the seriousness—in 55 percent of the articles about white celebrities, and 34 percent of the articles about black celebrities.
Celebrity stories are accessible because of, well, because of celebrity. But intimate partner violence is something that happens frequently all over the world. Understanding patterns in privilege and racial disparities can help us change the way we talk about and view intimate partner violence.
Molly McNulty is a CCF public affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a joint Sociology and Education major.
TSP readers likely appreciate Philip Cohen for his provocative blog, Family Inequality, which—based on a look at who retweets him—regularly has material valued by undergraduates, senior scholars, data nerds, policy wonks, and journalists alike. Cohen is a Council on Contemporary Families senior scholar and a professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. His research focuses on the sociology of families, social demography, and social inequality. His family textbook, The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change, was published in 2014. Cohen gave me these useful answers to my “3q”:
Q: First, a challenge: What’s one single thing you “know” with certainty, after years of research into modern families?
PC: Family inequality is remarkably resilient, but when it changes it does so under the influence of external forces. When women’s opportunities increase (or men’s decrease), when public investment in education increases, when the legal environment changes when technology permits reductions in household labor, when policies lighten (or compensate) the load of caring labor — that’s when inequality within families shifts. There is a dialectic here, and micro-level interactions within families matter, but these external forces are in the historical driver’s seat.
Q: Give us the “Twitter” version of your current research—in 140 characters (give or take), what are you working on now?
PC: This is what I’m working on today, in 140 characters: The culture wars over family politics always return to gender difference itself; it’s what’s at stake when left & right fight over families.
Q: How would you encourage a scholar of family life to work to get their research into public life, affecting policy and challenging assumptions about “average families”?
PC: The public loves to argue about families. There are lots of opportunities to get your work out there and make it relevant. Unlike some areas of sociological research, if you’re working on families, almost everything has a potential angle — in fact, one of the challenges is to not oversell the implications of our research. There is also a lot of translational work to do — interpreting and explaining new data and research as it comes out, helping people figure out what to make of the latest findings in the context of what we already know rather than participating in the whipsaw advice machine that thrives on contradicting conventional wisdom. I recommend that junior scholars get involved with the Council on Contemporary Families, which helps organize and transmit new research responsibly and effectively, and to look for opportunities to publish popular pieces in online venues that encourage well-reasoned and empirically-grounding discussion and debate.
Molly McNulty is a CCF Public Affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a joint Sociology and Education major.
Fifteen percent and 22 percent: These are estimated rates of white and black Americans born in 2010 who will not ever marry by age 85. These numbers, though, are not (so far) warranting a national reconsideration of the way that we treat unmarried people–socially or legally. As demonstrated by several recent editorials, the benefits to inclusivity for unmarried people would extend well beyond the large group of people who are unable to enjoy the many legal benefits of marriage. In February, three Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) scholars showed the variety of ways that everyone—married and unmarried alike—will benefit from a reconsideration of the place of the unmarried in America.
Stephanie Coontz, CCF Director of Research and Public Education, gave a demographic update showing that an increasing number of people will be harmed if our current social policies regarding unmarried individuals do not change. An estimated 25 percent of today’s young people will remain unmarried until their 40s, and perhaps 40 percent of those currently married will divorce, leading to the question, “Single or married: Does it really matter anymore?” Because a significant portion of this large group of singles will eventually marry, there are fewer differences between those who are married and those who are single.
Bella DePaulo, CCF expert and Project Scientist at UC Santa Barbara, wrote that, “Everything you think you know about single people is wrong.” In reviewing many of the negative stereotypes that work to legitimize a system that privileges married over single living, DePaulo reminded readers that singles are often the ones picking up the slack in their various communities—they are more likely to help family, friends, and neighbors, and are more likely to “value meaningful work.” And by many measures, single people are just as well off as those who are married.
Donna L. Franklin, past co-chair of CCF, and Angela D. James, CCF expert, discussed the negative repercussions for everyone when the specter of the single takes a front seat to bigger public policy issues. Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan talked about the supposed “tangle of pathology” that was black (single mother) family life, and these negative stereotypes still hold. Today, amid poverty and police brutality, encouraging black women to marry is a top priority for policy makers. Franklin and James asserted that “Black families matter,” and recommended social policy responses that benefit the growing number of single mother families by addressing the real structural inequalities facing black families.
Combined, these perspectives converge on the idea that providing singles and their families with the rights that offer parity with other family structures—especially married families—will benefit all of us.
Braxton Jones is a graduate student in sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and serves as a CCF Graduate Research and Public Affairs Scholar.
I have the good fortune of serving as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Council on Contemporary Families, an organization that has as its goal to make good research and practitioner knowledge on families more visible to more audiences. Our 18th Conference, Families As They Really Are: Demographics, Disparities, and Debates, held at the University of Texas at Austin on March 4 and 5, was a wonderful way to make this enhanced visibility of new findings about families happen.
As I listened to the insightful presentations, many of which thoughtfully referenced each other as the conference unfolded, I discovered a theme threaded throughout: Understanding contemporary families’ lives as they really are requires making invisible things more visible, especially as we discuss demographics, disparities and debates in family research, policy, and practice.
And here is how that happened.
First, some presenters showed the audience that there is invisibility of resources for some families, thus furthering disparities between groups. Our first keynote address, offered by Wendy Manning, helped us see how the amount of support in communities in which LGB families live can shape their relationship stability – more visible perceived support means more stability. We learned from Jenifer Bratter and Ellen Whitehead that grandparent support for mothers of biracial children is less visible than it is for mothers whose children are one race, complicating the notion that we are becoming a postracial society. Marcia Carlson showed how family-friendly policies for non-married parents are less visible in the U.S. as compared to many other countries. Carla Pfeffer presented her qualitative findings about women whose boyfriends and husbands haven’t always been recognized as men, leading to feelings of invisibility as they are pushed out of gay and lesbian social spaces. Liana Sayer drew attention to the lack of leisure time for families who have high work and family demands and exposed the invisible role of television use as a dominant (though declining) leisure time activity. And Debra Umberson’s presentation on the racialized impact of death on surviving family members struck an emotional chord with the audience when she asked us to think about how powerful an impact race is on family resources when African-Americans are disproportionately rendered literally invisible through premature death.
Second, presentations focused on the invisibility of entire groups and categories from demographic research on, and practice with, families. Our second keynote address, offered by Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, included findings from diversitydatakids.org – a project she directs that has as its goal to make data, policies, and programs that enhance outcomes for disadvantaged children more visible to scholars, practitioners, and families. Kelly Raley’s work on marriage rates showed how women without a college degree need to be more visible in research questions about women’s likelihood to marry, which is crucial to highlight since the decline in women ever married is concentrated among the least advantaged. And Daniel Carlson’s work on household division of labor showed how the increasingly visible population of men who do more housework than their female partners (a counter-conventional arrangement, which means it’s still less visible than women doing more housework) may be more about unemployment patterns than men’s preferences to participate more in household labor.
Third, presenters highlighted how their work asked new questions, thus revealing the Invisibility of research questions that get at new ways to see the complexity of actual family experiences and debates. Fenaba Addo’s research on young adults’ decisions about money showed us that the role of financial decision-making in the process of deciding to cohabit is less visible in research than outcomes, finding that combining a credit card account with a cohabiting partner may elicit warning signals because it is a debt that does not build joint capital (like a mortgage does). Sharon Sassler’s presentation highlighted that what’s missing from research on cohabitation is the paradox that less-educated couples may find living together initially attractive and advantageous, but in the long run the relationship is less stable than it is for college-educated individuals. Zhenchao Qian’s work on marital endogamy rendered visible the finding that foreign-born Hispanics reinforce Hispanic boundaries while U.S.-born Hispanics are more likely to make visible multiple paths of marital assimilation across races and ethnic groups. And Yolanda Padilla’s work on remittances for immigrants (mostly Mexican and Central American), made visible the strength of ties between immigrant families and their families at home, something that counters the misperception that immigrants sever social ties before coming to the U.S.
The presentations, along with a collection of stellar graduate student flash sessions and a panel on debates about poverty, early childcare, and reproductive health policy, made visible many formerly invisible counter-intuitive claims about families. This is where the conference theme, indeed the ethos of CCF, really shines. In order to understand families as they really are, we must continue to push our research and practice into new lines of questioning with new data, new groups of people, new interventions, and new ideas for removing disadvantages for families so that they can thrive.
So, what was visible at this year’s CCF Conference in Austin? Excitement, engagement, and energy. And not just because of the breakfast tacos. This year’s Media Awards winners, Ashley Cleek from Al Jazeera America and Dan Carsen from Alabama’s NPR Station WBHM, exemplified the mission of CCF in their acceptance speeches. Both highlighted how their work as journalists is to make counter-intuitive and surprising findings about families more apparent, even if it doesn’t seem like breaking news.
To me, the 2016 CCF Conference has done precisely that, in large part due to the amazing work of conference organizers Kristi Williams and Corinne Reczek, as well as members of the UT Executive Office and all of the UT sponsors. Let’s continue the CCF project of making visible the latest greatest (and perhaps surprising) research and practice on families to a wide audience.
Michelle Janning is Professor of Sociology at Whitman College, and serves as the Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families Board of Directors. Her research and writing emphasizes the intersections of home design and objects with family relations and the cultural construction of childhood. More specifically, she has focused on digital and handwritten love letter saving practices, divorce and kids’ bedrooms, Scandinavian childhood spaces, and gendered management of family photo albums.
Last month, Tom Porton, an award-winning, veteran Bronx high school teacher, handed in his resignation after colliding with the school’s principal. Porton had distributed HIV/AIDS education fliers listing nonsexual ways of “Making Love Without Doin’ It” (including advice to “read a book together”).
What does it say when a teacher who encourages students to discuss nonsexual ways to express love causes controversy? And how do discussions at school about sex affect teenagers? Do adults lose teenagers’ trust when they are not allowed to speak frankly about how to create healthy intimacy?
My cross-national research on adolescent sexuality shows a profound discomfort in American society not just with teenage sex, but with teenage love. And the silence among adults that results – in families, schools and the culture at large – may take a particular toll on adolescent boys.
The United States has seen more political strife and cultural controversy around adolescent sexuality than many other countries that went through a sexual revolution in the 1960s and ‘70’s. The Netherlands is an interesting comparative case: Like the U.S., Dutch society was culturally conservative in the 1950s. But Dutch society emerged from the sexual revolution with a more positive approach to adolescent sexuality, one that center-stages love.
American curricula tend to focus on physical acts and dangers – disease and pregnancy – often eschewing positive discussions of sexual pleasure or emotional intimacy.
Feminist scholars have critiqued American sex education for its overemphasis of danger and risk, noting the cost to teenage girls. Scholars have argued that the “missing discourse” of girls’ desire impedes their sense of power in and outside of relationships, leaving them poorly equipped to negotiate consent, safety and sexual satisfaction.
But scholars have paid less attention to the missing discourse of teenage love in American sex education, and its effects on boys, who confront a broader culture that provides scant recognition of, or support for, their emotional needs.
In comparison, sex education in the Netherlands tends to frame boys’ and girls’ sexual development in the context of their feelings for and relationships with others. Curricula include discussions of fun and exciting feelings. They also validate young people’s experience of love.
For example, the title of a widely used Dutch sex education curriculum is “Long Live Love, which is notable both for the celebration of sexual development, and for couching that development in terms of love.
Another example is of a PBS News Hour video, which shows a Dutch teacher engaging a group of 11-year olds in a conversation about what it feels like to be in love, and the proper protocol for breaking up (not via text message).
After watching the video, a male student at the University of Massachusetts spoke wistfully about what was missing from his own sex education experiences, stating, with a hint of outrage in his voice, “No one talks with us about love!”
‘Dirty little boys, get away!’
The differences between American and Dutch sex education curricula reflect broader cultural differences in the ways adults talk about young people and their motivations.
In interviews I conducted with Dutch and American parents of high school sophomores, the Dutch parents spoke about teenage sexuality in the context of their children falling in love.
One Dutch mother recalled that her son was “interested in girlfriends at a very early age and then he was also often intensely in love.” Her son would not have been unusual. Ninety percent of Dutch 12- to 14-year-old boys, surveyed in a national study, reported that they had been in love.
By contrast, American parents were very skeptical of love during the teenage years. They attributed adolescent sexuality to biological urges – particularly with regard to boys. I found it to be so, across the political spectrum.
Parents portrayed boys as slaves to their hormones. One self-described liberal mother said, “Most teenage boys would fuck anything that would sit still”.
A conservative father, who was anxious about his daughter’s dating, stated: “I’m a parent of a teenage cheerleader. I’m very concerned: ‘Dirty little boys! Get away! Get away!'”
What do boys want?
I found that boys in both cultures are looking for intimacy and relationships, not only sex. But they differed in how much they believed they fit the norm.
The Dutch boys thought that their desire to combine sex with relationships was normal, whereas American boys tended to see themselves as exceptionally romantic.
Says Randy, an American boy I interviewed:
“If you ask some guys, they’ll say it’s mainly for the sex or whatever [that they get together with a girl], but with me, you have to have a relationship with the person before you have sex with her…. I’d say I’m exceptional”.
Randy is far from exceptional. In one U.S. survey, boys chose having a girlfriend and no sex over having sex and no girlfriend by two to one.
American boys end up paying a price for a culture that does not support their needs for intimacy. For the issue is that while boys crave closeness, they are expected to act as if they are emotionally invulnerable. Among the American boys I interviewed, I observed a conflict between their desires and the prevailing masculinity norms – if they admit to valuing romantic love, they risk being viewed as “unmasculine.”
Unrealistic and unfair expectations about boys’ lack of emotional vulnerability, in turn, make it harder for them to navigate both platonic and romantic relationships. One study found that as boys move through the teenage years, masculinity norms (beliefs that men should be tough and not behave in ways marked as “feminine”), particularly the stigma of homosexuality, make it harder to maintain close same-sex friendships, leaving boys lonely and sometimes depressed.
With less practice sustaining intimacy, boys enter romantic relationships less confident and less skilled. Ironically, many boys end up less prepared for, but more emotionally reliant on, heterosexual contacts.
Talk to us
When I asked my students to brainstorm about ideal sex education programs, based on research, they recommended focusing more on relationships. These young men suggested that having older boys mentor young boys, showing that it is normal for boys to value relationships could challenge the idea that it’s not masculine to need emotional closeness.
Certainly, such peer mentoring might go a long way to counteract the gender stereotypes and rigid masculinity norms that research has shown adversely affect boys’ sexual health.
The flyer Porton distributed invited an intergenerational conversation about emotional intimacy that is missing from most classrooms and boys’ lives. And it’s a conversation boys appear eager to have.
Amy Schalet is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
About Council on Contemporary Families
The Council on Contemporary Families is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families. CCF seeks to enhance the national understanding of how and why families are changing, what needs and challenges they face, and how these needs can best be met.
Ashton Applewhite is a Council on Contemporary Families expert and has been recognized by the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. Her new book, “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism,” was just published in April 2016. She blogs at “This Chair Rocks,” where you can follow her ongoing insights, speaks widely, and is the voice of “Yo, is this ageist?” Ashton’s work is a call to wake up to the ageism in and around us, embrace a more accurate and positive view of growing older, and push back. She agreed to answer a few questions for us:
“New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable).
