My dad was the primary cook for my family growing up. Learning from him, I handle most of the cooking in my family. I generally like cooking, although the meal planning, prep, and grocery shopping can get tedious. When my wife tells others that I do all the cooking, she is often told: “you are so lucky” or “he’s a keeper!” Yet, no one has ever said to me: “You’re lucky that your wife schedules all the play dates for your kids”, or “How did you manage to find a wife that is so good at comforting your kids when they are upset?” There is a clear parenting double standard; everyone just assumes that mothers are good, involved parents whereas fathers are praised when they help out with just a few of these tasks.

The parenting double standard is fueled by gender gaps in domestic labor, with mothers spending significantly more time doing childcare, housework, and cognitive labor than fathers. Although fathers are expected to – and say they want to be – more engaged parents compared to fathers in previous generations, these attitudinal changes have not been enough to reduce persisting patterns of gender inequality in domestic labor.

In my new book, Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States: Contemporary Norms and Barriers, I seek to understand why this gap between fathers’ attitudes and behaviors exists, and what we can do to get fathers more involved at home and promote greater gender equality. Using data from national surveys, interviews with fathers, and my own fatherhood experiences, I argue that vague expectations of how involved fathers should be coupled with the persistence of traditional gender norms and workplace barriers enable gender disparities in domestic labor to persist.

In contrast to mothers who are expected to be intensely involved parents, fathers are simply expected to be more involved. The lack of clear expectations for father involvement enables fathers to view themselves as highly engaged when they help out with childcare and housework, yet still defer to mothers as being primarily responsible for these tasks. Additionally, even when fathers want to share domestic tasks, gendered ideal worker norms and limited access to flexible work options makes it difficult for fathers to be as involved at home as they would like to be.

To achieve greater gender equality, I argue that we need to embrace a new concept of fatherhood that I call the fully engaged dad concept of fatherhood. The fully engaged dad concept suggests that fathers should be equal parents and partners to mothers, being fully engaged in all aspects of domestic life including childcare, housework, and cognitive labor. By believing that fathers should be as equally involved in domestic tasks as mothers, holding fathers accountable to these expectations, and providing structural opportunities for fathers to meet this cultural standard, we can work to eliminate parenting double standards and achieve greater gender equality.

Richard J. Petts is a Professor of Sociology at Ball State University, and serves on the board of directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. You can read more about his research at www.richardpetts.com and can follow him on Twitter @pettsric.

Reprinted with permission from Temple Press

You’re at a party, a school parent gathering, somewhere where you’re meeting new people. What’s the first thing you might say? Or be asked? Isn’t it: “What do you do?”

You’re not alone in this. People’s work, and the labor market more broadly, occupy millions of people in the U.S. and around the globe. But why is “What do you do?” often the first question? Of course it’s partly because most people need the money that work provides—and often need more money than their particular labor market job offers. It’s also because what we “do” is often shorthand to others for “who we are.”

Yet “who we are” does not begin to touch the lack of opportunity in many of today’s labor market jobs, whether in manufacturing, printing, construction, healthcare, clerical work, retail, real estate, architecture, or automotive services. These are occupations and industries that have employed nearly two-thirds of the U.S. workforce since 1980, as workers in these areas since the 1980s until today vividly describe in What Workers Say.  The 1,200-plus people with whom I’ve talked at length since the early 1980s, some of them repeatedly, regardless of what occupation they hold or industry their job is in, have recognized that there’s little to no opportunity for promotion or advancement in their jobs, despite the fact that people, their communities, their families, and their country as a whole need what these workers do. At the same time, too many of them are also not paid a living wage.

In their own words in What Workers Say, the workers in the above-mentioned occupations and industries, regardless of socioeconomic characteristics, typify the types of struggles, discouragement, and on-the-job injuries that continue to affect millions of workers in the U.S. and elsewhere. Just as Studs Terkel’s Working (1972) valuably introduced the populace to what many jobs and occupations were like across the U.S. up to the early 1970s, the workers in What Workers Say describe their jobs and occupations from 1980 to today—a period of rapid and tumultuous labor market change. For example, Tisha** in manufacturing jobs, Joseph and Randy in construction work, and Kevin in printing jobs are among those who vividly illustrate the shift to service occupations from the earlier, higher-paying manufacturing occupations (Ch. 2). In one of the most dramatic examples of this shift, 40-year-old, African American, Hard Working Blessed experienced multiple eye injuries on his manufacturing job, which resulted in demotion and severe wage reduction. He ended up as a Fast Food Manager, with lower pay and a job that did not make use of his extensive work experience in manufacturing. Clerical workers, such as Roselyn, Wendy, Ayesha, Susan and others similarly describe struggling with frequent recessions and layoffs over the period (Ch. 3). Others, including Noel, Tom, and Shanquitta (for a period), describe frequent job disruptions and store closures from the increase in offshoring jobs to countries that pay workers even less than the U.S. does (Ch.5). And many healthcare workers, such as Laquita, Tasha, Martina, and Annie and others (Ch. 4) experience “credential creep,” where higher-level education became a hiring requirement, even though the demands of the job were suited perfectly to these applicants’ current credentials. This, of course, resulted in new forms of inequities in hiring.

In short, the workers tell the real story about today’s jobs so others can know what these jobs are really like. The richness and depth of the workers’ words help readers to understand that the formal definition of “unemployment” is very strict and does not cover many people who have been laid off or who aren’t able to look for work. Their words also illustrate the fact that since the 1980s there often haven’t been enough jobs for all who want labor market work, and that the default social policy response to low pay has been person-oriented: that more education and more skills are what is needed for greater equity in the labor market. In some cases, the coronavirus pandemic has illuminated the low-pay issue, to the benefit of current workers, but not in all cases and not necessarily to the level of a living wage. These workers also vividly describe what they’d really like to be doing, which leads in the final chapter to a solution that I call “compensated civil labor.” 

Drawing on German sociologist, Ulrich Beck’s (2000) idea of civil labor, I add “compensated” to the idea of civil labor. Compensated civil labor expands what we think of as work, how we do work, and particularly, how we do paid work. Compensated civil labor would allow the many people like Teresa (Ch. 7) to work at her rental car company part-time and satisfy her “heart-string” (aka her passion) of part-time food catering to her church, children’s school, and community and also be compensated for doing it. Compensated civil labor could also enable expansion of the notion of “work” well beyond the labor market in ways that can tap into today’s workers’ desire to engage in environmental protection activities, broader family participation, community contribution, and the like. In short, compensated civil labor would mean compensating people for their non-labor-market work, whether by actual money, exchange, or other forms of compensation. Data in the 2000s from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Statistics Survey (CES) and the Current Population Survey (CPS), together with numerous existing civic examples, aim to stimulate civic leaders, philanthropic foundations, educators and others to consider compensated civil labor, which could benefit workers, families, communities, and countries alike.

**All workers’ names are pseudonyms chosen by the worker.

Roberta Rehner Iversen, PhD, MSS, an associate professor at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), retired in July 2021 after nearly 25 years on the standing faculty at SP2.Dr. Iversen continues to serve as a faculty associate at the Penn Institute for Urban Research and as affiliated faculty at The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies. Her new book, What Workers Say: Decades of Struggle and How to Make Real Opportunity Now was published by Temple University Press in July 2022.

Millions of children grow up in a household that involves abuse, neglect, or other forms of dysfunction. These experiences have collectively become known as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. Because a person’s upbringing is foundational for the rest their life, having experienced ACEs can have long-term implications for adulthood. Unfortunately, for those who experience ACEs, adulthood is often marked by instability and dysfunction.

One marker of adversity in adulthood is being arrested or incarcerated. In the United States, the reach of the criminal justice system is vast. With over 2 million persons behind bars on any given day, the United States has the largest incarceration rate in the world. Beyond incarceration, millions of individuals encounter the police each year, and many of these interactions result in an arrest that potentially establishes a formal criminal history which can limit a person’s labor market prospects and civic participation. The criminal justice system is also deeply stratified across racial and socioeconomic lines, with low-income Black, Hispanic, and Native American persons being especially likely to experience an arrest or incarceration in their lifetimes.

Given that millions are impacted by involvement in the criminal justice system each year, it is important to identify early life antecedents that increase the risk of arrest or incarceration. Doing so can be foundational to the development of early prevention and intervention efforts that divert young people away from future arrests or incarceration. Previously, researchers have found that youth who are exposed to ACEs are more likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system. Still, most people age out of crime, and by the time people reach adulthood, the chances of being arrested or incarcerated have typically decreased substantially. Despite this, some adults remain involved with the criminal justice system even as adults. Understanding whether ACEs have an enduring effect that leads people to be at a greater risk for criminal justice system involvement as adults is an important, but understudied topic.

Our study

Our study, published in Academic Pediatrics, examined the relationship between ACEs exposure and criminal justice system contact in adulthood. Using data from of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adulthood Health, we examined the relationship between the number of ACEs a person experienced and their experiences with arrest and incarceration at multiple points of adulthood.

Our Findings

Do those who experienced more ACEs during childhood and adolescents have a greater risk of experiencing arrest and incarceration by the time they are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s?

We found that people who experienced more ACEs early in life, especially accumulating four or more separate types of ACEs, were at a higher risk of having been arrested and incarcerated as an adult (between the ages of 24-42 years old). Additionally, those with more ACEs had greater number of arrests and had served multiple stints of incarceration during their adult years. These findings are consistent with a broader line of research documenting that ACEs are associated with a range of negative social outcomes and serve as a catalyst that harms one’s adult life trajectory.

Implications

Our study offers important insights into how traumatic experiences early in life can have a significant enduring effect on what adult life looks like. Those who experience an accumulation of childhood adversities are at greater risk of experiencing arrest and incarceration by adulthood and spending longer periods of their adult life behind bars than individuals who have a childhood defined by less trauma and adversity. This suggests the need for early and effective detection of ACEs among children across the United States. When ACEs are properly screened for by health care professionals, they open up the possibility of youth receiving appropriate and effective interventions that provide supports needed to disrupt pathways into the criminal justice system and provide opportunities for a brighter future.

Alexander Testa, PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. You can follow them on Twitter @testaalex

Dylan B. Jackson, PhD, Johns Hopkins University. You can follow them on Twitter @Dr_DylanJackson 

Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, MSW. University of Toronto. You can follow them on Twitter @kyletganson 

Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc. University of California, San Francisco. You can follow them on Twitter @jasonmnagata 

Parents today are expected to do a lot. They are expected to place children at the center of their lives and organize everything around their children. Good parents are expected to spend lots of time with their children, enroll children in enriching extracurricular activities, closely monitor their children’s schedules, advocate for children’s individual needs, and foster their children’s own active voice. In short, good parents are expected to be intensive parents.

The cultural norm of intensive parenting creates challenges for American families. Notably, meeting the standards of intensive parenting is difficult for parents who work – and most do. There simply isn’t enough time in the day for parents to demonstrate commitment to their employer and live a completely child-centered life. Intensive parenthood norms are also a key source of gender inequality. Although contemporary fathers are expected to be engaged parents, parenting is still seen as secondary to breadwinner expectations. In contrast, intensive motherhood norms are pervasive, creating immense pressure for mothers to live up to these expectations. During the first year of the pandemic, employed mothers essentially worked two full-time jobs – spending over 14 hours per day in combined paid work and childcare. It is no surprise that mothers were disproportionately disadvantaged by the pandemic.

Given the challenges of intensive parenting – especially for mothers – it is important to consider policy solutions that provide parents with more time to focus on their children. One possible solution that Americans widely support is paid parental leave. In a recent study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, we considered whether workers are viewed as better parents when they take longer paid parental leave. We also considered whether paid parental leave may help shift gendered parenting norms such that leave-taking may also increase the likelihood that fathers are perceived as good parents. To answer these questions, we conducted survey experiments involving approximately 3,300 participants who evaluated an employee’s work situation and their parental leave-taking decision after the birth of a child. Participants then rated the degree to which they viewed the employee as a good parent, taking into consideration the worker’s parental leave-taking decision.

We find that both mothers and fathers who take longer paid parental leave are seen as better parents than those who take shorter leave (or no leave at all). Consistent with most public parental leave policies in the U.S. which provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave, ratings on the good parent scale were highest for mothers who took 12 weeks of leave and fathers who took 11 weeks of leave. We also find gender differences. Among those who take very short leaves, the effects of leave-taking on perceptions of workers as good parents were stronger for fathers than for mothers. Additionally, at moderate lengths of leave-taking (i.e., 3-10 weeks), fathers were actually viewed as better parents than mothers.

These results suggest that paid parental leave policies are believed to help parents better balance work and family life and live up to contemporary expectations to be an intensive parent. Paid parental leave may be especially important in changing gendered parenting norms such that fathers are also viewed as good, capable parents. Of course not everyone has the option to take leave, as most U.S. workers lack access to paid parental leave. Implementing a national paid parental leave policy, such as the one originally proposed as part of the Build Back Better plan that would have provided 12 weeks of paid leave, may give more parents the structural support needed to live child-centered lives. A national paid leave policy may also help to change perceptions of fathers so that fathers are viewed as good parents and not just financial providers. Doing so would help to breakdown gendered norms of parenting and promote greater gender equality.  

Richard J. Petts is a Professor of Sociology at Ball State University. You can read more about his research at www.richardpetts.com and can follow him on Twitter @pettsric.

Gayle Kaufman is Nancy and Erwin Maddrey Professor of Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies at Davidson College. You can read more about their research at www.gaylekaufman.com and can follow them on Twitter @gakaufman22.

Trenton D. Mize is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University. You can read more about his research at www.trentonmize.com and can follow him on Twitter @MizeTrenton.

“Hey Eli, can you watch the kids on Friday while I run to a doctor’s appointment?”

 “Sure Maria! By the way, would you mind getting my mail next week while I visit my sister?”

While it’s easy to imagine similar conversations between neighbors occurring all around the country every day, there’s a widespread belief that these conversations have become less common, that neighbors have grown apart, and that the bonds between neighbors have weakened. Yet, in recent research, colleagues and I find that connections amongst neighbors are more stable than many may expect.

Neighborhood social cohesion, which is the extent of mutual trust and support among neighbors, is an important predictor of a wide range of outcomes, including both kids’ and adults’ well-being.^1-4 Researchers have hypothesized that neighborhood social cohesion has been declining for decades due to factors like changes in communication technology, leisure activities, and economic organization.^5-8 This is commonly referred to as the “community lost” hypothesis.

Yet, research on whether changes in perceived neighborhood social cohesion have actually occurred is lacking, and despite the far-reaching body of research that considers neighborhood social cohesion, gaps in the literature remain. Studies on the topic frequently use data from a single city (often those near large research universities, like Chicago or Boston), leaving a large gap in our knowledge of what is happening throughout the country.⁹ Furthermore, few studies examine how perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion vary by individual and neighborhood characteristics, and those that do have produced conflicting findings. For example, some studies suggest that less-resourced neighborhoods may be more cohesive, while others suggest that higher-resourced neighborhoods are more cohesive.^10-11

In a recent research article, my colleagues and I addressed these gaps in the research by focusing on trends in neighborhood social cohesion across the entire country and whether perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion differ by individual and neighborhood characteristics. We used two different sets of data in our study, data which focuses on families with children, as neighborhood social cohesion is particularly important for families with children. Households with children are also the most common type of household in the US.

The first set of data is the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which allowed us to look at nationwide trends from 1997 to 2011 in neighborhood social cohesion. The second set of data is the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), which began following a group of families in the early 2000s though 2017, allowing us to examine whether individuals’ perceptions of neighborhood social cohesion have changed and whether neighborhood characteristics are associated with differences in neighborhood social cohesion. In both data sets, respondents shared how much they agreed with statements related to neighborhood social cohesion, such as “There are people I can count on in this neighborhood” and “This is a close-knit neighborhood.” We examined responses to individual statements and also combined the statements and their responses into a single scale representing overall cohesion.

Findings:

• Both data sets:
  • Across the different outcome measures, neighborhood social cohesion either remained stable or increased over time.
• SIPP data:
  • Reported cohesion was greater for respondents who are: homeowners, married, non-Hispanic white, college-educated, middle-aged, higher-income, or living in nonmetro areas.
• FFCWS data:
  • Cohesion was greater for respondents who are: homeowners, higher income, college-educated, and not living in public housing.
  • Cohesion was greater for non-Hispanic Blacks compared to non-Hispanic Whites for some measures. Cohesion was lower for other non-Hispanic races and identities compared to non-Hispanic Whites for most measures.
  • Cohesion was lower for respondents in neighborhoods with higher percentages of: unemployed residents, housing units that are rented, and households receiving public assistance.

In sum, we used different data sources with different strengths, and found multiple consistent patterns that all point to overall stability in neighborhood social cohesion across time and across individual and neighborhood differences. We found that neighborhood social cohesion has not decreased, and in fact has increased in certain ways. Our findings contradict the popular “community lost” hypothesis, at least for families with children. However, we did find notable disparities in neighborhood social cohesion depending on individual and neighborhood characteristics. We found lower levels of neighborhood social cohesion for respondents who had incomes below the poverty line, lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods, or were racial and ethnic minorities, renters, or unmarried. Since higher neighborhood social cohesion is associated with greater well-being for both adults and children, our findings suggest that less-resourced and/or marginalized families may face a well-being disadvantage linked to lower neighborhood social cohesion. While we do not find evidence that neighborhood social cohesion has decreased in recent years, concerns about certain families experiencing lost community are not unfounded.

References:

1. Dawson, Christyl T., Wensong Wu, Kristopher P. Fennie, Gladys Ibañez, Miguel Á. Cano, Jeremy W. Pettit, and Mary Jo Trepka. 2019. “Perceived Neighborhood Social Cohesion Moderates the Relationship between Neighborhood Structural Disadvantage and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms.” Health & Place 56:88–98.
2. Robinette, Jennifer W., Susan T. Charles, Jacqueline A. Mogle, and David M. Almeida. 2013. “Neighborhood Cohesion and Daily Well-Being: Results from a Diary Study.” Social Science & Medicine 96:174–82.
3. Robinette, Jennifer W., Jason D. Boardman, and Eileen Crimmins. 2018. “Perceived Neighborhood Social Cohesion and Cardiometabolic Risk: A Gene × Environment Study.” Biodemography and Social Biology 65(1):1–15.
4. Sharifian, Neika, Briana N. Spivey, Afsara B. Zaheed, and Laura B. Zahodne. 2020. “Psychological Distress Links Perceived Neighborhood Characteristics to Longitudinal Trajectories of Cognitive Health in Older Adulthood.” Social Science & Medicine 258:113125. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113125.
5. Boessen, Adam, John R. Hipp, Emily J. Smith, Carter T. Butts, Nicholas N. Nagle, and Zack Almquist. 2014. “Networks, Space, and Residents’ Perception of Cohesion.” American Journal of Community Psychology 53:447–61.
6. Dotson, Taylor. 2017. Technically Together: Reconsidering Community in a Networked World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Wellman, Barry. 1979. “The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers.” American Journal of Sociology 84(5):1201–31.
8. Wellman, Barry, and Barry Leighton. 1979. “Networks, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Approaches to the Study of the Community Question.” Urban Affairs Quarterly 14(3):363–90.
9. Schmidt, Nicole M., Eric J. Tchetgen Amy Ehntholt, Joanna Almeida, Quynh C. Nguyen, Beth E. Molnar, Deborah Azrael, and Theresa L. Osypuk. 2014. “Does Neighborhood Collective Efficacy for Families Change over Time? The Boston Neighborhood Survey.” Journal of Community Psychology 42(1):61–79.
10. Keene, Danya, Michael Bader, and Jennifer Ailshire. 2013. “Length of Residence and Social Integration: The Contingent Effects of Neighborhood Poverty.” Health & Place 21:171–78.
11. Sampson, Robert J., Jeffrey D. Morenoff, and Felton Earls. 1999. “Beyond Social Capital: Spatial Dynamics of Collective Efficacy for Children.” American Sociological Review 64(5):633–60

Kira England is a PhD candidate studying Sociology & Demography at the Pennsylvania State University. You can follow them on Twitter @kira_england

Acknowledgement:

We acknowledge assistance provided by the Population Research Institute at Penn State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025).

Relationships with parents are immensely central to children’s life experiences. Parents are understood as the de facto caregivers to children and young adults, and the quality of relationships with parents shape children’s entire life trajectories. Norms around parenting emphasize that parents should feed, clothe, and love their children. However, parents can also be sources of strain, rejection, fear, and trauma. What is remarkable is that even the most problematic parent-adult child relationships are expected to be—and often are—maintained. The new book Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents, explores why and how the parent-adult child bond remains intact – even when it maybe shouldn’t.

Families We Keep centers the voices of 76 LGBTQ adults and 44 of their parents who volunteered to be interviewed (separately) about their parent-child relationships. On average, LGBTQ people have more strained relationships with parents than cisgender heterosexual adult children due to parents’ homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and the other gender and sexuality related stigmas.  In fact, many LGBTQ adults’ ties with their parents are so bad that LGBTQ people create “chosen” families to supplement the support and love missing in family of origin ties. Still, even when LGBTQ adults form chosen families, many also keep their ties with parents. This is what Families We Keep calls a culture of Compulsory Kinship: the assumption and social expectation that family of origin relationships—especially ties with parents—are natural, inevitable, and the most central.  Families We Keep adds new insight to why and how this is the case.

LGBTQ adults use three rationales for why they keep ties with parents in line with compulsory kinship. First, LGBTQ adults and their parents draw on what are contemporary ideals of family as spaces of unconditional love and closeness – even when faced with unloving or unclose behavior. Second, LGBTQ people draw on notions of growth – of “it’s getting better” – to explain why they stay in these ties, even when the current state of the relationship is still bad. And third, LGBTQ adults draw of parents as unique (i.e., you only get one mom), and therefore this tie must be kept, even if it hurts. In showing these collective reasonings, Families We Keep highlights how the social forces of compulsory kinship frame parent-adult child relationships as natural, inevitable, and enduring regardless of the quality. Notably, the ways in which compulsory kinship operates is deeply racialized, with historic and ongoing structural racism subjecting individuals to different levels of stigma and discrimination, and increasing importance of family ties.

In answering the question of how do LGBTQ adults keep ties with parents, the second part of the book shows the type of work—specifically “conflict work”–that is used to keep these relationships intact. For LGBTQ adults, this work revolved around managing, minimizing, or coping with parental homophobia or transphobia, including avoiding or minimizing discussion of their LGBTQ identity or educating their parents about their LGBTQ identity, to name just a few strategies. The work to keep these bonds close fell heavily on the shoulders of LGBTQ adults, creating even more stress in an already strained family circumstance.

Overall, Families We Keep is a book about the importance of compulsory kinship in sustaining what is considered family, structuring choices about who we should be in family ties with even if family bonds are harmful or strained. This book is critical in showing the social forces that bond the tie between parents and their adult children, and should be considered in concert with a large and important scholarship on children who are forcibly removed from their parents—in particular in communities of color. In fact, in contrast to the parents of LGBTQ adult children found in this book, many have fought and are currently fighting for their rights to keep their own children including Indigenous peoples who had their children removed from their homes and placed in often deadly residential schools, Black parents’ experiences due to an unjust child welfare system and disproportionate incarceration, and immigrant parents who can be legally separated from their children. While many children are forcibly removed from parents, other children and adults are in vulnerable positions by an unsafe but compulsory parent-child tie. These two trends—one of the State removing children from people of color and one of compulsory kinship keeping parents and adult children together despite abuse—can be viewed together as a broader system that works to control the family lives of adults. As such, Families We Keep ends with a call for wider social supports for all adults, especially those most vulnerable to economic insecurity ultimately with the goal to facilitate the opportunity for all people to choose the relationships and life that is most fulfilling to them.

Rin Reczek (@RinReczek) and Emma Bosley-Smith (@bosley_smith) are coauthors of the book Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents and other relevant articles published in Journal of Marriage and Family and Social Problems. Rin Reczek is a Professor of Sociology at Ohio State who has published over 60 articles and book chapters on the topics of marriage, parent-child ties, parenthood, gender, sexuality, and health.

Emma Bosley-Smith is an Assistant Professor at Alma College in the Department of Sociology. She got her PhD from Ohio State University, and is a qualitative researcher focused on sexualities, gender, and class.

Sexual assault has received increasing attention in recent years, since the hashtag #MeToo spread on social media in 2017 in response to sexual-abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.  Some scholars have noted, however, that much of this advocacy and media emphasis has focused on women with race and class privilege.  Most of the women who garnered attention were white and heterosexual celebrities, with high-paying jobs.  #MeToo also began earlier than this time, as Tarana Burke, a Black woman, initially used the phrase in 2006.  #MeToo’s focus on primarily white women survivors has led some scholars to argue that Burke’s contributions have been sidelined and that gender inequality has become privileged over other forms of oppression, such as institutional racism, in sexual assault advocacy.  This emphasis on white women’s assaultive experiences does not reflect which group faces a preponderance of this violence.  For example, as I note in my book, Violent Differences: The Importance of Race in Sexual Assault against Queer Men, some nationally representative data in the U.S. has shown that Black men experience rates of sexual victimization at higher rates than white women. Research has also shown that queer men in general experience high rates of sexual assault and that queer people of color experience sexual assault at higher rates than their white counterparts.

      In Violent Differences, I examine queer men’s experiences of sexual assault, based on interviews I conducted with 60 queer male survivors.  This work builds on the contributions of women of color who have pointed to the marginalization of groups such Black and Latina women from much of the U.S. cultural landscape on sexual victimization, yet I examine the experiences of another marginalized group of survivors: Black queer men.  A majority of the respondents, 37, self-identified as Black or African American.  Many of their experiences differed from traditional representations of sexual assault.  For instance, one participant, whom I use the pseudonym of Ornell for, was a 37-year-old Black gay man who lived in a homeless shelter at the age of 21 and then met and fell in love with a man, Andres; they moved in together after dating for a few months.  Ornell described a process of escalating verbal disputes that eventually resulted in Andres being physically abusive.  Intimate partner violence and sexual assault are not mutually exclusive, as many forms of sexual assault occur within relationships.  In Ornell’s relationship, a few weeks after the physical abuse began, Andres raped Ornell, forcibly holding him down by the throat and covering his mouth. 

     Several weeks after the sexual assault, a neighbor called the police when Ornell and Andres were arguing.  When the officers came to their apartment, Ornell revealed that they had been arguing in part about the rape, which he said that the officers “turn into a joke” and included one of them asking, “You’re sitting here wearing earrings, and you expect us to take you seriously?” Ornell described his gender expression as “feminine,” and Black gender-expansive or gender-nonconforming men in this study often described previous profiling experiences in which they perceived the police as targeting their gender expression as well as their racial identity.  The complexities of such experiences would be flattened or obscured through an approach that focused only on race, gender, or sexuality; instead, these experiences require deeper consideration of their overlap. 

     White queer male survivors’ experiences undoubtedly revealed a lack of some institutional support as well – the vast majority of white participants had negative experiences when reporting a sexual assault to the police, for example.  However, I show that queer men of color described feeling “lonely” after their assaultive experiences to a much greater extent than their white counterparts, as the former felt more isolated from a variety of domains, such as LGBTQ communities and institutional resources provided by groups such as the police.  Focusing on the comparatively intense forms of marginalization that Black queer men experience reveals the extent to which many survivors are not supported in a U.S. context, pointing toward the necessity for change.

      For this reason, work attempting to reduce sexual assault would benefit by continuing to expand feminist understandings of sexual violence to include a wider range of survivors beyond white and middle-class heterosexual women.  Avoiding this expansion will continue to marginalize survivors who are harmed by systems of oppression other than gender inequality.  Instead, understanding sexual assault in relation to multiple dimensions of inequality helps with explaining high rates of assault experienced by multiply-marginalized individuals, such as Black women and LGBTQ people of color.  This understanding of sexual assault as rooted in multiple systems of oppression also facilitates a better understanding of how it operates, allowing feminist and intersectional work to account for acts in which gender inequality may be less apparent and to examine how assailants’ actions may emerge from several social hierarchies at the same time.  As challenges to multiple power relations become even more deeply integrated into work devoted to reducing sexual assault, this advocacy and scholarship can benefit a wider range of survivors and reveal the limitations of privileging one form of inequality over others. 

Doug Meyer is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Virginia and the author of Violence against Queer People: Race, Class, Gender, and the Persistence of Anti-LGBT Discrimination and Violent Differences: The Importance of Race in Sexual Assault against Queer Men.

Reprinted: A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Daniel L. Carlson, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah

April 25, 2022

Which marriages and relationships are happiest? And is it the same for men and women? These questions have come to the forefront of conversations about intimate partnerships in recent decades as the roles of men and women in families have shifted dramatically.

In 1960, seventy percent of married parent households consisted of a male income-earner and a female homemaker.  At the time, family experts believed that this was not only the most efficient way to organize society but the best predictor of marital stability and happiness. Nobel prize-winning economist Gary Becker argued that labor specialization among heterosexual partners maximized the product of men’s and women’s labor, making for greater efficiency and leading to more satisfying and stable partnerships.                

For several decades, research seemed to support Becker’s suppositions. Couples with a “traditional” division of household labor reported higher marital and sexual satisfaction than couples who shared housework, and earnings equality in intimate partnerships actually raised the risk of relationship dissolution.

Today, “breadwinner-homemaker” families constitute less than one-third of married parent families, while 60 percent of families are headed by dual earners. Gender responsibilities for paid work have become more evenly divided, and so have responsibilities for unpaid domestic work, though to a much lesser extent. On average, married mothers do half as much routine housework as they did in 1965 (16 hours vs. 32 hours per week) while married fathers do twice as much (5 hours vs. 2 hours). Among dual-earning couples, mothers do 13.5 hours of housework, compared to 9.5 hours for fathers.       

Contrary to the expectations of scholars such as Becker, the decline in marital specialization has not hurt marriages.  As of the 1990s, the increased risk of divorce for couples where wives earn as much or more than their husbands has disappeared.  Additionally, couples who share childcare responsibilities report greater relationship and sexual satisfaction than couples where mothers are solely responsible for childcare. Since the 1990s, sexual intimacy among those who share housework equally has increased, whereas among couples where female partners do the majority of housework it has decreased. 

Despite the seemingly positive impact of egalitarian relationships, movement in this direction has stalled in the past couple of decades. Although the gendered division of labor in families is much more equal than it was in the 1960s, there has been little change in women’s labor force participation or men’s housework in the last three decades.  The COVID-19 pandemic threatened to reverse the progress of the gender revolution by thrusting domestic labor back into homes. Though fathers increased their domestic labor during the early days of the pandemic, so too did mothers, and the loss of in-person school and daycare was associated with significant decreases in mothers’ labor force participation.

Some people suggest that we have reached an upper limit to the benefits of equal sharing, beyond which men in particular are not willing to go without relationship quality suffering. Others argue that relationships would be happier if work policies and social norms encouraged more couples to share the housework as evenly as they now share income-earning.

Resolving this question is not as easy as it might seem. The research is fairly consistent in demonstrating that women are happier in relationships where routine housework responsibilities (i.e., cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes, and shopping) are shared equally (see here, here, here, and here). But the findings are more mixed when it comes to men. Although some research finds that men report the greatest relationship satisfaction in couples where routine housework is shared equally (here, here, and here), others find that men are happiest in arrangements where they have no responsibilities for routine housework (here, here, here, here, and here). Still, other studies find no difference in men’s happiness between arrangements where they do no housework and those where they share it equally (here, here, here, here, and here).

These contradictory findings on the relationship between egalitarian housework and relationship satisfaction may stem from the fact that the way housework is currently measured doesn’t capture variations in how partners craft their housework arrangements. Conventional measures of housework simply calculate each partner’s total time spent on all tasks. Yet “housework” is actually an amalgamation of several distinct tasks. Because of this, partners can accomplish an equal division of tasks in many different ways. Some egalitarian couples may divide tasks between partners, with each partner doing all of some tasks and none of the tasks done by the other. Others may share equally in the completion of all tasks. For instance, each partner may do the laundry, the cooking, and the cleaning half of the time.  A fundamental question therefore is how do couples, egalitarian couples especially, actually construct their housework arrangements? And does this matter for relationship satisfaction?

In a forthcoming study in the journal Sex Roles, I use data from two nationally representative surveys of married and cohabiting US adults to examine the degree to which partners share in the completion of routine housework tasks and how men’s and women’s relationship quality (feelings of fairness; satisfaction with housework arrangements; overall relationship satisfaction) varies by the number of routine housework tasks they both take equal responsibility for versus the number that they divvy up, with each focusing on a different set of tasks.

My findings suggest that when it comes to analyzing the impact of the division of labor on people’s satisfaction, we need to do more than count the total time or overall proportion that each partner puts into housework. There is significant variation in the extent to which couples, especially those in egalitarian arrangements, share or divide up tasks.  As one might expect, there is little sharing in traditional housework arrangements (i.e., where men do less than 40% of housework). In such households, even when men do take on some of the routine tasks, 75 to 85 percent of partners equally share no tasks or only one. There is much more variation in task-sharing in egalitarian households (i.e., where women and men do roughly equal amounts of the housework, varying between 40 and 60 percent). Only 20 to 30 percent of egalitarian partners equally share no tasks or only one task with each other, while upwards of 40 percent equally share all or nearly all tasks.

As it turns out, the number of equally shared tasks matters a great deal for both men’s and women’s relationship quality.  Indeed, among recent cohorts, there is evidence to suggest that it matters as much if not more than each partner’s overall proportion of housework. For both men and women, the number of equally shared tasks is associated with a greater likelihood of A) feeling their relationship is fair to both partners, B) feeling satisfied with their own housework arrangement, and C) feeling satisfied with the relationship overall.

This pattern explains some of the contradictory research findings from earlier studies. Using the same data, I find that increases in men’s proportion of overall housework is positively associated with women’s reports of relationship quality, but negatively associated with men’s reports. From this, one could conclude that men feel less satisfied in equal domestic arrangements compared to traditional arrangements. But looking at the association of men’s satisfaction with the number of equally shared tasks, one could conclude that equality is associated with greater relationship satisfaction for men.

Indeed, when considering both the number of tasks that partners share and the proportion of overall housework each partner does, it appears that satisfaction in egalitarian relationships compared to traditional relationships depends on the number of tasks that the couple shares. Men in traditional arrangements who do no housework are significantly more satisfied with their relationships than men in egalitarian arrangements who equally share only two or fewer tasks. But egalitarian men who equally share at least three tasks with their partner are as fully satisfied with their relationships and housework arrangements as men who do no housework at all.

Women’s responses also confirm that not all egalitarian arrangements are created equal. Compared to women in traditional arrangements, women in egalitarian arrangements who equally share at least one task are significantly more satisfied with their relationships. However, women who divide housework equally with their male partners but do not equally share any tasks are no more satisfied than women who do all of the housework.

My findings suggest that the most mutually beneficial housework arrangement for the dyadic relationship is one where all tasks are shared equally.  Men may be equally satisfied doing no housework or sharing all or most tasks equally, but since women’s highest satisfaction is when all or most tasks are shared, the route to a happy relationship appears to lie in sharing.

Why might sharing the tasks equally create more satisfaction than dividing the tasks so that each partner specializes in a different set of tasks?  One likely answer is that tasks vary in how onerous or enjoyable people find them to be – think doing the laundry or cleaning the bathroom vs cooking – and the unpleasant ones are less likely to be shared than other more enjoyable ones. As such, egalitarian partners who divide up tasks run the risk of delegating particularly onerous tasks to just one person, lowering feelings of fairness and relationship satisfaction. Even when couples try to divide the onerous tasks equally, it is hard for someone to assess whether their partner’s contribution is the same as their own when doing different things at different times. Sharing all tasks equally eliminates these sources of resentment or misunderstanding, ensuring that each partner feels their arrangement is equitable and satisfying.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the staff at CCF for their assistance with the production of this article and Stephanie Coontz for her helpful comments in drafting this brief.

For More Information, Please Contact:

Daniel L. Carlson
Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies
University of Utah
daniel.carlson@fcs.utah.edu

Links

Brief report: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2022/04/25/egalitarian-relationships-brief-report/
Press release: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2022/04/25/egalitarian-relationships-press-release/

About CCF

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions For more information, contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, coontzs@msn.com. 

The family-building landscape for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) people has changed a great deal over the past several decades. My new book, LGBTQ Family Building: A Guide for Prospective Parents, covers a variety of pathways to parenthood, as well as guidance about how to navigate and circumvent various challenges that may arise along the way. I also share stories and statistics from “The LGBTQ Family Building Project,” my study of over 500 LGBTQ parents who built their families in various ways.

LGBTQ people report a number of barriers to pursuing parenthood. In the LGBTQ Family Building Project, for example, stigma and support related barriers included worries about teasing/harm for children (endorsed by 35% of parents), worries about discrimination in the family building process (30%), lack of LGBTQ role models (25%) and support from family 22%). Structural/practical barriers included financial considerations (58%) and geographic considerations (e.g., living in an LGBTQ unfriendly area) (18%). Personal circumstances also played a role (e.g., health concerns, 19%; partner who is uninterested in parenthood, 10%). 

Ultimately, all of these individuals did become parents, the majority through adoption or reproductive technologies (e.g., donor insemination). Adoption may be particularly appealing to cisgender male couples, who have fewer affordable options when it comes to family building, as surrogacy is quite expensive (over $100,000). LGBTQ people may be drawn to adoption as a means of building their families because it is appealing from an altruistic perspective, affordable (if via the child welfare system, as opposed to private domestic adoption), does not introduce genetic or gestational inequities in parents’ relationship to their child (as is often the case in parenthood pathways involving reproductive technologies), or because other methods (e.g., donor insemination) failed. For LGBTQ folks who choose donor insemination or surrogacy, this is often desirable because partner has a strong desire to carry, give birth to, chestfeed (i.e., nurse), and/or be genetically related to a child. They also cite various deterrents to pursuing adoption, such as perceived costliness, the unpredictability and uncertainty associated with both the adoption process and child outcomes (e.g., emotional, behavioral, and health issues), as well as legal barriers and adoption agency stigma.

There are many ways that LGBTQ people can self-advocate for themselves in the process of building their families. They can evaluate adoption agencies, medical providers, sperm banks, and other family-building resources for their LGBTQ-competence and inclusion. For example, they can examine websites and other public-facing materials for the presence of inclusive language and images (e.g., photos of same-gender couples and people with diverse gender presentations) and apparent knowledge of the unique issues present for LGBTQ folks. They can speak to staff members, and ask them directly about whether and how their policies, staff training, staff, and clientele reflect and include LGBTQ people. Further, they can ask staff directly for referrals of prior LGBTQ clients as well as inquire about the presence of LGBTQ specific resources (e.g., legal resources; support groups).

Ultimately, LGBTQ people benefit when they share knowledge and resources with each other. In turn, LGBTQ people who have successfully navigated the family building process will ideally share this knowledge informally through community and friendship networks. 

Abbie E. Goldberg is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she also currently serves as the Director of Women’s & Gender Studies, and is the current holder of the Jan and Larry Landry Endowed Chair (2020-2023). Follow them on Twitter @DrAbbieG

Imagine a world where everyone searches for their one true Friend, someone they hope to spend the rest of their life with. You can have as many lovers as you’d like, as long as those extra relationships don’t interfere with or detract from this central Friendship. Ether Rothblum, a psychologist whose work centers lesbian relationships and LGBTQ+ life, proposes this thought experiment to highlight how our culture privileges romantic relationships over friendships in all areas of life.

Defining “friend” is surprisingly difficult, and friendships are often conceptualized in contrast to other types of relationships. A friend is likely someone who you know, like, and trust more than someone you consider an acquaintance. You might think of a friend as someone who you love but don’t want to have sex with. Or a friend may be someone who you like to hang out with, but who you wouldn’t want to hang out with over an expensive candlelit dinner surrounded by other romantic couples.

We usually treat friendships like “extra” relationships that add a little fun to our everyday lives, but we don’t organize our lives around them. For instance, most people wouldn’t turn down a dream job because their best friend didn’t want to move to another city with them. If you noticed that someone brought their best friend to a wedding as their +1, rather than their romantic partner, you might wonder if they broke up. Spending too much time with a friend or appearing “too close” may solicit inquiries and rumors questioning if you really are “just friends.” These examples reveal the cultural assumption that everyone wants sexual and romantic relationships, but this isn’t the case. What is friendship when romantic and sexual relationships are not a relevant point of comparison?

First, we can turn to asexuality, which commonly refers to the experience of little or no sexual attraction. Although asexual people often do not experience sexual attraction, many report experiencing other forms of attraction, including romantic and platonic attraction. Based on this framework of multiple forms of attraction, many asexual people combine their romantic and sexual attractions to form identities like heteroromantic asexual, homoromantic asexual, panromantic asexual, etc.

But what is romantic attraction in the absence of sexual attraction? Without sexual attraction, how can you tell if you are drawn to someone as a friend or as a lover? Put plainly, when you can’t define a friend as someone you like but do not want to have sex with, the line between friend and lover becomes much fuzzier. Because of this, asexual folks often think of relationships as a spectrum rather as either friendships or romantic relationships.

Further complicating all of this, some individuals (and not just those under the asexuality umbrella) experience little or no romantic attraction, often described as aromanticism. Where asexuality blurs the line between friendships and romantic relationships, aromanticism challenges the idea that romance is the pinnacle of emotional intimacy. People who are aromantic call us to question why, exactly, romantic relationships are privileged over all other relationships, and why sex and romance are so tightly linked.

Other sexual and romantic relationship lifestyles challenge similar assumptions. For example, people who have sex with friends or are in consensual non-monogamous relationships also challenge the idea that sexual experiences should be limited to romantic relationships. Polyamorous folks and those who practice relationship anarchy do not restrict emotional intimacy to one central relationship, opposing the idea that romantic love should be exclusive and scarce. Queer folks have contested the boundaries between friend and family, creating chosen families that are accepting and loving.

The privileging of romantic and sexual relationships creates barriers for anyone who does not follow the “traditional” trajectory of heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Relationships that are not family or marital relationships don’t receive institutional or legal recognition. There is no ceremony to solidify and celebrate your status as friends. Many benefits and rights allotted under family law cannot be extended to friends, such as insurance coverage, filing joint taxes, visitation rights for someone in the hospital, and the release of deceased to next-of-kin for burial or cremation.

In other words, challenging the privileging of sexual and romantic relationships involves coming up against various cultural, legal, and economic institutions. How would our world look different if all types of connection and closeness were recognized and celebrated? The perspectives of asexual, aromantic, queer, and non-monogamous folks raise perhaps more questions than current research has answers to—but they point toward the cultural assumptions that underlie dominant understandings of “friendship.”

Emily Fox (@fox_emilyc) is a sociology Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in the context of friendship.

Canton Winer (@CantonWiner) is a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Irvine. His dissertation, part of which received honorable mention for the 2022 Best Graduate Student Paper from the ASA’s Section on Sexualities, examines the intersection of gender and sexuality through interviews with individuals on the asexuality spectrum.