Young adults in the United States are increasingly relying on their parents for economic support. This is due to long-term changes in the labour and housing market that have made it harder for young people to become economically independent after leaving full-time education.

Most parents, at some point, will provide some form of economic support to their young-adult children. However, the type of support that parents provide – and its consequences – depend strongly upon each family’s socio-economic position. Parents from upper-class families (that is, with higher wealth, incomes, and educational attainment) tend to support their children by giving them large sums of money. This helps children achieve financial security and independence early on, for instance by enabling them to make riskier and more rewarding career decisions, or by giving them preferential access to good-quality housing. Parents who are less well-off are instead more likely to help their children by letting them live at home, in what is known as prolonged intergenerational “co-residence.” Co-residence helps children with living expenses, allowing them for example to repay student debt while securing a stable job. The problem, however, is that co-residence is not as beneficial as direct money transfers for the economic outcomes of young adults. While receiving money that can be flexibly spent opens up the employment and housing opportunities of children, living with parents in young adulthood limits the geographic range of job searches, and it can delay the transition into economically independent adulthood. Clearly, social class differences in parental support to young adults are problematic insofar as they represent a way for socio-economic advantage and disadvantage to be transmitted along generational lines.

In the past thirty years, the United States have experienced consistently high or rising levels of income inequality. Sociological theory and research suggest that such inequality can act to exacerbate social class differences in parental support, which does not bode well for social mobility. By definition, rising inequality implies that, in real terms, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, or both. As such, inequality enables the rich to give disproportionately more money to their children than the poor. Moreover, inequality can raise the stakes of maintaining a high social status for upper-class families, by making lower social positions much less attractive. In a context of high inequality, upper-class parents may be motivated to give more money to their children to avoid them falling into lower-status occupations and housing, in what is known as “fear of falling” effect. Thus, as inequality increases, those parents who have the resources to do so may intensify their monetary support, enabling children to wait longer for the “right” position to open, or to spend long periods of time in prestigious but unpaid internships. Meanwhile, disadvantaged parents will find it more costly to transfer large sums of money to their children, because the risks associated with financial investments are higher. Instead, they may help children by allowing them to live at home while they secure a stable position. If these or similar mechanisms are at play, then high or rising inequality will make it harder for young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve independence from the parental home.

In a recent preprint, I study the relationship between income inequality across 50 U.S. states and class gaps in parental transfers of money and co-residence to young adults between 1992 and 2018. I analyse a large sample of families from the Health and Retirement Study, where children are aged 22-35 and parents are aged 50-75 and in good health, so as not to require practical assistance. I link the data on these families’ social class and transfer behaviour to indicators of state-level inequality, unemployment, and housing prices over the same period. I find that, as inequality increases within a given state, wealthier and college-educated parents give more money to their young-adult children (by around £1,000 per year for 0.1-point increase in the Gini coefficient for income inequality, see Figure 1). By contrast, poorer and lower-educated parents are less likely to give money, and more likely to provide co-residence in times of higher inequality. These changes are not explained by other state-level trends such as the spike in housing prices, giving support to the idea that they are brought about by contextual levels of inequality. The data show that upper-class families mainly intensified their money transfers in the years immediately after the Great Recession (2009-2014), as if shielding their children from the crisis. By contrast, the relationship between inequality and the shift from money to co-residence among lower-class families holds for the whole period under study (1992-2018).

Decades of high inequality and the increasing difficulties faced by young adults in the labour and housing markets in the United States make poor prospects for social mobility. My findings are suggestive of a “vicious cycle” by which inequality increases socio-economic disparities in parental transfers and, in turn, the widening disparities in transfers exacerbate inequalities in outcomes in the children’s generation. These problems are difficult to tackle from a policy perspective, because is not possible to force parents to withhold support to their children. The focus should be on equalising access to higher education, labour and housing markets instead.

Ginevra Floridi is a Lecturer in Sociology and Quantitative Methods at the University of Edinburgh. She is also affiliated with Nuffield College and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on contextual influences on individual and family behaviours including intergenerational transfers, fertility, and the provision of care. Follow her @ginevra_floridi

Figure 1. Change in inequality within a state and predicted amount of money given to children by parents’ educational attainment

Linked references

Fingerman, K., Kim, K., Davis, E. M., Furstenberg Jr., F. F., Birditt, K. S., & Zarit, S. H. (2015). “I’ll Give You the World”: Socioeconomic Differences in Parental Support of Adult Children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77, 844–865. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12204

Floridi, G. (2023). Inequality and class divides in parental transfers to young adults in the United States. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/g8yv2

Manzoni, A. (2018). Parental Support and Youth Occupational Attainment: Help or Hindrance? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47, 1580–1594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0856- z

Mitnik, P. A., Cumberworth, E., & Grusky, D. B. (2016). Social Mobility in a High-Inequality Regime. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 663, 140– 184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215596971

Schneider, D., Hastings, O. P., & LaBriola, J. (2018). Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments. American Sociological Review, 83, 475–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418772034

Sironi, M., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2012). Trends in the Economic Independence of Young Adults in the United States: 1973–2007. Population and Development Review, 38, 609–630. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00529.x

Toft, M., & Friedman, S. (2021). Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling: The Propulsive Power of The Bank of Mum and Dad. Sociology, 55, 90–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/003803852092253

Family members know very well how positive it is for our children to have real friends, those who always will support them and especially in the most difficult moments of their lives. Top scientific journals publish research about the concrete contributions to the well-being of children from reading and dialogue about the book Creative Friendships. The most important result is the promotion of the motivation and capacity of children to select and take care of the best friends. This is also the main source of the development of their dimensions of beauty, goodness, truth and freedom.

The book is scientific but it is written in a narrative that catches the attention of children from eight-year-olds to adults. It is the result of a PhD thesis followed by eight more years of research by two university professors in education, mothers, who also have a lot of practical experience working with children from zero to eighteen years old. Much scientific research is focused on successful cases and their replicability in diverse contexts and individuals. This book analyzes a successful case of one individual with wonderful friendships from his birth until his sixties.

One scientific article explained some of the testimonies made by children who have read and dialogued about this book:

I’ll tell you things from the book but also things I’ve thought . . . I mean . . . that while reading the book I have also thought many things of my own, you know? Things that are not in the book, that the book has made me remember and think, things of mine … But that have to do with the book . . . Do you understand? [Luca, eight years old]

Ramón since he was a child learned to decide well, looking for the reasons for things, that means that he has spent more years than the rest knowing how to decide . . . [Pau, thirteen years old]

Readers of Creative Friendships talk and think a lot about how important it was for the main character to decide freely without submitting himself to the dominant discourses of each moment. When he was fourteen years old (1966) all his peers smoked and pressed him to do the same. Most of them recognized they did not like the first cigarette they smoked, but they continued because they considered it to be a manly thing, and something necessary to be successful with girls.

He did not want to do something that was not pleasant and there was already evidence that it was detrimental for health. He told his friends that he did not need to smoke to feel like a man or to be successful with girls. Now, at seventy, he has much better health than his peers and sadly several of them have already died. As they read and talk about this, children understand the importance of not smoking, but more importantly the significance of making the best decisions without folding to peer pressure. Diverse anecdotes clarify how that would have been impossible without having real friends supporting him and understanding that they had different positions. But the most relevant thing is the narrative’s clarification that he had those extraordinary friendships precisely because of being secure enough to not submit himself to their preferences. Many children think that they will have no friends if they do not do what their friends do, reading and talking about this book helps clarify that this is the best path to have many real friends.

The narration provides plenty of tales inspiring children to self-betterment of their relationships and their lives. For instance, how he was always active against any kind of bullying, which ensured that he never suffered it and always helped his friends to overcome those situations. Children readers become very conscious that by not accepting any kind of disdainful attitudes towards them, they will be free and happy, and that it can help them develop good relationships with family and friends, and develop their leadership in their professional lives. In fact, the main character of the book is now the director of the European report entitled “Achieving student well-being for all: Educational contexts free of violence.” He has friends from when he was seven years old, and they have weekly meet-ups. Some of them are also leaders in different professional areas including medicine, companies, engineering, and culture.

Some people think that they need to choose between prioritizing the instrumental learning of children or their well-being. Almost each page of the book includes a different anecdote and different evidence about why it is important to substitute this “or” with “and.” There is no evidence at all that being good in mathematics means you need to sacrifice your well-being or vice versa. On the contrary, your well-being is much better when it includes instrumental learning of all subjects. Instrumental learning fosters well-being. So, the priority is to have well-being and to be good in all subjects; one fosters the other. The book motivates children towards languages, physics, music, literature, mathematics and all dimensions of their lives.

Marta Soler, Former President of the European Sociological Association. Twitter: @MartaSolerUB

Ane Lopez de Aguileta, PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona. Twitter: @AneLdaEng

Family members know very well how positive it is for our children to have real friends, those who always will support them and especially in the most difficult moments of their lives. Nevertheless, scientific research is being published in top scientific journals about the concrete contributions the reading and dialogue about the book “Creative Friendships” is doing to the well-being of children. The most important result is the promotion of the motivation and capacity of children to select and take care of the best friends. This is also the main source of the development of their dimensions of beauty, goodness, truth and freedom.

The book is scientific but it is written in a narrative that catches the attention of children since they are eight years old and of adults. It is the result of a PhD thesis followed by eight more years of research by two university professors in Education who have a lot of practical experience working with children from zero to eighteen years old, besides being mothers. Much of the scientific research in many areas is focused on successful cases and their replicability in diverse contexts and individuals. This book analyzes a successful case of one individual with wonderful friendships from his birth until his sixties.

One scientific article explained some of the testimonies made by children who have read and dialogued about this book:

I’ll tell you things from the book but also things I’ve thought . . . I mean . . . that while reading the book I have also thought many things of my own, you know? Things that are not in the book, that the book has made me remember and think, things of mine … But that have to do with the book . . . Do you understand? [Luca, eight years old]

Ramón since he was a child learned to decide well, looking for the reasons for things, that means that he has spent more years than the rest knowing how to decide . . . [Pau, thirteen years old]

Readers of “Creative Friendships” talk and think a lot about how important it has been for the character of the book to decide freely without submitting himself to the dominant discourses of each moment. When he was fourteen years old (1966) all his peers smoked and pressed him to do the same. Most of them recognized they did not like when they smoked the first cigarette but they did because they considered it to be a manly thing and something necessary to be successful with girls.

He did not want to do something that was not pleasant and there was already evidence that it was detrimental for health. Besides he said to his colleagues that he did not need to smoke to feel a man and to have success with girls. Now, being seventy, he has much better health than his peers and sadly several of them have already died. Reading and commenting this, children understand not mainly the importance of not smoking, but the importance of taking freely the best decisions without accepting any pressure of the peers. Diverse anecdotes of the narration clarify how that would have been impossible without having real friends supporting him and understanding that they had different positions. But the most relevant thing is the narrative’s clarification that he had those extraordinary friendships precisely because of being secure not submitting himself to their preferences. In the opposite way to the dominant discourse making most children think that they will have no friends if they do not accept the impositions, the reading and dialogue about this book clarify that this is the best path to have many, diverse and real friends.

The narration is plenty of tales inspiring children for the self-betterment of their relations and their lives. For instance, how he was always active against any kind of bullying, which ensured that he never suffered it and always helped his colleagues to overcome those situations. Children readers become very conscious that not accepting any kind of disdainful attitudes towards them, they will be all their lives free, happy and with excellent family, friends and affective relations, besides developing their leadership in their professional lives. In fact, being now seventy, the character of the book is now the director of the European report entitled “Achieving student well-being for all: Educational contexts free of violence”. He has friends from when he was seven years old and they have weekly relations. Some of them are also leaders in different professional areas including medicine, companies, engineering and culture.

Some people think that they need to choose between prioritizing the instrumental learning of children or their well-being. Almost each page of the book includes a different anecdote and a different evidence about why it is important to substitute this “or” by “and”. There is no evidence at all that being good in mathematics does not mean to not have well-being and that to have well-being does not mean to be bad in mathematics. On the contrary, the well-being is much better when it includes to be good also in instrumental learning of all subjects and, at the same time, to be good in instrumental learning fosters the well-being. So, the priority is to have well-being and to be good in all subjects, one fosters the other. The book includes and motivates children towards languages, physics, music, literature, mathematics and all the other dimensions of their lives.

Marta Soler, Former President of the European Sociological Association. Twitter: @MartaSolerUB

Ane Lopez de Aguileta, PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona. Twitter: @AneLdaEng

College-educated young men and women expect to work for pay and expect the same of their spouses and romantic partners. These young people also expect to share household chores and childcare with their partners. Yet research shows that past cohorts of dual-career couples who say they want gender-egalitarian relationships often fall short of this ideal in practice: men’s careers are more likely to be prioritized while women trade off paid work to shoulder a heavier burden of unpaid domestic labor. The new book Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions follows the lives of twenty-one couples who were embarking on their working lives to see if dual-career couples today come closer to living out their values – and what barriers continue to prevent them from acting on their intentions.

The consistent compromisers experienced an egalitarian work-family ecosystem over time. These partners had consistent access to supportive workplace conditions, held fast to their egalitarian beliefs, and regularly coordinated their actions to share resources and navigate constraints together. In particular, consistent compromiser men used their workplace advantages (like greater access to lucrative job opportunities, autonomy over where and when to work, and policies for partner hiring and parental leave) to support women’s careers and enable their own participation in domestic activities. Over the six years of the study, the biggest threat to this ecosystem was workplace discrimination and harassment against women that made it harder for them to advance in their careers as quickly as their husbands did.

Like the consistent compromisers, autonomous actors had good access to workplace support to facilitate gender equality in work and family. However, they held unique attitudes about “gender egalitarianism” that prevented them from making the most of these resources. First, they expressed support for men’s and women’s equal right to pursue their best individual opportunities. Second, they believed men and women were equally responsible for preserving their partner’s autonomy by refraining from holding each other back in their pursuits. This gender-neutral logic was paired with a gender-unequal pattern of action in which men passively stated their support for whatever women wanted to do without seeking resources to empower them, but many women actively compromised their careers for the couple. Over time, men’s growing confidence in their professional security shifted their attitudes away from autonomy and toward collaboration, spurring better coordinated action to enact an equal division of labor with their partners.

Lastly, tending traditional couples fell into a gender-unequal work-family arrangement early on and got stuck there over time. These partners faced relatively greater work-related challenges (namely a lack of two professional jobs in the same city), were more open to temporarily having a gender-unequal division of labor, and took gender complementary actions to meet work and family responsibilities. Tending traditional men’s prolonged unemployment violated masculinity norms dictating that men should work, so partners mobilized to get men a job, no matter the cost to women’s careers. Despite expecting women to eventually take a turn as the career leader, couples found it difficult to change their work-family ecosystem over time as men became specialized as earners and women specialized as caregivers.

Equal Partners? shows that it takes three main ingredients for an equal dual-career partnership – but that these ingredients are currently in short supply and are not always easily combined. Structural support is necessary for egalitarian relationships. Consistent compromisers, autonomous actors, and tending traditional couples would benefit from spousal hiring and partner job placement services; formal remote, part-time, and other flexible work options; fully paid parental leave; and affordable high-quality childcare. Employers should also ensure that women specifically receive adequate mentorship and protection from workplace harassment. However, the existence of these sorts of workplace policies are not sufficient on their own to produce equal partnerships without widespread cultural support for using them. Expanding the cultural models available to professional men and women for their work and family lives can help them imagine better and additional possibilities for equality in their relationships. And finally, couples need to effectively take joint action to leverage their external resources to put their cultural beliefs into practice. Partners, especially men, can actively look for professional opportunities for each other; be mindful of whether they are acting too autonomously; and take caution when trying to “trade off” being career leaders.

Jaclyn S. Wong (@JaclynSWong) is the author of the book Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions and other relevant articles published in Gender & Society and Journal of Family Issues. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina who does multi-method research on gender inequality within and between couples and families over the life course.

Reprinted with permission from Knowable Magazine

OPINION: Systemic inequity means women in the US die younger and suffer more than they should. It’s time for health for all.

One of the big news stories of 2022 was the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which threw America’s appalling treatment of women’s reproductive health into the international spotlight. But the problem of how the US is failing women’s health goes far beyond abortion rights. This wider issue deserves more attention.

The state of women’s health in the US is shocking — even to us, medical sociologists and demographers with a history of studying gender and health. Population health statistics paint a sobering portrait. Women in the US fare poorly in one way or another compared with women in other high-income countries, compared with US men, and even compared with previous generations of American women. And there’s no sign that these patterns are improving.

Mortality statistics show that US women live substantially shorter lives than women in other high-income countries. While US women’s life expectancy at birth was similar to the average across 23 comparison nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1980, by 2019 the US had fallen to the bottom of the pack. That year, US women’s life expectancy was 81.4 years — 3.2 years lower than the average across those comparison nations and more than four years lower than in Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Japan.

US rates of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity — “near-miss” events that could have resulted in death — are inexcusable. They have been rising for decades, with troubling increases in recent years. Between 2018 and 2020, the US maternal mortality rate increased from 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births to 23.8. For comparison, in 2020, the US maternal mortality rate was more than three times higher than that of 10 other high-income countries, including Canada, the UK and Germany. A 2022 CDC report suggests most pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable.

Delivery isn’t the only risk to pregnant people in the US: They die even more often from homicide than they do from pregnancy-related causes. Homicide also ranks among the top five causes of death for girls and women up to age 44 in the US overall.

Women’s health in the US and elsewhere also suffers needlessly from the silence and stigma about female bodies that persist in science, medicine and society. The lack of science on the clitoris, even its basic anatomy, is a notable example. Experts agree, too, that our understanding of basic uterine and menstrual physiology is lacking. Endometriosis, a painful and poorly understood condition that involves endometrial tissue growing outside the uterus, affects over 11 percent of women aged 15 to 44 in the US, many of whom wait years for a diagnosis. Millions more suffer during menopause from night sweats, memory lapses and sleep difficulties. Too many dismiss all this pain and suffering as natural — something to be endured.

The leading cause of death among US women is heart disease. A 2022 study of emergency room visits by adults 55 and under revealed that women who came in with chest pain waited longer to see a doctor or nurse and were less likely to be admitted for observation than men. A 2009 experimental study found that when women and men reported exactly the same cardiovascular symptoms, doctors were less certain of how to diagnose women than men, and were twice as likely to misdiagnose middle-aged women with a mental health condition compared with men.

Similar things happen with other health conditions. For example, women who came to an emergency room with abdominal pain in the US waited longer for pain medication, and were less likely to be given opioid analgesics, than men.

These statistics all point in the same direction. The United States is failing women’s health. But why?

People often assume that the main reason for women’s poor health is underlying sex-based biology. But biology is unlikely to explain why women in the US die younger than women in other high-income countries. Neither is health care spending. The US spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world.

The root cause of US women’s poor health is non-medical. It is systemic inequity: everything from unfair structures and practices that benefit the advantaged, to gender bias in science, to cultural expectations about what can and should be. Scientists have shown how sexism — together with racism, nativism, ablism, and other systems of privilege and oppression — shape the scientific questions we ask, as well as our everyday experiences, with profound implications for health.

It’s powerfully telling that Indigenous women and Black women in the US are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. That less educated women die years earlier than more educated women, and that women in Mississippi die younger than women in Massachusetts. Some suggest that the source of these inequalities lies in preexisting chronic conditions and things like obesity, smoking and individual actions labeled “health behaviors” that are assumed to be a matter of personal choice. But this misses the point. These differences, too, reflect systemic inequity. Our bodies — indeed, our biology — do not exist apart from our social surroundings.

To make change, a shift towards equity — in and out of science — is needed.

Inclusive science means, among other things, equitable funding. Despite progress, a 2021 study reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the largest public funder of health research in the US — tends to overfund research on diseases that disproportionately affect men, while underfunding those primarily affecting women. Funding for research on the health of transgender and gender non-binary people also lags. On the hopeful side, the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, among others, are working to advance research on the social foundations of health. That should be applauded.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade, and recent moves to legislate abortion bans, undermine everyone’s health. Laws matter, and changing laws in the direction of equity (instead of away from it), would be an important step. But laws alone can’t create the shift we need. Systemic injustice courses through all sectors, and will give rise to unjust legislation or practices again and again. We need a wholescale social movement that is broader.

We need to think things can and should be different, and make them so. Systems and structures rely on people to create and maintain them. The progress of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements are signs of hope. We can get there: It’s time to double down and advocate for health for all.

Susan E. Short and Meghan Zacher are sociologists at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. They research the social foundations of health.

Does stigma and discrimination influence the parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people (i.e., people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, etc.)? Laws barring same-sex couples from fostering or adopting children have been in place in many states, especially prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. There are only a handful of research studies that focus on how experiences of discrimination and perceptions of stigma may shape parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people. A new study in the Journal of Family Psychology examines the effects of felt stigma, internalized homophobia, and discrimination on the desire by lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to have children, as well as the belief in whether having children is a possibility.

What prior studies haven’t done is consider how younger generations of sexual minority people may differ in their parenthood aspirations than those in older generations. Recent cohorts of LGB people who came of age during the period leading up to marriage equality may have very different family life expectations compared to older LGB people who came of age, for example, in the era of HIV/AIDS.

This new study shows that a younger generation (ages 18-25 in 2016) of sexual minority people both desire to have children more than a generation that came of age before marriage equality (ages 34-41), and believe in a greater likelihood that they will have children. For both generations, those who reported more negative feelings about being LGB (“internalized homophobia”) also reported a greater desire to have children. This finding may seem surprising: it suggests is that having children may help some LGB people conform to society’s heterosexual norms, feelings that would be consistent with internalized homophobia. At the same time, the study also found that those who felt greater stigma related to being LGB believed it was less likely that they would ever have children. People who experience or feel discrimination for being LGB may feel discouraged about the possibility of having children, regardless of how much they may want to have children. The discrepancy between the desire to have children and the belief it is likely is referred to as a “parenting expectation gap.” This expectation gap – about a very typical and important life goal – may be harmful to mental health.

These findings show that prejudice and stigma can negatively impact the parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people. For counselors and social workers that work with sexual minority adults who want to be parents, it is critical to understand how internalized feelings of stigma or shame may affect their aspirations for having children. Counselors can help sexual minority adults recognize the discrepancy between the desire to have children and the belief that they will be parents in the future, a process that could protect mental health.

Acknowledgments: The Generations study is funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD; Grant 1R01HD078526) and through supplemental grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and Office of Research on Women’s Health. Generations study investigators are I. H. Meyer (principal investigator), D. M. Frost, P. L. Hammack, M. Lightfoot, S.T. Russell, and B. D. M. Wilson. The research was also supported by an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, P2C HD042849) awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Armin A. Dorri is a Doctoral Candidate in Human Development and Family Sciences at University of Texas at Austin. You can follow them on Twitter @armin_dorri

Stephen T. Russell is a Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor in Child Development and Director of the School of Human Ecology at the University of Texas at Austin. You can follow them on Twitter @StephnTRussell

Families in the U.S. already face a myriad of challenges to staying connected, including busy schedules, distractions, and stressors from work and parenting roles. Now, imagine that a family member is incarcerated. The barriers to maintaining familial bonds are even further compounded.

This issue is important to consider as a recent nationally representative study estimates that 45% of the U.S. population (113 million adults) has had a family member incarcerated at some point throughout their lifetimes. The United States is currently the world leader in incarceration with a rate higher than any other nation in the world. Each of the 1.4 million people incarcerated in the U.S. leaves behind a family system. Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic/Latiné families face increased risks due to racial disparities and overrepresentation in the U.S. carceral system. Families with incarcerated loved ones face increased financial burdens as well as mental and physical health deficits. The impacts are felt most fiercely by immediate relatives, such as parents and their children.

Recent reports indicate that nearly half of state prisoners (47%) and more than half of federal prisoners (58%) are parents to an estimated 1.5 million children. Parental incarceration, especially maternal incarceration, has adverse impacts on children, including mental health issues, lower educational performance, and increased likelihood for system-involvement. In fact, one study found that children with an incarcerated parent were nearly two times as likely to become incarcerated in comparison to children without an incarcerated parent.

The additional efforts families must take to stay in contact with their incarcerated loved ones is emotionally and financially taxing. Facilities often charge families and incarcerated loved ones per minute or per call rates with additional fees and surcharges by communications providers. For example, a 15-minute call from a state prison ranges between $0.14 and $4.30, with the average for jails being three times as much. Even sending funds to incarcerated people is facilitated through a private entity (i.e., JPay) and families must pay additional fees to use this service. Many families, especially from impoverished backgrounds, feel financial stressors as their loved ones make little to no income while incarcerated.

In-person visitation is one of the main and most important methods for families to communicate with an incarcerated loved one and maintain social bonds. Research consistently shows that visitation improves outcomes among incarcerated people, both while incarcerated and once they are released. Yet, families often must travel long distances, navigate punitive uncodified and codified policies related to visitation, and cope with a lack of privacy and constant surveillance.

My research with co-authors Drs. Dana DeHart and Cheri Shapiro (University of South Carolina) examined the stressors related to prison visitation through interviews with people incarcerated (n = 77) and family members (n = 21) on the outside in a southeastern state. Most prominently, families described the burdens, or strains and sacrifices, associated with visitation largely stemming from transportation costs (i.e., gas, lodging), food during visitation, and buying clothes to fit the strict dress code. Families also described issues with the scheduling of visitation that made it difficult for them to visit due to their work schedules. One incarcerated woman stated that her husband moved to avoid the 10 hours commute to come visit her in prison. Families also faced the uncertainty of visitation closures without notice due to seemingly arbitrary lockdowns in the facility.

Families also described significant anxiety around the rules and intense environment they faced once at the facility. Strict dress codes were a constant source of frustration and apprehension and disproportionately impacted women visitors. Families reported inconsistencies in the implementation of the dress code rules. For example, one family member stated that she was turned away for an outfit she had worn to visit several times previously. A mother who visited her son remarked, “You’re at their mercy. The rules are subject to change. They treat the inmates like they’re nobody, and when you come in, you’re treated the same way. It’s degrading. The staff have no empathy. It’s like they are desensitized.”

Beyond the stressors families face to enter the facility, they must also endure constant surveillance and lack of privacy. Correctional officers stand guard nearby during visitation. Often, there are restrictions on how long families can touch or embrace–imagine how this could impact critical parent-child connections. Other restrictions can extend to how often family members are able to stand or use the restroom.

Despite the barriers and stressors, families in our study discussed the importance of in-person visitation in maintaining familial bonds. Visitation provided time and space to talk, play board games, navigate parenting roles, and discuss responsibilities to the household. A wife who visited her incarcerated husband said, “[During visitation], they’re able to learn about their father themselves. He’s showing them how to love and embrace. They don’t even complain [about visiting]. I’ve seen changes in them. The cutest thing is them whispering in his ear. He sits there and smiles a big smile.”

Our findings highlight the immense challenges families impacted by mass incarceration face to maintain bonds. Several policy recommendations are derived from these results. Families must be provided support to overcome the financial burdens associated with communication. Such impacts are especially felt among families with low-income and historically marginalized backgrounds who are disproportionately likely to be impacted by mass incarceration. Also, increased consistency and transparency in rules and visitation closures would help ease anxiety and tension.

Facilities across the U.S. have decreased or even eliminated in-person visitation, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic due to understaffing issues. The findings from our study demonstrate the importance of in-person visitation to support non-verbal communication and physical touch that help support familial bonds. As families are often incarcerated people’s main source for reentry planning, including where they reside upon release, maintaining visitation is vital to public safety in the community, as well.

We hope our post helps shine light on the experiences of families impacted by incarceration. Their stories should be heard and considered among policy makers in relation to sentencing and release policies.

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You can find the full article with the study mentioned here:

Boppre, B., DeHart, D., & Shapiro, C. (2022). “The Prison System Doesn’t Make It Comfortable to Visit:” Prison Visitation from the Perspectives of People Incarcerated and Family Members. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 49, 1474-1494. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00938548221094823

Bios:

Dr. Breanna Boppre is Assistant Professor of Victim Studies at Sam Houston State University in Texas. She was also the child of incarcerated parents. You can follow her on Twitter @bree_bop

Transgender parents may let children explore gender on their own before labeling a child’s identity

According to our recent research, many transgender parents with children between one-and-a-half and six years of age hesitate to label their child’s gender identity. In addition, our results suggest that many children with transgender parents play in ways that conform to gendered societal expectations, while others play in more gender-expansive ways.

Previous research has shown that misgendering, or incorrectly labeling someone’s gender identity, often harms a person’s mental and physical health. Our new research suggests that transgender parents may offer their children supportive environments to explore their own gender identity and expression.

We also found a strong link between child age and the likelihood of labeling (see Figure 1): the older the child, the more likely parents were to label their child’s gender identity. Transgender parents of elementary-school-aged children may be more likely than transgender parents of toddlers to label their child’s gender identity.

This study can’t speak to whether transgender parents assign their children gendered names or pronouns or otherwise socialize them in gendered ways. But it does suggest that transgender parents hesitate to label their child’s gender identity before their child can communicate it themselves.

Method

Based on a subsample of the Gender Diverse Parents Study, our study utilized web-based surveys of 64 nonbinary and binary transgender parents across the United States. Binary transgender people identify primarily as women, girls, men, or boys; these labels do not capture nonbinary peoples’ gender identity.

The Gender Diverse Parents Study measured children’s gender expression: their interest in masculinized and feminized toys (e.g., toolsets and jewelry), activities (e.g., climbing and playing house), and personality characteristics (e.g., enjoying tumble play and liking pretty things). Participants rated how often their child engaged with and enjoyed each item or activity. The Gender Diverse Parents Study also asked parents about the sex their child was assigned at birth and about their child’s current gender identity.

We found that 41% of the participants did not report their child’s current gender identity, choosing either “unknown,” “choose not to label,” or “self-describe,” with a text field to write in their response. For “self-describe,” parents often described a gender-fluid child or a child who had not verbalized their gender identity. Several parents wrote, “I think it’s too early to know.”

Although the surveys revealed that, on average, children’s play was conventionally gendered, there was a great deal of diversity within the sample. For example, older children of nonbinary parents may be more likely to engage in gender-expansive play (see Figure 2).

This study was published on Aug. 17 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Implications

Some believe that parent gender identity has everything or nothing to do with child gender expression. But this study suggests that the truth is somewhere in between.

This recent study is one of the largest to focus on the gender of young children with transgender parents. It will further inform our understanding of gender development, parenting, and child development more broadly.

Rachel G. Riskind, PhD is a professor of Psychology at Guilford College. Dr. Riskind is a feminist social developmental psychologist focusing on parents, children, and adolescents. Her recent research describes family processes in families headed by transgender parents. You can follow her on Twitter @RachelRiskind

Dr. Samantha L. Tornello is a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State. She has three major research interests: Family, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Most of her work has focused on the role of family composition and parental sexual orientation and gender in the family system.

Mary Campbell, marketing and communications, Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, Mary is a blog post coauthor.

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Press Release 10/31/2022

Why does family structure—aka marriage–remain such an enduring explanation for Black-White inequality in the US? That’s the central question in a new article, “Racism, Family Structure, and Black Families,” made available this week as an open-access preprint shared at SocArxiv. The article has been accepted for the forthcoming Council on Contemporary Families anthology, Families as They Really Are published by Norton Books.  

Lead author, University of Tennessee sociologist Deadric Williams, has a detailed answer you can read in the new chapter. But he also has an answer to the central question in brief: “The belief that marriage is an inequality reducing mechanism serves as a racial ideology maintaining the status quo.”

The new article brings the receipts. In particular, Williams’ article, coauthored by Caroline Sanner (Virginia Tech), Todd Jensen (UNC-Chapel Hill), and Laura Simon (Mercer University), offers a history of claims that family structure is to blame for inequality, starting with the Moynihan Report of 1965. The authors review evidence for its limitations and set forward an alternative way to understand the many varieties of families that exist.

Dr. Williams explains: “We know that when compared to White Americans, African Americans are less likely to marry and more likely to experience a non-marital birth.” He continues, “Yet prior studies show that family formations do not account for the Black-White inequality gap.” The authors show how the benefits of family structure are not equally distributed between Black and White families when it comes to child outcomes. These patterns parallel results in education, health, and wealth accumulation outcomes, to name a few.

“With scant evidence, family formations remain an enduring explanation for scholars, layperson, and policymakers alike. Entire foundations and grants programs are built around supporting this line of thinking. Acting as if people are already on equal footing, and that ‘these days’ everyone starts with equal chances, can help people make sense of racial inequality as something that is the consequence of personal choices. But repeating that story again and again doesn’t make it so,” notes Virginia Rutter, CCF senior scholar and editor of the new edition of Families as They Really Are.

Dr. Williams and his colleagues note: “Family structure is a racial ideology based on the erroneous notion that (1) race is an essentialist characteristic and (2) individual-level characteristics (e.g., family structure) account for racial inequality. We conclude the chapter by championing Critical Race Theory as a powerful tool for charting a path forward for understanding African American families.”

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REFERENCE: Williams, D. T., Sanner, C., Jensen, T. M., & Simon, L. (2022, October 7). Racism, Family Structure, and Black Families. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/3u6jn

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Deadric T. Williams, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, dwill196@utk.edu. Dr. Williams is a keynote speaker at the NCFR annual conference, November 18, 2022, on “Bringing Racism out of the Shadows in Family Science.”

To learn more about Families as They Really Are and the forthcoming 3^rd edition, contact:

Virginia Rutter, Professor (retired), Department of Sociology, Framingham State University, vrutter@framingham.edu. Dr. Rutter is editor, with Kristi Williams (Ohio State University) and Barbara Risman (University of Illinois at Chicago).

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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. 

The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223. 

On a bright day last spring, a group of Latina immigrant mothers gathered in a park in Somerville, Massachusetts, a small, densely populated city north of Boston. They were there to participate in a weekly arts & conversation group for immigrant parents in the city’s public schools, a collaboration between a local non-profit and the city. Snacks and craft materials were strewn across the long table, all of us sipping coffee from styrofoam mugs, when the conversation turned to death. Losing a family member is always painful. But for the women around the table, immigration policy seeps into their decisions, caregiving, and grieving, across international borders. One mother, a vivacious El Salvadoran with a green card, explained how she had been the one to go home when her father had died. Her brother, living without authorization in another state, could not travel without risking permanent displacement from the U.S. “It isn’t fair,” she murmured, as the other women nodded in agreement.

In some places, where restrictive policies and racialized immigration enforcement leaves families in fear, talking about immigration status so openly and in a city-sponsored space would be unthinkable. But in Somerville, which has declared itself to be a sanctuary for immigrants since 1987, women frequently and openly discuss the constraints of immigrant motherhood, including but not limited to undocumented immigration status. Somerville is not alone in its self-proclaimed sanctuary identity. In the wake of the 2016 election, sanctuary cities proliferated across the U.S., drawing the ire of the 45^th president, who threatened to withdraw funds and raid immigrant families’ homes if cities did not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Despite this public attention, we actually know quite little about how sanctuary ordinances shape the lives of the immigrant families they purport to help. Refusing to enact a 287(g) agreement, which enables cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents, is an important step in creating safe living conditions for immigrants and their families. Beyond this, though, what are the consequences of sanctuary policies on immigrant families, especially women who, through their motherhood, are fulfilling gendered family and social roles? And what role do local institutions –especially schools, as legally accessible institutions for all immigrant children and their families, regardless of immigration status – play in enacting sanctuary in meaningful ways?

My research tackles these questions through an ethnography of Latina immigrant mothers’ lives in Somerville (where I also live and raise my children). Since 2018, I have been observing and interviewing immigrant mothers, educators, and community leaders. In a recently published paper, I argue that welcoming school districts, in the context of a sanctuary city, become central sites of belonging and inclusion for Latina immigrant mothers. The city offers programs for immigrant parents across the district, including parent English classes, an advocacy committee, and the arts and conversation group. While the mothers in my study (and it was almost always mothers who participated) use these programs to learn English, advocate, and develop new artistic skills, they also transform these spaces into sites of what I term intersectional recognition. I define intersectional recognition as the process through which individuals and institutions affirm the intersections between multiple marginalized identities. By acknowledging their mutual social positions as Latinas, immigrants, and mothers, the women position themselves and their families as worthy members of a community, even as xenophobic national discourses situate them as outsiders. Yet as women offer each other this recognition, they bear witness to the ways immigration laws shape their individual experiences of motherhood. One morning, for instance, a meeting of the parent advocacy group had come to an end, and most of the women had left to fetch children from school or get to work. A few of us lingered behind, and Carolina, an El Salvadoran mother and leader of the group, leaned across the long table, telling the stragglers that she had something to say. Some of the mothers were paid for their work, hired by the school district as parent leaders, she reminded us. But undocumented mothers could not be hired, and Carolina was unsettled by this inequality. She continued advocating until gift cards to a local grocery store were distributed to mothers who could not be legally hired.

The gift cards were helpful to the undocumented mothers, and Carolina’s organizing was rooted in her intersectional recognition of how immigranthood, motherhood, and being Latina were intertwined in women’s caregiving and relationships with their children’s schools. But the cards were also inadequate in the face of two broader barriers that shape immigrant mothers’ familial roles and responsibilities: restrictive immigration policies at the national level and extraordinarily high costs of housing locally. While sanctuary cities can refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal government still holds jurisdiction on immigration and pathways to citizenship.So, despite Somerville’s welcoming stance, and a school district that strives to support immigrant families, gentrification threatens the community ties that women foster through participating in city and district programs. Eva, a gifted painter who revealed her talents one day at the arts & conversation group to the surprise and delight of the other mothers, relocated to another, less expensive state. Nadia, a skilled seamstress who crafted beautifully designed children’s clothes from donated scraps, was evicted and homeless for months; she could not secure housing in Somerville and left for a nearby city. Even as women felt a sense of belonging, worthiness, and inclusion in the city, immigration policy and rising housing costs remain critical, intertwined obstacles.

And yet, although these obstacles may feel insurmountable, cities and schools should not acquiesce. They can and should enact welcoming programs and ensure resources are accessible to immigrants with and without authorized immigration status. The symbolism of sanctuary is important, but my research points out that it is also how sanctuary is enacted that really matters. To keep spaces of belonging thriving as gentrification threatens the social and cultural fabric of immigrant neighborhoods, sanctuary cities must respond proactively and creatively to the exorbitant costs of housing that are reshaping our cities. Otherwise, the women who gathered at the park, making art and recognizing the intersectional aspects of who they are, as mothers, immigrants, and Latinas, will not be able to stay in the very city that claims to offer sanctuary.

Sarah Bruhn is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Visiting Fellow at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Her research broadly revolves around questions of belonging, migration, gender, and education. She is working on a book that examines how immigrant women resist displacement from anti-immigrant policies and gentrification through their motherhood. You can find her on Twitter @sarahbruhn3 or sarahbruhn.com.