Christian colleges and universities make up around one-third of all colleges and universities in the United States, and many of these schools maintain policies that make it difficult for people of different genders to interact with each other in campus housing. For example, while an increasing number of secular colleges and universities offer gender-neutral housing, many Christian colleges and universities refuse to do so. Why might this be the case? In our new study, we argue that many U.S. Christian colleges and universities’ decision to maintain “gendered” housing, roommate, and visitation policies may be informed not only by their conservative, cisnormative (the assumption that everyone identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth) views on gender, but also by their heteronormative (a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation) views of sexuality.

Through an analysis of residence life policies at 609 Christian colleges and universities in the United States, we discovered that 27% of Christian colleges and universities segregate women and men into different residence halls. In addition, 86% of Christian colleges and universities require that students room with someone of the same gender. And 72% of Christian colleges and universities maintain gender-specific visitation policies that require students to follow a strict set of rules if they wish to visit the room of someone of a different gender, such as signing in at a front desk, leaving doors propped open, and keeping lights turned on.

Schools’ conservative, cisnormative beliefs about gender certainly inform their decisions to maintain these policies. Specifically, members of white, conservative Christian denominations are more likely to believe that there are only two biologically determined genders and that women and men are characterized by innate, essential gender differences. Such beliefs likely influence some Christian colleges and universities’ decision to place all students into one of two types of residence halls—women’s dorms or men’s dorms—and then enforce roommate and visitation policies that assume all students identify as women or men.

In addition to adhering to such beliefs about gender, most Christian colleges and universities expect their students to adhere to conservative Christian norms regarding appropriate sexual behavior, such as avoiding premarital sexual intercourse. LGBTQ students are also discriminated against at many Christian colleges and universities; for example, in line with prior research, 28% of Christian colleges and universities in our sample explicitly prohibit same-sex relationships. Because many Christian colleges and universities believe that their students are (or should be) heterosexual, and want their students to refrain from sexual intercourse, they place students into rooms and residence halls where they cannot easily be alone with a person of a different gender.

Yet, our work also suggests a deep irony in schools’ adoption of gendered residence life policies. Specifically, the same schools that condemn same-sex relationships and seek to exclude LGBTQ students from their campus actually craft policies that provide more opportunities for lesbian and gay students (as opposed to straight students) to live alongside, room with, or visit the dorms of their romantic partners. Thus, the assumptions about sexuality that underlie Christian colleges and universities’ gendered housing, roommate, and visitation policies are internally contradictory in that they have the potential to enable some of the same behaviors (e.g., same-sex dating) that they seek to prohibit and undermine some of the same behaviors (e.g., heterosexual dating) that those schools support. 

To be sure, we do not suggest that it is easier to be LGBTQ on a conservative Christian campus; many schools continue to punish students who are caught dating people of the same sex, and many schools have chilly campus climates that make it difficult for LGBTQ students to be comfortably out. But what our research does suggest is that schools’ heteronormative residence life policies are not firmly tethered to reality. Crafting residence life policies that assume that all students are men or women who are attracted to the so-called “opposite sex” inevitably means that some students will be living alongside people of the gender to which they are attracted. 

The internal contradictions underlying Christian colleges and universities’ residence life policies suggest that Christian colleges and universities’ residence life policies are in need of rethinking and that attempts to enforce cisnormative, heteronormative policies simply will not work. Although evidence suggests that gendered residence life policies have a negative impact on LGBTQ students’ (and especially transgender and nonbinary students’) mental health, current U.S. Department of Education policy enables religiously affiliated colleges and universities to maintain them. To challenge this state of affairs, organizations like the Religious Exemption Accountability Project have filed lawsuits against many Christian colleges and universities’ policies on gender and sexuality. Many LGBTQ students and their allies also continue to mobilize in favor of more inclusive, equitable policies at their schools. It is possible that such efforts will convince more schools to adopt gender-neutral residence life policies in the years to come.

Jessica Schachle-Gordon is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. You can follow her on Twitter @JessicaSchachle

Gabby Gomez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Sociology department at Oklahoma State University. Follow her on Twitter @gabgo128

Jonathan S. Coley is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. You can learn more about his work here and follow him on Twitter @jcoleysociology

Dan Morrison is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. You can follow him on Twitter @danielrmorrison

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Reports published on May 31, 2023

Recent infant formula shortages in the United States have reignited debates about the importance of breastfeeding for child health and development. Major health and medical organizations unanimously recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed their infants for six months or more, and breastfeeding has become a hallmark of ideal parenting. Children who are breastfed generally have lower rates of child obesity, fewer behavior and conduct disorders in childhood, and higher cognitive test scores compared to children who are not breastfed.

Although over 80% of infants receive some breastmilk, only 26% are exclusively breastfed for the recommended six months. This is partially because breastfeeding is time-intensive and requires a lot of support. As a result, breastfeeding is socially stratified in the United States and is most common among those with the most resources. For example, women with a college degree are twice as likely to exclusively breastfeed for six months compared to those with a high school degree.

Public health initiatives suggest that increasing breastfeeding rates among populations that are less likely to breastfeed is an important strategy for improving children’s health and development. But a growing body of research suggests that benefits of breastfeeding may have been overstated. We cannot conduct randomized controlled trials for breastfeeding, so it’s difficult to tell whether it is directly causing improvements in children’s health, or if breastfed children tend to have better outcomes because of their parent’s other socioeconomic advantages. Studies using sophisticated statistical techniques to account for these complicated dynamics find that, all else equal, the causal effect of breastfeeding is weak or nonexistent. For example, when we compare siblings in the same family who were fed differently (one sibling was breastfed and the other was not, or they were breastfed for different amounts of time), they tend to have very similar physical, behavioral, and cognitive development.

The lack of an average causal benefit of breastfeeding, however, does not mean that it confers no advantages.  Averages can obscure substantial variation, particularly for behaviors like breastfeeding that are highly influenced by social and economic factors. In such cases, asking if breast is best is too simplistic a question. Better questions to ask are: Does breastfeeding benefit all children equally? Or do some children reap greater benefits than others?

I conducted a study with my co-authors Kerri Raissian and Jiyeon Kim to answer these questions. Our study analyzed data from a longitudinal nationally representative sample to evaluate the relationship between breastfeeding and a comprehensive set of longer-term developmental outcomes for children ages 4-14. Specifically, we examined body mass index (BMI), three measures of behavioral development, and five measures of cognitive skills. We used statistical techniques to carefully compare children who were breastfed to children who were never breastfed but had very similar characteristics. We also grouped children based on their likelihood of breastfeeding and compared the effects across these different groups to assess whether everyone benefitted equally. We found that breastfeeding provides small benefits for children’s behavioral development, math scores, and academic ability, but only among those that are highly likely to breastfeed. We also found small benefits for children’s reading comprehension and vocabulary, but these effects were concentrated among those who were least likely to breastfeed.

One key takeaway from our study is that breastfeeding does not equally benefit everyone. What explains this variation?

One potential answer is that people experience the costs of breastfeeding differently. Although breastmilk is “free,” breastfeeding is not costless in American society. Breastfeeding is associated with prolonged earnings losses for women, in part due to lack of paid parental leave and time out of the workforce. This economic penalty may be more easily absorbed by women who are financially secure but is a more significant hardship for low-income or single women. Lack of economic resources may offset some of the benefits of breastfeeding for these children who are less likely to breastfeed. This could explain why we found that breastfeeding is related to better behavior, math scores, and academic ability among those who are most likely to breastfeed.

Another potential source of variation is that people experience the benefits of breastfeeding differently. If more advantaged parents are already providing an optimal home environment or parenting in ways that promote their children’s health or cognitive skills, they may not receive an additional boost from breastfeeding. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all parents read to their children from birth through kindergarten, and it is possible that parents who adopt this practice are also likely to follow the AAP recommendations for breastfeeding. If parents who are less likely to breastfeed do not engage in these early literacy activities to the same extent, the benefits of breastfeeding could be amplified among this group. This might explain why we found that breastfeeding is linked with better reading comprehension and vocabulary among children who are least likely to breastfeed. Parents may be less equipped to compensate for quantitative skills given that we did not find this pattern for math scores.

The second key takeaway is that the benefits of breastfeeding are modest. For example, among children who were least likely to breastfeed, those who breastfed for 6 months or more had about 30% of a standard deviation higher reading comprehension score than those who were never breastfed. In comparison, four extra days of mother-child shared reading time per month increases reading achievement by 32% of a standard deviation. On a broader scale, expansions in Universal Pre-K are linked with larger increases in letter-word identification (79% of a standard deviation) and spelling scores (64% of a standard deviation).

To be clear, we are not saying that breastfeeding isn’t an ideal source of nutrition for infants, or that other parenting practices or policies are direct substitutes. Rather, parents and policymakers should consider breastfeeding as one potential tool among others that may provide comparable or larger benefits for longer-term child development. This is especially useful information given the very real tradeoffs that many mothers make. It may also help to relieve some of the stigma and shame that some mothers experience when they are unable to breastfeed.

Our study provides insights for public policy. We highlight socioeconomic and racial inequality in breastfeeding within the United States. The US provides a weak safety net for parents of young children and offers no federal paid family leave. Factors such as race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, income, marital status, and employment are strongly related to the likelihood that a mother will breastfeed.

Furthermore, we demonstrate that the social context not only shapes who breastfeeds in American society, but also who benefits most. Efforts to increase breastfeeding rates among populations that are least likely to breastfeed are unlikely to close disparities in child development. The benefits of breastfeeding are largely concentrated among the populations that are already likely to breastfeed. To level the playing field, rather than merely telling mothers that “breast is best,” policies should focus on reducing structural barriers and economic costs for mothers who want to breastfeed. For many mothers in the United States, breastfeeding is ideal but unattainable.

Jessica Houston Su is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. You can follow them on Twitter: @jesshoustonsu

Bella DePaulo is the author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, and How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century. She is also an Academic Affiliate in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has written for Medium, Psychology Today, HuffPost, New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, CNN, Time magazine, the Atlantic, New York magazine, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her TedX talk, What no one ever told you about people who are single, has over a million views. Here, I ask DePaulo about her new book, Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life. You can find out more at: https://belladepaulo.com/ You can follow them on Twitter: @belladepaulo

AMW: What is being single at heart? Is that different from just being single?

For people who are single at heart, single life is their best life – their most joyful, meaningful, fulfilling, psychologically rich, and authentic life. They love being single and want to stay single. They don’t want to organize their life around a romantic partner. They are happy and flourishing because they are single, not in spite of it.

Single people who do not like being single are not single at heart. Even single people who want to stay single may not be single at heart if their reasons are only negative ones – for example, they hate dating, or they have given up on “finding someone,” or they have challenges that make it difficult to pursue or maintain a romantic relationship. People who are single at heart are powerfully drawn to single life for positive reasons; they value all that single life has to offer.

AMW: What are the advantages of being single at heart?
Here are a few of the advantages of being single at heart that I discuss in my Single at Heart book:

1. People who are single at heart love the time they have to themselves. In solitude, they enjoy the opportunities for relaxation, creativity, productivity, spirituality, and just getting to be themselves. That’s a whole different experience than fearing solitude or finding it deeply distressing, as can happen, for example, when people are alone not because they enjoy being alone, but because they have been rejected or ostracized. People such as the single at heart who appreciate alone time have some great advantages. Contrary to stereotypes, they are very unlikely to feel lonely. Feeling comfortable in solitude helped the single at heart fare better than a lot of other people during the worst of the pandemic. Their embrace of solitude also means that they are very unlikely to become the caricature of the older single person who is isolated and sad.
2. People who are single at heart have the freedom to follow their hearts and live according to their values. Within the limits of their resources and opportunities, the single at heart might use their freedom to continue to learn and to grow, to do meaningful work, and to chart their own life courses, rather than following the expected path through adult life. They appreciate their financial freedom, getting to be the deciders, and arranging their homes and their everyday lives just the way they want them. One of the stereotypes of single people is that they are selfish, but some people who are single at heart use their freedom to be there for the important people in their lives and to contribute to their communities or their nation.
3. Because they are not organizing their lives around a romantic partner, the single at heart are often devoted friends. They can spend time with, and care for, as many people as they want, whenever they want, without worrying about romantic partners who may want more of that attention for themselves.
4. Because the single at heart embrace their single lives and invest in them, they are often particularly well prepared for later life. Because they don’t marginalize their friends to focus on a spouse or romantic partner (they have “The Ones” rather than “The One”), they are likely to have a number of people who are there for them as they grow older. Because they don’t divide up the chores and tasks of everyday life with a romantic partner, they head into their later years already knowing how to do everything that needs to be done, or they have found people to hire or who will help. They are often good planners. For example, one of the single at heart women who shared her life story with me was only 33, but she was already having renovations done on her home that would make it more likely that she could live there as long as possible.  
5. The single at heart have more expansive, open-hearted perspectives on intimacy and love. Sure, intimacy can include sexual intimacy, but it also includes emotional intimacy. And to the single at heart, love encompasses so much more than just romantic love. For example:
   1. About intimacy, a 61-year-old single at heart woman said: “When people share their deepest sorrows, fears, and joys with you, that’s intimacy. Giving people long hugs is intimacy.”
   1. About love, a 47-year-old single at heart schoolteacher said: “I love my blood family. I love my chosen family. I love my students, my pets, and pursuing my creative endeavors. My family, pets, and friends love me. My students love me.”

AMW: What are the biggest misconceptions about single life?

One of the most important misconceptions, and the one I most fervently want to dismantle in Single at Heart, is that what single people want, more than anything else, is to not be single. I review some striking evidence shattering that stereotype in the book. Challenging that misconception is important because when people believe that no one really wants to stay single, then single life gets treated as a lesser life. The stories told about single people’s lives are deficit narratives. What I find really stunning is that these deficit narratives are so powerful, and so rarely challenged, that single people who love their single lives worry that there is something wrong with them. Think about that: They have what we all crave – a life they find meaningful and fulfilling. And yet, they write to advice columnists, read self-help books, and go to therapy to figure out why they have this “problem” of liking single life!

Just about all the other stereotypes of single people turn out to be exactly wrong. For example, single people are often described as “alone” or “unattached” or as people who “don’t have anyone.” But in fact, research shows that single people are often more connected to more different people. Single people are often regarded as selfish, but in important ways, they are more generous with their time, money, and caring. And of course, the big one – that single people are unhappy; and as they grow older, they become even more dissatisfied with their single lives; and if only they would get married, they really would live happily ever after. I review evidence dispelling all of those misleading notions, and more, in Single at Heart.

Reprinted with permission from Online Sexuality Scholars blog

Why did you decide to write this book?

First – as a parent myself, I know how often kids surprise us with questions about bodies, relationships, and sexuality. Also, things come up in our kids’ lives – maybe in their friend group or at school– and sometimes we find ourselves addressing topics years before we ever thought we would. I wanted to write a book that helped parents navigate these conversations with more comfort and confidence.

Second – from both my own research on the mainstreaming of rough sex among young people and from talking with Kristina and Susan about what they see in their legal cases – it’s clear that sex has changed substantially over the past decade and we need to talk about it. In my team’s research, we’ve found that most college students report engaging in sexual choking (which is actually a form of strangulation) and that, even though it is usually described as consensual and often as pleasure, it also poses a number of health risks to young people, including to their brain health. As parents, we need to be informed so we can support our kids.

What’s behind the title – “Yes Your Kid”?

The title “Yes Your Kid” reflects an experience that so many sexuality educators have had, which involves sharing information with parents of teenagers about what sex is like today and being met with not quite disbelief, but some sense that their own child would never engage in those behaviors. Whether it’s sending a nude image (“sexting”), pressuring a peer for a nude image, watching pornography, or exploring rough sex, too many parents think their child would never do something like that. The title “Yes Your Kid” is meant to invite parents to step into the conversation, to accept that – whether or not they think their own child is doing a particular thing – that their child will be helped by open, frank, fact-based conversations with their parents.

What kinds of topics does Yes Your Kid cover?

Yes Your Kid provides parents with numerous tools to have ongoing conversations with their kids about bodies and sexuality. There’s an entire chapter on how to become a more askable, approachable parent. Whether readers are gearing up for conversations about how babies are made, puberty, condoms, birth control, sex and technology, pornography, or various forms of sexual behavior that are common today, Yes Your Kid has something to offer.

How is Yes Your Kid different from other sex education books for parents?

Let me be clear: there are many terrific books for parents about how to talk with their kids about sex. That said, most were written in the “before times” – before the widespread access to online pornography, before the COVID pandemic when kids and teens began living even more of their lives online, before most kids had access to smartphones, and before rough sex (like choking, slapping, and smothering) became normalized among teenagers. In Yes Your Kid, I talk about how we can use popular media as teachable moments to learn from our kids what their worlds are like and share our perspectives too. For parents who want to talk with their teens about the normalization of rough sex, consider this: the song “Lovin’ On Me” by Jack Harlow – which not only mentions choking, but describes it as “vanilla” – recently reached #1 on Billboard, has been a viral hit on TikTok, and its YouTube video has been viewed more than 60 million times in just two months since the song’s release.

Parents need updated information to talk with their kids about the realities of sex today. Throughout Yes Your Kid, readers will also find examples from Kristina and Susan’s legal cases, which provide real-world insights into the kinds of things that can and do go wrong – whether among middle school students, high school students, or college students – and what parents and their kids can learn from these situations.

There’s also a chapter on sexuality education for those with autism spectrum disorder, right?

Yes, we decided to include an entire chapter dedicated to sexuality topics for autistic teens and young adults, especially given how often I get questions from parents of autistic teenagers and young adults on this topic. As background, for many years I worked with children on the autism spectrum and their families. Also, as a college professor, I regularly have autistic students who have taught me a great deal about what more inclusive sexuality education can and should look like for them. Readers will find information about how to approach topics like puberty, reproduction, sexual and gender diversity, sensory needs, and much more in this chapter.

Anything else you want to add?

Yes, that talking about sex (and even some of the more complicated topics like sexting and pornography) may be awkward at first, but it’s also completely doable. Learning to talk openly about sensitive topics is a gift – especially when these conversations can be critical to our children’s safety and to their ability to develop healthy, connecting intimate relationships as they grow older.

Dr. Debby Herbenick – a sexuality researcher, educator, and Provost Professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health – has a new book out titled Yes Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know About Today’s Teens and Sex. The book includes contributions from Kristina Supler and Susan Stone, attorneys who have led numerous sexual misconduct and sexual assault cases throughout the United States, including at many college campuses. Follow Dr. Herbenick on Twitter or Instagram @DebbyHerbenick

Educational systems and school experiences were fraught with challenges during and following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without attending school, students across the country faced a unique form of isolation and lack of connectedness.

Given differential access to educational and social resources and technology amongst the families and communities of these students, we expect that challenges associated with the pandemic disproportionately impacted youth of color. To this end, we investigated whether youth of color differed from their white peers in their sense of belonging.

We defined a sense of belonging as feeling included, respected, and supported, rather than feeling isolated or excluded. Past research explains that sense of belonging matters for students’ well-being and academic success. This research has largely examined school belonging. We expanded past research by also examining social belonging—relationships that are trusting and supportive for youth to feel connected to school and social groups—and community belonging, or how youth felt a sense of connectedness and safety out of school. If minoritized youth report lower senses of belonging, that lack of belonging informs understanding of the compounded disadvantages these youth experience and underscores the need for educational policy and community initiatives to prioritize support for vulnerable youth.

Most survey research on belonging focuses on belonging within the school setting, but we conceptualize belonging as extending beyond the educational context. We emphasize that belonging can be shaped by perceptions of support from the broader surrounding community, and further, that belonging and the contextual factors that shape it may differ critically by demographic group: race, ethnicity, and gender.

Thus, we move beyond a focus on just school belonging to include three other types of social belonging: community belonging (referring to feeling discriminated against or unsafe in the community), out-of-school belonging (referring to experiences with extracurricular/after-school activities), and identity (whether students’ racial/ethnic identities are affirmed or rejected by those around them). We join with other scholars to assert that these measures of social belonging matter for students’ well-being and educational trajectories. In our study published in Educational Researcher, we investigated whether school belonging and social belonging varied by race, ethnicity, and gender for high school and middle school youth in a public school district. Our sample included 1233 youth from fifth to twelfth grade and 40 items about categories of belonging as well as an open ended response question where youth could add additional experiences they have had.

First, we focus on key findings regarding the high school youth in our sample. Using survey data in a midsize district in the Mid-Atlantic, we found that Black and multiracial high school students were less likely than others to feel a strong sense of belonging in their schools. Black high school students also were more likely than other students to feel discriminated against or unsafe in their communities. Hispanic and multiracial high school students reported lower out-of-school belonging, or a lack of connection to social activities and relationships outside of school. We also found that high school students who spoke English as a second language struggled to belong in the after-school setting.

The middle schoolers in our sample were similar, but with some differences. Black middle schoolers reported both struggles to belong within the school setting and in the out-of-school setting; further, Black, Hispanic, and Asian middle schoolers were less likely than other students to feel a lack of belonging in their communities. Middle school students who spoke English as a second language were also less likely than other students to report a lack of belonging in both the community and out-of-school contexts.

Indeed, minoritized students in our sample reported weaker senses of belonging, both in-school and out-of-school, compared to their white peers. Through analysis of over 600 open-ended response items in the survey, we found that youths’ lack of belonging often stemmed from negative experiences at school, few trusting relationships with adults, and little affirmation from adults in school of students’ identities (e.g., racial/ethnic and language backgrounds). Youth reported various forms of bullying in relation to race, gender identity and religious preferences as well:

Figure A: Youth perspectives on factors that inhibit belonging in schools

Our findings have implications for educational policies. If Black and Latino students, students of immigrant backgrounds, and nonnative English speakers report a lower sense of belonging than their White peers, schools should be intentional in seeking to understand and affirm students’ needs and racial/ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. As many school districts face challenges related to racial inequity, anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, and anti-Black racism, systems and structures must transform to support marginalized youth. In fact, in the open-ended responses youth reported their desires for change, which included:

 “We need to learn about black culture, and other cultures and races and identities generally. It would help to have a more welcoming school envirnment.”

These results underscore the importance of centering youth voices and experiences in efforts for improvement of racial inequity and reducing negative experiences of belonging. Going forward, we hope research further investigates specific reasons for lower belonging amongst racially/ethnically minoritized youth. Additionally, research should aim to identify how school districts can best address race-specific bullying and in the case of this district and districts alike gender, religious and culturally-specific bullying and lack of supportive relationships and affirmation of identities both within-school and in afterschool programs.

Belonging is critical for youths’ well-being and their educational and social trajectories—schools and communities must strive towards fostering belonging for marginalized youth who face compounding social inequities and need to feel safe and connected.

Sophia Rodriguez PhD (@SoRoPhD), is an associate professor of urban education at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is incoming (Fall 2024) associate professor of educational policy studies at New York University. With generous funding from the William T. Grant and Spencer Foundations, her research investigates how community-school partnerships and educators promote equity for immigrant youth; her research appears in AERA Open, Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Teachers College Record, Urban Education, and the Washington Post.

Gabrielle Cabrera Wy, MA (@GabiCWy), is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests focus on immigrant generational disparities in key life outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic led many single adults to put a hold on dating, both for health concerns and social venue closures. For those who decided to keep dating, they were left with questions like, How could you meet someone if everything was shut down? Where would you go on a date if bars and restaurants were closed? How do you handle physical intimacy when even breathing the same air is dangerous? Single older adults faced additional concerns, not only because the virus was particularly deadly for this demographic, but because many in this group had not dated in decades and were trying to learn how to date in the middle of a pandemic. Would older adults continue dating, even when the health risks were higher?

Answering this question is not so straightforward. There are many layers to consider, including how older adults generally experience higher levels of loneliness and that these feelings may have increased because of pandemic isolation. Older adults who are single were at even greater risk of loneliness and isolation because they did not have a romantic partner with whom to isolate. The opportunity to meet other single adults also played a role, as older adults are using the internet frequently, and like many others, single older adults have increased their use of online dating. When older adults are feeling isolated and alone, they can connect with an endless number of peers to mitigate loneliness both in the immediate moment and in the long-term. Additionally, there is evidence that younger adults took safety precautions when dating during COVID, but it was not clear if older adults would do the same or limit their physical interactions with others.

In my recent research, I investigated how the context of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted single older adults’ dating experiences and desires. I recruited 100 single older adults, ages 60-83, from online dating websites to discuss their dating preferences and desires, and how they saw their experience in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. All respondents were single, heterosexual, and interested in dating to some degree, but varied by race, education level, marital history, family structure, employment status, and location. Since interviews were conducted in the latter half of 2020, all interviews included some discussion about the pandemic and the impact on dating for single older adults.

This research found that many single older adults were still interested in dating during a pandemic, despite the potential threat to their health and lives. In fact, older daters used COVID-19 health regulations to justify dating, alleviate their concerns for contracting the virus on a date, and get more creative with date ideas.

First, respondents took safety precautions in their daily lives, including limiting indoor interactions and wearing a face covering during interactions, and used these behaviors as evidence that meeting up with a new person would be safe, since they had been so cautious to not contract COVID-19. Next, single older daters followed safety directives while on dates. Audrey (age 68) went on a date where they had lunch outside, walked around for a bit, and wore face masks when they went into a shop. Fred (age 66) met a woman in a parking lot for a date, where they both stayed at their cars and talked through face masks. Though they were meeting new people in person, single older adults felt that their dates were safe because they followed healthcare directions in their daily life and while on dates, allowing them to justify meeting new people at a time when doing so could be dangerous.

Though both men and women spoke about COVID-safe behaviors and dating practices, men and women approached the issue differently. Men seemed generally less adherent to COVID-safe dating measures on their own, but the women they dated requested it. More men stumbled over planning a date during a pandemic because the standard dates of going to the movies or a restaurant were unavailable. Women, however, more often spoke of COVID-safe dating practices and provided a range of COVID-safe date ideas, from video calls to kayaking.

We may imagine single older adults would retreat from dating during a pandemic, when meeting in person posed a significant health risk, particularly among that population. Though this may be the case for many single older adults, those I spoke with pointed to the impact the pandemic had on their lives as leading them to date. This speaks to how deeply people, including older adults, can value and desire a romantic relationship. Even in times when meeting in person was dangerous and the common dating venues were closed, older adults used online dating and safety precautions to continue (or begin!) their search for a romantic partner. (Take a look at the article for discussion on the role of loneliness and the proliferation of online dating in prompting older adults to date in a pandemic.)

This study includes early COVID dating experiences, as data were collected between June and December 2020. Future research should investigate how COVID may (or may not) have a lasting impact on dating norms, for both younger and older adults. Additionally, this study focuses on those who are seeking a partner, so still little is known about how the pandemic and isolation impacted those uninterested in dating or in burgeoning dating relationships. This study does uncover, however, how single older adults used COVID precautions to justify dating during a pandemic, despite health risks and the closure of public places. This study helps to dispel some myths and finds older adults do not always take health risks as seriously as younger adults would assume and that romantic relationships are important to older adults. Single older adults value romantic relationships just like everyone else, even to the point that they are willing to stand next to their car in a large parking lot to see if there is chemistry with the person they met online.

Lauren Harris is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on the meanings, processes, and transitions associated with developing romantic relationships, currently among older adults. You can learn more about her work here, here, and here, and on twitter @lauren_e_harris.

On December 29 of last year, misogynistic social media influencer, Andrew Tate, was arrested in Romania on suspicion of rape and human trafficking. Later charged, and in ways that mirror former US President Trump’s present legal woes, the ‘controversy’ was very 2020s. First, anyone who had had the displeasure of viewing Tate’s online content would not have been in the least bit surprised by the news. Indeed, the charges were a natural extension of his oft-stated views on women, their role in society, and heterosexual relations. Before being banned from the platform, Tate had argued on Twitter that women ‘bear responsibility’ as victims of sexual assault, later describing in violent detail what he would do to a woman were she to accuse him of cheating (he’s OK with male infidelity, by the way). On his decision to relocate from Britain to Romania, he cited what he – ill-advisedly, it turns out – saw as being the country’s more lenient approach to rape, saying that it was “probably 40% of the reason… I like the idea of just being able to do what I want.” Perhaps most illustrative of his broader outlook, he once bemoaned the “decline of Western civilisation” after seeing an airport billboard “encouraging girls to go on holiday as opposed to… being a loving mother and a loyal wife.”

So, as far as arrests go, Tate was “hiding in plain sight” and it had always seemed more a case of “when” rather than “if” to anyone paying attention. However, reporting of the incident – and to a lesser extent of his banning from various social media platforms in the months leading up to it – also exposed to the wider public the astonishing extent of the influencer’s popularity among the heterosexual boys and men to whom his content is geared. As part of the broader online ‘manosphere’ – a loose network of antifeminist and reactionary YouTube and TikTok channels, and other social media accounts – Tate remains their Kardashian. Undented by recent events, he enjoys a profile that, were it not for his seemingly beyond-the-pale views, could only be described as mainstream. His videos have garnered countless millions of views, accompanied by all but uniformly supportive comment sections. His Twitter (or ‘X’) account, reinstated in late-2022 by Elon Musk, now has over 6 million followers. A recent YouGov poll found that approximately one quarter of British young men agree with his positions on women. These are just a few of the many metrics we could share.

What is going on here? How could someone like Tate, so blatantly offensive to some, resonate so powerfully with others? It’s particularly vexing given the numerous studies that show young people, including boys and men, moving decidedly towards more progressive outlooks. Scholarship up to this point – most notably the work of Debbie Ging at Dublin City University – has been very good at making sense of manosphere discourses and the logics of purveyors like Tate. To quote Ging, they represent a ‘preoccupation with male hegemony’ elicited by misdirected anxieties over “men’s position in the social hierarchy as a result of feminism.” The predominant explanation given for the spread of this phenomenon is a gendered form of zero-sum thinking: the idea that men, while still enjoying disproportionately better socioeconomic outcomes, experience the gains made by women over recent decades as losses. Baked into this theory of ‘aggrieved entitlement’ – however inadvertent – is an unhelpful dismissal of contemporary hetero-masculine anxieties as a sort of overprivileged ‘get over yourselves!’ whingeing. While the theory has ‘bigger picture’ validity, it leaves little scope for acknowledging the very real, and to some extent distinct, contemporary pressures faced by heterosexual boys and young men, and how they increasingly feel ignored by, and disenfranchised from, mainstream society.

We argue that it’s time to shift to a more empathetic investigation of what’s driving boys and men into the arms of the manosphere. For one, we need to be more cognisant of the way in which a concept like ‘male privilege’ renders invisible the wildly complicating dimensions of class and/or race. Indeed, try telling a young working-class man from the British Midlands or American ‘flyover country’, with no girlfriend and dubious job prospects, that he’s the beneficiary of undue ‘privilege’. The realities of male privilege remain true in an overarching systemic sense, as well as in the countless minute ways men experience the world differently from women. However, it is important to recognize the various socioeconomic factors that prevent many men from experiencing this privilege in any sort of life enhancing way.

As a cohort, heterosexual men in countries like Britain and America are also significantly more likely to be isolated and friendless, as well as involuntarily single and celibate. Along with the rest of youth, they are also entering adulthood in the context of an economy that is offering fewer secure and meaningful jobs. All of this is exacerbated by a set of enduring traditional expectations that measure a man’s worth precisely against these increasingly unattainable sexual and financial markers of success, while also inhibiting boys’ and men’s ability to talk about their failures. Of course, the gender scholarship we’re respectfully critiquing here has long highlighted the link between unattainable masculine ideals, on the one hand, and antisocial behaviours and negative mental wellbeing outcomes, on the other. However, this can often veer into an implicit victim-blaming in which boys and men are their own worst enemies and need only shed their ‘toxic’ attitudes to live healthier, more integrated lives. In the context of the abovementioned realities, it’s easier said than done, and somewhat puts the cart before the horse.

Indeed, heterosexual boys and men seem stuck between a mainstream conversation largely (and not unjustifiably) focused on their historical privilege and toxic practices, and manosphere figures like Tate who sell misogynistic delusions of grandeur while painting the world as hostile to their interests. However self-detrimental, it’s not surprising that some choose the latter. Responding to this, a nascent body of scholarship is treading a different path by investigating the vulnerabilities on which the manosphere feeds, as a way of better understanding its disturbing end-product. To give some examples, a recent study of the notorious manosphere breeding ground, 4chan, coauthored by the first author here, found that many boys and men yet to exhibit reactionary views are drawn into these spaces more for a sense of community and because, alarmingly, they feel safer expressing vulnerabilities here than via conventional support channels. This is presently being followed up by the same team’s study of the similarly notorious Reddit platform, with data suggesting comparable

patterns. In their groundbreaking 2023 study, Daly and Reed interviewed members of the ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) subculture – a subset of the manosphere motivated by abject failure in the sexual marketplace – and found that they were being driven deeper into this misogynistic community by the misunderstanding and persecution they felt emanating from mainstream society. Echoing this work, the second author here is presently undertaking a study investigating the ways in which men’s engagement with these subcultures can be considered a form of digital self-harm. Vulnerable men actively engage in toxic online environments that pull them deeper into self-loathing and isolation, and they find curious ‘solace’ in forums where their peers continuously belittle and insult them.

More work needs to be done to understand the causes, contexts and narratives underpinning the manosphere’s appeal, and it needs to be empathetic as well as critical. If we continue to dismiss the anxieties of heterosexual boys and men as little more than entitled special pleading, we will be guilty of exacerbating the sense of disenfranchisement on which figures like Tate successfully prey. No one wants this. Loneliness, the psychologist, Carl Jung, observed, “does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.”

Marcus Maloney is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures.

Kate Babin is a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures.

A healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby are the primary goals of most parents choosing to have a child. While parents may take many steps, such as using prenatal vitamins or quitting drinking alcohol or smoking, some factors influence pregnancy outcomes beyond their control.

I was awarded a large NIH grant to study how structural stigma, that is, the way that stigma and discrimination are codified into laws and policies, and influence the maternal and infant health of sexual minority women (e.g., women who identify as bisexual/lesbian/queer or have same-sex attractions or relationships [SMW]). Sexual minority populations are more likely to experience discrimination at multiple levels compared to heterosexual populations, and several studies have linked stress to adverse maternal and fetal health. Little research, however, has examined how stress and the social environment may impact the obstetrical and perinatal health of SMW.

Much of the prior research focused on women in same-sex relationships accessing assisted reproductive technologies to conceive. While important, these studies systematically exclude SMW in romantic relationships with men (i.e. bisexual women partnered with men), SMW who are single, and SMW who become pregnant through sex with a male partner. In fact, my research has found that SMW, including lesbian-identified women, are more likely to describe their pregnancies as “unwanted” than heterosexual women.

In a first-of-its-kind study using nationally representative data, we documented that SMW were more likely to have preterm and low birthweight infants. We were unable, however, to identify the mechanisms that led to these worse outcomes among SMW. This finding led us to use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a longitudinal, probability-based US survey of middle and high school students that began in 1993 and 1994 and has followed the same students for over twenty years. Using this longitudinal data, we were able to document several disparities in perinatal and obstetrical risk factors by sexual orientation, including preconception health behaviors. These differences, however, did not explain why SMW were more likely to report preterm and lower birthweight infants.

 One factor, however, proved to be critical to pregnant SMW and their babies: the number of state policies that provide protections for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons. The policies we examined included same-sex marriage or civil union protections, anti-LGB discrimination policies, legal same-sex adoption, and banned employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Indeed, state policies were so powerful in shaping SMW’s birth outcomes that in states with three or more of these policies, SMW had even better birth outcomes than their heterosexual peers despite higher rates of reporting key risk factors for adverse birth outcomes. The policies we examined included same-sex marriage or civil union protections, anti-LGB discrimination policies, legal same-sex adoption, and banned employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. We found that these policies also were associated with a lower risk of maternal hypertension, particularly for Black SMW. This finding is in line with other research that has suggested that policies that ensure equal protection for persons based on their sexual orientation may disproportionately benefit sexual minorities of color.

The results from these studies come at a critical time when the rights of women and LGBTQ populations are under attack. A record number of laws have been introduced to undermine the progress made by LGBTQ activists and introduce new forms of discrimination that ban or reduce access to health care and multiple other forms of social and economic resources. Similarly, the bodily autonomy of pregnant persons is also under unprecedented attack; the 50-year precedent of Roe v Wade was repealed in June 2022, and many bills have been introduced to restrict access in states where abortion remains legal. With colleagues, I have argued that attacks on LGTBQ populations and reproductive rights are rooted in the same ideology that seeks to maintain a system that privileges men and heterosexuality and punishes those who challenge traditional gender and sexuality-based norms. We created a measure incorporating these two forms of discrimination (structural sexism and structural LGB stigma) into a single construct called “structural heteropatriarchy.” We showed that women who live in states and counties with higher levels of structural heteropatriarchy were more likely to have preterm and low birthweight infants, even if they identified as heterosexual.

In sum, this set of studies shows that the political and social environment in which an individual lives can undermine many of the efforts pregnant people may take to ensure a healthy pregnancy. However, the results also show that policy changes can dramatically improve maternal and infant health. Moreover, these policies do not necessarily need to target pregnant people per se, but increasing the number of civil rights and social resources individuals can access may improve maternal and infant health while also likely benefitting non-pregnant citizens. That is, living in environments that foster safety and inclusion, and support an individual’s right to choose if, when, and how they become a parent, can lead to improved population health, improved maternal and infant health, and ultimately healthier future generations.

Bethany Everett is Associate Professor of Sociology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Utah and an affiliate of the Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research at Columbia University. She completed her PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an NIH Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Fellowship while she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago from 2012-2015. She has published over 75 peer-reviewed articles and is currently PI of an NICHD-funded R01 study on sexual orientation disparities in maternal, infant, and child health and her work focuses on the social determinants of health, particularly in the area of orientation and sexual and reproductive health. Follow her on Twitter @bethanygeverett

Many of the issues facing families today touch on parental gender: high childhood poverty rates, mass incarceration, battles over same-sex marriage, transgender rights, assisted reproductive technologies, and access to abortion. Due to these issues and more, questions of parental gender remain at the forefront of cultural commentary and political debates in the United States. Do kids “need” a mother and a father, or are two parents of any gender sufficient? Do fathers contribute something unique, just for being men? Are there contributions to families that mothers provide that fathers cannot possibly replicate (and vice versa)? What do kids lose–resources, opportunities, crucial socialization, social acceptance–when they don’t have both a mother and a father?    

Social science has established a consensus on these questions, indicating that parental gender is not important for children’s development and success. Instead, economic resources and social factors, like positive parent-child interactions, are stronger predictors of children’s well-being. Despite the evidence suggesting parental gender is not essential for children’s development, we continue to see these “parental essentialist” ideologies–ideas that parental gender offers unique qualities to childrearing–permeate the public sphere. Parental essentialism is especially salient in the panic over same-sex families, as well as manufactured crises of “fatherlessness.”

We are two sociologists who conducted separate studies on fatherhood that provide unique insight into questions about parental essentialism from the perspectives of two groups of fathers with specific stakes in these debates: poor men of color at the center of controversies over children without residential dads and gay men raising children without women. Through this work (recently published in Men & Masculinities), we found patterns that help explain the persistence–as well as the harms–of parental essentialist discourse. 

Jennifer Randles spent two years studying “responsible fatherhood” policy and programs by doing ethnography and interviews with very low-income fathers of color enrolled in a fathering program intended to help marginalized dads improve their job prospects, co-parenting relationships, and fathering skills. Megan Carroll did an ethnography of gay fatherhood groups, interviewing gay men raising children, most of whom were white and economically advantaged. In comparing our findings about these two socially dissimilar groups of fathers, we noticed that the men we studied had very different responses to parental essentialist ideas. 

For poor fathers of color, Randles found, parental essentialism was valorizing. Many of these fathers did not have a diploma, were unemployed, had a criminal record or incarceration history, or were not with children’s mothers. Yet the idea that they could still contribute something unique and valuable to childrearing by virtue of being men made marginalized fathers feel as though they were essential for their kids and their social and economic opportunities. As one dad said, “I teach [my kids] responsibility and give them motivation and the confidence they need to survive in school. It’s something about being a man. It’s in our DNA, I guess.”  

On the other hand, as Carroll discovered, for mostly white, wealthy gay fathers, parental essentialism was marginalizing. The idea that their children were deprived of something by not having a mother was threaded through their lives in ways that limited their access to parental opportunities and legitimacy. One married gay father in Texas, for example, expressed frustration with parental essentialism, arguing that parents of any gender play a mixture of masculine and feminine roles: “The thing that really gets me sometimes, this assumption that kids have to have a mom and a dad, and if they don’t … you’re somehow depriving them. … If you’re only thinking that you’re gonna be maternal and you’re never gonna have to do something that is dad-like, it’s ridiculous. Same goes for dads. That day has come and gone.”

Understood collectively, we realized that fathers’ social positions at the intersections of race, class, and sexuality fundamentally shaped how they responded to parental essentialist ideas. Studying these two differentially situated groups of fathers in tandem taught us valuable lessons about the persistent salience and harms of parental essentialism. The idea that fathering is essential – as in, important, unique, and innate – is especially powerful in the absence of viable economic and social support for disadvantaged families and especially for marginalized men still beholden to white middle-class norms of “responsible” fatherhood. On the other hand, the notion that families are somehow incomplete without mothers perpetuates dangerous and demoralizing views of gay fathers raising children as essentially lacking.  

Understood as both valorizing and stigmatizing, men’s views of parental essentialism urge us to consider other crucial questions in social and political debates over why parents’ gender matters and how. Why do essentialist views of fathering persist and influence men’s identities and experiences of fatherhood? How does social position shape how fathers grapple with and make sense of ideas that they are both necessary and insufficient for children’s well-being? What can and should we do to promote ideas that fathers matter because they love and care for their children, not because they are men? These are the questions that get us closer to sustaining families and understanding how parents of all genders and sexual orientations can make essential – rather than essentialist – contributions to children.  

Jennifer Randles (she/her) is Professor of Sociology and interim Associate Dean in the College of Social Sciences at California State University, Fresno. A scholar of families, policy, and gender/race/class inequalities, she is the author of Proposing Prosperity and Essential Dads. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. Her social media handle is @jrandles3. 

Megan Carroll (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, San Bernardino. She is a queer families scholar who founded the Ace/Aro Scholar Support Network. Her research on gay fatherhood can be found here and here, and her research on asexualities can be found here and here. Her social media handle is @MCsociology.

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Report published on May 3, 2023

When we talk about domestic labor, we often talk about the physical activities of doing work around the house and caring for family members. But running a household is more than cooking, cleaning, and transporting kids to practice; it’s also monitoring the pantry to know when groceries are getting low, weighing options about (and deciding on) which vacuum cleaner to buy, and remembering that little league signups are the last week of March and that cleats typically go on sale the week prior to the season.  

Domestic labor therefore is not just the physical activities of doing housework and caregiving, but also anticipating and monitoring family needs, organizing and planning, and making decisions on which courses of action to pursue. These sorts of activities, known as cognitive labor, are often hidden (i.e., a parent might be planning their children’s schedules in their head while doing other tasks) and are never-ending as there are always things to think about and plan.

Most research on housework and childcare focuses on routine physical tasks but does not account for hidden cognitive labor. This is problematic because mothers perform more physical domestic labor than fathers, and this disparity contributes to negative consequences such as to the gender pay gap as well as to greater stress and less leisure time for mothers compared to fathers. Yet, mothers also perform more cognitive labor than fathers, and the constant need to anticipate and monitor family needs may be a significant source of additional stress for mothers. In sum, the lack of attention to cognitive labor may mean that the enduring gender gap in domestic labor—and subsequent inequalities in well-being—may be even larger than often estimated.

Our new study recently published in Society and Mental Health focuses on the division of cognitive labor between mothers and fathers during the pandemic, and the implications of this division for parents’ psychological well-being.  

Using data from the Study on Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC) on 1,765 partnered parents, we examined parents’ time in, and division of, cognitive labor in Fall 2020. Popular press articles illustrate how mothers are increasingly overwhelmed and experiencing burnout due to the sheer volume of things they are trying to juggle. Results from our study provide some empirical support for these colloquial ideas. Among parents in the SPDLC, mothers spent over twice as much time per week performing cognitive labor (5 hours) compared to fathers (2 hours). When asked how cognitive labor was divided between themselves and their partners, mothers reported that they did more of this labor. In addition, mothers reported that the division of cognitive labor was more unequal than the division of housework and childcare—suggesting that the gender gap in domestic labor may indeed be even larger than we commonly think it is.

In addition to understanding how cognitive labor was divided among parents, we also wanted to know if there were consequences of performing this hidden labor. The results were striking; being primarily responsible for cognitive labor was associated with psychological consequences for mothers. Specifically, mothers who were more responsible for cognitive labor reported being more stressed and more depressed. The combination of mothers being primarily responsible for all of these hidden tasks and spending more time doing them means that cognitive labor may act as a chronic stressor that increases mothers’ risk of experiencing psychological distress.

But what about fathers? Do fathers who perform cognitive labor also report negative psychological consequences? Based on our study, the simple answer is no. Our findings show that when fathers perform more of the cognitive labor in families, they actually experience lower stress and fewer depressive symptoms. Similarly, mothers’ stress and depressive symptoms were also lower when fathers took on more of the responsibility for cognitive labor. Thus, whereas mothers’ involvement in cognitive labor may reduce their well-being, fathers’ involvement in cognitive labor appears to benefit both their own and their partners’ well-being.

Research on stress shows that the effects of stressors vary by context, and we find that gender conditions the effect of cognitive labor on parents’ psychological well-being. Fathers are not expected to manage the household and constantly monitor family needs. While fathers increasingly desire to be more engaged parents, they do not face strong social pressures to perform domestic tasks. Consequently, fathers may receive praise and positive reinforcement for performing cognitive labor as they are seen as going above and beyond what is expected of them. In contrast, mothers are expected to be primarily responsible for household tasks and may be penalized and judged if they do not meet these expectations. This makes mothers uniquely susceptible to the hidden, enduring burdens of cognitive labor.

Overall, our new findings suggest that gender inequality in housework and childcare extends to hidden domestic tasks, and also that performance of these tasks likely contributes to inequality in well-being between mothers and fathers. As long as gendered norms of care and the parenting double standard persist, gender inequality in domestic labor and well-being will continue. We need to change our cultural expectations about caregiving and provide more structural opportunities for fathers to be more engaged at home (e.g., remote work, paid leave) to reduce the burdens on mothers, reduce mothers’ stress, and promote greater gender equality at home. Increased opportunities for engagement will likely increase fathers’ awareness of family needs and empower them to take ownership in sharing both physical tasks as well as the hidden cognitive labor.

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Richard Petts, Professor, Department of Sociology, Ball State University, and Daniel L. Carlson, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah.