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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Findings:

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

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

References:

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

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

Acknowledgement:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 25, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Acknowledgment

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

For More Information, Please Contact:

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

Links

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

About CCF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Personal Perspective: What has sex got to do with it?

Reprinted from Psychology Today July 12, 2022

Key points

• A sexual culture that values pleasure depends on the ability to control fertility.
• The loss of abortion rights are likely to change our cultural expectation that sexual pleasure is a human right.
• Past research suggests that a culture that values sexual pleasure for its own sake depends on the right to end unwanted pregnancy.

The pain of realizing that people like me, those of us with the capacity to become pregnant and give birth, are no longer full citizens of the United States is deep and sharp. Others such as Tressie McMillan Cottom have written about this denial of full citizenship rights more powerfully than I could. As a feminist scholar who has spent decades studying gender inequality, I realize that one court decision has set back changes toward gender equality that generations have fought for.

In my research I have often studied intimacy between sexual partners, and how it has changed between the 20th and 21st Century. We have gone from alarm at the increasing number of women with pre-marital sexual experience to being perplexed at the decreasing sexual activity of teenagers today. But through it all, the right of women and people who can become pregnant to control their own fertility has allowed the right to sexual pleasure for all to be taken for granted. No one beyond those bound by a literalist religious theology expects to have to wait until marriage to explore their own sexual desires, and surely no one expects to return to abstinence in the event of a divorce. One of the too-rarely-acknowledged consequences of Roe vs. Wade was women’s full access to the rights to sexual pleasure without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy that they are forced to carry to term. Thus, reversing Roe is an assault on bodily autonomy in all forms, including an assault on the right to sexual pleasure.

My own research, co-authored with Rachel Allison, suggests that the expectation of recreational sex has gone far beyond simply being an expectation of adulthood; hooking up has come to define the “college experience” among young people privileged enough to go to residential, four-year colleges. Even among students at primarily working-class urban campuses where many students live with their families, young people still believe “hooking up” defines the college experience, and they are disappointed that they can’t afford to live in a dormitory far from their parents policing. Research by Lisa Wade suggests that the culture of casual sex is so strong that even those who would prefer to have deep relationships feel pressured to pretend they do not want to mix feelings with sexual activity while in college.

It has only been since the legalization of birth control for single women in the 1960’s—and then the national availability of abortion soon after, in 1973, with the Roe vs. Wade decision—that sexual culture in America could change to allow for recreational sex. Only when heterosexual women were totally sure that sexual activity would not result in an unwanted child could they be free to enjoy, and even seek out, sexual pleasure outside the bounds of relationships. And change came quickly: In the 1950’s most women were virgins until marriage, or if not, they had sex with one partner before the wedding night: their fiancé. By the turn of this century, few brides were virgins because most young women had explored their own sexual desires during their emerging adulthood. By the time they choose a partner, most of us, whether heterosexual or not, cis-gendered or not, have had years of experience in dating and with sexual activity. Recreational sex is a normal part of young adulthood, useful for understanding one’s own sexual desires, likes, and dislikes. The rising age of marriage, and with it, the falling rates of divorce, are no doubt related to young people being able to have good sex lives without committing to the wrong person too early, just to have an available sexual partner.

The pain of realizing that people like me, those of us with the capacity to become pregnant and give birth, are no longer full citizens of the United States is deep and sharp. Others such as Tressie McMillan Cottom have written about this denial of full citizenship rights more powerfully than I could. As a feminist scholar who has spent decades studying gender inequality, I realize that one court decision has set back changes toward gender equality that generations have fought for.

In my research I have often studied intimacy between sexual partners, and how it has changed between the 20th and 21st Century. We have gone from alarm at the increasing number of women with pre-marital sexual experience to being perplexed at the decreasing sexual activity of teenagers today. But through it all, the right of women and people who can become pregnant to control their own fertility has allowed the right to sexual pleasure for all to be taken for granted. No one beyond those bound by a literalist religious theology expects to have to wait until marriage to explore their own sexual desires, and surely no one expects to return to abstinence in the event of a divorce. One of the too-rarely-acknowledged consequences of Roe vs. Wade was women’s full access to the rights to sexual pleasure without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy that they are forced to carry to term. Thus, reversing Roe is an assault on bodily autonomy in all forms, including an assault on the right to sexual pleasure.

My own research, co-authored with Rachel Allison, suggests that the expectation of recreational sex has gone far beyond simply being an expectation of adulthood; hooking up has come to define the “college experience” among young people privileged enough to go to residential, four-year colleges. Even among students at primarily working-class urban campuses where many students live with their families, young people still believe “hooking up” defines the college experience, and they are disappointed that they can’t afford to live in a dormitory far from their parents policing. Research by Lisa Wade suggests that the culture of casual sex is so strong that even those who would prefer to have deep relationships feel pressured to pretend they do not want to mix feelings with sexual activity while in college.

It has only been since the legalization of birth control for single women in the 1960’s—and then the national availability of abortion soon after, in 1973, with the Roe vs. Wade decision—that sexual culture in America could change to allow for recreational sex. Only when heterosexual women were totally sure that sexual activity would not result in an unwanted child could they be free to enjoy, and even seek out, sexual pleasure outside the bounds of relationships. And change came quickly: In the 1950’s most women were virgins until marriage, or if not, they had sex with one partner before the wedding night: their fiancé. By the turn of this century, few brides were virgins because most young women had explored their own sexual desires during their emerging adulthood. By the time they choose a partner, most of us, whether heterosexual or not, cis-gendered or not, have had years of experience in dating and with sexual activity. Recreational sex is a normal part of young adulthood, useful for understanding one’s own sexual desires, likes, and dislikes. The rising age of marriage, and with it, the falling rates of divorce, are no doubt related to young people being able to have good sex lives without committing to the wrong person too early, just to have an available sexual partner.

But this is all old news; old news that is newly relevant in a post-Roe world where safe and legal abortions will once again become beyond the reach of many American women. A caveat is important here: Abortion will not be beyond the reach of Americans who know how to scour the internet for pills that induce medical abortions, even if the pills themselves are not legal in their state. Nor will abortion be unavailable to people who can afford to travel to a state that provides full health care to women. But for minors whose parents are disapproving of their sexual activity and oppose abortion, and for those who do not have the funds to go elsewhere, the cost of sexual activity can be a life disrupted, if not forever damaged. Indeed new research just published by Hutchens (2022) in the journal that I edit, Gender & Society, suggests that there are religiously motivated women across the country who volunteer in “pregnancy crises” centers that disguise themselves as places to help women with unwanted pregnancies, but actually seek to convince them to carry the unwanted fetuses to term. Hutchens’s research shows that these women may be effective because they do not openly proselytize but rather offer empathy while dissuading women from seeking the health care they desire. In the coming years, such delays may be even more detrimental if the women who have been deceived waste precious time that needed to be spent driving out of state to end their unwanted pregnancy.

So what will the cultural ramifications be of depriving women, and others who can become pregnant, of the right to fully control their fertility? Will men step in to assure their sexual partners that contraception is everyone’s concern, and step up to take responsibility for that cntraception, from condom use to vasectomies? More research in Gender & Society suggests that men will not step in and save the day. Dalessandro and his colleague’s research shows that men have little inclination to take responsibility for contraception, presuming it to be a women’s responsibility. They find that college men presume their sexual partners are STI-free, responsible for contraception, and will pursue abortion services if necessary. So they leave women’s fertility up to the women themselves. If women and others who can become pregnant cannot control when and whether to have children, our attitude toward sex cannot help but to change. Just how much pleasure is worth an unplanned pregnancy that cannot be terminated?

Since women’s right to bodily autonomy is no longer guaranteed by our Constitution, it seems quite plausible that interest in casual recreational sex will diminish as well, at least heterosexual intercourse. The freedom to seek pleasure, for its own sake, rests on the presumption that a mistaken pregnancy can be ended and not result in a forever changed life, an education rather than a fetus aborted, too many mouths to feed with too small an income, or too many sleepless nights to continue to progress in one’s chosen career. Women have always had to struggle to juggle their work and motherhood, but that can only be successful when motherhood is freely chosen. The right to bodily autonomy does not guarantee this free choice for all, but it is a necessary pre-condition. When the state forces parenthood upon those unwilling because of unintended pregnancy by a denial of comprehensive health care, the survival of sexual culture that values pleasure is unlikely. Perhaps that is the goal of Christian conservative judges in the first place: to assure that women fear heterosexual sex itself. When men do not fear sex but women do, the power of patriarchy has increased as women have one more reason to fear men themselves. But pleasure for men who have sex with women decreases as well, as enthusiastic sexual partners disappear due to the fear of pregnancy.

Sociological research has long shown that culture reflects the opportunities and limitations we face in our every day lives. When those who can become pregnant lose the right to control their fertility, all people lose a culture that celebrates pleasure. We lost the right, and expectation, to anxiety-free heterosexual sexual intercourse simply for the sake of pleasure on the day Roe V. Wade was overturned. It’s one more loss for future generations, and one more way that future generations’ lives have been diminished by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Barbara J. Risman is a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Where the Millennials will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure. You can follow them on Twitter @bjrisman

Reprinted from Health Affairs Reports, July 8, 2022

The scientific process is a dynamic one of building models, testing assumptions, and constructing a theory of how the world works—all based on the quality of the evidence at every turn. What this process accomplishes does not simply explain reality; it can create a reality. Historically, this has had dangerous implications for women’s health. Rethinking what research is funded could change that.

Take, as an example, what was long considered to be the scope of heart disease. What cardiovascular research had uncovered, broadly, about the most common diseases of the heart led to screenings later in life, tests that looked for arterial blockages, and treatments for those blockages, such as valve replacement. But these approaches are sufficient for only about half of the population; they unintentionally distort reality. That’s because nearly all foundational cardiovascular research—the studies that laid the groundwork to construct our picture of what this family of ailments entailed—was primarily performed on male bodies, to understand and address cardiovascular disease in men.

When the focus finally shifted to what was happening in women’s cardiovascular systems, a different reality emerged. Beginning in the 1990s, C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, among other researchers, began interrogating the tools she had at her disposal, and the framework she’d been taught to apply to how the disease presented itself. In women, she was finding, the symptoms of cardiovascular disease were often less clear and more diffuse. She was searching for blockages in major arteries, but she wasn’t finding them. She was hearing a wide range of symptoms from her patients, from back pain to nausea, but she just didn’t have a framework that made sense of those symptoms. She also knew the statistics: Cardiovascular disease was the leading cause of death in women in the United States and, unlike among men, it was actually getting worse, not better, over time. Women had a higher mortality and worse prognosis after an acute cardiovascular event. Clearly, the existing diagnostics were missing something.

Merz threw out the old model and found that the sex differences in the cardiovascular system began right at the very beginning: from different gene expressions in sex chromosomes and hormones. She discovered that, in women, cardiovascular disease is much more a micro-vascular disease, so the blockages the tests would be looking for weren’t in the major arteries but in smaller arteries. This new picture of the disease changed the testing, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular disease in women.

What Is Funded Creates What Is Known

The problem of generalizing from research that is not representative of all sexes cuts both ways. Men suffer because of it, too. There currently aren’t great treatments for osteoporosis in men because it occurs four times as often in women, and most of the research on osteoporosis is based on women’s bodies. Much the same is true with other perceived “women’s diseases,” such as breast cancer. We understudy, underfund, and under treat these diseases in men—often with devastating results. However, the evidence base generally is biased toward the male body. This is the result of a long history of providing generous funding for diseases that predominantly impact men and underfunding those that predominantly impact women. This problem, and the resulting distortions, continues today. What is funded creates what is known.

Still, if science shapes reality, it can reshape it, too. Last year, I helped oversee a study commissioned by Women’s Health Access Matters, a nonprofit advocacy organization that works to increase awareness of and funding for women’s health issues. This study assessed the return on investment (ROI) we might conservatively expect if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) doubled its funding for research assessing women’s health. This wouldn’t be hard to achieve. As a case in point, only 12.0 percent of the NIH funding on Alzheimer’s disease and 4.5 percent of that on coronary artery disease went to studies that specifically addressed how the disease plays out in women. We estimated that the ROI of doubling funding for research varies across diseases. If an additional $288 million was invested to address questions about women with Alzheimer’s disease, we estimated that the ROI would be 224 percent. The ROI for additional investment of $20 million for research on coronary artery disease and women’s health would be 9,500 percent. And the ROI for investing an additional $6 million spent on researching rheumatoid arthritis in women would be 174,000 percent.

How Investing In Research On Women Benefits All

The model we used in our study considered the downstream effects of these one-time increases in the NIH’s budget: the new knowledge gained; the new treatments developed; and the lives prolonged, saved, and made more productive due to better treatments. For example, for coronary artery disease—assuming a 0.01 percent improvement in disease age-incidence, slowed disease progression, and improved quality of life over 30 years—our microsimulations show a one-time investment would save more than 15,000 years of life for women and 6,000 for men; eliminate nearly 31,000 years living with the disease for women and more than 10,500 for men; and eliminate nearly 6,500 years of lost productivity for women with coronary artery disease, and more than 2,500 for men. Finally, such an investment would add nearly 28,000 quality-adjusted life years for women, and almost 10,000 for men. The billions generated by such relatively modest investments provide evidence that these are, in fact, solvable problems. If we could simply reinvest even a fraction of the health care savings created by this initial investment, we might begin building the same robust evidence base for women’s health that already exists for men, thus creating even bigger returns and life improvements for both sexes.

As it turns out, the cost of the science pales in comparison to the price we continue to pay for what we don’t know about caring for women.

Author’s Note

The author helped lead a study at RAND coauthored and funded by WHAM (Women’s Health Access Matters), which is mentioned/disclosed in the article.

Chloe E. Bird (she/her), an adjunct sociologist at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School studies women’s health and determinants of sex/gender differences in health and health care. Bird has served as senior advisor in the National Institutes of Health’s Office for Research on Women’s Health and editor-in-chief of Women’s Health Issues, where she is now associate editor. You can follow her on Twitter @ChloeBirdPhD

Talking with your children about sex is important in setting them up for healthy sexual development, but it’s also really hard work! It can be difficult to know what information your children need from you if you’re not sure where they are at with their own sexual feelings, behaviors, and concerns. You may wonder: “Is my child sexually active or just spending romantic time with her girlfriend?” or “Does my child have questions or insecurities about their body I’m not aware of?” or “Is the information I’ve provided my child enough for where he’s at in his development?”

This is where our research comes in! We wanted to know if how often parents talked with teens about sex, and how open they were during these conversations was related to how much the child would open up to parents about their sexual feelings, concerns, and behaviors. We wanted to know so we could provide tips for parents on how to potentially help their child feel like they can open up about these topics.

Our Study

We surveyed 603 pairs of mothers and their teenage children ages 12-17. We asked each of them questions about how often they talk about sex-related topics together (frequency) and the level of communication openness of these conversations (openness). More open conversations were more comfortable, interactive, honest, and involved the mother actively listening to the teenage child. We also asked about how often the teenager deliberately told their mom about their sexual feelings, concerns, and behaviors (disclosure) and how often they kept secrets related to sex from their mom (secret keeping).

Our analysis showed that:

• Teens who talked with moms more often about sex-related topics were more likely to disclose to mothers about sex, BUT were also more likely to keep secrets from moms about sex.
• Teens who talked with moms more with a more open communication style were more likely to disclose to mothers about sex AND were also less likely to keep secrets from moms about sex.
• When communication about sex-related topics was BOTH frequent AND open, teens were more likely to disclose to mothers about sex AND were also less likely to keep secrets from moms about sex.

What Does It Mean?

Our findings show that how often you talk with teens about sex and how open you are during these talks are both important.

Talking frequently in a way that is not open (e.g., lecturing, not respecting the child’s point of view) may create more conversational opportunities for a child to answer questions, but it may also send negative messages to the child. If parents are constantly lecturing to their children or sending messages that children don’t agree with, children will likely feel unable to disclose certain information about their beliefs, identity, or experiences to parents. For example, a child who is constantly lectured that sex is only okay in marriage may be unlikely to tell their parents if they are sexually active or if they’ve experienced sexual violence, even when they need support.

This is why openness during parent-child talks about sex-related topics is so important! As shown in our analysis, if these conversations were frequent AND open, children shared more with their mothers. Even if parents are talking with their child about sexuality regularly, if these conversations are one-sided, parent-dominated, and discouraging or dismissive of child input or perspectives (typical of most parent-child conversations about sex), this may further cement the message that parents do not want to hear about the child’s true experiences and feelings. Children may not feel safe, comfortable, or able to share secrets related to sexuality.

Start Having Open Conversations with Your Child Today!

If you want to set up a foundation for your child to share with you about their sexual concerns, feelings, and behaviors, you can start today by having open conversations about sex-related topics with your child- no matter what age! Visit my favorite resource Sex Positive Families for tips on how to get started. Parents can be extremely influential in positively influencing their child’s sexual development, so I encourage you to start today!

Shelby Astle, MS, CFLE is a Ph.D candidate in Applied Family Science at Kansas State University. Her research interests include parent-child sexual communication and sexual self-concept. The ultimate goal of her work is to improve young people’s sexual well-being by improving how they are socialized around sex-related topics. You can follow her research on Twitter @astleshelby and LinkedIn

Reprinted from Gender & Society April 20, 2022

In 2021, the number of stay-at-home dads in the United States reached record highs. Does this mean that cultural views about gender, masculinity, work, and family—particularly the idea that men should be breadwinners—are changing? Not necessarily.

Our recent research in Gender & Society assesses cultural views of stay-at-home fathers over three decades, by examining their portrayal in leading newspapers and magazines between 1987 and 2016. We found that news portrayals of stay-at-home dads have indeed become more positive over time. But the growing support for full-time caregiver fathers is conditional. Dads who lost their jobs because of involuntary unemployment are viewed sympathetically, especially since the Great Recession. But dads who are able to work, but choose to stay home with children instead, are still described negatively. As much as we’d like to think that the gender-bending phenomenon of (slightly) increasing numbers of dads at home is a harbinger of more fundamental gender liberalization, our results suggest that this is not unambiguously the case.

Advertisements https://c0.pubmine.com/sf/0.0.3/html/safeframe.html Report this ad

News articles about stay-at-home dads often focused on the stigma and hardships that these dads faced in their everyday lives. In the 94 articles we analyzed, stay-at-home dads discussed being laughed at, dismissed, or even accused of being a pedophile while at the playground with their child. They were often described as being shunned by mothers and ridiculed by their friends. Fathers discussed feeling like “less of a man” because they could not financially provide for their families, and over half were described as feeling isolated and experiencing stress because of their role. Many recounted being called “Mr. Mom”, the title of a 1980s movie about an inept stay-at-home dad. This phrase reinforced the idea that active parenting was something that women do, not men. Further reinforcing this idea, some dads were instead excessively praised for doing the most basic chores with their child (like bringing them to the grocery store).

But the focus on stigma lessened over time, as more dads began to stay home with children. After the Great Recession resulted in high rates of unemployment, dads who had lost their jobs and took on caretaking roles at home were no longer described as experiencing stigma, and were discussed sympathetically and supportively. Accounts of stigma experiences didn’t disappear, however; instead they were mostly confined to another type of stay-at-home dad—those who had chosen to stay home with their children, and hadn’t been forced into the role by lay-offs.

In our article we also compared stay-at-home dads’ depictions to demographic trends. In the figure below, we extend this analysis to 2021 to include another major economic shock—the COVID pandemic. What is clear is that the rate at which fathers were at home rose in the wake of economic downturns, but eventually reversed course and reverted to near pre-downturn levels upon economic recovery. Over the period we studied, staying home became more common among dads—especially after the Great Recession of 2007-9. But the number of dads who reported they were home specifically to take care of children was still very low—less than two percent in 2021. And prior to the pandemic, rates of staying home had begun to go down among dads of younger children, declining almost to pre-Great Recession levels by 2019. These patterns also suggest that the post-recession increase in dads staying home was not a result of long-lasting changes in attitudes and ideologies about gender and work, but rather was a temporary response to economic precarity.

_{Figure 1: Percent of U.S. fathers out of the labor force, and out of the labor force specifically to care for children, 1980-2021.}

Taken together, our findings indicate that cultural views on stay-at-home dads may be changing, but mostly for dads who stay home because they don’t have any other choice. The stigma about stay-at- home dads has been reduced, but only because more dads are out of the workforce because of broader economic circumstances that make it impossible for them to be breadwinners. Dads who choose to stay home and not contribute financially to the family are still stigmatized, presumably seen as failures as breadwinners or as deadbeats for ducking this responsibility entirely. But dads who began to stay home because of the pandemic (or other future economic events) are likely to be viewed sympathetically, suggesting some relaxing of strong male-breadwinner social norms.

And cultural views may continue to change. A recent report found that over 70% of mothers will spend at least part of their children’s childhood as the main financial provider, with the average mother spending 6 years in this role. The pandemic also reversed the beginning of a decline in staying home rates among fathers of young children, and dads are now out of the labor force and home with kids at record high rates. The sustained rate of dads staying home with kids may reduce the stigma of this role even further, as more children grow up with dads at home as caregivers for at least some portion of their childhoods.

On the other hand, support for dads staying home may be reduced if economic conditions improve more broadly, reducing the number of men in that role involuntarily. And during the pandemic, while more dads withdrew from the labor force and increased the time they spent on housework and childcare, in 70% of families it was mothers who were primarily responsible for homeschooling when schools went virtual. Mothers were also far more likely than fathers to withdraw from the workforce or reduce their hours in paid work. These pandemic trends also reinforce the idea that the recent uptick in dads staying home is not an auger of radical gender change, but that traditional ideas about gender and parenting and divisions of labor are still going strong. Until these ideas change, and the stigma of men voluntarily staying home with children is reduced, few men will be willing to take on this role, preventing advancement towards full gender equality in work and family roles.

Arielle Kuperberg is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families.

Pamela Stone is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Follow them on twitter @ATKuperberg and @profpamstone.