Reposted with permission from the Gender & Society Blog

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened inequalities in unpaid care work, with increased childcare and housework burdens disproportionately borne by women. Across Europe and North America, women have been pushed out of the labor market, while mothers are increasingly suffering from stress and burnout.

Social policy might be able to reverse these trends – and the Carework Network has been urging the Biden-Harris administration to take decisive action now and reinvest in care infrastructure to “build back better”. Similar campaigns have been launched internationally, including in Canada and the UK.

But what can data tell us about the potential for welfare programs to address the gender gap in unpaid care work?

In our recent article in Gender & Society, we quantify the connections between social policy spending and inequality amongst unpaid care workers across 29 European countries.

We find that social policies do matter in addressing women’s “double burden” (at home and in paid work). Spending on social policies targeted to families – i.e., child allowances and credits, childcare supports, parental leave supports, and single-parent payments – is associated with a smaller gender gap in time spent on housework. And while this dynamic is visible across the income spectrum, it is strongest in lower income households.

The Gendered and Classed Dimensions of Unpaid Care

Data from the 2007/2008 and 2016/2017 waves of the European Quality of Life Survey highlights the scope of the care crisis even before the onset of the pandemic.

Figure 1 presents the mean weekly number of hours spent on unpaid care, broken down by care type (i.e. childcare as compared to housework), gender, and income quartile, for people living with at least one child under the age of 18 years. Several patterns emerge.

First, across all income groups, childcare makes up the majority of time dedicated to unpaid care work. This means both men and women spend proportionately more time caring for children than cooking and cleaning.

Second, women devote around twice as much time to unpaid caring as men. This pattern is consistent across the income spectrum, though the gender gap is especially large in lower income households.

Third, women with higher household income spend less time on unpaid care work than their poorer counterparts – likely because wealthier women outsource work to paid care providers. Men, by contrast, dedicate similar (lower) amounts of time to unpaid care work regardless of income level.

Fourth, childcare makes up a larger proportion of unpaid care work for wealthier women than for poorer ones. This reinforces prior research on “intensive mothering”: time spent educating children has become an important means of class reproduction within higher-income families, while “menial” tasks such as cooking and cleaning are more readily outsourced.

Spending on Family Policy is Associated with Reduced Inequalities in Housework

Using national data from the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation’s SOCX database, we then examine the state’s potential role in reducing inequalities in unpaid care work.

Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between how much a country spends on helping families (as a percentage of GDP) and the mean number of total hours spent by women and men, per country, on housework.

The two panels highlight that the gender gap in unpaid housework is a common feature across each of the 29 countries we examine. Regardless of the country or level of spending, women continually perform more unpaid housework then men.

Yet the data also show that the more a country spends to help its families thrive, the fewer hours women spend on housework. Women in countries where money spent on families accounts for a higher proportion of GDP spend less time, on average, doing unpaid housework tasks.

Using Family Policy to Build Back Better

Our analyses show that while women – and especially poorer women – spend more time on unpaid care work than men, carefully designed social policy spending may help to shrink the size of that gender gap. For governments, then, (re)investing in social programs that target families offers a promising route forward to counteract the large increases in unpaid care work that have occurred during the pandemic. These programs should be a crucial component of post-pandemic efforts to create a more equitable and caring society.

Naomi Lightman is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary. Her current research focuses on the of impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the employment conditions and health and well-being of paid caregivers in long-term care settings. Her related research publications examine the intersections of gender, inequality, care work (paid and unpaid), and social policy. You can follow her on Twitter @naomilightman.

Anthony Kevins is Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University. His research centers around inequality, public opinion, and various social policy programs, often with a focus on labor market vulnerability. You can read more about his research on his website, which also includes non-paywalled, open-access copies of his published studies – and you can follow him on Twitter @avkevins.

Reprinted from the UT Austin Texas Population Center https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/prc/research/research-brief-series/2021-research-briefs/johnson-economics-medab.php

For those wanting to end a pregnancy, the cost of in-clinic abortion care can be a significant barrier. The average cost of medication abortion (abortion with pills) in a clinic is $551. The majority of people pay for their abortion out of pocket. Abortion funds help cover some of the in-clinic abortion costs for some people, but they are not able to assist everyone in need of financial help. Many people who struggle to pay for their abortion delay or forgo paying bills such as rent, food, or utilities. The lack of affordable access to abortion care in the United States is linked to ongoing personal financial distress, debt, and poor credit.

Restrictive abortion laws in the U.S. add further economic burdens to people who would like to obtain an abortion in a clinic. At the federal level, the Hyde Amendment bans insurance plans that use federal funds, such as Medicaid, from paying for abortion care. Restrictions at the state level, such as mandatory waiting periods and multiple visit requirements, add costly appointments to the in-clinic experience. Restrictions aimed at abortion facilities, such as requiring that they be fitted out like mini-hospitals, have closed many clinics. These closures have placed additional financial burdens on people seeking in-clinic abortion care by necessitating out-of-pocket costs such as childcare, lodging, transportation, and lost wages. 

As abortion has become increasingly restricted, researchers have found evidence that some people in the U.S. forgo the clinic altogether. Instead, they manage their abortion on their own, outside of the formal healthcare setting. While some people have attempted abortion self-management with methods such as herbs, teas, homeopathic remedies, or self-harm, the growth of information-sharing on the internet has brought expanded access to the abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol. 

In 2018, Aid Access became the first service to provide self-managed medication abortion in the U.S. via an online telemedicine service.

This brief reports on a recent study of 80 U.S.-based people who self-managed their abortion using medications obtained from Aid Access. The in-depth interviews, conducted anonymously, sought to understand the role that socioeconomic factors play in an individual’s decision to self-manage an abortion using online telemedicine.

Key Findings

• The main reason why participants sought abortion care via online telemedicine was the unaffordable cost of in-clinic abortion.
• Restrictive state abortion policies, on top of personal financial hardship, made it impossible for participants to access abortion care in a clinic.
• For participants with children, their family’s economic wellbeing motivated the decision both to seek an abortion and to do so via online telemedicine.
• Medication abortion provided via online telemedicine offered an affordable alternative to the high costs of in-clinic abortion care. However, for some, accessing pills at no cost or a reduced cost was necessary because the suggested donation of $90 still posed a financial burden. See representative quotes below.

The high costs of in-clinic abortion care, made more difficult by restrictive abortion policies – along with balancing the needs of existing children – motivated people to seek medication abortion via online telemedicine

Note: Quotes have been edited for brevity.

Policy Implications

To improve people’s access to abortion in the United States, particularly for those with low incomes, policymakers can make policy changes to improve the availability and affordability of telemedicine for medication abortion. They can also make policy changes to improve Medicaid and private insurance coverage for clinic-based abortion.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates the abortion medication mifepristone by a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS). This regulation requires that providers must register as certified prescribers and that mifepristone be dispensed directly from a healthcare facility, rather than a retail pharmacy. Despite a growing body of evidence demonstrating that the existing restrictions are medically unnecessary and overly burdensome, the REMS remains.

Removing the REMS classification would increase delivery of medication abortion. In the 31 states that do not ban the provision of abortion by telemedicine, providers could implement flexible service delivery models. Providers could conduct the pre-abortion appointment via telemedicine, and partner with mail-order pharmacies to ship the medications directly to the patient or allow for pick-up at a retail pharmacy. This would allow patients to reduce their trips to the clinic, especially in states with laws requiring multiple trips for pre-abortion ultrasounds or state-mandated counseling. Removing the REMS and making the medications available by mail or pharmacy pick-up would mean fewer trips to the clinic and alleviate some of the burdens such as paying for transportation, childcare, or taking time off of work.

In addition to removing the REMS, Congress could expand affordable abortion access by passing the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance, or EACH Woman Act. This legislation would repeal the Hyde Amendment and ensure coverage for abortion through all government-sponsored health insurance plans. It would also prohibit politicians from interfering with private health insurance plans that offer coverage for abortion. This would substantially expand insurance coverage for abortion care and would increase the ability of more people, particularly people with low incomes, to obtain an abortion from a medical provider.

Evidence suggests that self-managed abortion will continue, especially as new abortion restrictions are enacted, such as Texas’ recent law prohibiting abortions at around six weeks’ gestation. For people living in the 19 states that prohibit the provision of abortion by telemedicine, self-managed abortion options are especially important.

However, potential legal risks exist for people who self-manage their abortion. Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, South Carolina and Delaware have all passed laws criminalizing self-managed abortion, and people in these states could be prosecuted.  Moreover, people with few economic resources or those who are members of groups historically criminalized in the U.S. may be at even greater risk of prosecution. Policymakers could eliminate these risks by repealing laws that criminalize self-managed abortion.

Reference

Johnson, D.M., Madera, M., Gomperts, R. & Aiken, A.R.A., The economic context of pursuing online medication abortion in the United States. (2021). SSM – Qualitative Research in Health. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2021.100003.

Suggested Citation

Johnson, D.M., Madera, M., Gomperts, R. & Aiken, A.R.A. (2021). What motivates people in the United States to seek medication abortion pills outside of the clinic setting? PRC Research Brief 6(11). DOI: 10.15781/xm1d-t214.

About the Authors

Dana M. Johnson, danajohnson@utexas.edu is a PhD candidate in public policy and demography and an NICHD predoctoral trainee in the Population Research Center at The University of Texas; Melissa Madera is a senior project manager and research fellow for Project SANA (The Self-Managed Abortion Needs Assessment Project); Rebecca Gomperts is the founder and director of Women on Waves, Women on Web and Aid Access; and Abigail Aiken is an associate professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and a PRC faculty scholar at The University of Texas at Austin.

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Society of Family Planning (SFP), Grant # SFPRF12-MA1 and received infrastructure support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Grant # P2CHD042849). Neither source of funding had any involvement in the design and conduct of the study; the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

In the 1950s, dating etiquette decreed that the man had to initiate all interactions. Although much has changed since then, many women continue to believe they will end up with a higher quality man if they don’t appear too eager. You might think the tech savvy women who turn to the internet to search for partners would be less inhibited, but in a recent study using 6 months of online dating data from a midsized Southwestern city (N=8,259 men, 6,274 women), my coauthors and I found that women send 4 times fewer messages than men.

But the payoffs for violating older gender conventions are significant. A woman who initiates a contact is twice as likely to get a favorable response from a potential partner as a man who does so. And women who take the initiative connect with equally desirable partners as women who wait to be asked, without having to wade through a pile of less desirable suitors.

University of Texas sociologist Shannon Cavanagh studies online dating and analyzes hundreds of thousands of messages between partners.

Originally printed February 11, 2015 https://thesocietypages.org/ccf/2015/02/11/hoping-for-a-valentines-day-date-stop-waiting-to-be-asked/

Breaking up takes skills: Do you have them?                                

Reposted with permission from Psychology Today

Research from the ’80s and ’90s taught us that breakups are often a painfully long process, marked by fits and starts, internal debate, and lots of negotiating with your partner. One study found that it took 16 steps to break up with someone. On the other end of that spectrum is ghosting. If the relationship is casual enough, we can just stop communicating and the relationship dies quietly.

We know there is a middle ground between these two where, even in an uncomfortable breakup situation, people can go their separate ways with a bit of dignity left intact. Research shows that this process takes a set of breakup skills that no one really teaches us.

Both our culture and relationship research teach us that relationships take work to make them last. But what relationships are worth working for? What kind of work is healthy and necessary? And maybe most importantly: How do you know when to stop working at it?

In our study, we didn’t propose answers to those questions. However, with my colleague Dr. Jonathon Beckmeyer in the lead, we decided to explore what it takes to successfully break up with someone. This is what we found.

1. Know when to break up.

Dr. Beckmeyer and I have spent most of our careers studying emerging adults—or people ages 18-29 that are still figuring out who they are, what careers they want, and what education to pursue. They usually feel like they are somewhere in between adolescence and adulthood, and the world seems full of possibilities for them.

During emerging adulthood, people also explore their options for relationships. Research suggests that they must figure out how to coordinate their love lives around their education and career plans. If you’re in this age group and unmarried, this juggling act might sound familiar.

Aside from the more obvious reasons to break up (e.g., physical, emotional, or sexual abuse), it is important to assess whether your relationship is compatible with your individual goals. Does your relationship present barriers to you finishing school or taking a job you need or want? Do you feel supported by your partner as you pursue your goals? Does your partner want to live a similar kind of life to you in terms of work and family balance, having children, and geographic location?

These questions are especially important for emerging adults. If you’re in a relationship that is happy, healthy, and supportive, you can work together to make sure each of your goals is being met. If not, it may be time to move on.

2. Follow through on the breakup.

Breaking up with someone can be stressful, especially if you have been together for a long time. Unfortunately, if you aren’t clear and direct when breaking up with someone, they may end up confused about the status of the relationship. In this case, the breakup might drag on and on or you end up sliding back into the relationship.

Whether your breakup style is more self-focused (how does this affect me?) or other-focused (how can I ease their discomfort?) being clear about your intentions to end the relationship serves everyone’s interests. You get out of the relationship and they are not left wondering what happened.

3. If your partner wants to break up with you, accept it and move on.

Let’s imagine you’re on the other side of the breakup. Your job is to accept your partner’s wishes. You may disagree with their reasons for ending the relationship, but you can’t disagree with the breakup itself.

Truly accepting the breakup might also mean severing the ties you have to that person on social media. Research suggests that staying connected is likely to cause additional stress, anger, and pain. It also keeps you psychologically invested in their lives, which prevents you from moving forward separately from them. This kind of rumination has also been linked to more distress after a breakup.

If you really think the relationship still has potential, consider the old wisdom from Khalil Gibran, “If you really love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” The key is that you have to honestly let them go.

4. Don’t delay the breakup.

Once you know the relationship is unhealthy or unsatisfying, just end it. In another study, we explored what happens when people linger in unsatisfying relationships for too long. In hindsight, the people we interviewed were full of regret that they hadn’t ended the relationships earlier. They felt stuck, but they had trouble overcoming the barriers they saw to leave the relationship, whether that was living together, being enmeshed with their partner’s family, or having children together.

We were surprised to find that sometimes unexpected events like the death of a family member or a diagnosis with serious illness delayed breakups because individuals felt obligated to see their partners through a difficult time. There is certainly room for kindness and consideration about the timing of a breakup, but there is unlikely to be a good time to end a relationship. When it’s time to move on, don’t delay.

Conclusion

Breakups can be painful and difficult, whether you are the “leaver” or the “left.” However, they are also a normative part of being a young adult. Leaving a relationship that isn’t working (or accepting when someone wants to end a relationship with you) helps you move toward the kinds of partnerships you truly want. The key is to try and learn from the experience so that the next relationship you form is stronger and more satisfying.

References

Beckmeyer, J. J., & Jamison, T. B. (2019) Is breaking up hard to do? Exploring emerging adults’ beliefs about their abilities to end romantic relationships. Family Relations. Advance Online. doi.org/10.1111/fare.12404

Jamison, T. B., & Beckmeyer, J. J. (2021) Feeling stuck: Exploring the development of felt constraint in romantic relationships, Family Relations, 70(3) 880-895. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12496

Tyler Jamison, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Twitter: @DrTylerJamison

A therapist colleague got a call in the middle of the night from a mom in his practice.  The woman was frantic.  Her daughter’s anger had escalated into physical attacks.  The mother had locked herself in her room – not knowing who to call.  The friend asked me if I could recommend resources that he could give the family.  He was familiar with my research and new book “Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children through Conflict and Change” which will launch on February 2^nd, Rowman & Littlefield. 

Difficult is the first book to speak to and name the experience of older mothers of troubled adult children who have become the default safety-net in the face of a failed mental health system, limited substance abuse treatment, and sky-rocketing rents.  Little known face – the most likely perpetrator of what is called elder abuse is a dependent adult child living at home suffering with mental illness and/or substance use disorder.  Vulnerable adults who cannot manage, or afford to, live on their own turn to their families.  But the shared household arrangement often only benefits the adult child.  Most cases of elder abuse do not get reported in part because older parents do not want their troubled adult children to go to jail.

My work is based on several years of qualitative research with older women (all over 60) who self-identified as having adult children whose problems were negatively impacting their quality of life.  After analyzing their stories, I coined the name “difficult adult child” to capture the dilemmas that each of the women reported about the complex difficult mothering that emerged for them when their adult child who had returned home because they could no longer support themselves. The older mothers (and fathers if available) do not feel appreciated for the sacrifices they are making by re-opening their homes to their children later in life. Each mother shared with me her feelings of helplessness regarding the conflict whose needs take priority – mine or hers?   

While this book will be extremely helpful to therapists and physicians who often do not sufficiently understand the stress that older parents with difficult adult children experience, Difficult is also written for the parents of challenging adult children.  There are chapters on mental illness, substance use and family violence that offer accessible psycho-education and resources for getting help.  This is a book you can suggest to your clients. It will help them see that they are not alone. 

So many families who have adult children who are “off-time” in their development and/or engaged in deviant or stigmatized behavior, keep their adult children’s troubles secret and often blame themselves.  The book is empathic to the terrible conflicts that parents feel when their adult child’s life is stopped by mental illness and/or substance abuse problems.   Beyond allowing mothers and fathers to feel less alone, there are several chapters that offer readers a way to use the Stages of Change model applied to changingtheir  relationship with an adult child; and there is a large section devoted to resources for self-care, getting social support, and staying safe. 

  Difficult is not about “boomerang kids” who will bounce back into independent living.  Instead, the book shines a light on a large, usually unseen, population of parents who often feel that their adult children’s problems have no solution.  The book presents the deep feeling of being “torn in two” that each woman is living with.  Each felt that she had no choice but to support her adult child when they were in crisis and had invited them to move back into the family home.  As clinicians, helping women see their problem as connected to other mothers and not a result of their unique failure in parenting can be empowering. 

The book can be ordered on-line from your favorite on-line book seller.

Judith R. Smith, PhD, LCSW, is a senior clinical social worker, therapist, researcher, and professor at Fordham University. She is a leader in gerontological research focusing on women’s experiences as they age. Her book, “Difficult: Mothering Challenging Adult Children through Conflict and Change” Rowman & Littlefield, will be available Feb. 2022.  Follow them on Twitter @JudithRSmithPhd

Reposted with Permission from the Gender & Society Blog.

“Um to me, being a Black girl is fighting the stereotypes that people have, like about all of us being loud and obnoxious, ghetto, ratchet, promiscuous, and all that.”

Following a Saturday morning arts-based workshop with Deborah, Christa, Unique, Philippi, and Nicole (self-designated pseudonyms), I interviewed girls about their workshop experience. I was also eager to learn about how they defined Black girlhood. Sitting upright in her seat, looking up at the ceiling and then eventually lowering her gaze to meet mine, Unique candidly shared her thoughts. She expressed frustration that despite being smart, serious about her education, and performing an unproblematic comportment, she felt unseen and overshadowed by the negative stereotypes. While it could prove useful to examine the racialized characteristics and the larger archetypes they support—like the thot, welfare queen, hood rat, and even older relics like the jezebel— it is also essential  to hear the reality that fighting is quotidian to being a Black girl.

When a Black girl is bullied and forced to choose between uninterrupted education and self-definition a fight follows. For example, when a Black girl is invited to the front of the room only to be sent back to her seat in tears with a braid missing or denied the experience of taking yearbook photos or required to remove beads in the middle of a game, a fight follows. As anti-Blackness and racialized expectations of femininity converge with loose and subjective interpretations of policies and regulations, Black girls must decide with whom or what they want to brawl. Although frequently attached to girls at each other’s throats, this truism is evidence of how Black girls’ embodiment is marked problematic, something to be policed, a reason for her confinement.

IN WHAT WAYS IS JUSTICE INTIMATELY TIED TO EXPRESSION AND SELF-DEFINITION?

“I understand hair clips and stuff that’s like on my forehead and stuff. I understand that, cuz it applies to everybody. But ask yourself, who else wears beads? Who else wears things that hang off braids in your hair?”

On April 19, 2021, high school sophomore and softball player Nicole Pyles became the target of anti-Black and gendered microaggressions. After playing a full inning and hitting a double, her beads were suddenly an issue. Nicole’s teammates collaborated to use some bands to secure the beads, and she tucked them into her sports bra. Allowed to return to the field, she helped her team strike out their opponent until it was her turn at bat.

In Nicole’s statement during an interview with The News & Observer, she made plain that the decision to label her hair a problem at this particular moment was both unethical and unnecessary. In addition to playing the first inning of the game on April 19, Nicole had played the first four games of the tournament with no issue.

The coach of the opposing team first brought attention to her hair, claiming it obstructed her jersey number, and then an umpire gave Nicole the ultimatum to remove the beads or sit out of the game. To Nicole, these were fighting words. Appalled by the demand and aware that the call wasn’t really about following a rule, she firmly and candidly communicated, “And so I made the decision that I was gonna remove my beads and I was gonna play my game.” The groundedness of Nicole’s deliberation can be understood as a transgressive act, one wherein a boundary is crossed in the name of a benefit, a desire, and in this case, an insistence on doing what she came to do: play (and win) her game.

Only the opposing team’s coach knows his true motivations for rigidly enforcing the rules at that particular moment. However, it would not be the first time a Black girls’ adornment or expression of self has rattled others, nor the first injustice endured due to hair stylization. They changed the game on Nicole. Under pressure from the other team’s coach, the umpire decided to invoke the code, placing full responsibility and blame on Nicole and her coach in the final hour of the tournament. Perhaps they bet on her having a different response to their push, that she would get rightfully indignant, loud, or disheveled. Being a Black girl requires us to choose our opponents carefully. Nicole decided to place her undivided attention on the game and fight her battle off the field.

WHAT DO BLACK GIRLS’ DELIBERATIONS ABOUT THEIR BODIES TEACH US?

In the face of varying textures of injustice, Black girls are inviting us to practice reliability. While there was no physical altercation on the field, the restriction of beads in the rules and the after-the-fact argument that her number was covered by her hair revealed the foul play afoot.

From over a decade of work with Black girls, reliability emerged as a pedagogy and tenet, a way to represent Black girls and the lessons they gift. Returning to Unique’s statement about fighting stereotypes and Black girlhood, to practice reliability with Black girls requires that their self-definition is welcomed. It is to ensure that rules and policies involving their livelihood are based on actual concerns of harm. To practice Black girl reliability in Nicole’s case would have meant breaking out into the game ‘Little Sally Walker’ cheering, “Gon’ girl, do yo thang, do yo thang, do yo thang, switch,” because she was on her game and her beads weren’t bothering nobody.

It would have meant leaving her be and believing in Nicole’s assessment of potential injury, her hair, and the game she came to win and wanted to play. When we say Black girls’ names, let it be in exaltation. Black girls everywhere are demanding that we see the injustice in denying their flavor, especially in spaces where they aren’t expected to be or shine. It’s up to all of us to listen.

Read Hill’s piece in the #SayHerName symposium here.

Dominique C. Hill, PhD, is a Blackqueer feminist whose written and performed scholarship interrogates Black embodiment with foci in girlhood, education, and artistic expression. Hill, in research and praxis, seeks to extend the field of Black girlhood studies as an assistant professor of Women’s Studies at Colgate University.

Reposted with Permission from the Gender & Society Blog.

Who Pulls the Purse Strings—Why Does it Matter?

How partners manage their money is a key part of everyday family life. Money management illustrates the checks and balances of power that are crucial to understanding couple relationships. As financial management provides essential access to money in the household, gender inequalities in household financial management can lead to inequalities in partners’ living standards, health, and well-being. A few recent studies have also shown that gendered dynamics of partners’ money management also matter for relationship satisfaction.

The uneven pace of the gender revolution between the public and domestic spheres presents a major puzzle for understanding how gender equality at work translates into gender equality at home. Household financial management is an important, but often overlooked, link in this translation. In my previous research, for example, I have found that women were only able to translate their earnings into a reduction in their housework time when they participate in or control financial management in the household.

Context: Changing Couplehood and the Gender Revolution

Over the past decades, couple relationships have evolved as has the gender revolution. Popular media and scholars alike have predicted a decline in partners’ material interdependence and an “individualization” of couple relationships, as women’s labor force participation and economic status increases. However, it is less clear whether the “individualization” of couplehood is also reflected in how partners manage their money. Has the gender revolution given women greater power in household finances? As couples have different economic options, it is important to explore whether and how trends of household financial management differ between low- and high-earning women and couples.

The Research

In my paper, published in Gender & Society, I have analyzed data from 11,730 heterosexual couples from a nationally representative sample of the UK population. I have examined changes in financial management for cohorts of couples born between the 1920s and 1990s.

My findings show that the gender revolution in who pulls the purse strings has followed divergent paths. Over time, low- and high-earning women have come to take more control of the finances in their relationships, but in different ways.

As high-earning women develop a sense of autonomy from their earnings and can afford the transaction costs associated with keeping separate purses, their empowerment in household finances is primarily characterized by a trend of “individualization,” as reflected in a decrease in joint financial management and an increase in independent management, such as separate bank accounts. Further, the trend of “individualization” is primarily found among men and women with about equal individual income: the decline of joint financial management is particularly prominent among women with equally high earnings as their male partners.

Women with low earnings have seen more subtle changes. More recent groups of low-earning women now keep their own spending money rather than receive a housekeeping allowance, which gives them more freedom of choice on how the money is spent.

Changes have also taken place for men. More recently, men have become less likely to adopt a “back-seat” management of the finances, where they give their partners a housekeeping allowance to manage the delegated and onerous chore of making the money stretch to cover daily expenses. Rather, men have stepped up to share the chore of everyday money management. Taken together, these trends show a subtle relaxation of male control over household finances for women with low earnings.

Implications of the Findings

My findings lead to some room for optimism. I found progress toward, but not yet full achievement of, gender equality in how couples manage their money. The tale of two (divergent) gender revolutions by social class underlines the importance of an intersectional lens on gender equality in couples.

While some sociologists have long argued that modern couple relationships increasingly incorporate the ideals of equality and individual autonomy, how these ideals are achieved differs considerably between low- and high-earning women and couples. My findings draw attention to the role played by material conditions in shaping the way gender equality is achieved in couples’ money management. I show that (income) equality between high-earning partners is at the core of the “individualization” of couple relationships.

Yang Hu(Twitter: @dr_yanghu) is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. His research focuses on changing gender and work-family relations and their intersections with population mobility in a global context.

Parents are bombarded with advice on how they should feed their young children. Nutritional science identifies different parental feeding styles and associated health outcomes, while celebrity chefs encourage parents to produce tasty, practical and ‘homemade’ meals. Whatever their source, these messages emphasise healthiness and variation as key components of good feeding. However, despite apparent consistency in the dietary discourse, there are wide disparities in parental attitudes. Why is this the case? And why does it matter?

In my British Academy funded research, I explored how parents of toddler-aged children from different social classes understand good feeding – and how these interpretations influence their day- to-day feedwork.  I conducted go-along interviews (accompanying participants on their outings) to participate in the choosing, purchasing, cooking, feeding and cleaning up processes. My research was longitudinal; I collected my data over the course of 2 years from 12 families living in southeast England. This enabled me to observe food practices as children grow and conditions change. 

The results showed that parents from all classes consider variation to be key, but they interpret this differently according to their cultural and economic resources. For middle-class interviewees, variety is essential in cultivating a broad, autonomous, and adventurous taste repertoire. This involves continually introducing different types of food, cooking and serving styles to “educate the palate”.  Pureed baby food pouches are avoided as “banal” and “horrible,” like “cat food”.  These parents, especially mothers, devote considerable time and effort teaching their children how to appreciate “foreign” and “exotic” foodstuffs and, more generally, to achieve this sophisticated ideal of variety.

For families with fewer resources, encouraging their children to appreciate a varied diet is important because feeding “fussy children” is considered to be demanding for many reasons. This practical rationale generates very different practices. For instance, working class families tend to “hide” the foodstuffs that their children might reject in dishes that they like, so they eat them “without knowing it”. Another strategy used to minimize the risk of rejection is to allow children to watch videos or TV when eating. While these pragmatic approaches ensure that variation is delivered and sustained, they fall short of encouraging the heightened culinary agency desired by most middle class parents.

Equally, parents’ understanding of a healthy diet differs widely. Middle class parents tend to adopt a hypercritical nutritional approach, dismissing broader public health messages such as the ‘five-a-day’ rule as too simplistic. They often ignore mainstream advice after doing their own research and are more confident in offering plant-based alternatives, in line with broader environmental concerns.  The journey from soil to plate and the importance of reading food labels is also emphasised from early on. This is coupled with a strict and exclusionary definition of homemade; as something “things with no list of ingredients,”  and which “produces less plastic waste.”

Providing healthy meals is a primary concern for working class families too, but their main objective is finding a balance between food groups – and their strategies are quite different. For instance, one interviewee sprinkled refined sugar on top of fruits less favoured by her children – a tactic unlikely to be adopted by middle class parents. These families also define homemade more literally: the meal is assembled and consumed at home “properly,” regardless of the number of industrial steps involved in the production of the items prior to purchase.

Why should these interpretative differences matter? Firstly, it shows us that one-size-fits-all recommendations, devoid of any nuanced understanding of parents’ conditions, cannot generate any meaningful impact on feeding practices. If a homemade, varied, balanced, healthy diet is understood so differently, providing information and support to families using these terms is simply not helpful. Secondly, the tastes embodied through these diverse culinary socialisations are likely to yield different symbolic value  in adulthood years.  Those who possess a complex palette, a heightened sense of culinary agency and environmental awareness are likely to occupy a cultural and moral high ground, whereas those who lack them can easily be categorised as practical (food as fuel), vulgar or uncultivated. Studying the nuanced differences in feeding practices can give us a much needed insight into how class based culinary inequalities emerge and reproduce in everyday life.

Irmak Karademir- Hazır is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her research focuses on the lived experience of social class, cultural inequalities, and consumption practices. You can find her on Twitter @KarademirIrmak

Funding acknowledgement: British Academy Small Grant SG170135

The police killings of Black Americans such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain (among countless others) sparked a renewed reckoning with racial injustice in 2020. Race differences in the risk of being killed by police are striking. According to recent estimates, Black Americans are over three times more likely to be killed by the police than White Americans.

Racial inequities in mortality, however, extend far beyond police killings. Decades of research show that Black Americans live shorter lives and experience higher mortality rates for numerous causes of death beginning in infancy and continuing throughout much of later life. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has underscored such racial disparities in mortality, with one study suggesting that the odds of dying from COVID-19 are 60% higher for Black Americans compared to White Americans.

These patterns of premature mortality mean that Black Americans lose family members more often and earlier in life than White Americans, a traumatic and uniquely stressful experience that only serves to undermine the health of surviving family members even more. Thus, Black families are trapped in a vicious cycle wherein inequity in longevity leads to inequity in experiencing family loss which then exacerbates existing inequities in health. Considering the already high stress burden of living in a world built on systems of racism, researchers and policy-makers alike should consider the additional burden of premature mortality for the health and well-being of Black families.

Our recent research supported by the National Institutes of Health documents the extent of racial inequities in family loss and shows how this unequal burden adds to racial disadvantage in health and well-being. Indeed, throughout life, Black Americans are much more likely to lose a mother, father, sibling, child, and/or spouse than White Americans and to lose them at earlier ages. The differences are striking. By age 10, Black children are three times more likely than White children to lose a mother. Racial disadvantage in spouse and sibling loss follows similar patterns.

Cumulatively, this results in Black Americans being three times more likely than White Americans to experience the death of two or more family members by age 30. By age 60, this disadvantage persists, with Black Americans almost twice as likely to have lost four or more family members compared to White Americans.

Racial inequity in exposure to family loss sends ripple effects through Black families that are left to deal with the grief of losing a loved one. Such grief can have far-reaching implications for health. Research shows that losing a family member is a uniquely traumatic experience that can have lifelong psychological, social, behavioral, and biological consequences, all of which undermine health and well-being.

For example, experiencing the death of a family member increases the risk of depression and anxiety for bereaved family members, even years after the loss. Losing a family member can also result in new caregiving responsibilities as roles within the family shift. Behaviorally, individuals may self-medicate with drugs and alcohol to cope with their grief. The chronic stress triggered by loss can even get under the skin by adding to cumulative wear and tear on physiological systems which can lead to declines in health. Together, these responses to bereavement can have detrimental effects on health, and the unequal burden of bereavement in Black families disproportionately impinges on the health of Black Americans.   

Losing a child is arguably one of the most stressful events a parent can experience. Our research suggests that Black parents are about two times more likely to lose a child by age 60 compared to White parents, a disadvantage that only grows as parents age.

The prolonged stress of losing a child can have long-lasting consequences for health. As our studies show, child loss increases dementia and mortality risks in later life for both Black parents and White parents. Dementia prevalence is already two times higher for Black Americans than for White Americans, so the higher rates of child loss for Black parents exacerbate existing racial disparities in dementia risk. Indeed, we find that Black parents who lose a child by age 40 are almost three times more likely to develop dementia over the study period than White parents experiencing the same loss.

Considering mortality risk in later life, we find that Black mothers who lose a child have 35% higher odds of dying compared to Black mothers who do not experience child loss. Likewise, White mothers who lose a child face 25% higher odds of dying than White mothers who do not lose a child. Again, Black Americans already experience higher mortality rates than white Americans, and the unequal burden of child loss adds to that disadvantage.  

The health-damaging consequences of family member deaths are not restricted to later life. A forthcoming paper from our research team explores the potential effect of family losses that occur earlier in life on Black Americans’ cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in early-to-mid adulthood. We measure CVD risk by combining measurements of blood pressure, waist size, blood sugar, and c-reactive protein (a protein related to inflammation). Preliminary findings suggest that Black Americans, but not White Americans, face increased CVD risk in early-to-mid adulthood following the death of a parent in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood (up to age 27).

These findings show how bereavement can get under the skin to undermine health even at relatively young ages. Research consistently finds that Black Americans die from cardiovascular diseases at a higher rate than White Americans and these disparities are projected to persist (and potentially grow) in the future. Thus, our findings underscore the need to consider how unequal exposure to family member loss contributes to racial inequities in cardiovascular health.

While the grief that follows the death of a family member is not unique to any one group, higher death rates and lower life expectancy for Black Americans (a result of the long and continuing legacy of racism in the United States) means that Black families disproportionately bear this burden. As our research clearly shows, this lifetime burden of bereavement fuels stark inequities in health and well-being across the life course.

Racial inequities in exposure to family member deaths is a public health crisis that we must address. Policies and public health interventions aimed at improving the health of Black Americans could have far-reaching benefits if they recognize the unequal burden of bereavement and its impact on health. More importantly, directly reducing racial inequity in mortality rates would reduce disparities in bereavement burden and shield surviving family members from the adverse consequences of grief.

 Michael A. Garcia is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, Population Research Center (PRC) Graduate Research Trainee, and Executive Director of the Council on Contemporary Families. Her research focuses on how social relationships shape health and well-being across the life course. Her recent work has been published in Social Forces, Social Science & Medicine, and Journal of Marriage and Family. You can follow them on Twitter:@magarcia_tx

Rachel Donnelly is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on the social determinants of health across the life course, with an emphasis on stress, work, and family relationships. She also examines how disparate experiences based on gender, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity shape mental and physical health outcomes.

 Debra Umberson is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. Her research focuses on the impact of relationships on health across the life course, and gender, sexuality, and racial variation in relationship and health experiences. You can follow them on them on Twitter: @DebUmberson