Andréa Becker (she/they) is a medical sociologist, sexual and reproductive health expert, and assistant professor of sociology at Hunter College-City University of New York. Their writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Nation, and Slate. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @andreavbecker and learn more at andrea-becker.com. Here, I ask them about their new book Get it Out: On the Politics of Hysterectomy.

AMW: Why is there so much silence around the hysterectomy? 

AB: We teach people with uteruses and ovaries to feel shame about these organs–especially when they are “malfunctioning.” Yet speaking out and forging communities around the various paths that lead to a hysterectomy–whether it’s endometriosis, fibroids, or part of gender-affirming care–can be lifesaving. We desperately need more research and attention within healthcare to these organs, and focusing on hysterectomy reveals just how much work there is to be done. 

One in five people who are born with a uterus will have it removed by the time they are in their sixties—a statistic that was one in three when I began this project and one which never ceases to shock the person who asks why I study hysterectomy. And yet given the vast silence around hysterectomy, you’d never know how common it is. The reason for this silence is multifold. First, it is widely taboo to talk about nearly anything related to “women’s health” or “women’s organs”–from menstruation to vaginal infections to abortion. When it comes to hysterectomy specifically hysterectomy is understood as a devastating event that happens to you. To read about hysterectomy in the news is to read about disaster: emergency hysterectomy after a denied abortion, deadly hysterectomies during war, coerced hysterectomies on detained migrants. A hysterectomy often signals multifold systemic and legal failures, which are then forever written on the body—a body forever changed.

And yet, by hearing from one of the 100 hysterectomy seekers in my book and delving into the history of this procedure, the story of hysterectomy grows more complicated. While we rarely read about this in news headlines, many people want a hysterectomy, choose a hysterectomy, and are happy to have had a hysterectomy. As my interviewees explained, people might want a hysterectomy for a number of reasons, whether to find freedom from one of the many illnesses that affect the uterus and ovaries or to affirm their gender. In many ways, a hysterectomy can be understood as a form of self care. This is especially tha case because the modern hysterectomy is unrecognizable from its earlier forms–it’s now largely regarded as minimally invasive, typically outpatient, and leaves behind 3-5 tiny abdominal scars. Yet we continue to talk about hysterectomy, and doctors continue to approach the surgery as unilaterally devastating and to be avoided if possible.

AMW: How does the U.S. healthcare system deprive people of the ability to control their own bodies? 

AB: When we talk about “the right to choose” conversations tend to be limited to abortion–to be able to exert agency in terminating a single pregnancy. Yet bodily and reproductive autonomy span far beyond the termination of a pregnancy. Full right to choose also means that a healthcare system is equipped to help you take care of your body. We refer to the uterus, ovaries, and cervix as the “reproductive system” or “reproductive organs” but people want to keep these organs healthy and pain-free beyond their use for gestating and delivering a pregnancy. We have known about endometriosis–a disease that impacts 10% of people with these organs–since the early 20th century for instance, yet still we can only diagnose it via surgery and there is no known permanent cure. As I say over and over in the book, to have a uterus in a medical system built for cis women having babies often means being pushed to want hysterectomy and then being told to wait. People with chronic pain and bleeding often choose a hysterectomy as a mode of self care and for many people it brings a lot of relief. Yet this choice is constrained. Would they choose this surgery if there was adequate attention, funding, and research devoted to promoting the health and wellbeing of the uterus, ovaries, and cervix? Would they have wanted a hysterectomy if they hadn’t spent years of their lives being told their pain was a normal part of having a uterus? It’s these broader structural and cultural conditions that ultimately render a hysterectomy constrained, even if it’s very much wanted and met with joy. 

the pelvis—the way the body is externally racialized and gendered bestows distinct meanings on this particular part of the body. Looking closely at the various meanings deduced from these differently “housed” uteruses reveals the extent to which culture and politics interact with biological and structural forces to shape the experience of healthcare and of one’s own body. Race, class, and gender continue to stratify healthcare options, and ultimately the reproductive freedoms bestowed.

A hysterectomy as part of gender affirming care is also constrained, despite being recognized as essential care and one that brings joy and relief to those who want it. There is limited research on how the hormones involved gender affirming care impacts the uterus, ovaries, and cervix, and therefore conflicting information about whether someone taking hormones needs a hysterectomy. There’s long been a fear within the medical community that longterm use of HRT will lead to cancers in these organs, commonly leading doctors to suggest a hysterectomy to patients, and many trans and nonbinary patients opting into this surgery as a preventative measure even if having a uterus doesn’t necessarily bother them. At the same time, many of the transmasc people I spoke to would have liked to preserve their fertility, but the additional costs of games retrieval and cryopreservation on top of the hysterectomy was too burdensome. In many cases, their doctors didn’t even discuss fertility preservation, which is a stark contrast to women’s experiences. In a context of structural medical transphobia, limited research, and lack of funds, a hysterectomy as part of gender affirming care likewise becomes a constrained choice. 

AMW: Why is there so much pushback for people who request a hysterectomy? 

AB: Put simply, our medical system is obsessed with promoting women’s fertility (and with maintaining a sex/gender binary, in the case of trans and nonbinary patients). As the sociologist Miranda Waggoner aptly named it in her book, women’s bodies are construed as existing in a “zero trimester” of pregnancy, always viewed as one-day-pregnant or mothers in waiting. Given this, there is often a hesitation to permanently remove the capacity for pregnancy. This is particularly the case for white women, dozens of whom told me their doctors told them they were too young well into their late 30’s, that they would inevitably change their minds or feel grief, and in some cases, that their future husbands would be upset by their lack of uterus. We often talk about infertility as a tragedy–and for many it is–but the concept of willingly opting into infertility, even if in the service of living a happier, pain free, gender affirming life is so unfathomable to many. 

Of note, my 100 interviews also revealed that hysterectomy is part of what sociologists call stratified reproduction. While white women well into their mid to late thirties were often told by their doctors that they are too young for a hysterectomy and told to try a dozen alternatives instead, many young Black and Afro-Latina I spoke to were recommended the surgery as their only choice. I was particularly struck by the contrast between two women, who I call Stacey and Luna. Both of these women were college students in east coast cities, and both had debilitating endometriosis symptoms in the form of chronic pain and incessant bleeding. Yet while Luna was brashly told she needed a hysterectomy as her only option, Stacey was told she should instead become pregnant as her cure. If she didn’t want the baby, her doctor assured her, she could always just place it for adoption after the pregnancy cured her. Medical research does not confirm that either pregnancy or hysterectomy is a full cure for this debilitating illness–yet race and class often come into play for which route a doctor chooses for their patient. While the uterus itself remains the same—a hollow, fist-sized, pear-shaped organ that lives in

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Report

A briefing paper prepared by Liana C. Sayer, University of Maryland and Joanna R. Pepin, University of Toronto for the Council on Contemporary Families online symposium The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Future of Gender Equality (PDF).

In the past, widespread economic impacts have affected gender dynamics in paid and unpaid work. For example, the concentration of job loss among men during the 2008 recession was associated with increases in married fathers’ household and care work. The COVID-19 pandemic produced an unprecedented economic crisis and it too brought about changes in parents’ employment. Job loss and reduced work hours were initially concentrated among women, particularly racial and ethnic minority women, and disproportionately affected mothers.

These employment changes alongside stay-at-home guidelines, restrictions on eating at restaurants, altered grocery shopping and cooking patterns, and public health guidance to sanitize living quarters led many scholars and pundits to speculate families were spending more of their time cooking and cleaning. Childcare closures and the shift to remote learning for schoolchildren upended parents’ expectations of the time necessary for supervising their children. Did these sharp disruptions to everyday family life affect gender inequality in unpaid work? And how are these changes associated with paid work during COVID?

On the one hand, gender inequality in unpaid work may have worsened during the pandemic. The lack of formal childcare and increased needs for cooking and cleaning were likely to affect mothers more than fathers due to expectations of intensive mothering and notions that women are primarily responsible for the household. On the other hand, greater access to remote work, especially among employed fathers, and a redistribution of daily activities (e.g., less time transporting children to extracurricular activities) may have facilitated more equality in sharing housework and childcare.

Same song, new verse?

Similar to what happened during the 2008 recession, initial research showed some signs that, in the early days of the pandemic, the parental gender gap in unpaid work narrowed. One study showed an 18% decrease in the number of minutes per day mothers and fathers spent with their children. In the Fall of 2019, the gender gap was about 175 minutes – nearly 3 hours – per day. By the Fall of 2020, the daily gap in time spent with children had declined to 144 minutes per day (about 2 hours 25 minutes). Another study, based on a non-probability sample of 1,025 US parents in different-gender partnerships, showed similar patterns. Although mothers continued to do more housework and childcare than fathers about one month into the pandemic, notably, fathers increased their contribution to the household labor. It was fathers’ greater time spent in unpaid labor that narrowed the gender gap.

However, as the pandemic carried on, evidence of lasting change didn’t materialize. A follow-up study showed that the shift toward more equal sharing of housework returned to pre-pandemic levels by November 2020. As childcare facilities remained closed and schools shifted to remote learning, mothers more than fathers rearranged their daily lives to provide more supervision for children’s school-related activities and to physically care for children at home. The return to mothers doing more of this work than fathers was rationalized by parents who pointed to structural constraints – such as the motherhood earnings penalty and fatherhood premium – and cultural prescriptions about appropriate behaviors for men and women.

The premier source of daily activity data, the American Time Use Survey, is now available for the years prior to the pandemic (2019), early in the pandemic (2020), and late in the pandemic (2021). A new study¹ uses this data to show how the pandemic affected gender inequality in unpaid work among parents with children ages 12 and younger. The analysis focuses on changes from 2019 to 2021 in mothers’ and fathers’ time spent on housework and three types of childcare: 1) parental childcare (time when childcare is the primary task and only focus of attention); 2) secondary childcare (time when parents are monitoring children but not directly engaged in childcare or other activities with children); and 3) total time spent with children present (e.g., watching TV with children). The findings confirm the pandemic affected gender inequality in unpaid work and reveal that it did so unevenly across types of unpaid work.

The most striking finding is the lack of change in the gender gap in parental childcare time. There were no statistically significant changes in either mothers’ or fathers’ time providing childcare between 2019 and 2021, meaning mothers continued to do about 40 minutes more childcare per day than fathers. Time parents are actively providing care consists of both physical childcare (e.g., hands-on care and supervision) and developmental childcare (e.g., education, playing, talking). Between 2019 and 2020, mothers’ physical childcare decreased slightly, but this was counterbalanced by a modest increase in time spent on developmental childcare, and levels in 2021 were similar to 2019. This lack of change in primary childcare suggests that in 2020 parents redistributed time across specific types of childcare activities (such as away from driving children to organized activities to managing and supervising children’s remote education and play) rather than making larger investments of time in childcare.

Still, the time parents are actively providing care does not reflect the whole spectrum of parental time investments in children. Some childcare is multitasked with other activities. For example, parents fortunate to work remotely may have experienced more flexibility in integrating childcare and housework into their lives by multitasking. But research on the early days of the pandemic suggests that fathers who work remotely safeguard their work time and space (and leisure) from care of and time with children. Although the ATUS data (like most international time use data) does not collect data on multitasking, it does collect data on secondary childcare – time parents are monitoring children’s activities and whereabouts while doing something else. Mothers’ secondary childcare initially increased 47 minutes/day in 2020 but then decreased 22 minutes from 2020-2021. Fathers followed a similar pattern, leading the gender gap in secondary childcare to remain constant during the early pandemic years.

Parents also do some daily activities with children present, such as taking a walk or watching TV while children are present. Mothers’ time with children did not change between 2019 and 2021 – around 6 hours and 40 minutes each day. In contrast, fathers’ time with children increased 30 minutes in 2020 and 13 minutes more by 2021. As a result, the gender gap in time with children narrowed from 2019-2021. The slight decrease in fathers’ time with children in 2021 may result from easing restrictions on public activities and social interactions, with children returning to school and childcare centers and older children spending more time outside their homes with friends.

The ATUS data also suggests the pandemic impacted unpaid work differently depending on parents’ employment circumstances¹. Among employed mothers and fathers who worked only at home on the ATUS diary day, mothers spend about 30 minutes more per day than fathers providing physical care – but there is no significant gender gap in developmental care. This holds in 2019, 2020, and 2021 – suggesting the pandemic didn’t disrupt or exacerbate the gender gap in parental childcare. Additionally, fathers who worked at home on ATUS diary day reported more childcare time compared with those who worked outside the home (about 38 minutes more in 2021), and just about as much as non-employed fathers. College educated fathers are more likely to hold jobs that allow remote work and those fathers may have engaged in status safeguarding parenting behaviors during the pandemic.

Turning to housework, fathers’ time in housework increased about 10 minutes/day between 2019 and 2020 before a return to 2019 levels by 2021. Mothers continue to do about an hour more housework per day than fathers. Hence, the pandemic appears not to have led to greater gender equality in housework. Interestingly, though, housework did not increase during the pandemic even among mothers who worked remotely.

What do these findings mean for gender inequality in unpaid work in the future?

There are two possible ways to narrow the gender gap in housework and childcare: 1) decrease women’s time spent in unpaid labor or 2) increase men’s time spent in unpaid labor. Longitudinal data suggest childcare time increased among some parents, such as those who reduced paid work hours or left jobs altogether. About half of mothers’ increased childcare time during the initial phase of the pandemic can be attributed to mothers’ decline in paid work and leaving the labor market altogether. This is not surprising given that the United States only temporarily expanded the family safety net. Pundits and scholars alike believe the possibility of addressing the critical need for federal policies subsidizing childcare facilities and securing a robust care infrastructure is slim in the current political and social conflict. Still, 13 U.S. states and D.C. have passed legislation requiring paid family or parental leave, and 14 U.S. States and D.C. require employers to provide paid sick days. These workplace policies are likely to support mothers’ labor force participation, tamping down increases in mothers time spent providing childcare. Additionally, the absence of paid parental leave in the U.S. and U.K. negatively affected mothers’ mental health during COVID, in contrast to those in countries like Canada and Australia that offered paid leave during COVID.

College educated workers are demanding continued options to work at home and some workplaces have relented to these demands. Some pre-pandemic research suggests that men who work from home share more equally in domestic labor, particularly when their partners are employed fulltime. If greater access to remote work persists, some [privileged] fathers may be more able to achieve their growing desire to spend more time with their children. Still, pre-pandemic research shows that fathers’ paid labor time tends to be protected from routine childcare duties, potentially mitigating substantial changes. And, many workers – particularly low-income and racial/ethnic minority workers, continue to lack access to flexible work policies.

The long historical arc of work on gender inequality in unpaid work offers only one vision for greater gender equality: it requires fathers’ daily time use to become more like mothers, particularly through the investment of fathers in housework and in childcare. Intentional efforts to bring this about at both an individual and societal level are necessary to bring about more lasting shifts toward greater equality in unpaid labor.

¹Sayer, Liana C., Kelsey Drotning, and Sarah Flood. “Gender Racial, and Class Disparities in COVID-19 Impacts on Parent’s Work & Family Time.” Paper presented at the June 2022 Work and Family Research Network conference, New York, NY

About the Authors

Liana C. Sayer is Professor of Sociology and Director, Maryland Time Use Lab and Editor, Journal of Marriage and Family. She can be reached at lsayer@umd.edu. You can follow her on Mastodon sciences.social at @lsayer.

Joanna Pepin is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. You can follow her on Mastodon at https://sciences.social/@CoffeeBaseball.

The debate about what type of work arrangement is best for worker well-being and work-life balance has raged for years. Most recently, this issue was brought to the foreground by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the mass transition to remote work during the pandemic opened the door for many workers to finally have the job flexibility they craved, essential workers who did not have that option experienced worsened mental health. Nonetheless, not all benefited from remote work during the pandemic. Indeed, the Great Resignation was fueled in part by some workers, mothers especially, who struggled substantially with the intrusion of home and family into their workday, and found themselves cutting back on work hours or leaving their positions altogether.

The pandemic demonstrated that on-site work and remote work both have costs and benefits. On-site work benefits workers by helping them maintain clear boundaries between work and family, reducing the possibility of work-family conflict. The downside, however, is that the rigidity of those boundaries makes it difficult to manage multiple roles. The benefits of remote work are in many ways the opposite. Working remotely provides employees the flexibility to manage their multiple role obligations and maintain work-life balance. Yet, flexibility can also foster role conflict by weakening the boundaries between work and family.

Though work locations may each come with their own costs and benefits, that does not mean that they come in equal measure. Research nonetheless is quite mixed, leaving the answer to whether on-site or remote work is best as elusive. One potential reason for this is that workers’ preferences often are not considered when employers make decisions about work location.

In a recent study published in Society and Mental Health, we examined work-place mismatch – the degree to which preferred and actual work locations are not aligned – and the degree to which this mismatch is associated with working parents’ well-being. To do this, we used national survey data collected in 2023, and focused on approximately 2,300 employed parents. Parents were asked how frequently they worked from home, as well as how frequently they preferred to work from home. We used this information to assess the degree to which parents’ actual work location matched their preferences.

We found that most parents (60%) report experiencing some work-place mismatch. But, this varies by where parents work. Work-place mismatch is least common among fully remote workers (15% experience mismatch), more common among hybrid workers (58%), and most common among on-site workers – 87% of on-site workers report some degree of work-place mismatch. In fact, just under half of parents who worked fully in-person reported a very high degree of work-place mismatch according to our measure.

Though disconnect between parents’ actual and preferred work location is common, the most important question is: does this matter for workers? In our study, we found consistent evidence that work-place mismatch is associated with lower well-being among working parents. Specifically, parents who experience greater work-place mismatch report higher work-family conflict, higher stress, and more depressive symptoms. In fact, our findings suggest that the disconnect between actual and preferred work location matters more for parents’ well-being than work location itself. Moreover, we found that failure to account for preferences masked the impact of work location on well-being. When looking just at work location, we found no differences in well-being between remote, hybrid, and on-site workers. Yet, when we looked at both work location and work-place mismatch together, we found that on-site working parents actually experience lower work-family conflict, stress, and depressive symptoms compared to hybrid or remote working parents.

What this demonstrates is that failure to account for workers’ preferences (and subsequent mismatch between actual and preferred work location) leads to underestimation of some intrinsic benefits to on-site work, particularly because work-place mismatch is much more pervasive among those working exclusively in-person. Put another way, while on-site work may have benefits to worker well-being, workers’ overwhelming preference (and need) for workplace flexibility diminishes any benefits that on-site work may provide.

Overall, our research suggests that there is no one “best” work location. Instead, the work location that is best for workers is the one that suits their own preferences and needs. When parents work in a location that matches their preferences, which overwhelmingly involves at least some remote work, they report less work-family conflict and higher psychological well-being compared to workers who experience mismatch between their actual and preferred work location.

Organizations are increasingly investing in workplace wellness programs, acknowledging that employee well-being is linked to positive outcomes such as organizational commitment and productivity. Our findings suggest that recognizing variations in workers’ preferences about working remotely, on-site, or in a hybrid format – and designing policies that enable workers to align their preferred and actual work locations – would promote higher well-being among workers and alleviate some of the challenges experienced by workers and organizations during the Great Resignation, including promoting employee retention and commitment.

Richard J. Petts is a Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. He also serves on the board of directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. You can read more about his research at www.richardpetts.com.

Daniel L. Carlson is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. He is a sociologist and family demographer studying the gendered division of labor. He serves on the board of directors for the Council on Contemporary Families.

Wen Fan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston College. Her research focuses on the work, family, and well-being implications of alternative, new ways of working. You can read more about her research at wenfan.co.

There is a widely held belief that contraception is the responsibility of people who menstruate. In both everyday life and the research on family planning, people assigned male at birth, usually men, are rarely the focus, although (prospective) fathers can prove to be an exception. In response to this “shadowing” of men, recent research in public health has increasingly begun to center the  perspectives of men (and boys), who want to be more active in contraception.

In this blog post, I summarize some key findings of our interview study as well as an ethical reflection of the recruitment process on the internet platform Reddit.

Contraception “is [not only] a woman’s job”

We wanted to know how men “develop a critical consciousness of (their) masculinity” and how that awareness shapes their attitudes toward family planning and contraception.

The men we interviewed all live in Germany. While not all identified within the gender binary, all were assigned male at birth and comfortable being referred to as men. In the interviews we saw a pattern of questioning what it means to be a “real” man. Topics included traditional gender roles, social expectations, the possible harms of these enacted expectations, and ways to redefine them by thinking and acting differently. All names here are pseudonyms.

Negative and Positive Role Models

Rejecting male role models —like the stereotypical “primitive soccer fan”—came up often. Many men spoke about emotionally distant fathers, especially when it came to expressing feelings. They shaped their own masculinities by rejecting these toxic traits and choosing instead to care for their own and their partners’ physical, emotional, and sexual wellbeing.

Some men found more inspiring role models in pop culture. Gerrit admired Mufasa from The Lion King as a strong, loving father figure. Friedrich, 48, looked up to Leonardo DiCaprio in the ’90s, describing him as a “counter-image to masculine gender norms” because of his soft features and non-muscular build. Many participants talked about the value of therapy and counselling, which helped Michael to understand his sexuality as fluid. He playfully challenged gender norms, through crossdressing and kissing other men in public spaces. A gay male friend showed him that deep, loving connections between men don’t have to involve sex or romance. Other participants emphasized their caregiving responsibilities—for children, partners, and other family members.Evolving to Wanting to be More Active

Most participants wanted to take a more active role when it came to contraception, although meanings of  “active” differed widely. Several described how their views had changed over time. In the past, they hadn’t thought about contraception much at all, often because “it wasn’t their body.” Their stories and reflections were central to our study:Michael, for instance, shared:

“in relation to masculinity, I used to be cold and distanced like saying: ‘it [contraception] is

    a woman’s job; you do you. I do not want anything to do with this. I am here to have fun.’

    But now I am more like: ‘No, I also have responsibility, so we share responsibility.’ So, you

   just empathize with another person and recognize that their desire or need is not to become

        pregnant. So, I left behind this hard and rigid ideal of masculinity […]. [C]ontraception is

   part of living healthily and living responsibly.’”

At the time of the interviews, none of the men had had a vasectomy but the topic came up frequently. Their reasons varied: some felt too young, some wanted to be in a stable relationship with someone who didn’t want children, and others simply didn’t know where to begin.Manuel talked about his involvement in a collective of men working for reproductive justice. His political and activist engagement showed how men can also take action outside of their relationships and sexual encounters. The group explored alternative ways to prevent pregnancies, like mild testicular heating, a method that temporarily reduces sperm count. These grassroots approaches offer promising directions for future research.

Being Critically Supportive

In our study, being critically supportive meant that men had strong opinions about contraceptive methods but still supported their partners’ decisions. Many were concerned about the negative side effects of the pill. Still, as Justin said, it was his girlfriend’s body and therefore her choice.

Justin described a time when he and his girlfriend tried to get the morning after pill, but the pharmacist refused to provide it. Even though they were both upset, Justin took the lead and insisted they go to another pharmacy, knowing the refusal was illegal.

Georg talked about his long-time partner’s gender transition. Because sterilization was required at the time to legally change gender in Germany, pregnancy was no longer a concern.  He reflected:

“Yeah, that was exciting, because in my head I was never homosexual, but in the

end, in this context, I was kind of indirectly made homosexual. It does not really

matter to me, but to come to terms with this societal pressure… [was hard] So, that

was a moment where I thought to myself: ‘OK, this is a whole new challenge to my

identity.’”

What Needs to Change

Regardless of sex or gender, people need universal entry points to access to family planning and contraception services.

As the interviews showed, developing this kind of critical awareness requires emotional stability, curiosity, health literacy, time, and sacrifice (or at least compromise).” That’s why supporting men in  gaining these resources should be part of their education. Critical supportiveness —especially from men who have sex with people who can get pregnant—is essential. I hope that this blog post encourages you–no matter your gender–to become (or stay) actively involved in conversations and decisions about contraception, especially if you’re having sex that could lead to pregnancy.

Jan Marc Morawe finished the M.A. in Gender Studies while we worked on the last paper of the MANFOKUS project. Other (open access) articles of the project deal with smoking cessassion by (expectant) fathers and “Gender-transformative health interventions that involve men and boys”. If you speak German, check out our policy brief, too. You can follow Jan Marc on Bluesky at janmarcmorawe.bsky.social.

Ranita Ray is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, where she holds an endowed chair. For 15 years, her research program has centered on youth, education, and gender and racial injustice. Ray is a 2019 National Academy of Education/Spencer fellow, as well as a 2018 Racial Democracy and Criminal Justice Network fellow. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation several times, including in 2018 when her team was awarded a large grant to study urban inequalities in Las Vegas. Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Las Vegas Review Journal, Las Vegas Sun, and the Las Vegas Weekly have featured Ray’s research and original writing. She is author of The Making of a Teenage Service Class, which won four prizes and is widely adopted for classroom use. In addition, Ray’s TED talk is often used by educators. And, Slow Violence was shortlisted for the 2024 Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize. You can find her on her website or on Instagram or Bluesky: @ranitaray1

Here, I ask about her new book, Slow Violence: Confronting Dark Truths in the American Classroom

AMW: In Slow Violence, you point to the ways school personnel including teachers often bully students in the form of racial harassment, anti-fat talk, gender based harassment and other forms of indifference and cruelty. How widespread is this and why isn’t there more conversation about this?

RR: Honestly, when I first entered schools in Las Vegas, back in 2017, I had an entirely different vision for the book that eventually became about the slow violence our most marginalized children encounter behind closed classroom doors. I wanted to write about resource-deprived schools with no textbooks or running air conditioning, and their underpaid and overworked teachers.

All of the above is still true and these are stories you encounter every day. We all know about the racial and class achievement gap, about underfunded schools, and underpaid teachers. What I was astonished to find, and the untold story I want to expose, is the breadth and depth of everyday racial, gendered, anti-immigrant, anti-fat harassment 10-11-12-year old children faced inside the classroom daily. Often, this was under the pretext of discipline and order. For example, teachers harassed one 10-year-old Black boy for googling a picture of two people kissing—which in the case of white children is considered average curiosity as I discuss in the book. For years, teachers cast him as a predator and implied his family was despicable because he had googled this picture. Brown immigrant girls were asked to summon grit when their parents were deported, and a Black math pro was asked to summon grit when her baby sibling passed away. When these girls of color grieved, they were cast as worthless and harassed. On the contrary, when a teacher grieved her friend’s untimely death during the Vegas shooting, she was granted all the grace (of course, deserved in all cases).

Not only were these extremely common place inside the two schools and many classrooms I spent time inside, but they are commonplace across the nation’s schools. We often see media stories (for example, a teacher walked over the backs of Black students during a lesson on Slavery or teachers who dressed as the “Wall” or the beating of disabled children—I cover these in the book as well). Social media is also replete with these conversations. When I wrote a piece for Slate on this issue, I heard on social media from marginalized people who had similar experiences. When I lecture on the topic, often people come up to me after to discuss their own experiences or those of marginalized family members or friends.

There is a dearth of conversation on this because we are so focused on constructing teachers either as paragons of altruism or evil people invested in inculcating liberal values in our children. Both these conversations justify their meagre pay—you shouldn’t get paid if you indoctrinate children with the wrong values and you don’t need pay if you do it as altruistic higher calling. Teachers are people. They come to the classroom with their strengths and their dark sides. And children often fall prey to their everyday anger, their exhaustion, their racism. And we don’t talk about this—this slow violence tears down the spirit, political consciousness, and the love for learning in our children. I followed a group of children for three years and saw how the most enthusiastic scholars became back-of-the room sleepers by the end of the year—many had been torn down by their teachers for little things.

AMW: Your book introduces the concept of “slow violence” to describe the cumulative, often unnoticed harm inflicted on marginalized students through routine practices in schools. Could you elaborate on how this form of violence operates within daily classroom interactions and the systemic factors that perpetuate it?

RR: First, Slow Violence is not physical or sexual violence, but it is often subtle/hidden (as opposed to theatrical), and it accumulates into grave harm over time. I draw this concept from environmental scholars who use the term to indicate the destruction of our environment over time that has serious consequences for ecosystems as well as marginalized communities (for example oil spills).

Inside the classroom, school personnel including teachers, for example, often mocked children, made racist, misogynist, anti-fat, anti-trans comments or belittled immigrant parents. Children are always listening to us. Even our four-year-old is constantly picking up on things we say. So, imagine the 10-11-12-year olds who heard these directly addressed to them or sometimes as water-cooler talks; they internalized these. One teacher mocked an “Asian accent,” another called immigrants “dirty,” and still another publicly humiliated one child assumed to be on the Autism Disorder Spectrum. One teacher chided two brown boys attempting to draw a connection between Rosa Parks and Colin Kaepernick—dismissing their bourgeoning political consciousness. These things happened on the daily.

One of the systemic factors that perpetuates this is, of course, that teachers are overworked and underpaid a lot of the times BUT this should not preclude us from talking about the grave harm they cause and should not allow us to erase the experiences of our most vulnerable children. For example, some will say that police have a hard job hence let us overlook or justify the violence they perpetuate. But many of us have now acknowledged that we cannot do that!

Also, we need to acknowledge that schools are workplaces and in this workplace teachers, who are workers, have enormous amount of power over children. They have almost unbridled authority behind closed classroom doors and when these children are the most vulnerable, this power is exacerbated. Power is always vulnerable to exploitation—why have we assumed this won’t happen inside classrooms? And why have we assumed that children being mistreated by teachers inside classrooms—where they spend almost 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, most months of the year—won’t be impacted by this?

AMW: How might schools begin to undo these harmful narratives? What structural changes within teacher training and school administration do you believe are necessary to disrupt these patterns and create more equitable learning environments?

RR: First, I think it is imperative I acknowledge the strength and importance of teachers’ unions. By the way, I should mention that while teachers’ unions have historically leaned democratic, there was overwhelming support for Donald Trump and JD Vance among teachers in the 2024 election (majority of teachers under 40 wanted to vote for them). Teachers’ unions can advocate for teachers—for better pay and better working conditions.

You see, research now shows that most teachers don’t want the job. And my own research shows that most of them did the job as a placeholder. They had other dreams and ambitions, and this was a job with decent and stable pay, and benefits and retirement. Many felt stuck in a job they did not want and punched down on students and their communities. Students paid a heavy price.

Much like other existing research on sexual harassment trainings in workplaces, I also found that antiracist and other DEI trainings often caused teachers to become further hostile. For example, one white teacher became angry that “white culture” was not valued in the same way as other cultures given that she had to celebrate Native American Heritage Month in her classroom but there was no white history month. Some teachers even mobilized language they learned through trainings to cause more harm—they would say something racist and then forgive themselves by stating it was just their “implicit bias.”  

We must, then, remain vigilant in how we envision and operationalize these teacher trainings. But before all else, we must begin by hearing this other story about the classroom that is almost nom-existent in the public discourse. We must acknowledge the harm little children are enduring behind closed classroom doors before we can actually do something about it.  We must ask: how is a teaching force that overwhelming voted for Trump (which, as someone who has been inside schools for a while, did not surprise me) treating our children?

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Chris Bjork is Professor of Education and Associate Dean of the Faculty at Vassar College. His research interests include youth sports, educational reform, and comparative education. His newest book, More Than Just a Game: How the Youth Sports Industry is Changing the Way We Parent and What to Do About It, was published by Central Recovery Press. You can find out more about Chris on his website and his author’s page. He frequently shares information about the youth sports industry on Twitter: @chrisbjork6.

William Hoynes is Professor of Sociology on the Jane Baker Nord ’42 Chair in Media Studies at Vassar College. Hoynes served as Vassar’s Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer from 2019 to 2024, and previously served as Chair of the Sociology Department and Director of both the American Studies Program and the Media Studies Program. Hoynes is a cultural sociologist whose research explores contemporary media and culture in the United States, with a focus on professional journalism, the structure of the media industry, consumer culture, youth sports, and practices of democratic citizenship. His newest book, More Than Just a Game: How the Youth Sports Industry is Changing the Way We Parent and What to Do About It, was published by Central Recovery Press. You can find out more about William’s work on his website and his author’s page. You can follow him on Twitter @wihoynes.

Here, I ask them about their new book, More Than a Game, which is out now from Central Recovery Press.

AMW: Your book argues that the youth sports industry often pulls families into a system that works against their values, even when they’re trying to do what’s best for their kids. What structural or cultural forces make it so hard for parents to resist the pull of “keeping up” in this competitive landscape?

CB & WH: Over the past decade or so, the assumptions that guide parents as they make decisions about their children’s extra-curricular activities have been upended. In many locations, playing for a community-based sports team is no longer considered adequate—even for many parents who consider their child to be an “average” athlete. Recreational leagues with limited seasons are facing new challenges. The youth sports industry has evolved into a complex system with multiple layers and shifting expectations, and most parents are only vaguely aware of what’s expected of them or their children. In this environment, we learned that many parents are struggling to maintain a sense of equilibrium. The growing emphasis on competitive success, which is often tied to the goal of playing on an elite travel team and ultimately earning a college scholarship, has increased pressure to begin high-intensity training for very young athletes, often under age 10.

The youth sports industry has become big business, and its influence on family decision-making has intensified. As we observe in More Than Just a Game, parents often sign their children up for travel teams in response to a kind of community peer pressure rather than thoughtful planning. Many of the adults we interviewed did not initially intend to make sports such a central component of their children’s lives. Their commitments to youth sports escalated rapidly, often becoming a central activity dominating their child’s (and family) schedule, and their perspective shifted to a focus on nurturing their child’sburgeoning athletic “career.” 

In this context, parents must grapple with thorny questions related their children’s social, ethical, and physical development:  How much stress should they place on sports?  Should they push their children to set ambitious goals for themselves, or provide their children with the space to make those decisions for themselves? What sacrifices are worth making if they increase a young athlete’s chances of achieving excellence? 

A generation ago, most parents did not feel compelled to consider questions like these until their children were in high school. Today, in the context of the recent expansion and commercialization of youth sports, parents may feel compelled to start plotting their children’s sports careers before they finish elementary school. As we learned, the pressure to specialize, training year-round in one sport and eschewing other athletic activities, can be difficult to resist, especially for adults whose understanding of youth sports is limited.

AMW: Your research shows how youth sports participation can stretch families financially, logistically, and emotionally. In your research, what patterns emerged about how these pressures vary by class or community? And how do those patterns deepen inequality?

CB & WH: The parents we interviewed typically began with the assumption that the most talented and hardworking athletes would gain the rewards they deserve, but immersion in the youth sports world led many parents to question this understanding. That’s because it has become common for families with money and time to push their children ahead of young athletes who must rely solely on their athletic talent to compete. In many locations, playing in a local recreational league or earning a spot on a school team is no longer considered enough. Many parents of pre-teens now feel obligated to sign up their kids for activities designed to accelerate their athletic development—and attract the attention of coaches and scouts. That could involve playing for an elite travel club or signing up to train with an expensive private coach.

For some parents, spending large sums of money on their children’s extra-curricular activities is not a major concern, even when the cost is a bit of a stretch on their family budget. Many of the people we interviewed for our research believed that the benefits their kids derived from elite training justified the costs. They were happy to invest in their children’s athletic development. Of course, not all families can afford to sign their children up to play for privately-run teams or hire a private skills coach. Still, no matter how much parents would like to support their children’s athletic careers, the increasing costs associated with travel sports prevent many from even considering that option.

Today, rates of sports participation are tightly linked with family income. Elite teams allow children of any background to try out. Yet many families lack the resources or knowledge to take advantage of those opportunities. Joining a travel team is simply too expensive or places too many demands on families to be a realistic option. As we might expect, race and class are often linked when it comes to youth sports. Children who are poor, or from Black or Hispanic households, are less likely to participate in organized sports than middle class white kids. A number of factors are responsible for the disparities. The most obvious is affordability. Many parents do not have the funds to finance their children’s athletic careers, especially as the expectations, demands, and costs continue to escalate. For many families, the growth in private club-based sports and the decline in community-based programs has reduced the options available to their children. Time constraints, limited access to athletic facilities, and parental priorities can also make it difficult for lower-income children to participate in sports, which can limit the opportunity for children from marginalized backgrounds to have the full range of youth sports experiences and live up to their athletic potential.

AMW: You write about the tension between letting kids play for fun and the adult-driven intensity of competitive youth sports. What does your book suggest parents should look for—or actively push back on—if they want to support their child’s development without feeding into the “win at all costs” culture?

CB & WH: We heard from many parents that managing their children’s athletic activities was complicated and stressful. Popular media images, pervasive consumerism, stories circulating on social media all convey to parents the notion that they should do whatever they can to make sure their children are exceptional.

For adults seeking to mitigate the intensity of youth sports, a central concern is that youth sports have come to imitate professional sports in a way that narrows the experience for young players. They hope to open a window for young children to enjoy the experience of playing sports, being part of a team, and learning new skills before a culture of competition shifts the attention of players and parents alike to winning and achievement.

The world of youth sports contains a richness that is rarely recognized: emphasizing competition as well as community, celebrating both accomplishment and connection, recognizing both the joy of victory and resilience in the face of failure. We learned that a significant portion of parents see something more than a culture of competition in youth sports: a road to friendship and social connection, experiencing the joy of teamwork, physical activity that can be both healthy and fun, the opportunity to learn about one’s own body, and a powerful arena for young people to develop resilience. While an overemphasis on competition and achievement can overshadow other ways of experiencing youth sports, it is important to recognize the range of possibilities that often hover just below the surface of our shared conversations about what parents and children might find within the world of youth sports.

For this reason, we encourage parents to operate under the assumption that their child can lead very rewarding lives without letting sports dominate their daily lives. Rather than let sports dreams guide the decisions they make, parents could view athletic accomplishment as one of many possible indications of success. If their child ends up playing for a highly ranked college softball team, that will be worth celebrating, but she might find just as much personal satisfaction if she decides to choose a college based on her academic goals, and play softball at the intramural level. We interviewed many college students who played sports competitively as adolescents but decided to focus on other activities in college; none of those former athletes regretted that decision. Not a single one.

Our research suggests that the essential ingredient in this endeavor is balance. Rather than offer a formula that can be followed to ensure a young athlete success or happiness, we encourage parents to make decisions that create balance in their children’s lives. Kids who participate in a variety of activities, interact with all sorts of people, and have a chance to relax and decompress on a regular basis are more likely to thrive. The specific activities that children participate in will vary according to individual interests—and may change over time. Encouraging kids to sample different pursuits and recognizing that failure is an inevitable part of growing up will help create balance in the lives of young athletes and their families. Children who take part in a variety of activities are more likely to bounce back from defeat than those whose lives are dominated by a single interest.

The most well-adjusted athletes we observed invested time and energy in sports but also participated in other extra-curricular activities. Parents of these well-rounded young people resisted pressure to make decisions based on the assumption that their children would be recognized for their athletic accomplishment and receive offers to play at the college level. Leading balanced lives made them aware of the multitude of opportunities, both on and off the athletic field, that could bring their children satisfaction in the future.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Anna Strhan is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Sociology at the University of York (UK), where she leads the Culture, Values, and Practices Research Cluster. She also co-leads the Social Studies of Ethics, Morality and Values Network. Her research explores the culture and politics of religion, childhood, parenting, and education. She is the author of a number of books, and her work has appeared in various media outlets, including The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. You can find her on BlueSky @annastrhan.bsky.social or on her website.

Rachael Shillitoe is a sociologist and a senior social scientist in the civil service. She was previously a research fellow at the Universities of Birmingham and York (UK). Her research interests focus on the formation of beliefs and values across generations. She is the author of Negotiating Religion and Non-Religion in Childhood with Palgrave Macmillan.

Here, I talk to them about their new book, Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England.

AMW: Your research highlights how non-religious children still engage with questions of meaning and morality. What were some of the most striking ways these children made sense of such big ideas outside of religious frameworks?

AS & RS: We were working with children aged 7 – 10 years old, and one of the most striking things was how reflective they were in talking about big questions! They were, in fact, highly articulate and thoughtful in discussing what made life meaningful to them, as well as about their views about the origins of the universe, their thoughts on the existence of God and other supernatural phenomena, life after death, ideas of morality, and how their beliefs related to the views of their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and peers.

Several ways that the children were making existential meaning in their lives were especially striking. Firstly, when we asked the children about what was important and mattered in their lives, they all spoke about relationships: family, friends, and pets. And when they spoke about particular objects – for instance, special toys – they talked about how these were special to them because they had been given by a particular family member or were something that their friendship group had a shared love for, rather than being about consumerism. Secondly, many spoke about how they were sceptical about belief in God because they felt that the ideas of God they had encountered were at odds with their own scientific worldview – and they often elaborated on how they believed in the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution. However, despite their acceptance of science, many of them had fun, playful beliefs in magical figures like unicorns, dragons, or ghosts, and again, linked these to their friendships – commenting that it was fun to talk about these things with their friends. Thirdly, many also spoke about how animals and the natural world were important to them – indeed, many mentioned that they admired figures like David Attenborough or Steve Irwin who had inspired their love of nature.

Across all these ideas, it was striking that the children had a sense of meaning and purpose as based in this world, rather than some heavenly, transcendent realm. The decline of religion has often been portrayed as leading to a loss of meaning and enchantment. But our book shows that this non-religious world wasn’t disenchanted or meaningless for these children – it was rather, a site of fullness and wonder. Indeed, several said that they didn’t have any need for religion, because the needs that religion might fulfil were for them being met in other ways, for instance, through their sense of belonging with friends and family.

In terms of morality, a really prominent issue for the children was equality. They really cared about fairness, and many spoke about how important it was to treat others equally and to respect differences in relation to religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. In fact, while their parents were often quite critical of religion, very few children expressed moral critiques of religion and instead emphasized the importance of respecting religious diversity. They also often mentioned the importance of trying to understand others’ viewpoints and experiences, and the importance of not judging. For instance, when discussing whether a particular action was wrong, they felt it was important to try and understand the reasons why the person had acted in that way.

AMW: The book challenges the assumption that secular upbringings are neutral or empty of tradition. What patterns did you observe in how non-religious families construct and pass down values or rituals?

AS & RS: A core value that all the parents emphasized was autonomy and the importance of supporting their children’s own worldview choice. Although a few expressed a sense of discomfort about the idea that their children might, say, become a conservative evangelical, by and large, they generally spoke much more about how they wanted their children to have freedom and self-confidence to make their own choices in life.

In terms of patterns across generations, it was striking that some parents spoke about how they’d experienced religion as stifling or undermining freedom in their own upbringings, and they saw their own desire to ensure their children’s sense of freedom and authenticity as a reaction against that. In the book, we look at how the parents’ emphasis on enabling the children’s freedom in relation to religion is part of a broader cultural change. This shift is something the cultural theorist Raymond Williams called ‘the long democratic revolution’, in which ideas of choice and voice have been extended to previously more marginalized groups of people. And we argue that this includes children. This is part of a long-term process in which ideas of individual freedom and rights have been ‘made official’ in things like international treaties, and professional ethics codes, and these have also infused parenting and educational cultures with ideas of respectful parenting and child-centred education. All of this means that the children are growing up with a strong sense of their own rights and freedoms, as well as those of others.

The question of rituals is an interesting one. Because historically, rituals have often been most clearly linked to religious institutions, there’s quite a strong narrative in social theory about the decline of rituals. But actually, all the families still celebrated things like Christmas, Easter, Eid, or Hanukkah – depending on their religious heritage. However, they mostly did not see the meaningsof these festivals as linked to religion, even if for some of the families, they might go to church, for instance, at Christmas. Instead, they spoke about these rituals as about celebrating or honouring family, caring for others, or creating a sense of childhood magic.

Some parents described Christmas and Easter as meaningful in relation to pre-Christian seasonal rituals, for instance, pagan midwinter festivals. Some families also created new rituals to mark important life events – for instance, one family held placenta-burying rituals in their allotment and garden, with a plum tree and a rose bush planted to mark their daughters’ births. Birthdays and Halloween were, of course, also important for the families too.

Besides these annual, seasonal or lifecycle rituals, more regular ritual practices varied quite a bit between families. A few engaged with things like meditation and mindfulness together, while others spoke about the importance of getting out into nature together regularly at the weekend – for instance, a walk by the seaside. Some also spoke about the importance of watching nature documentaries on TV together. Although not exactly a ritual, the weekly routine of watching a programme like Blue Planet or Planet Earth together on a Sunday – evoking a sense of awe and wonder in the natural world – was something that several parents spoke about as an important way they were encouraging their children to care about the planet.

But as well as rituals, the parents were shaping the children’s values in more implicit ways – through what they signalled to children were things of interest and importance, the things that are worth their attention. So, what they talked about with their children and how they talked about it – and what they didn’t talk about – influenced what the children were coming to value for themselves. And here, in relation to religion, the fact that the parents generally didn’t talk much about religion with their children meant that the children were picking up the idea that religion wasn’t something that was especially important to them.

AMW: In documenting the everyday lives of non-religious children, what did your findings reveal about how schools shape—or sometimes clash with—their developing worldviews?

AS & RS: Many children we spoke to were growing up in homes where there was relatively little engagement with religion. For these children, it was therefore actually in schools that they first really encountered forms of religion – for instance, through classmates who were religious or through learning about religion – and it was through these encounters that they began to reflect on their own stances in relation to religion, and to think of themselves as non-religious. But schools and friendships both also played an important role in shaping the children’s sense of what mattered to them and what they felt was significant or interesting. So, the fact that the schools prioritized teaching about maths and science and tried to make these lessons fun (with games-based learning, for instance) meant that many children spoke about liking science or maths, and seeing these as things that mattered in life. One child, for instance, said ‘almost everything involves maths’, while others said they wanted to be scientists when they grew up.

But as well these ways of thinking about knowledge, the schools were – like the parents – strongly reinforcing ideas of individuals’ rights and freedoms, and principles of equality. Indeed, the value of ‘respect’ was a core value at each of the schools, and the children took it for granted that this was just a basic principle of how you should treat others – even if they didn’t always do so in practice.

We didn’t find very strong clashes between the children and the schools, although many of them did find some aspects of school boring (including, often, religious education lessons). But the children were sometimes critical of classmates who expressed beliefs that were at odds with their own more pluralist stances – for instance, one child criticized a conservative Christian classmate who had said that another child’s Muslim beliefs were wrong.

In general, we found that the schools and the parents were encouraging the same kind of broadly liberal values. What’s interesting here is that these values are often seen as taken-for-granted and something you just figure out for yourself, autonomously. But our book shows how, actually, they are being encouraged by wider institutions – such as schools – and other cultural resources and traditions, linking with recent work by Galen Watts about how a liberal imaginary is often seen as intuitive, but in reality it is shaped by cultural structures and institutions. In our book, we call this a broadly ‘humanist’ culture – which emphasizes the agency, achievements and significance of humans – even though most of the parents and children wouldn’t have necessarily called themselves humanist.

Overall, we suggest that rather than just thinking of what is happening here as the decline of institutional Christianity, it’s important to pay attention to the question of what these children are becoming and what they are learning to value, and how this is being fostered through particular traditions, institutions, and everyday practices.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

When same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the United States in 2015, it was heralded as a monumental victory in the long struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. For many, this legal shift symbolized full citizenship—access not only to tax benefits and hospital visitation rights, but also to social legitimacy and recognition. However, nearly a decade later, we’re still left with important questions: Do queer people want to get married? And perhaps more importantly—why, or why not?

Despite growing acceptance and legal recognition, scholarly work about marriage has often overlooked the voices of LGBTQ+ young adults, many of them who also self-identify as queer. Much of the research predates 2015. More recent work has primarily focused on legal debates surrounding same-sex marriage, demographic trends, or public sentiment toward the legalization of same-sex marriage. Less attention has been given to the personal narratives and desires of queer individuals—especially queer women.

In a recent study, I interviewed 36 college-educated women of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds who also self-identified as queer. I asked about their desires—or lack thereof—for marriage in a time when it is legally possible, yet still politically and socially complicated. I find that most women in this sample want to marry someday, but a relevant portion are ambivalent or reject marriage. I argue that the reasons they provide for their attitudes toward marriage demonstrate that sexual minorities are not fully accepted in American society, even though they can now be included in one of the most exclusive institutions in the US.

First, most of the queer women in this sample express a desire to marry someday. Additionally, queer women of color are more likely to desire marriage than their white counterparts. Interestingly, queer women of color are more likely to desire marriage than their white counterparts—representing the most notable racial and ethnic difference in the study. Among queer women who desired marriage, the meaning of marriage often extends beyond personal fulfillment. The women recognized that marriage made them eligible for the over 1000 rights, rewards, and privileges that are exclusive to married individuals. More importantly, however, they also see it as an opportunity to assert their equality and claim space within a society that has historically marginalized their relationships. Annabelle, a 24-year-old white woman, explained that she wants to get married because her marriage would symbolize the triumph of the legalization of same-sex marriage. “I think that I would want to be legally married as opposed to just in a committed relationship, because it was such a triumph when gay marriage was passed into law. I want to celebrate that by being married.

Women who want to be married also see marriage not only as an opportunity to resist traditional, heteronormative norms about marriage, but also to queer marriage itself. For them, the desire to queer marriage is intimately connected to the desire to be married. Stella, a 27-year-old Middle Eastern woman, stated, “I think that while marriage is a legal arrangement that is traditionally understood to imply exclusivity, couples can decide for themselves, under mutual terms, what that exclusivity extends to. Being part of the queer community has definitely normalized this concept for me. I’ve had far more friends in queer relationships opt for an open long-term partnership…Seeing that polyamory can be implemented successfully, peacefully, and happily in a variety of forms has definitely empowered me to feel more comfortable breaking from the more traditional, monogamous model.” Additionally, as Stella and other women mention, being members of a community where married queer couples are practicing alternative forms of romantic partnership gives them the confidence and support to challenge heteronormativity and homonormativity in their future marital relationships. It also makes marriage even more appealing to them. While debates persist about whether the institution of marriage inherently conflicts with the goals of queerness, the desires these women express—for marriage as both a declaration of humanity and a site of resistance—demonstrate that queering marriage can be a way to resist homophobic structures without compromising deeply held personal values.

A significant, but smaller, portion of the sample expressed ambivalence about or resistance to marriage. These women cite serious reservations about participating in an institution that has historically perpetuated inequality, particularly against women and queer people. They also question the state’s outsized role in a deeply personal decision and highlight the financial burdens associated with modern weddings. At the same time, they overwhelmingly acknowledge that marriage confers class privilege, which could maintain or elevate their current social standing. Hope, a 30-year-old white woman, reflects on the class advantages of marriage even though she is unsure about being married in the future. “There is the one situation where I’m okay with that [being called a wife] actually…if it’s gonna gain you capital. Let’s say I do get married to an attorney or something. They’re at posh networking dinners. This is kind of your class power, for someone to say, ‘I have a wife. This my wife.’ There is a kind of power in that.” Hope’s insight is particularly striking because she points out that the class power marriage can confer is often rooted in the inferior status traditionally associated with the “wife” role. Her comment encapsulates the ambivalence that many queer women feel: desiring the social capital of marriage while being critical of its embedded inequalities.

Some women in the sample also expressed concerns about the legal precarity of same-sex marriage. Given the 2024 presidential election of Donald Trump and the rightward turn of the United States Supreme Court, they fear that same-sex marriage may not remain legal in the future. Furthermore, their ambivalence to marriage allows them to resist gender inequality and heteronormativity in ways that are more in line with queerness. Kamilah, a 27-year-old white woman explained, “I know I would like a long-term relationship; and marriage offers security and benefits that cohabitation does not…the current political landscape— if I ended up in a queer relationship, would marriage even be an option?” It is difficult to desire an institution whose legality for queer people feels uncertain. For some, this precarity fuels skepticism. For others, it becomes another reason to resist gender inequality and heteronormativity through non-marital forms of commitment more aligned with queer values.

In conclusion, whether desiring marriage, feeling ambivalent about it, or rejecting it altogether, the queer women in this study articulate complex reasons for their perspectives. Their reflections suggest that the legalization of same-sex marriage has not erased the structural inequalities that LGBTQ+ people face. They also demonstrate that while the granting of civil rights to marginalized groups is essential, it is not sufficient. More must be done to dismantle the systems and institutions that disproportionately privilege married and heterosexual individuals.

Sarah Adeyinka-Skold is an assistant professor in the Sociology department at Loyola Marymount University. She can be reached at sarah.adeyinka-skold@lmu.edu.

Anna Kirkland has been studying law, health, and discrimination for twenty-five years. She is a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of multiple books and articles, many available for download on her website. Here, I ask her about her new book, Health Care Civil Rights: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients, which is out now from University of California Press and available free and open access. You can follow her on Bluesky @annakirkland.bsky.social

AMW: You argue that civil rights law in health care is “set up to fail.” Can you unpack what structural features of the U.S. health care system most undermine the effectiveness of civil rights protections, especially for trans patients?

AK: One way to think about this problem is through both push and pull – that is, what other operations and incentives in U.S. healthcare pull towards something else and what barriers and outright hostilities push rights away? The pulling incentives in healthcare that I focus on are patient safety and patient experience, and the ways laws incentivize those priorities through funding and accreditation. Now, it’s good to care about those things, but that’s not the same as thinking through how healthcare systems exclude, ignore, devalue, and harass trans patients in ways that go far beyond a patient experience or even a quality-of-care problem. But it also means that hospital administrators, for example, are doing a lot of things that seem like they might help but actually do not (issuing fake apologies but not fixing anything). And then they don’t see what they’re missing because they’re doing what is required. The push away from rights protections comes from many places. Catholic healthcare systems are allowed to refuse whole categories of care while taking public dollars. A right wing social and legal movement has installed very conservative judges throughout our courts and set up cases to block extensions of rights to trans people. The very structure of our government (every state gets 2 Senators regardless of population, for example) means that our courts have been able to become much more conservative than the median voter, for example, and we’re stuck with it. In addition, our healthcare system is a massive public-private partnership with insurance carriers and businesses and our federal civil rights bureaucracy has always been underfunded deliberately. So there aren’t many investigations and insurers are allowed to have their own rules about what they do and don’t cover. When there is regulation of these things, enforcement options are either weak or non-existent.

AMW: One of the most striking arguments in your book is that insurance companies—not courts or doctors—often end up deciding which civil rights matter. How did we get here, and what does that reveal about the political economy of health care?

AK: Most working age adults have employer-sponsored health insurance through their jobs. Trans people are more likely to be on public programs like Medicaid, but even so, most trans people have employer-based insurance, too. We got here for lots of reasons, but the main ones are that employer-sponsored health plans served a lot of interests historically, like presenting a group of people who were an organized set but not for any reasons related to their health but rather because of their jobs. Giving benefits instead of wages has also been a nice thing for employers to offer, especially when costs were lower. Another big reason is that doctors have opposed any kind of national health insurance alternative that would take away some of their independence. Once the employer-based system is in place and national health insurance efforts failed (and I mean back in the Truman administration), it’s very hard to change. Health care as an employee benefit managed by insurance carriers means that the care you get from your doctor is mediated by what your insurer will pay for. Insurers use sophisticated business practices combined with medical knowledge to say what’s medically necessary and to manage our usage of our health insurance. Laws regulate this, but in a federalist system that is fragmented. State insurance laws have some say, but national laws intervene over them and sometimes make it hard for states to protect rights or innovate. So you have all these layers of control: the corporate insurance carrier, your employer, state laws, and federal laws. These entities are very sophisticated, but the patient and the doctor often know very little about insurance even though people pay $9,000 as an individual or $25,000 for a family per year for it. Consider the alternative: we could have a national health plan and it could say what care is required for health equity. We would have to organize politically to say what that should be, and we should have a conception of rights, constitutional and statutory, that protect people even when their care is costly or politically unpopular. We don’t have any of that in place right now, and where we sort of have it, it is fragmented, privately determined, or undercut.

AMW: Many readers may assume that antidiscrimination law is a solid safeguard for vulnerable patients. What do you most want the public—and policymakers—to understand about the limits of current civil rights frameworks in medical settings?

AK: The main limitation is that there is no real enforcement mechanism for health care civil rights. The setting in which you may encounter discrimination has been subject to wildly shifting rules between administrations, and they may not be very well informed at all about your needs or their obligations. There is a structure in place to respond to your complaints, and if you feel comfortable, you should use it because they don’t want you to give them poor survey ratings. It may be a useless process, but you might find someone who cares who can help you. If you work for an employer that self-insures for your health benefits, you should consider lobbying them to improve coverage for things you need. Employers have been somewhat responsive to LGBT employees, employees with infertility, and others who want expanded benefits. They can change the benefits because they design them. Engage at multiple policy levels, from your own workplace to state civil rights boards to professional groups to national advocacy. Often when one area is hostile, others are more hospitable.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Corey Moss-Pech is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. His research focuses on the relationship between higher education and labor markets to better understand stratification and social mobility outcomes. His scholarship places particular emphasis on gender inequality and its intersection with race and class. Corey has published in Sociology of Education, Social Forces, Qualitative Sociology, the Washington Post and other outlets. His first book, Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-level Jobs, is out now from University of Chicago Press. You can find him on X @CoreyPech, Bluesky cmpech.bsky.social or learn more on his website https://coreymosspech.com/
Here, I interview him about his book.

AMW: Your book highlights how liberal arts majors often end up using their degree skills more directly than their peers in so-called “practical” majors, yet they receive less institutional support and lower pay and receive cultural messages that devalue their degrees. What does this suggest about how we define success and value in higher education vis-a-vis the job market? And how does this reproduce inequality across fields of study?

CMP: Understandably, there’s a lot of discourse—both in public commentary and among higher education practitioners—about the return on investment (ROI) of a college degree. When we think about the value of a degree, we often focus on whether it pays off financially. This makes sense. College has become significantly more expensive, public funding for higher education has declined, many students take on substantial debt to attend college, and labor markets have become more uncertain and unstable. So, it’s reasonable for people to wonder whether their degree will ultimately pay off.

As a result of these concerns, many colleges have placed greater emphasis on so-called “practical arts” majors—fields of study directly tied to specific occupations. For example, engineering is both a college major and a job title. From a narrow ROI perspective, these practical majors do tend to yield higher short-term earnings than liberal arts majors. But this framing undervalues other important aspects of people’s work experiences—such as the opportunity to use their skills and find meaning in their jobs.

Popular narratives often assume that high-paying jobs are also the most skilled. Think of engineers designing robots, writing code, and developing algorithms—work that’s seen as both in-demand and skill-intensive. But that assumption doesn’t always hold true. In my research, as discussed in my book, I found that liberal arts graduates are actually more likely to report using their skills in their entry-level jobs. So, if we think about the value of a degree in terms of doing interesting, skill-intensive work, not just short-term earnings, we see real advantages in liberal arts education.

In fact, liberal arts graduates tend to catch up in earnings over time. They’re not handicapping themselves in the long term. This matters especially when we consider who is choosing which majors. Students aren’t randomly assigned to fields of study. Many college majors are highly gendered, and liberal arts disciplines—which are often devalued in the labor market—are disproportionately chosen by women, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and people of color.

This creates a double devaluation: the majors themselves are seen as less economically valuable, and so are the students who pursue them. As a society, we need to recognize that liberal arts degrees provide critical skills that are in demand—even if they’re not immediately rewarded with high salaries. If we want to promote equity among college graduates, we must acknowledge that all degree fields impart a mix of practical and general skills. It’s not just students in practical majors who go on to use those skills in the labor market—liberal arts graduates do too, and commentators often miss this essential truth about the college-to-work transition.

AMW: Your book challenges the assumption that a college degree guarantees meaningful or intellectually engaging work. How does this mismatch between degree field, employment conditions, and job content affect how young adults think about work, identity, and purpose after graduation?

CMP: That’s a great question—and an interesting one—because you’re right: there’s a real disconnect between people’s employment conditions and the actual content of their jobs. What I found in my research is that many graduates from practical majors, particularly in business and engineering, often land high-paying jobs that are overwhelmingly clerical in nature. These positions frequently involve routine tasks like data entry or sending emails, and many of the people I interviewed were unhappy in those roles.

One example I write about in my book is a student named Courtney, who graduated with a business degree and started working for a greeting card company. On paper, it looked like a solid job. But in reality, 90% of her day was spent emailing salespeople in the field to check if they had any problems. The role required very few of her actual skills—and not much of her time, either. In the introduction of the book, I talk about how, on a good day, Courtney had maybe two hours of work. She’d go on long lunches, come back to no emails, and her bosses wouldn’t even notice she was gone. She was extremely dissatisfied with the lack of challenge and meaning in her job.

That said, liberal arts graduates didn’t always have it easy either. Many found roles where they could use their skills, but those jobs were often low-paid, unstable, or short-term. Another example from my book is Jennifer, who moved to New York City to work for a social media firm. She enjoyed the creative writing aspect of the job and found the media work fulfilling. But the pay was low, and there was no room for advancement.

So yes, it’s a real struggle for graduates to find work that is both meaningful and well-compensated. Some do manage to get both—and I wish I had the secret formula for how that happens—but I don’t. At the end of the day, students face real choices. They can pursue high-paying, stable jobs that often end up being clerical and corporate in nature. Or they can look for work that feels meaningful and makes use of their skills, even if it pays less and offers fewer opportunities for advancement.

Ultimately, most people want to feel like they’re using their skills. And I think employers could do a much better job at actually utilizing the full range of talents their employees bring to the table. For young people, it’s important to understand this trade-off. If you go for a more practical, so-called “safe” major, you might end up in a job that’s financially stable but not very intellectually engaging. If you follow a liberal arts path, you might find the work more fulfilling but less financially secure.

Everyone’s definition of purpose is different, and people need to choose what’s right for them. One of my favorite examples is a graduate I call Vance in the book. He worked at an African American community center, earning just $23,000 a year—the lowest salary among full-time workers in my study. But he loved what he did. He believed in the center’s mission and found the work genuinely interesting. Still, like many others in similar situations—including a number of English majors—he eventually left the role to pursue something with more stability.

So yes, it’s a tough balance. But I hope my book gives students and graduates a clearer, more informed perspective as they navigate these decisions. It’s not just about choosing a major—it’s about figuring out what you want out of your work and career.

AMW: Given your findings, how should parents, educators, and policymakers rethink the advice they give students choosing college majors?

CMP: I think it’s important to start with the scope conditions of my book. My research focused on a large Midwestern public research university—one that isn’t particularly selective or what people might consider “elite.” This context matters. If you’re at a highly elite institution, like Princeton, where they only offer liberal arts majors, then major choice might not have much of an impact on long-term outcomes. On the other end of the spectrum, if you attend a low-income serving, open-access institution, you might also see less variation in outcomes by major. But for this broad middle—large research universities that aim to serve multiple constituencies and offer a wide range of programs—the trade-offs are more pronounced.

For students at these kinds of institutions, I would say: major in something you find interesting but go in with your eyes open. One of the key things my book helps clarify is the trade-off many students face—between high-paying but often clerical work, and lower-paid but more meaningful or interesting work. Understanding that trade-off can help students make more informed choices.

It’s also important to note that the gaps between majors are the biggest early in graduates’ careers. Over time, liberal arts students tend to make up ground. What my book really shows, though, is that liberal arts graduates often start using their major-specific skills right away in the workforce, something that’s frequently overlooked.

There’s often a tendency—even among liberal arts advocates—to talk about college as either preparation for the labor market or as a place for personal and intellectual growth, as though those two goals are mutually exclusive. My book challenges that idea. It actually defends the liberal arts using the very criteria that are usually used to justify practical majors: workforce readiness. Liberal arts graduates do have market-relevant skills immediately after graduation. And that’s something parents, educators, and policymakers should recognize.

So, while practical majors do offer certain advantages, it’s not always because of the specific skills they teach. A lot of their benefits come from things like institutional support, connections with employers, and broader cultural ideas about what types of knowledge are seen as “useful.” As I discussed earlier, these forces shape how we value different fields of study.

In the end, at these large, comprehensive universities that offer a wide range of majors, students should feel empowered to study what interests them. And we, as a society, should invest more in the liberal arts and be less dismissive of their application to the workforce.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, her Hidden Desires column, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd