Since the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) continued to spread worldwide without significant slowing until January 2023. Following the World Health Organization’s declaration of the pandemic, governments around the world implemented measures to mitigate the risks associated with COVID-19. Measures included the closure of schools, cinemas, and theaters, along with a temporary lockdown. These restrictions led to increased time spent at home for children, resulting in changes to family dynamics and children’s behavior. Studies examining children of various ages, from infancy to adolescence, have reported effects such as disrupted sleep patterns, increased screen time, and heightened dependence on parents, along with behavioral changes like inattention and irritability. Especially in urban areas where access to outdoor spaces is limited, parents bore the primary responsibility of supporting their children through these challenges during quarantine.

Given that mothers often serve as primary caregivers, the pandemic may have exacerbated their burdens. Some argue that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women, potentially setting back progress toward gender equality. As parents spent more time at home during lockdowns, some also had to balance remote work with increased domestic responsibilities. A study of Canadian parents found that factors like having more time available and transitioning to remote work may have led to greater involvement of fathers in household and childcare tasks, especially as they became more aware of caregiving needs they previously overlooked. Comparing perceptions of household labor before and during the pandemic, researchers noted a slight move toward a more equal distribution of tasks during the earlier stages of the pandemic. However, research from cultures with more collectivistic values suggests that the gender gap in household labor either persisted or widened during COVID-19. Despite initial shifts seen in some places, the overall trend in these cultures was toward traditional gender roles remaining dominant, with women shouldering a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities.

While factors like work conditions influence fathers’ engagement in childcare, research emphasizes the significant influence of mothers as gatekeepers in father-child relationships. Maternal gatekeeping involves mothers’ preferences and efforts to control fathers’ involvement in household and childcare activities. Mothers may either encourage (gate opening) or discourage (gate closing) fathers’ participation through their attitudes and behaviors. Maternal encouragement of paternal involvement is vital for fostering father-child bonds, while maternal behaviors that restrict father involvement can create barriers. Despite the growing emphasis on the significance of father involvement for children’s healthy development, domestic tasks, including childcare, are still primarily seen as women’s responsibility, ingrained in traditional gender roles.

Our study with 91 Turkish couples with at least one child between 0 and 5 years old showed that mothers spent more time on housework and childcare activities compared to fathers during the second wave of COVID-19, regardless of whether they worked from home or not. While some research suggests that women spend more time on domestic tasks when working from home, our findings suggest that other factors, beyond work contexts, drive the gender disparity in household responsibilities.

In collectivistic cultures like Turkey, certain social roles are deeply ingrained. These roles lead to anxiety about meeting family expectations, even when circumstances allow for redefining parental roles. Despite women’s increasing participation in full-time employment, mothers still prioritize childcare and housework, often to protect their investment in their children and maintain their position in marriage. In other words, women sometimes compensate for being the primary breadwinner by taking on more domestic tasks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic’s second wave in Turkey, both mothers and fathers spent more time on childcare when both parents worked from home. While mothers spent less time in childcare activities when only fathers worked from home, fathers maintained or increased their work hours. Also, fathers perceived higher levels of maternal gatekeeping than mothers, consistent with previous research in Turkey. This suggests that women’s responsibilities in household and childcare tasks remain consistent, regardless of their employment status. These perceptions were less affected by the fathers’ work context.

Encouraging greater father involvement in childcare and housework is crucial for children’s development and promoting gender equality. Understanding the barriers to father involvement, including maternal attitudes and behaviors, is essential for informing interventions and social policies aimed at promoting more egalitarian family dynamics.

F. Kubra Aytac is a PhD candidate in Psychology at The Ohio State University. Her primary research interests are adult attachment, coparenting, couple relationships, and mental health.

The study discussed in this blog is published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies. I would like to recognize my advisor and co-author, Dr. Sarah J. Schoppe-Sullivan.

There are two distinct variations of The Talk. There is The Talk about sex and The Talk about racism. Regardless of the variation, Black families are bound to have both discussions with their children. The Talk about sex is the most known of the two discussions as it applies to all racial and ethnic groups, aiming to educate youth about sexual development and provide precautionary lessons to avoid sexually transmitted infections and prevent pregnancy. Parents generally have this discussion with their children at the onset of puberty. In contrast, The Talk about racism is a social and cultural phenomenon that has existed within Black families dating back to the days of chattel slavery. Similar to The Talk about sex, Black families typically have The Talk about race and racism with their children at the early onset of adolescence but may have this discussion with their children sooner due to the adultification and criminalization of Black youth. The Talk is a racial socialization practice that Black parents use to shield their children from the threats and dangers of racism.

The Talk is directly associated with the racial etiquette that was enforced on Black Americans during the days of Jim Crow. During those times, Black families would instruct their children to adhere to Jim Crow laws and social norms, such as stepping off the sidewalk when White men and women were passing and drinking water and using the restroom before leaving home to reduce temptations to use White-only water fountains and restrooms while away from home. Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, gave him The Talk prior to his trip to Money, Mississippi by warning him to follow the racial etiquette of the South to ensure his safe return to Chicago. Tragically, Till would not return alive. The prevalence of racism and incidents of racialized violence such as the murders of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ahmaud Arbery, Jordan Davis and countless others has maintained the relevance of The Talk.

As the world grappled with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it also witnessed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin, an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The video footage of Floyd’s murder went viral, sparking widespread discourse surrounding race and racism, leading to massive protest and what many perceived to be a racial awakening. One of the many discussions focused on The Talk and how Black parents discussed racism and safety. Despite The Talk being a practice that Black parents have used dating back to the days of American chattel slavery and it becoming a discussion that has filtered its way into the homes of the general public, there still remains few scholarship that explicitly explore The Talk.

            As a family and fatherhood scholar with a particular interest in Black fatherhood, I aimed to explore the perspectives and lessons that Black fathers instilled in their children when having The Talk. I chose to use a modified version of photovoice that allowed my participants to use their cell phones and photos found on the internet. What I found was that The Talk was a practice that was a practice that involved immediate family members, mentors, and other community members.

The fathers reported The Talk being an emotional discussion for both them and their children, and often initiated after an incident of experienced racism. Interestingly, all the fathers in the study shared experiencing some form of racism in elementary school, mirroring the experiences of their own children. One of the participants shared the following about having The Talk with his sons:

“There’s a range of emotions for me, you know, it’s always an emotional conversation because you start to question your skills as a father, because now I have to have this conversation and I’ve sworn my life to protect you.”

It was also found that cell phone use and social media influenced exposure to racism and how soon the fathers had The Talk with their children. One of the fathers discussed his children seeing and hearing about protest and the murder of George Floyd by way of social media and the news. He disclosed the following about his experience:

“I’ve always been a little apprehensive about these topics. Because there’s a part of me… that just don’t want to take the innocence away from the kids. Like, you want them to still be kids… [My eldest daughter] is so innocent and emotional. She would literally go out the door and walk with the weight of the world on her shoulder because she’s so caring of other people no matter the color of your skin.”

The fathers in the study expressed including lectures about driving while Black (DWB), equality, use of the N word, navigating racism, police encounters, code switching, activism, history, and what it means to be Black. However, The Talk that these fathers provided varied based on the gender of their children. The lessons that the fathers taught their sons were centered around safety and protection, while the lessons for their daughters focused on exceptionalism and beauty, such as hair and complexion.

There were a few participants that expressed gratitude at the end of the study. One of the participants shared:

“I appreciate all the comments. Man, I’m sitting here full. I feel like I’ve gone to church. I want to thank you for this. This has really been inspirational. It’s been insightful, and it has been powerful. And I want to thank you thank all of you for allowing me to be a part of this today.”

The exploration of The Talk and the involvement of Black fathers in such practice is important to further explore, as both areas are limited in existing research. Additional research should examine how men and women of other racial and ethnic groups have discussion surrounding race and racism with their children. Parents of all genders, racial, and ethnic groups can find resources on how to discuss race with their children by visiting the American Psychological Association’s website.

Conial Caldwell, Jr. is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He can be reached at ccald@umbc.edu. You can also follow him on Instagram at @conial_c and LinkedIn @Conial Caldwell, Jr.

Reprinted with permission from Rotman School of Management

That gender discrimination is wrong is beyond argument. But identifying which incidents are cases of it is not always so clear cut.

That’s why researchers are recommending that organizations develop processes that encourage workers to share their concerns when they suspect but aren’t sure that they have experienced discriminatory treatment based on their gender. While employees may want to keep suspicions to themselves for fear of reprisal if they’re mistaken, the consequences of doing so carry risks to workplace culture and performance, the researchers say.

“Not every ambiguous incident is discriminatory — some are simply misunderstandings,” says researcher Laura Doering, an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “In order to adjudicate between discrimination and misunderstandings, we suggest that organizations look for patterns. Are people repeatedly sharing concerns about the same person or situation? If so, it’s worth investigating as possible cases of discrimination.”

More than 2000 women working in professional roles participated in the research through personal interviews, a survey, and a study where respondents were asked what they would do when faced with scenarios involving different levels of certainty. Prof. Doering and two co-researchers found that women were likelier to speak up when they experienced what felt like overt discrimination, such as a supervisor assigning male workers a more challenging project while giving their female peer a less valued administrative task.

But when women weren’t so sure — for example, when a supervisor might have overlooked a woman’s contribution because a phone rang while she spoke and he couldn’t hear her idea — the researchers found that they “turned inward,” doubling down on their own work habits and keeping the incident to themselves. “They plan to change things about themselves like speaking louder, working harder, and calling more attention to their efforts at work,” says Prof. Doering. Ambiguous incidents happened more frequently than overt ones, the researchers found, becoming a ruminating distraction for the women and even interfering with their confidence to advance through their organization.

Organizations can reduce uncertainty, the researchers suggest, by making internal processes more transparent such as widely advertising job opportunities and spelling out their criteria, and clearly explaining the process and rationale for particular hiring and promotion decisions.

Cultivating an environment where employees feel comfortable to share their concerns informally, such as through an equity and diversity officer or ombudsman’s office, and where colleagues and leaders can serve as supportive allies if they witness potential gender discrimination can also help, says Prof. Doering. Employees unsure whether they’ve experienced gender discrimination might also seek out a trusted colleague as a sounding board if they don’t have other places to go.

When women stay silent about ambiguous incidents, it limits not only their careers but the potential for change that benefits everyone. “If organizations don’t know about experiences that are discriminatory – and, if these things are happening to multiple women suffering in isolation – then there’s no capacity for leaders to take action to address these problems,” says Prof. Doering.

The research was co-authored by András Tilcsik, the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society and a professor of strategic management at the Rotman School, and Jan Doering, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.

The study appears in Sociological Science.

Bringing together high-impact faculty research and thought leadership on one searchable platform, the Rotman Insights Hub offers articles, podcasts, opinions, books and videos representing the latest in management thinking and providing insights into the key issues facing business and society. Visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca/insightshub.

The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca  

Laura Doering, is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and is cross-appointed in the Department of Sociology. As an economic sociologist, she examines how interactions and social psychological processes shape outcomes for households, organizations, and markets. You can follow her on Twitter @Laura_B_Doerin

Jan Doering is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. His research is situated in two, sometimes overlapping areas: 1) social control and conflict in urban neighborhoods and 2) individual experiences and responses in relation to discrimination. You can follow him on Twitter @jandoering

András Tilcsik holds the Canada Research Chair in Strategy, Organizations, and Society and is a Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He also serves as the Deputy Editor of Administrative Science Quarterly. Tilcsik studies organizations, occupations, and work.

Dear Readers, as college students march off to campus, enjoy this reprint from our blog

The month of May means graduation. This is the time of the year to celebrate accomplishment, take pride in completing degrees, and look to the future. In fact, college graduation is called “commencement,” signaling the beginning of something—for many, it’s what they hope is the beginning of independent adulthood.

But in our recently published research, we found that college graduation doesn’t always bring the commencement of “adulthood” if adulthood is defined as financial or residential independence. Especially among college graduates with loans.

To find out about how students and college graduates with and without loans rely on family for housing and financial help, what kinds of help they give to their families in return, and how they feel about it, we interviewed and surveyed students and graduates at two public universities. Our data were all collected before the pandemic-spurred loan pause started in March 2020, allowing us to examine how student debt repayment obligations shaped young adults’ experiences of relying on and helping family before and after graduation.

Our research suggests rising student debt is reshaping the experiences of young adulthood for college graduates. Graduates often must live with parents or other family members to be able to afford other expenses and student loan payments. We found that financial support from family and living with family were both common, and graduates with loans were more likely to rely on regular financial help from parents, even though they had been less likely to have that support while they were still in college. After graduation, Alice[1] was living with her mother and contributing to some household bills in exchange, and told us “It’s definitely saving me money, and I have to place a live, so I’m thankful for that.”

At the same time, research participants felt that living with family kept them from crossing a threshold to adulthood. Ava, who was living with her parents, told us, “I just feel like you can’t be grown up living with your parents.” Yet, delaying residential independence also positioned graduates better for loan repayment, a major obstacle in reaching financial stability—another marker of the transition to adulthood. Participants Leo and PJ were both able to pay off all their student loans while living with their parents rent-free!

Sharing housing and pooling resources with family members helps graduates with loans. But it also often feels like an obligation, since their resources help their families, too. Some interview participants shared that they faced expectations of reciprocity—obligations to help family members in return for help they received—that were sometimes quite burdensome. In our survey, both students and graduates with loans were significantly more likely to give money to their families compared to those without loans, deepening their financial difficulties.

Two years after graduation, Monique was giving $300 a month to her mother and did a lot around the house. Monique’s romantic partner was also staying there and contributing $300 a month. Monique reported feeling overwhelmed at times: “I do a lot around the house, like besides work. I come home and I’m cooking because I have three younger siblings. I’m cooking dinner, I’m getting kids home from school and giving baths and getting them to bed. I take them to school in the morning, I get them dressed…I’m doing a lot.”

But Monique reported mostly feeling like the arrangement was working well, even if there were days her contributions felt weighty, and she knew she did a lot around the house because she hadn’t always been able to contribute financially.

We found that it is common for graduates to contribute monetarily to their households, and over half of graduates with loans reported giving money to family (compared to 28% of graduates without loans). But among those who gave money to their family, over half of graduates with loans (and over 70% of graduates without loans) also lived with their families. The financial contributions they gave usually amounted to less money than they would have to pay for housing if they were living independently. Ashley said it would be “cheaper than it would be if I was living by myself.” Noah told us that his decision to live at home and pay his parents several hundred dollars each month was “just the smartest thing financially.” He explained that “I can save my money, pay my loans, and then help my parents too.” He added, “the fact that I can contribute, it just feels more like a partnership more or less…. We help each other out.”

The changing funding structure for higher education—coupled with steeply rising college costs over the last several decades—has made college far more expensive for students and their families. The majority take out thousands of dollars in loans to fund their education. Completing their degrees positions graduating students to be much more likely to pay off their student loan debt, but it can take years or even decades. The pause on student loan repayment, interest, and collections has now been extended through August 31, 2022 after being repeatedly extended. People are wondering now, will student loan payments resume September 1, be paused again, or might student debt even be canceled? We’ve written before about how college students and graduates would approach their futures if their student debt were forgiven.

Our new findings suggest that if debt payments resume, college graduates will increasingly rely on their families for help, affecting multiple generations. If public higher education were adequately funded, college costs would be lower, loans would be less burdensome, and the experiences of college students and graduates would depend less on family resources. In the current higher education funding system, the outsized role that family resources play in paying for higher education instead contributes to persistent and deepening inequalities.

But given the current system, family help can be vital in enabling some graduates with loans to pay down their debt and eventually transition to independence—even if that independence is a bit delayed. So this commencement season, if you or someone you love is approaching college graduation: remember that it’s now common for graduates to live with family after completing their degrees. Given the high cost of college and the difficult burdens loans create, it’s often the best—or only—option that graduates have.

—

Joan Maya Mazelis is the author of Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties among the Poor (NYU Press 2017). She is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and Acting Director of the Gender Studies Program at Rutgers University–Camden. Follow her @JoanieMazelis.

Arielle Kuperberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families. Follow her @ATKuperberg

[1] All names used are pseudonyms.

Rebecca L. Davis is a Professor of History and of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware. Her most recent book is Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America (Norton, 2024). She is also the author of Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions that Changed American Politics and More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss. She writes the Carnal Knowledge newsletter and is co-host of This Is Probably a Really Weird Question, a podcast about LGBTQ health and history. Here, I ask her about her new book, Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America published by Norton. You can follow here on Twitter @historydavis and on Instagram @rebeccadavisinsta

How have debates over the meaning and importance of sexuality shaped life in the U.S. over time? 

There is a common, but mistaken, view that it was the “Puritans” of the 1600s who most strictly governed sexual behaviors as part of their pursuit of a godly society. What the evidence shows, instead, is that it was typically only when sexual behaviors threatened to upend the community’s cohesion—or drain local treasuries—that early American officials charged people with sex-related offenses. What was most important to them was the cohesion of the household, a unit that included a male husband/father with his dependent wife and children, as well as any servants or enslaved people. For that reason, we see large numbers of prosecutions for fornication (sex with an unmarried woman) and bastardy (a child born out of wedlock) and very, very few charges for sodomy. A child born to an unwed mother disrupted the patriarchal order: to whose household would they belong? Who would pay for the child’s upbringing?

The growth of the federal government after the Civil War and the expansion of local police powers in the late 1800s were major turning points. Now, local, state, and federal authorities increasingly recognized sexual behavior as an arena for government power. A key example of this shift is the Comstock Act of 1873, which barred the use of the US mail for anything considered “obscene” or related to contraception or abortion. So is the Dawes Severalty Act of 1888, which broke up Indian tribal lands and forced the formation of male-headed nuclear households. At the local level, police forces across the United States increasingly prosecuted “vagrancy” and “public disturbances,” laws that targeted growing numbers of sex workers, transgender people, men having sex with men, and other sex/gender nonconformists. During World War Two, Selective Service boards screened inductees for signs of homosexuality, and the military instituted a new policy banning gay men and lesbians—policies that would have been utterly inconceivable at any prior point in the US history. The sexual equality and liberation movements of the post-World War II United States attempted to reverse these and other punitive sexual regulations.

Today, we’re witnessing a resurgence of the regulatory impulse. But now it is confronting entire movements organized around the idea that the freedom of sexual self-expression is intrinsic to each individual’s very identity and that to punish that expression is to violate an American’s civil liberties.

How did we as a society shift from understanding sexual behaviors as personal traits to understanding sexuality as a fundamental aspect of who someone is?

This shift is one of the main threads in my book. On the one hand, Americans long believed that some people had particular “tendencies,” or “inward dispositions.” The idea was, you were supposed to be able to control those urges, so that your outward behavior reflected a morally correct character. But the government’s expansion into the regulation of sexuality, as I was describing it above, created new ways of “seeing” and thinking about a person’s erotic interests. At the same time, the expanding world of urban nightlife allowed people to create and enjoy their sexualities, whether as creators or consumers of erotic or queer performances. Individuals who resisted the government’s intensifying censure of nonheterosexual sex began to express a new theory of sexuality as a fundamental, intrinsic aspect of what makes a person who they are. By the mid-20^th century, that new concept competed with the older idea that sexual behaviors reflect personal morality. Today, those two ways of viewing sexuality are in conflict.

How new are gender nonconformity, queer love, and abortion? 

They are not new at all! My book opens with a story about Thomas/Thomasine Hall, an indentured servant who was investigated in 1628–1629 because members of the community disagreed over whether Hall was male or female. Hall, for their part, said they were “both.” We also know that two-spirit people existed in most Indigenous tribes across North America. We likewise can see from prosecution and church records that couples in queer or same-sex relationships lived in colonial settlements and in Indigenous nations. In single-sex schools, the military, and prisons, and also within working- and middle-class homes, queer desire was ubiquitous and occasionally even celebrated. Widespread arrests for sodomy began only in the 1890s and after, as local police forces expanded and attacked urban “vice.”

Fertility management also has ancient origins. Stress and poor diets can cause a missed period, so its absence was often interpreted as evidence of poor health, not necessarily the start of a pregnancy. Women ingested herbal concoctions to “restore” their regular flow. Those remedies might have ended a pregnancy, stimulated ovulation, or done nothing at all. In this way, women did not think of themselves as necessarily aborting a pregnancy so much as keeping themselves healthy. Well into the nineteenth century, “quickening” (the first indications of fetal movement felt by the pregnant person) was understood as the onset of a pregnancy; it might not occur until week 18–21 of a pregnancy. Historians estimate that American women aborted as many as one-third of their pregnancies during the nineteenth century.

A key contention in the movements against transgender rights, legal abortion, and queer/same-sex equality is that these are novel ideologies (rather than identities or rights) foisted on American youth by a woke left-wing sex mafia intent on corrupting minors. My book debunks all such arguments. Transgender and queer people existed long before an identity-based language of homosexual / lesbian / gay / straight and so on was coined. Movements against abortion access and queer rights ground much of their heft in a set of “history and traditions” that exclude all but straight monogamy. They ignore the powerful and widely held understanding of sexuality as a fundamental aspect of what makes a person who they are, essential to human liberty and self-expression.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

Many Americans believe that mothers should spend as much time as possible with their children for their children to grow up all right. Childrearing experts advise that mothers spend time with their children purposefully in age-appropriate activities, such as providing basic care, playing games indoors or outside, doing arts and crafts, singing, reading, and outings to enriching spaces like libraries, sporting events, or children’s museums.

Accordingly, research has focused on investigating subpopulations of mothers who spend lesschildcare time in these activities and identifying what factors prevent them from investing more time in childrearing. The findings, the researchers argue, can inform policymakers to generate intervention programs that help resource-deprived mothers spend more time with their children in a “proper” way.

Racial/ethnic minority mothers are among such subpopulations that researchers care about. Researchers tend to ask: Do racial/ethnic minority mothers spend less childcare time than White mothers due to constraints such as financial strain, long work hours, single parenthood, or language barriers? 

In our recent research, we argue that if we seek to understand racial/ethnic variation in maternal time, we need to transform our perspectives.

First, we should question the assumption that all subpopulations can fit into one childrearing ideal similarly. Research has long documented that racial/ethnic minority Americans generally agree with the mainstream parenting/mothering norms, but they also recognize that their childrearing practices cannot be the same as White parents’ practices. To ensure their children are well-cared for and well-prepared for an unequal society, minority communities have built alternative childrearing strategies that are rooted in their historical and social locations in the U.S., as we describe below when we discuss the findings of our study. Hence, the kinds of activities in which mothers spend time with children may differ across racial/ethnic communities. 

Second, we need to expand the scope of the investigation to go beyond mothers’ time spent in childcare activities. Childcare time is a small portion of the total time mothers spend with their children. Mothers spend a lot more time accompanied by their children in daily routines (e.g., meals, housework) or leisure activities (e.g., watching TV, visiting friends), which we call mother-child copresence. To capture variation in how mothers in different racial/ethnic communities spend time with children in diverse ways, it is critical to include mother-child copresent time in our analyses.  

We use data collected from 44,372 mothers who participated in the 2003–2019 American Time Use Surveys to examine how Black, Latina, Asian, and White mothers spend time with their young, elementary-school-age, and adolescent children differently from other racial/ethnic groups. We pool the multiple years of data to ensure enough sample sizes for each racial/ethnic group in each of the three age groups of children.

We find that some racial/ethnic differences in maternal time spent with children are related to disparities in socioeconomic characteristics and differences across other demographic characteristics, such as mothers’ education, employment hours, family income, and immigration status, across the four racial/ethnic groups. However, some distinct patterns for each racial/ethnic group in maternal time still exist even after these other factors are held constant.

Black mothers spend more time with children in religious activities while spending less in terms of the total amount of time with their children, particularly activities like play, meals, housework, and shopping, compared with mothers in the three other racial/ethnic groups. These patterns make sense if we consider Black communities’ communal mothering. Black communities conceive good mothering as in part delegatory, given the history that breadwinning is a primary responsibility for Black mothers to fulfill and therefore they rely on trusted others within extended families and local communities for the day-to-day care of their children. The central role that religious communities play in Black communities as a source of social support is well known. 

Latina mothers spend more copresent time with elementary-school-age children, particularly while shopping, watching TV, and attending or hosting social activities, compared with mothers in the three other racial/ethnic groups. This pattern is aligned with Latinx communities’ emphasis on family-centered, as opposed to individualistic, child-centered, childrearing. We also find that Latina mothers spend less childcare time with their young or elementary-school-age children in educational activities, but they spend more time managing their children’s lives. These patterns are consistent with prior findings that during the summer break after first grade, Latina mothers do educational activities with their children less often but are more likely to have them tutored, compared to parents in the three other racial/ethnic groups. These findings indicate that Latina mothers tend to be behind the scenes making sure that their children have things that they need, perhaps particularly if their first language is not English. 

Asian mothers spend more time teaching young or elementary-school-age children than mothers in the three other racial/ethnic groups. They also spend more time providing basic care for young children. Asian communities, which in the U.S. consist of a large proportion of immigrants with highly skilled occupations, stress that raising academically competitive children is a parental obligation to honor their extended families. Another notable finding is that Asian mothers spend more mealtime with young and elementary-school-age children, consistent with anecdotal evidence that Asian parents and children maintain pride in their cultural heritage through their ethnic food. 

White mothers spend more time playing with young and elementary-school-age children and spending more time with elementary-school-age children doing physical activities, consistent with other research findings that outside play is emphasized by White parents, but not so much by other racial/ethnic groups. These reflect the mainstream emphasis on the importance of parent-child play and physical activities for the proper development of children. 

Together, we argue that racial/ethnic variation in maternal time should be theorized and interpreted by centering each minority community’s perspective, not simply using the majority’s ideal as the “gold standard.” Using each community’s perspective can allow us to regard mothers—and other adults—as active agents, within their larger social contexts and communities, who spend time with their children to ensure that their children are well prepared for life. 

Kei Nomaguchi is Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University. Her research interests focus on parenting, parent-child relationships, work-family linkages, and health and well-being. She can be reached at knomagu@bgsu.edu. Follow her on X/Twitter at @kei_nomaguchi.

Melissa A. Milkie is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland, and recently served as President of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN). Her research centers on gender, work-family intersections and well-being, with a unique focus on time use and culture. She can be reached via email at: melissa.milkie@utoronto.ca; on Linked In at www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-milkie-64345136, and on X/Twitter at @melissamilkie.

Imagine trying to juggle a career and family life without a reliable safety net—this is the reality for many parents, especially mothers, in the U.S. Finding affordable, dependable, and high-quality childcare can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

The COVID-19 pandemic made things worse. Two-thirds of childcare centers had closed by April 2020, and one-third remained closed in April 2021. With childcare centers and schools closed, many parents struggled to work from home while caring for their children. Many other parents who did not have the option to work from home had to quit their jobs due to childcare needs. This was particularly tough on mothers and families with fewer resources.

Families usually turn to informal sources of childcare, such as babysitters/nannies, extended family members, older children, friends, neighbors, or in-home group childcare when formal childcare is disrupted. However, the pandemic made it harder for some families to access these options than others. COVID-19 disproportionately affects older populations and people of color, and families of color disproportionately relied on older relatives for childcare before the pandemic. This left many families, especially those with limited financial resources, struggling to find the care they needed.

When the pandemic upended formal childcare, who stepped in to help U.S. families? And how did these shifts affect parents’ work hours? We examined these questions in our recent research published the Journal of Family Issues. Our study was based on data from a nationally-representative survey of 1,954 U.S. parents. The Institutions Trust and Decisions Study was conducted online from November 30 through December 30, 2020 on Qualtrics by researchers from Indiana University.

We found that 60% of U.S. parents received informal childcare help during early stages of the pandemic. Notably, care provided by older children emerged as the most common form. Around 50% of parents relied on older children as caregivers. About 40% of parents received help from extended family members. These patterns were likely facilitated by the shift to remote instruction, which left older and younger children at home together during the day, even if their parents had to leave home to complete their paid work. Our finding suggests that childcare help from older children was at least as important as extended family childcare, which has been the main focus of prior studies on informal childcare.

Secondly, families from different socioeconomic backgrounds differ in terms of the kinds of informal care they used. Parents with at least a college degree and those with family income above $150,000 were most likely to have received informal help, especially from paid care workers. Latinx, and other/multiracial families were less likely to use paid care workers than White families.

Finally, receiving support with informal childcare potentially helped parents with young children, especially mothers who lost or left their jobs during the pandemic, work more hours. More flexible forms of informal childcare, such as care provided by older children, extended family, neighbors, friends and pandemic pods, was especially important in helping these mothers work more hours.

Our research reveals a stark divide: low-income, less-educated, and families of color, especially mothers with young children, faced major childcare hurdles during the pandemic. Meanwhile, wealthier and White families often had the means to secure the few available paid caregivers. To keep disadvantaged families in the workforce, we must support them better. Policymakers should recognize and assist the unsung heroes—grandparents and older children—who stepped up as informal caregivers despite facing heightened health risks and stress during such crises. Remarkably, older siblings often took on the role of caregiver, balancing schoolwork and the responsibility of looking after their younger brothers and sisters. These young caregivers played a crucial part in helping their families navigate the challenging landscape of the pandemic.

Milly Yang is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at Yale University. She can be reached at milly.yang@yale.edu. Twitter: @MillyYYang.

Emma Zang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, Biostatistics (Secondary) and Global Affairs (Secondary) at Yale University. She can be reached at emma.zang@yale.edu. Twitter: @DrEmmaZang.

Jessica Calarco is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She can be reached at jcalarco@wisc.edu. Twitter: @JessicaCalarco.

Elias Nader is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Kent State University. He is a criminologist who studies the maturation of young adults and their desistance from crime, as well as evaluating justice system policy and practice. His most recent work has been published in Criminal Justice and Behavior and Crime and Delinquency, and his research funded by the Russell Sage Foundation.  Here, I ask him about his new book, Growing up and out of crime: Desistance, maturation, and emerging adulthood, which is out now from Routledge. You can find out more about Elias and his work on his university profile. And you can follow him on Twitter @eliasnader_

AMW: How have the developmental norms and expectations for young people aged 18-25 shifted from previous generations?

EN: This has really been the question on the minds of developmental psychologists for the past decade or two! We’ve seen some major shifts in the demographic profiles of today’s young people compared to previous generations for reaching milestones of adulthood such as older ages for marriage, becoming a parent, and home-ownership. These shifts are the result of changes in our societal norms and expectations over the last quarter of the 20^th century, such as women entering the workforce and an increased emphasis on higher education, as well as structural shifts such as in the economy, job market, and housing market.

The delays in achieving the milestones of adulthood have created space for young people to explore their identities and roles in society – who they are, who they want to be, what they want to do, and how they want to contribute. Young people spend the ages of 18-25 exploring and testing out identities and experiences across the domains of their relationships (friends, family, romantic), employment and education, values, and perspective of the world. This exploration is acceptable and encouraged, meaning that young people are spending this time slowly emerging into adulthood until they are about 25, instead of viewing themselves as adults immediately at 18.

Our understanding of this social and structural context has been coupled with evidence that most of our brains typically continue to develop until we are around 25 years old. Thus, it makes sense why more people tend to behave impulsively or act “immaturely” during this phase in the life course while their brains finish developing.

AMW: How do delays in young people achieving typical turning points into adulthood affect how maturation influence folks to refrain from committing crime?

EN: These delays have major implications for the study of desistance, or the cessation of crime. Classical criminological theory argues that youth are generally more impulsive than adults and are more likely to take risks including violating societal norms, breaking rules, and engaging in crime. As young people age into adulthood, they embrace “turning points” in their life course that allow them to view themselves as adults. These are the adulthood milestones I mentioned, things like getting married, buying a house, getting a job, etc. These turning points have an added benefit of facilitating the desistance from crime. As young people take on these turning points into adulthood, they become less impulsive and are less willing to take risks as they have more to lose. This process is somewhat natural or automatic for the majority of young people engaged in delinquency or crime. They will just grow up and age out of crime.

So, if we are expecting young people to use the time from 18-25 to explore their identities and their place in society, how are those who rely on adulthood markers to stop engagement in crime affected by this shift? Essentially, they are under an extended period of impulsivity and risk for crime. Behaviors that might be typical of adolescents or teenagers can extend into this period of the early twenties as young people are still developing biologically, socially, and psychologically. Young adults, however, have left the purview of protections provided to juveniles through the juvenile justice system and the education system. While their impulsive behavior might be developmentally appropriate, society can only label them as deviants and criminals. This likely has a huge impact for young people who are trying to find out who they are and what they want to do in society. When they get labeled as criminals in this phase of life, it might be a label they internalize as defining their identity.

AMW: How do relationships and social supports play a role?

EN: Relationships and social supports play a major role in influencing the maturation of young people. They provide the context and conditions for who we are, and for young adults they are the place where identity exploration and access to turning points largely exists.

Within the ages of 18 – 25, the context of a young person’s relationships is shifting as they emerge into adulthood. Their expectations of relationships and social supports are changing from adolescence, providing new challenges and opportunities for pathways in and out of deviance. Peers and friends, for example, are amongst the most important of relationships, and potentially the most criminogenic. Juveniles tend to prioritize larger groups of friends with more acquaintances, valuing things like popularity. Juveniles are also often more likely to participate in deviant behavior with peers or when members of their social networks are already involved in crime. As young people emerge into adulthood, the value they place on these relationships shifts to emphasize the quality of friendships. Young people begin to prioritize smaller, more intimate friend groups where they can rely on and trust their peers at a deeper level. They actively engage in a process of trimming down their friend groups, often cutting criminogenic friends out of their networks.

Relationships with parents and families are also amongst the most important for keeping young people out of crime. The expectations of the relationship with parents in young adulthood shifts from adolescence and the teenage years. Young adults often express better relationships with their parents when they are able to establish autonomy from them. Material independence from parents, such as being able to pay your own bills or living outside the family home, are important markers for today’s young person in their transition to adulthood. While material independence is prioritized, young adults also emphasize building or maintaining close emotional attachments with their parents and families. So, the protective nature of familial relationships shifts from one of oversight and material support to one of emotional support.  

These changes extend to a myriad of relationship types and social supports. For example, marriage has historically been one of the largest protective factors against criminality and facilitators of the cessation of crime. Young people in previous generations often got married below the age of 25. Today’s young person is spending this time exploring romantic relationships and partnerships and getting married closer to 30. Changes such as these shift how romantic relationships can protect against delinquency. In this case, this positive turning point into adulthood is often absent in the 18-25 period, leaving these young people at a risk for prolonged engagement in risk taking and exploration, and thus potentially deviance and crime.

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity. She is the current editor of the Council of Contemporary Families blog. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter at @AliciaMWalker1 and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd

For parents of color in the U.S., talking to their kids about race and racism is a fundamental aspect of parenting, but for white parents, most try to avoid these topics, or offer unhelpful lessons to “treat everyone the same.” This approach ultimately perpetuates colorblind racism and allows white privilege to remain a “lived but not seen” aspect of growing up white. However, a growing minority of “antiracist” white parents have begun intentionally speaking with their kids about systemic racism and whiteness. Both white moms and white dads report a desire to raise racially aware white children, but little is known about who is leading these efforts within white families and why.

In our recent Social Problems article, we examine this question using interview data from 28 “antiracist” white parents in heterosexual marriages to examine how and why gender influences which parent is more likely to discuss race/racism with their children.

In theory, the white moms and dads shared similar beliefs about race/racism and the importance of discussing these topics with their kids. In practice, however, moms disproportionately led these conversations. We trace this divergence between parents’ shared principals but unequal practices back to moms’ distinctively antiracist embrace of intensive mothering—a cultural ideology with extremely high expectations for moms’ involvement in their kids’ lives. More specifically, we highlight how moms refashioned three intensive mothering practices to develop the tools, resources, opportunities, and a sense of integrity needed to proactively talk with their kids about race.

(1) Moms pursued expert-guided education on race/racism. They listened to podcasts, joined book clubs, attended workshops, and followed DEI professionals on social media. Gracie, for example, described seeking guidance before her son was even old enough to talk: “I did research one night about talking to your kid about race, and found a book…I was just like, I need a place to start. I need some ideas. Let’s go to a professional.”  

(2) Moms took a hands-on role in their kids’ education, which allowed them to recognize racism in their children’s classrooms and curricula. These observations gave them concrete examples to discuss with their kids. Through classroom-volunteering, for instance, moms saw that teachers were “treating kids of color differently [and] disciplining them differently” (Heidi) and used their evolving race-related knowledge to explain to their kids that “the teachers are probably having unconscious bias in the classroom” (Audrey). 

(3) Moms strategically cultivated activities for their kids that de-centered whiteness or sought to advance racial equity. Moms joined antiracist community organizations and “racial equity teams” at their churches or synagogues, workplaces, or their kids’ schools, and would bring their kids to organization events, as well as marches/protests, whenever possible. These events served as natural conversation-starters, as Gabby explained: “It’s really easy to just invite conversation. We’ll go to things like protests, we’ll go to marches, so we’ll be surrounded by messages.” Getting involved in antiracist community coalitions also gave moms a sense of integrity to talk about racism with their kids. As Nadia explained:

I feel like if you aren’t doing anything it can be hard to talk about…it can be a little embarrassing [to say] like about race, “I should be making sure things are fair” but like not reading or doing anything actively…having even the small tiny thing that I’m doing…helps me feel empowered to talk about it more.

Culturally, dads don’t face the same intensive parenting pressure that moms do. Perhaps as a result, the dads in our study didn’t pursue the same level of racial re-education that moms did; they didn’t look for everyday examples of racism and inequality in their kids’ classrooms or curricula; and they didn’t plan race-related activities for their children. Consequently, they felt ill-equipped and unprepared to initiate conversations about race/racism, commonly saying they “don’t know how” (Erik). They were also less comfortable discussing race because as Nadia described, it feels awkward and phony to preach one thing but practice another. Whereas moms’ antiracist intensive mothering prompted them to pursue personal- and community-level work aimed at social change, dads weren’t “in the mud doing this type of stuff” (Miller), so they felt “bad and uncomfortable” (Jacob) talking about racism. As Jacob explained, “We don’t like to say we’re the foot on the neck of people who are different from us.”

Because dads were ill-equipped and uncomfortable initiating conversations proactively, they took a more passive approach. They were willing to answer their kids’ questions when asked but believed their kids should “dictate how much information they want” (Frank) and “tell you what they need to know” (Daniel). In other words, they looked to kids to instigate these conversations.

However, since moms had already established a communication line and demonstrated ongoing interest/knowledge about race, kids logically brought any questions about race to their moms instead of their dads. Together, moms’ proactive approach, dads’ passive approach, and kids’ response to this contrast created a reciprocal cycle that allowed race to become a “Mom topic” within these white families.

Why does it matter if antiracism is primarily moms’ domain? We suspect that gendered divisions of labor threaten the sustainability of antiracist parenting practices.

Norms of colorblindness and white silence are hard to break in white families, and new habits are even harder to maintain (and encourage kids to practice) if one parent is still practicing old ones. While there can certainly be “racism without racists,” white people also have significant agency in reducing racism, and white parents have an important part to play. Parents of color have always talked to their children about race and racism, because they do not have the privilege to remain silent. It’s time for more white moms and dads to follow suit and start talking with their white kids about these issues too.

Reilly Kincaid is a PhD Candidate at Purdue University. Her research focuses on family, gender, work, and social inequalities. You can follow her on Twitter/X at @ReillyKincaid.

Megan R. Underhill is an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Asheville where she teaches and researches about race and racism among white Americans. You can follow her on Twitter/X at @Soc_Seeker.

When COVID-19 shuttered college campuses in March 2020, many—but not all—undergraduates sought refuge in their parents’ homes. Why did some students fall into this parental “safety net” while others did not? As three sociologists who have studied young adults’ relationships with their families, we suspected the answer would be more complex than need and availability alone would predict.

In a new study published in Socius, we analyzed survey data we collected from 750 undergraduates at two regional public universities in the United States to understand who moved home with their parents during the pandemic and who didn’t. We focused on whether students reported moving in with a parent because of the pandemic between March 2020 (when campus closed) and March 2021 (when we collected the survey).

Unsurprisingly, we found that students’ housing and financial needs influenced their decisions to return home. Students living in dorms, who were asked to leave the dormitories during the pandemic at the two universities we surveyed, were over three times as likely to move in with a parent compared to their off-campus peers (66% vs. 18%). For off-campus students, problems with their jobs such as being furloughed or laid off led to higher rates of moving to a parent’s home.

However, material needs weren’t the only factors in these decisions. Among students living off campus at the start of the pandemic, older students and those living with a romantic partner were less likely to move home with parents. The off-campus group included many students who would be considered non-traditional undergraduates: just over half (52%) were above the age of 24 and 38% were living with a romantic partner (including some who were married). Students who might be considered more “adult” by one or both measures were far less likely to move in with a parent, possibly because those students’ primary safety nets had shifted from their parents to their partners. Off-campus students living with siblings or extended family were also less likely to move home with their parents, which suggests that these relatives, like romantic partners, may have provided an alternative safety net.

On-campus students showed more similar rates of returning home across the different factors we analyzed, likely because their immediate housing needs took priority over other considerations. However, there was one notable exception: on-campus students who expressed negative feelings about asking their parents for money were more likely to move home.

At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive: if sharing housing is a form of help from parents, wouldn’t students reluctant to ask their parents for money also be reluctant to ask to move back home?

But this finding fits with our other research on family support in young adulthood. In interview projects examining young adults’ experiences with student loans, help from family after having a child, and understandings of financial (in)dependence, we found young adults viewed housing support as distinct from (and typically preferable to) direct financial help from their parents, often viewing it as less stigmatizing or imposing less of a burden. And those who were more reluctant to ask for money may also have found it more difficult to pay for the costs of independent housing once their dormitories closed. 

Given that students were surveyed a year after the initial campus closures, we may have also captured how the experience of living with their parents during the pandemic negatively influenced students’ feelings about asking parents for money. Students who moved in with a parent may have felt that asking for additional money would be too great of a burden on their families or would signal a failure to achieve adult independence (when that was already compromised). They may also have resented restrictions on their freedom they experienced in terms of rules in their parents’ homes during the pandemic and thus felt more reluctant to acknowledge needing help. Regardless of the direction of influence, the link between moving home and negative feelings about asking parents for money highlights the emotional tensions that so often characterize parental support at this life stage.

Overall, our study builds on past research describing social class divides in undergraduates’ reliance on parents during the pandemic by demonstrating how parents’ roles also change within families throughout young adulthood. The findings also highlight the role of other close relationships—romantic partners, siblings, and extended family members—as alternative sources of support for some undergraduates. And they offer a window into the tensions surrounding parental support during this transitional stage of life. Beyond increasing our understanding of the unprecedented historical event of the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings provide broader insight into the complicated social factors affecting whether young adults ask for help from their parents during times of need and uncertainty.

About the authors:

Elena G. van Stee is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University. She’s also the Blog Editor for Contexts, the public-facing periodical of the American Sociological Association. Follow her @elenavanstee.

Arielle Kuperberg is Professor of Sociology at UNC Greensboro, incoming Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families. Follow her at @ATKuperberg.

Joan Maya Mazelis is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Camden and the author of Surviving Poverty: Creating Sustainable Ties Among the Poor. Follow her @JoanieMazelis.