Deborah J. Cohan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina- Beaufort whose work has appeared in numerous academic and non-academic publications. She is the author of the popular blog “Social Lights” for Psychology Today, is a regular contributor to Inside Higher Ed, and is frequently quoted in major media outlets. Here we ask her questions about her new sociologically inspired memoir, Welcome to Wherever We Are. Learn more about her at deborahjcohan.com.

BJR: What made you, a sociologist, decide to write a book about your own life experiences caring for your ailing father?

DJC: I have been actively reading and formally studying memoir in earnest since I was at the end stages of my dissertation in graduate school. I found myself growing impatient with various aspects and profound limitations of academic writing and was looking for a creative outlet. Ever since I was a child, writing was something that felt available and important to me. However, growing up, I was less of a reader because all that was shoved down my throat in school was fiction. And, my dirty secret is that I still don’t read fiction! Once I discovered memoir though, it all made sense. At its best, memoir is essentially a very creative sociology.

The analytical and interpretive properties of both sociology and memoir are quite similar. Sociology is about giving people the tools and the vocabulary to seek multiple truths about individuals, societies and the social forces that constrain and support their very being; sociology offers us the opportunity to then take this information to question, reflect, re-evaluate and put the pieces of our own lives together again, to see how the private “I” fits into the larger public “eye.”

Memoir involves possessing the sociological imagination, connecting biography to history, and understanding how private troubles of one’s personal milieu are indeed public issues related to the social structure. Memoir is about excavating identity and salvaging a sense of self. It is also about the power of finding and using one’s voice.

It is qualitative and ethnographic. The best memoir writers take the particulars of their own lived experience and write their hearts out in a way that connects with others and the larger project of what it means to be human.

Sociological theory, and feminist analysis, which I rely on heavily, helps us to uncover truths no matter how discomforting or disquieting they can be or how deeply one must probe to discover them, and yet this journey toward truth is often enlightening, magical, and transforming. Sociology gives us the opportunity to re-think our place in history, to imagine the future direction of the world, and perhaps to dream about how we might engage in tikkun olam, a Hebrew expression for repairing and healing the world. Memoir has become an extension of all of that for me. The writer Dorothy Allison said: “…Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world.”

Long motivated by a continuous thread I have followed since I began college, both my academic writing and my memoir tell stories at the intersections of gender, family, home, identity, race, class, violence, trauma, grief, loss, rage, creativity, social justice, and social change. These tend to be the issues I write about regardless of genre, and I have published a book, academic articles, book chapters, essays, articles for the mass media, and poetry. The breadth and depth of my writing showcases fluency and versatility with genre because of my belief in the promise of sociology and how we must make ourselves relevant in public discourse. I consider myself an interdisciplinary sociologist, a feminist sociologist, and a public sociologist—creating and applying sociological insights for public knowledge and for the public good.

BJR: Are there any sociological lessons that you can share from the story you share in this book?

 DJC: That’s a great question and there are so many!

In sociology, we often say that things are not always as they seem. This is most definitely true. My book sheds light on how abuse is not black or white, and that there is multidimensionality to abusers. In my case, my father was both adoring and abusive; both are my lived realities. Also, in the book you learn that I was raised in an upper middle class Jewish home, and domestic violence is still very much cloaked in silence, secrecy and shame in households like that. The book punctures assumptions around abusers, survivors, marriage, divorce, social class, etc.

Back in college, I got interested in homelessness among children and adults. I wanted to understand the structural conditions that lead some people to a life on the streets. We know there is a connection between homelessness and violence. As time has unfolded, I have found myself compelled by how traumatic experiences of violence leave us homeless, even metaphorically, in our bodies, in our relationships, and just in our very existence. Writing memoir about family violence became a way to come home to myself.

Sociologists are concerned with how relationships come together and break apart. Sociology consistently asks how we form connection and community with one another and how we become alienated from each other. Studying intimacy and violence provides rich ground for examining these dynamics and processes.

Also, in sociology, we aim to understand why people are cruel to each other, especially in a context of intimacy, sexuality, family, and love.  Domestic violence cuts to the core of human experience of intimacy, vulnerability and relations of domination.

Furthermore, many of us have an interest in social justice and social change and operate from the assumption that sociological writing is not just about creating knowledge for knowledge’s sake but that it is also about forging solidarity with suffering human beings. Domestic violence and violence against women offer us the possibility to think about the nexus of relationships between social problems, personal healing and recovery, and social change.  As sociologists, we are trained in asking questions and observing the complexities and nuances of human behavior, and domestic violence cases like what I experienced provide an opportunity for deep, ongoing sociological inquiry.

BJR: Given the connection between the personal and the political, can you help the reader understand if there are any implications for social policy from your experiences as a caregiver?

DJC: I hope that the book compels readers to think about ways that we can talk more honestly about domestic violence, and especially how to have those conversations intergenerationally. When I began caregiving for my father, I was in my thirties and not yet on the tenure track and cobbling together a series of contingent academic jobs back and forth in two states. I spent a lot of money I didn’t have to travel to see him and I remember thinking how fabulous it would be if there were grants for people in my situation, simultaneously doing public service with teaching and also intense caregiving. I felt choked by my living expenses, student loan debt, and caregiving bills. It was clear to me then—and remains so—that we need a much greater, supportive infrastructure in our social institutions to help people navigate this and to buffer against the extreme loneliness that people face in these distressing and grief-filled circumstances. Growing up, I was one of very few only children with older parents. Now that this is an increasingly common demographic, it seems like as a society we will have to better offer support as people reconcile the dilemmas of aging and caregiving from the complicated context of tiny and tender family dynamics.

Barbara J. Risman is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She is also a Senior Scholar at the Council of Contemporary Families. 

In Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving, Caitlyn Collins investigates the ways in which policy impacts the experiences of working mothers. Through rich, in-depth interviews and observation, Collins conducts the very first systematic comparative study looking at women’s lived experiences with work-family policies. Through the participants’ own words and careful review of policy and existing research, Collins weaves together a compelling and nuanced investigation of the ways policy impacts women’s lived experiences. This five-year study articulates the ways both government and cultural support work to bring about what Collins calls work-family justice, an assurance that all citizens have access to opportunities to participate in both family care and paid work. This book examines the ways and the extent to which support systems fluctuate from country to country. Collins makes clear the importance of cultural values, which at least equal in importance to written policy in terms of creating work-family justice. Collins shares that policies alone cannot solve the struggles of working mothers. Rather, our cultural beliefs about gender, work, and motherhood must shift to fully address these challenges.

Collins discusses the current state of family policy and support in the United States as well as how the U.S. compares to other Western industrialized nations. Collins makes the key point that the current meager provision of federal support for families is by design, but by accident. She explains that U.S. stands as one of the nations “with no mention of the word ‘family’ in its constitution,” “no federal body dedicated specifically to family issues,” and “no explicit national family policy” (2). This book is particularly effective at illustrating the ways in which the cultural ethos of individualism in the United States places the responsibility for the care and feeding of the family squarely on the shoulders of the individual, and presents parenthood as a lifestyle choice. Collin raises the important point that while we see the act of childrearing as a private, individual one, in reality children grow up to be taxpayers and workers. Thus, citizens who were raised well actually function in the country’s best interest. However, the insistence of the U.S. on relying upon the market to solve individual problems has led to a privatized approach, where the most privileged members of our society hold access to the greatest number of work-family policies, leaving the most vulnerable among us having the least support. Generally speaking, we expect women in the U.S. to solve their own work-family stressors because, after all, we’ve told them they can “have it all.” Collins relates the previous studies showing the ways that family policies can actually hinder women’s progress at work, as well as gender relations and beliefs.

Collins’ study includes in-depth interviews with 135 working mothers living in the capital cities of Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Her fieldwork entailed a summer spent in each city, where she both observed and participated the lives of the women around her. Collins focused on middle-class mothers noting that Pamela Stone wrote that middle-class mothers are the “miners’ canary—a frontline indication that something is seriously amiss” (24). While the interviewees in Europe lacked racial diversity, her stateside sample included more than half of respondents identifying as a racial/ethnic minority.

This book examines the differences in lived experiences of working mothers by social context and location, and discusses solutions to the challenges of working mothers. Collins found that what mothers who work expect and want with regard to their family and work lives depends on their social context. Collins points out that the important factors for both comprehending and solving the conflicts faced by working mothers rely not upon social policies alone, but the larger social context and beliefs about parenthood, equality, and employment. She also discovered that who mothers blame for their unmet expectations varies widely depending upon where they live. US working mothers blame themselves, while mothers abroad blamed external forces (e.g. government, cultural forces). Also dependent on social context are the solutions employed by working mothers. Mothers in Italy, western Germany, and the US feared utilizing the policies available to them because of the resulting stigma they would endure. Working mothers in Sweden are the most satisfied. While Collins explains that she let Sweden quite optimistic about the ways that work-family policies can help further gender equality, she is careful to point out that merely importing Swedish policies to the US won’t work without addressing our cultural attitudes about work, gender, and parenting. Rather, she explains that any work-family policies require an environment that’s supportive of gender equality because policy alone won’t help mothers balance careers and responsibilities at home.

Collins contends that we must enact policies in packages, providing the example of paid parental leave policies alongside policies increasing availability of childcare. She also emphasizes the importance of building consensus when enacting new legislation. Ultimately, Collins explains that in Sweden policies enjoy success because of a cultural sense of shared responsibility with regard to childcare and work inside the home. Until we shift our view of raising children in the US from our current notion of it as a “lifestyle choice” to one of contribution to the continuation of society, no policy alone can alleviate the plight of working mothers in the US. Beyond policy, Collins shows that workplaces must increase flexibility in terms of both where and how we work, but also the ways we assess productivity, how we compensate workers, and that we will need to stop seeing men as the ideal worker. Instead, we must realize that everyone comes to work with outside lives, interests, and responsibilities requiring their time and attention. In other words, we need to reconceptualize work in the United States. Collins posits that creating work-family justice in the US will demand cultural shifts in our definitions of parenthood, our work structures, and our commitment to families and parents. She is fully aware that this is a monumental task. To begin to address this problem, Collins explains that we must begin to realize that the existing inequalities that result in differing experiences of work-family life, and further recognize that these are conditions we can address. Across social contexts, the working mothers in Collins’ study shared one single cause of stress: “the pressure to live up to an idealized definition of motherhood” (263).

Collins’ highly readable book provides a thorough analysis of the ways that cultural ideas about gender, work, and motherhood converge to create or alleviate burdens for working mothers. Her participants provide rich, moving, and generous accounts of their lived experiences, that require readers to explore their views on gender, motherhood, fatherhood, and work. With its focus on motherhood, employment, and gender, Making Motherhood Work is a useful resource to examine the ways gender politics and cultural ideas regarding employment and motherhood come to bear on women’s lived experiences.

Alicia M. Walker works as an assistant professor at Missouri State University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her previous book, The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, investigated women’s participation in outside partnerships. Her forthcoming book focuses on men’s participation. Follow her on Twitter @AliciaMWalker1

Sociologist Arielle Kuperberg conducted new data analysis exclusively for this CCF briefing report that shows how cohabitation has changed from 1956 to the present. This new brief also includes findings from her forthcoming journal article in Marriage and Family Review. Historian Stephanie Coontz, CCF’s research director, reflects on what Kuperberg’s discoveries tell us about the state of close relationships in this interview on American Intimacy in Times of Escalating Inequality.

The most common path to marriage these days includes cohabitation, according to research presented to the Council on Contemporary Families by sociologist Arielle Kuperberg (UNC-Greensboro). In “From Countercultural Trend to Strategy for the Financially Insecure: Premarital Cohabitation and Premarital Cohabitors, 1956-2015,” Kuperberg reports how cohabitation raised eyebrows forty years ago. She shows that in the past decade, though, an overwhelming majority of Americans approve of it. There’s an asterisk: For a highly religious minority for whom “direct marrying” might be preferable, living together before marriage has as much to do with economic resources as with values. Kuperberg’s report offers three big findings:

Cohabitation before marriage is the norm. Kuperberg reports that 70 percent of marriages start with living together. Furthermore, only 17 percent of Americans disapprove of “premarital cohabitation.” And it is with good reason, she shows, since cohabitation has ceased to be a risk factor for divorce.

Since it’s so common, who is least likely to cohabit least before marriage? College graduates—who married directly 40 percent of the time between 2011 and 2015, twice as often as people without a college education. To be clear: A majority within all educational groups—including college graduates—cohabit before marriage. Not only do less-educated people cohabit more; Kuperberg notes that “working-class couples move in together earlier in their relationships than college-educated couples, often because of financial difficulties or housing needs.”

More religiously observant people are the most likely to be direct marriers—but only if they can afford it.Among highly religious college graduates, only 35 percent cohabited before getting hitched (versus 60 percent overall). Yet, equally religious people who did not have a high school degree lived together before marriage 97 percent of the time. The greater practice of premarital cohabitation among people with less education—and most likely lower incomes—may have to do with access to resources.

Cohabitation is no longer a countercultural trend, but instead is an unremarkable practice. In the past, worry about propriety and reputation created strong cultural pressures against living together before marriage. That is no longer the case. Now, economic inequality seems to shape the choices of religiously observant people with low levels of education, who tend to have lower incomes than equally observant people who have completed college. What Kuperberg’s study adds up to is that there may be less choice about close relationships than meets the eye today.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

Arielle Kuperberg, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology and Cross-Appointed Faculty in the Women and Gender Studies Program, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; atkuperb@uncg.edu.

Stephanie Coontz, Professor of History and Family Studies, The Evergreen State College, coontzs@msn.com; 360-556-9223.

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families

In the early 1960s, fewer than 3 percent of women who married for the first time had lived with their husband before the wedding. As late as 1968, news of a college student living with her boyfriend touched off a national scandal. As you can see in Figure 1 (below), even by the end of the 1970s, fewer than one-third of first marriages began after premarital cohabitation. Since the mid-1990s, however, cohabiting before marriage has become the norm. Between 2011 and 2015, around 70 percent of women marrying for the first time had lived with their husband before marriage, and a 2015 national poll of U.S. adults found that only 17% believed living together outside of marriage was not an acceptable way of life.

Note: Numbers calculated from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households (1946-1985, N=4,356) and National Survey of Family Growth (1986-2015, N=9,480) and based on women <36 at first marriage. 

As I show in a new article in the journal Marriage & Family Review based on an analysis of national data on more than 13,000 women who married between 1956 and 2015, the characteristics of couples who live together before marriage have changed over time. Despite the widespread acceptance of premarital cohabitation, its practice has changed in ways that reflect a growing divide between Americans with a college degree and those with some or no college education. This change has interacted with differences in premarital cohabitation between more- and less-religiously-observant Americans in some surprising ways.

Early cohabitation rates: Only small differences between more- and less-educated Americans.Throughout the earliest period, from 1956 to 1985 (see Figure 1), when premarital cohabitation was still practiced by a minority of couples, the few couples who lived together before marriage generally belonged to one of two distinct groups. One was composed largely of couples with the lowest level of education: 27 percent of premarital cohabitors had less than a high school education when they moved in together. But an even larger group of early cohabitors had higher levels of education; 31 percent of cohabitors had at least some college education when they moved in together.

Whether college grads or people without a high school degree, cohabitors transgressed powerful social norms when they decided to live together before marriage. This is likely for different reasons: The least educated women may have delayed marriage until they were more financially stable or to save money for a wedding, while more highly educated women were more likely participating in a new countercultural trend that stemmed from the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Still, overall there were no significant differences between rates of premarital cohabitation among couples with different levels of education during the period from 1956 to 1986.

When rates of cohabitation began to change by education. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, premarital cohabitation began to grow most rapidly among the least educated Americans. Between 1986 and 2000, premarital cohabitation rates grew more quickly among couples who had not completed high school than among any other group. At the next levels of education, differences in cohabitation rates remained small. Their rates grew more slowly, and there wasn’t a big difference among couples with at least a high school degree over this time period.

All that growth meant that, starting in 1995, a majority of first marriages have begun with premarital cohabitation. Here’s where a new educational divergence occurred: Since 2000, cohabitation rates of the most educated couples have grown markedly more slowly than those of all other educational groups – people with high school diplomas and even ones with some college. By 2011-2015, women who married directly, without first cohabiting, were a minority in every educational group. Even so, marrying directly was twice as common among women with a college degree as among women who had a high school diploma or less. More than 40 percent of women with a bachelor’s degree married in the so-called “traditional” way, without having first cohabited. But fewer than 20 percent of women who had never attended college did so.

In other words, although acceptance of premarital cohabitation is equally high among highly-educated as among less-educated Americans, the actual rates of cohabitation among couples with a bachelor’s degree or higher are much lower than those of any other educational category. College-educated couples, often considered the group most likely to challenge traditional relationship and sexual norms, are now the group most likely to practice the traditionally “respectable” route to marriage – with women moving in with their husbands only after the wedding.

Religion, Education, and Cohabitation. Direct marriers became an increasingly select group in another way as well, as you can see in Figure 2. Not only did they tend to be more educated than average, they were also more religious. In 2011-2015, 73 percent of women who married without first cohabiting attended religious services at least once a month, compared to only 46 percent of premarital cohabitors. While almost a third (29 percent) of women who cohabited before marriage never attended religious services, this was true of only 10 percent of women who married directly.

In a new analysis for this report, I found that the education gap in premarital cohabitation was even larger among women who attended religious services at least once a month than among women as a whole (see Figure 2). Among women who had a college degree and regularly attended religious services, only 35 percent cohabited before marriage. By contrast, among women who did not attend college but attended religious services regularly, a full 86 percent cohabited before marriage. The difference is even greater when we look only at equally-religiously-observant women with no high school degree, 97 percent of whom cohabited before marriage!

These figures suggest that in today’s social and economic environment, it has become harder to act on one’s personal values in the absence of the good economic prospects conferred by a college education. The majority of young adults today believe that living together before marriage is okay, and research from the early 2000s found that these rates do not differ by education. But among those who do not share this acceptance of cohabitation yet lack the high levels of education associated with stronger labor markets and greater financial stability, contemporary economic circumstances make it harder to live up to their values. The highly religious may sometimes marry even without that financial stability due to the strong social disapproval of their peers and a belief that “God will provide.” But others facing financial insecurity resulting from their low levels of education are more reluctant to make that leap, even when they would prefer to marry directly.

Note: Numbers calculated from the National Survey of Family Growth and based on women <36 at first marriage.  (N=553; Frequent Religious Service Attenders, N=315)

Even More Evidence that Resources Influence Romantic Decisions. In addition to being more likely to cohabit before marriage, recent research finds that working-class couples move in together earlier in their relationships than college-educated couples, often because of financial difficulties or housing needs. Among college-educated couples, financial difficulties seldom play a part in the decision to cohabit. Increasingly, then, the ability of couples to make decisions about cohabitation and marriage based on their values seems to depend upon their financial circumstances. And this can have consequences for relationship stability. As I show below (Figure 3), premarital cohabitation no longer predicts divorce, but moving in together rapidly does increase the possibility that a relationship will dissolve without moving on to marriage.

The Relationship of Cohabitation and Divorce Reversed over Time. In a new analysis prepared for this report and shown in Figure 3, I find that the relationship between premarital cohabitation and divorce has also changed over time. Not surprisingly, those who were willing to transgress strong social norms to cohabit from the 1950s to 1970 were also more likely to transgress similar social norms about divorce. Indeed, in that earlier period, people who lived together before marriage were 82 percent more likely to divorce than people who moved in together only after marriage. But as cohabitation became more widespread, its association with divorce faded. In fact, since 2000 premarital cohabitation has actually been associated with a lower rate of divorce, once factors such as religiosity, education, and age at co-residence are accounted for.

Note: Numbers calculated from the 1988 National Survey of Families and Households (1956-1985, N=3,594) and National Survey of Family Growth (1986-2015, N=9,420) using Cox regressions and based on women <36 at first marriage. Controls for age at coresidence, age at coresidence squared, raised not religious, religious attendance, race, education at marriage, mother’s education, prior cohabitations, lived with both biological parents at age 14, birth prior to coresidence, began coresidence while pregnant. **p<.01

But the likelihood of divorce, other research shows, also varies by education and economic stability. Regardless of whether people live together before marriage or not, college-educated couples have far lower rates of divorce than couples with a high school diploma or less. On average, women with a high school diploma or less have a 60 percent chance of a marriage ending in divorce within 20 years. The chance that a woman with a college degree will divorce within the same time period is nearly three times lower — about 22 percent.

Arielle Kuperberg is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology and Cross-Appointed Faculty in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is also the editor of the CCF blog @ The Society Pages. Follow her on twitter at @ATKuperberg and reach her at atkuperb@uncg.edu.

Marriage rates today are at an historic low, as couples tie the knot less frequently (and at older ages) than in the past. Other trends portend a “liberalizing” of the American family as well. There are currently high rates of births outside of marriage, support for decoupling parenthood from marriage is at an all-time high among millennials, and divorce is up among those in mid-life. Couples who have children without being married, get divorced, or delay or forego the institution or marriage are not living lives of solitude, however. They are living together outside of marriage. In fact, as of 2016, 18 million people lived together in cohabiting unions.

At one point in time, cohabitation was considered to be the union choice either for those too poor to marry or the avant garde who eschewed marriage. Now, however, the majority of recent marriages were preceded by cohabitation.  With so many couples cohabiting (or having cohabited), it is  quite likely that the views cohabitors hold, on a range of issues – from maternal employment to how couples should divide housework – are quite similar to those of married couples. So, are cohabitors the new traditionalists?

In fact, in our research with Daniel Carlson, we find that around 40% of the cohabiting couples we studied did have quite conventional work orientation more similar to Leave it to Beaver than not. That is, they had fairly traditional ways of thinking about their both their own careers and their jobs in relationship to those of their partners’. For these couples, most intend for both partners to work, but view the man’s job as more central – he is the one whose career gets top billing in the family, whose job determines where couples will live (or if they will move), and who receives more privileges (such as being able to do less housework), as a result of his job.  For these couples, this “King of the Castle” view holds whether or not his job is actually more prestigious, better paying, or requires more hours per week.  Many of these couples planned for the female partner to become the primary parent in the future, working part time or leaving the workforce for a period of time to be with children. Based on this, yes, cohabitation is the new conservative model of family. Such views (as well as behaviors) are not randomly dispersed throughout the sample, though.  Adherence to these more conventional arrangements are more often held by middle class, college-educated couples (who generally do not yet have children) than by their less educated peers who work in service sector jobs.

Lest we think that women with college degrees are the new Stepford Wives, however, it’s important to note that roughly 20% of the couples we studied are following a far more egalitarian pathway- or even reversing convention entirely. Again, more common among the college educated, a number of couples are those who equally privilege one another’s careers, taking turns advancing up the ladder, for example, or, in rare instances, even see the female partner’s more specialized job and greater earnings potential as the one which should receive the most focus.

So what of their service class peers- couples in which both partners tend to have a high school diploma or some college education? They have much more variation in their work orientations. These couples often consist of partners for whom work is a low priority or those in which at least one partner few plans for advancement but is a stable worker. This makes sense given that the types of jobs that service-class individuals tend to be in. After all, financially and practically it is difficult for those working in fields like retail and telemarketing to move up through the ranks- or ultimately be able to afford to have one partner stay home part time with children.

How are couples to navigate this Brave New World of family formation and negotiation of work and family roles?  Couples who have clearer social scripts to follow (whether that be “traditional breadwinner/homemaker” or “egalitarian power couple”) tend to experience greater relationship stability than those who do not, in larger part because they have societal expectations to fall back on and are not trying to constantly renegotiate gendered norms anew. Whether they are moving toward a marriage like the Cleavers’ or more like the executive and physician couple, The Johnsons of TV’s “Blackish” it is not surprising, then, that the college educated are moving into marriage at higher rates than their peers. As we argued in our most recent work, “unless there is a change in the nature of jobs available for those without college educations, the divergence in marriage rates- and relationship satisfaction- between service-class and middle-class cohabitors is likely to continue.” Rather than focusing on marriage as the panacea for all that ails today’s families, a more productive approach would be to make it easier to be partners, workers, and parents – by providing paid parental sick leave, easier pathways to educational attainment and off-routes that are not laden with crushing debt, and affordable childcare.  What today’s alternative families need, after all, are not all that different from what their more traditional counterparts – married couples – also seek.

Amy Blackstone is a professor in Sociology and the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I recently interviewed her about her new book, Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence (Dutton, 2019). Amy and her husband Lance blog at we’re {not} having a baby!.

BJR: Can you explain why you think that American needs a social movement to support childfree adults? 

AB:  It might seem strange to hear that childfree people need the support of a movement but until we live in a world where childfree people can share their status without receiving patronizing responses (e.g., “Oh, you’ll change your mind one day,” and “That’s selfish!” and “But you’re missing out on the most fundamental part of being a woman!”), where they are not immediately presumed to be less-than or to be miserable and lonely and selfish, I think a movement is needed. Beyond these stereotypes of childfree people, there are also structural, institutional issues that a movement can address. In the United States, we have a tax policy that penalizes poor working non-parents. The Earned Income Tax Credit, which was designed to lift people out of poverty by ensuring that they don’t begin owing income tax until their earnings exceed the poverty level, does not apply equally to parents and non-parents in poverty. Many non-parents begin owing income taxes while still below the poverty line. We also need to change how we think about reproductive health and who is responsible for it. For example, vasectomy is safer, more effective, and less costly than tubal ligation but vasectomy rates are half those of tubal ligation rates in the U.S, and one-fifth the rate of tubal ligation worldwide. Much of this has to do with cultural lore linking men’s fertility to masculinity, and to the belief that birth control is women’s responsibility alone. Finally, many of the childfree women and men I’ve interviewed tell me that they are often overlooked in policy and conversation about work/life balance. Though we all need and deserve balance, we sometimes forget that people without children also create family and have personal lives they need and want to nurture. 

BJR: Does your research suggest that childlessness is different for women and men, and if so, why do you think that is? 

AB: Though my research focuses exclusively on people who have made the choice not to have children, or childfree people, much of the existing research does not distinguish childfree from childless, a term that refers to people who want children but can’t or don’t for any number of reasons. In my own research on childfree people, I did find differences between women’s and men’s experiences. Women felt more pressure to become mothers than men did to become fathers, and they received more negative feedback about their choice than did men. I think that this is because of our strong cultural attachment to, and belief in, the notion of maternal instinct. We assume that women are wired to want kids, though there is no scientific evidence to support this idea. Instead, girls are taught from a very early age that motherhood is their destiny, and that it is the singular most important and fulfilling role they will have. One need only take a stroll down the “girls” aisle of any children’s toy store to see this. Boys are certainly reared to believe they will become fathers one day, but fatherhood is not presumed to be “in their nature” in the way that motherhood is for girls. 

BJR: What are the policy implications of your research on childlessness? 

AB: There are so many! As mentioned, one policy that needs to change is how the Earned Income Tax Credit works. Non-parents should have the same opportunity as parents to lift themselves out of poverty. In my book, I also describe how inheritance laws disadvantage non-parents in some states. Another area that I heard about over and over again in my interviews is work/life balance. Employers and policy makers must understand that the “life” part of that equation does not always mean kids — and this is true for parents and non-parents alike. And we need to think much more creatively about how we age and how we prepare for old age. This isn’t just an issue for non-parents; research shows that most parents do not have adult children who will provide intensive care for them as they age. We also should be educating children to understand that parenthood is a role best fulfilled when it is chosen — and that non-parenthood can be a fulfilling life path as well. Recently, policy makers and others have expressed concern over declining fertility rates among women born in the United States. What these conversations overlook is that our population is actually growing, and we have immigrants to thank for that. Rather that pushing people who don’t want to become parents into doing so, we should be looking for ways to welcome – not turn away – people who wish to immigrate to the U.S. Finally, there are many policy implications having to do with reproductive justice. Who gets to decide when, whether, how, and to how many children we become parents? These are questions that seem to be on everyone’s mind these days, and how and by whom they are answered has very real consequences for everyone, including childfree people.

Barbara J. Risman is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  She is also a Senior Scholar at the Council of Contemporary Families. 

Although the “gayby boom” that began in the 1990s ushered in many new possibilities—socially, legally, and politically—for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) families, attention to the reproductive challenges they face has not kept pace.

In my new book, Reproductive Losses: Challenges to LGBTQ Family-Making, I explore the distinctive issues that pregnancy and adoption loss raise for LGBTQ individuals and couples. Most Americans still believe that reproductive loss is relatively rare (<5%). But according to experts:

• 10-20% of pregnancies end in loss
• 12% of US women are diagnosed with infertility
• adoption disruption rates in the US are estimated at 10-25% (adoption professionals use the term “disruption” to describe a process that ends after the child is placed in an adoptive home, but before the adoption is legally finalized)
• failure rates for reproductive technologies, such as IVF, are often much higher

For LGBTQ people the stakes for contending with reproductive loss are particularly high. The loss of a child during adoption or pregnancy is often intertwined with discriminatory laws and policies, homophobic/transphobic assumptions by family and/or healthcare and adoption professionals, and the rising costs associated with assisted reproductive technologies and adoption. Yet few resources exist to support LGBTQ people faced with reproductive loss.

Most support resources are aimed at heterosexual married couples (usually also depicted as white, affluent, and Christian) and books on LGBTQ family-making devote only a sidebar to discussing pregnancy or adoption loss, if they discuss it at all. When I interviewed over 50 LGBTQ people who had experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, failed adoptions, infertility, and sterility—including those who carried pregnancies, non-gestational and adoptive parents, and families from a broad range of racial/ethnic, socio-economic, and religious backgrounds—most reported feeling isolated in their experience. As one participant confided to me when we spoke, “I thought I was the only gay person ever to experience the grief of losing a child.” While the belief that they were alone is due in part to pervasive cultural silence surrounding reproductive loss generally, it is amplified for LGBTQ people by outdated assumptions about what makes a “real” parent and who should mourn reproductive loss.

This book shares their stories. It highlights LGBTQ experiences with communal support and personal resiliency, as well as the effects of encountering adversity and discrimination. The book’s open-access companion website also includes their advice for coping with loss and supporting bereaved LGBTQ people, as well as photos that participants shared of commemorative tattoos, memorials, personal remembrances, birth and death announcements, and other ways of memorializing reproductive loss: www.lgbtqreproductiveloss.org. Visitors can contribute additional stories and images to this digital archive and my hope is that it can serve as an expanding resource for LGBTQ+* people and families.

Reproductive Losses and its companion website are aimed at a broad audience—including healthcare and adoption professionals, social workers and psychologists, bereaved LGBTQ families, and family and friends who support them.  As the “gayby boom” shows no signs of slowing—and spans a diverse array of families racially, socioeconomically, and religiously—developing more inclusive resources to address the reproductive challenges LGBTQ families face is essential.

Christa Craven is the incoming Dean for Faculty Development at the College of Wooster in Ohio and teaches in Anthropology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. In addition to Reproductive Losses: Challenges to LGBTQ Family-Making (2019), she is the author of Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement (2010) and a textbook with Dána-Ain Davis, Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges & Possibilities (2016). For more information on her research and teaching, see: http://discover.wooster.edu/ccraven/.

A study in the Journal of Labor Economics of Quebec’s recent non-transferable parental leave for fathers demonstrates just how effective this generous benefit is in getting fathers more involved at home. With new benefits, fathers increased their participation in parental leave by 250 percent. In households where men were given the opportunity to use this benefit, fathers’ daily time in household work was 23 percent higher, long after the leave period ended. Background and details of economist Ankita Patnaik’s innovative study are provided in this blog post.

The United States lags woefully behind many nations in family-friendly work policies, especially those that allow fathers to take time off to be with their children. Worldwide, more than 95 countries ensure that fathers have access to paid parental leave after a child is born. In the United States, by comparison, fathers have no such guarantee of paid leave. Some fathers are eligible for 6 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), but the lack of financial compensation makes using this option unaffordable for many families.

Getting fathers involved in childcare early on has been shown to improve children’s cognitive outcomes, strengthen the father-child bond, and increase fathers’ life satisfaction. It is also is a critical next step in promoting gender equity in the workplace as well as at home. Unfortunately, even in nations where fathers have the right to paid leave, take-up rates are often low, because fathers worry about the impact on their finances or their career. Canada offers an ideal case study on how the take-up rates and impact of paternity leave can be improved by carefully designed public policy.

Throughout Canada, every mother is entitled to a year of unpaid job-protected leave after a birth, and every father to 37 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave. Eligible parents can then convert this leave into paid leave through benefit programs run by the government in the form of social insurance. From 2001 to 2005, eligible parents in all Canadian provinces could claim parental leave benefits from the government through the Employment Insurance (EI) Program. Mothers had access to “maternity leave” reserved specifically for them, and gender-neutral parental leave that was technically shared with fathers. Fathers had access to benefits through this “shared” parental leave – but they could transfer the leave to their wives, and leave-takers were compensated with just a little over half their wages up to a strict cap, so household incomes were hit hard when fathers took leave. As a result, fewer than 20 percent of fathers in Canada participated in paid parental leave under the EI program.

In 2006, however, Quebec left the EI system and established the Regime Quebecois D’assurance Parentale or the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP). The new scheme made more men and women eligible for parental leave benefits, increased the replacement rate from 55 percent to 70 percent of income, raised the cap on maximum benefits from $412 to $767 per week, and established a 5-week “daddy quota” of paid leave for fathers. Quebec is now the only province in Canada in which fathers enjoy an individual and non-transferable right to parental leave. This reform provided me with a unique opportunity to study how a daddy quota affects paternal leave-taking, as well as whether such leave-taking has long-term effects on the way fathers and mothers divide paid employment and household work.

Was QPIP successful in increasing fathers’ leave-taking?

To investigate the effects of QPIP on parents’ leave behavior, I analyzed data on benefit claims from the 2002-2010 rounds of the Employment Insurance Coverage Survey (EICS). Using a regression discontinuity approach, I identified the local mean impact of the new program. This method essentially isolates the difference between births that only differed in the exact timing of birth: i.e. comparing a birth that happened on December, 31st 2005 (under the old EI program) to an otherwise-identical birth that happened on January 1^st, 2006 (under the new QPIP program).

The introduction of QPIP had a dramatic impact on fathers’ behavior, increasing the participation rate of eligible fathers from 21.3 by 53 percentage points – a jump of 250 percent. In addition, the duration of paid leave taken by fathers increased by 150 percent. Before the reform, the average Quebecois father took only 2 weeks of leave. Today he takes the full 5 weeks allocated to him by the quota. By contrast, in the Canadian provinces that have held on to the EI program, fathers’ leave participation remains abysmally low: Less than 1 in 5 fathers take any paid parental leave. I did not find any immediate effect of QPIP on mothers’ leave behavior – but over the years Quebecois mothers’ leave participation did rise by about 16 percent.

Does this mean `daddy-only’ quotas really work?

Fathers changed their leave behavior much more substantially in response to the QPIP reform than did mothers, both in absolute magnitude and relative to their respective baselines. This strongly suggests that a “daddy-only” label is effective, because the other reform features of QPIP cannot explain this disproportionately larger response from fathers. First, the vast majority of fathers were already eligible for leave under the criteria of the old program (600 hours of employment in the last year), so QPIP’s lowering of the eligibility criteria predominantly affected low-income women. Second, increased income replacement did make it easier for fathers to take leave, but mothers also experienced the same increase in benefits. Economists would expect mothers to respond more strongly to increased benefits for two reasons – (i) women’s labor supply is known to be more sensitive to wages than is men’s, and (ii) mothers tend to earn lower incomes. Since the benefits are capped, this means QPIP effectively offers lower-earners a bigger relative subsidy for taking leave.

Prior to the QPIP reform, very few families in Quebec used all the leave to which they were entitled. In fact, more than 60 percent of families left a full month or more of leave unused, even when the fathers could have used some of it. Thus, it appears that there is something about the “daddy-only” label that especially encouraged participation from fathers. This could be because the label reduced stigma against fathers taking leave, making it appear to be a normal expectation. It could also be that giving fathers an individual entitlement emboldened them to request leave from their employer or made them feel guilty about not using this generous allowance to bond with their baby. This is important for future policy design, as it suggests that labeling may play an important role in influencing program participation.

Are there lasting effects of paternity leave?

To understand the long-term effects of paternity leave on household dynamics, I also investigated whether the increase in fathers’ leave-taking under QPIP had an impact on the household division of labor 1 to 3 years after the parental leave period ended. I used time-diary data from the 2005 and 2010 rounds of the General Social Survey, which provides incredibly precise and accurate measures of the minutes spent per day by mothers and fathers in various kinds of paid and unpaid work.

My treatment group comprised parents surveyed in 2010 in Quebec who had a child since QPIP was introduced. My control groups comprised parents in other Canadian provinces, parents surveyed in 2005, before the reform, and parents who may have been surveyed in 2010 in Quebec but whose children were a little too old to have been born under QPIP. The identification strategy was to isolate the difference between being exposed to the QPIP program (with a more than 80 percent probability the father took leave) versus being exposed to the EI program (with a less than 20 percent probability the father took leave).

I found strong evidence that by altering the initial experience of parental leave, QPIP had a large and persistent impact on gender dynamics within households even years after the leave period ended, encouraging movement toward a dual-earner, dual-caregiver model wherein fathers and mothers contributed more equally to home and market production. In the long term, mothers who experienced a birth under QPIP spent more time in paid work, spent more time physically at the workplace and were more likely to be full-time employed, compared to their counterparts who experienced a birth under the EI program instead. In the long term, the men who became parents after the introduction of the QPIP spent 23 percent more time in non-market household work, compared to their counterparts who had become parents under the EI program. Fathers exposed to QPIP spent approximately a half-hour more time present in the home per day, while mothers spent a half hour less in the home per day. Women who gave birth under the QPIP program actually increased their time in non-market household work by 9 per cent, but they reorganized that time, spending less time on housework and more time devoted to childcare. Overall, the introduction of the QPIP program was associated with a clear pattern of reduced sex specialization among households, without a reduction in total time spent in childcare.

Why should we care?

Studies by the Families and Work Institute reveal that American men now report higher levels of work-family conflict than do women. And when Ellen Galinsky, President of the Institute, surveyed children of dual-earner parents about their views, she found that they were more likely to think they didn’t get enough time with their father than with their mother.

Getting more fathers access to family leave would be good for the men, good for their children — and, my research suggests, good for gender equity at work as well as at home. Maybe it’s time for an affirmative action program for dads when it comes to parental leave. The experience of Quebec suggests that it can work.

Originally posted 4/2/2015. 

You’re selfish. You’ll die alone. You’re not a real woman. As a woman who has opted out of parenthood, I’ve heard it all. In my new book released today, CHILDFREE BY CHOICE, I set the record straight, analyzing data from my interviews with 70 childfree women and men, others’ work, and my own experience. I investigate the history and current growing movement of adults choosing not to have kids, considering what this cultural shift means for our society, economy, environment, perceived gender roles, and legacies.

Today in the United States, one in six women will end her childbearing years without ever having given birth. Half of millennials don’t yet have children and it remains to be seen how many ever will. What at first glance appears to be the very personal question of whether to have kids has become a matter of public concern and political debate. We’ve seen the letters to advice columnists lamenting the pressure to give parents grandchildren, heard the cries of “You’ll regret it!” from well-meaning friends and relatives, and seen the name-calling (“Selfish!” “Stupid!” “Shallow!”) from observers online.

Despite the negative buzz surrounding them, 94 percent of childfree adults in my own study said they gave careful thought to their choice not to become parents. As Sarah, a childfree partnered psychiatrist in her 30s told me, “I actually think that most people who have children don’t even think about it, they just have them…most people just go for it and don’t give it much thought. Go for what’s next. ‘I got married, now I have to have kids.’ … I think there’s more thinking to decide to not have children.”

Further, while the stereotype tells us that all childfree people hate children, over a quarter of participants in my study chose careers – such as teaching, social work, and pediatrics – that involve work with children. As Susan, a childfree camp director in her 50s shared, “I had a lot of experience at being with children at various stages. And I enjoyed it, I loved it, but I said to myself, ‘There are way too many kids out there that don’t have someone to look after them and don’t have someone to be an advocate for them.’ And I felt that I could be that person.”

Other research shows that 80 percent of non-mothers play an active role in children’s lives. And when compared to parents, childfree people report higher marital satisfaction, lower rates of depression, and similar rates of civic engagement. In short, childfree people are happy, engaged singles and couples who have carved out meaningful lives for themselves. Understanding and supporting their choice means better outcomes for families, children, parents, and nonparents alike.

I explore these and other in my new book released today from Dutton.

Amy Blackstone is a professor in Sociology and the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine.  She is author of Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence (Dutton, 2019). Amy and her husband Lance blog at we’re {not} having a baby!.

Editor’s Note: This piece originally ran on 3/6/2018. Punishing Disease was just awarded the 2019 American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Sexualities Section Distinguished Book Award.

Trevor Hoppe is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and recently published the book Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness.  The book traces the rise and application of criminal laws used to prosecute people living with HIV in the United States, typically for failing to disclose their status to a sexual partner.  I recently interviewed him about his book.

AK: Besides HIV and related behavior that you focus on, have other sexual behaviors and diseases been criminalized in recent United States history, and are these laws disproportionately enforced among certain populations?

TH: The book traces the rise of HIV-specific criminal laws in the 1980s and 1990s, linking that shift towards criminalization to the broader war on crime and particularly the war on drugs. AIDS unfortunately coincided with a massive expansion of the carceral state through Ronald Reagan’s presidency and it was seized upon by evangelical conservatives as a harbinger of moral decline. That made for a unique and deeply punitive response to this epidemic that has no parallel in history or in the years that have followed. During World War II, many states did pass venereal disease statutes, mostly to target prostitutes who were viewed mistakenly as responsible for the spread of syphilis. However, those laws featured misdemeanor penalties and there’s no evidence I could find that that they were widely used.

Recently, states have been moving to expand their felony HIV-specific criminal laws to include other diseases, particularly Hepatitis C. To date, only a handful of states have done so and it’s not clear that they will be widely utilized by prosecutors, as that disease is spread primarily through the sharing of needles, and drug users are not especially likely to call the police to report a needle-sharing partner. By comparison, the sexual transmission aspect of HIV more readily lends itself to a criminal justice response, since the HIV-negative partner can more readily claim victimhood in a criminal courtroom.

AK: You found that lawyers and judges often had very little medical understanding of HIV and how it is transmitted, leading to legal arguments that were inaccurate, but compelling. Did these inaccuracies allow for anyone to appeal their convictions?

TH: As is the case in the criminal justice system more broadly, most defendants charged under these statutes plead guilty. Once you plead guilty, it’s difficult if not impossible to turn back and show cause for an appeal. Defendants take pleas to avoid the much harsher penalties that come with taking your case to trial. My analysis finds, for example, that male defendants at trial received an average prison sentence of 153 months versus an average of 77 months for male defendants who plead out. Further, there is no evidence that any defendant charged under a felony HIV-specific criminal law in the United States has ever been acquitted at trial. The only cases that do not result in conviction are the rare few that are dismissed, usually because the accuser does not show up to testify. In this context, appeals are few and far between and those that have proceeded are almost universally unsuccessful.

That said, there are many cases I encountered that would appear to a casual onlooker to be ripe for appeal—such as the case of a Michigan stripper convicted for giving a lap dance (the prosecutor claimed the prohibited sexual penetration involved the client’s nose). But in her case and countless others, defendants chose to plea.

AK: If someone does not know their HIV status at the time they expose somebody else, can they be prosecuted under these laws, and if not, do these laws then encourage avoiding HIV testing so that individuals can avoid legal issues? What would be a better policy that could more effectively encourage testing and disclosure of HIV to sexual partners?

TH: No. HIV-specific laws require that a person be aware of their HIV-status. Advocates often criticize these laws on the basis that they discourage HIV testing. I don’t think there’s good social science evidence to support that claim. Most people who are not currently living with HIV do not know that these laws exist. There are far stronger arguments for demanding legal reform. For example, these laws are extremely broad and can be used to prosecute harmless behaviors, such as spitting, biting, or in at least once case, even a lap dance. The crime is failing to disclose before any sexual contact, whether or not that contact posed a risk of transmission. To this point, less than 10 percent of cases involve an allegation that defendant transmitted the disease to their partner. This is a dangerous precedent. Should partners suffering from noncommunicable diseases, such as cancer, be required to disclose? No. We can obviously recognize that policy intervention as ludicrous. The only reason we can’t say the same for HIV laws is that our vision is clouded with stigma and, too often, obfuscated by ignorance. It is terrible policy to send people to prison for years or even decades for nothing more than causing a sexual partner to experience irrational and, in most cases, unwarranted psychological duress. The best science we have today says that people living with HIV who are on treatment and have a suppressed viral load cannot—cannot—transmit the disease. It’s time for most Americans to wake up and rethink everything they know about HIV. The disease has changed. The laws, unfortunately, have not.

Trevor Hoppe is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of Punishing Disease: HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness, published by University of California Press, and co-editor of The War on Sex, published by Duke University Press. Arielle Kuperberg is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and board member of the Council on Contemporary Families. Follow her on twitter at @ATKuperberg