There is a widely held belief that contraception is the responsibility of people who menstruate. In both everyday life and the research on family planning, people assigned male at birth, usually men, are rarely the focus, although (prospective) fathers can prove to be an exception. In response to this “shadowing” of men, recent research in public health has increasingly begun to center the perspectives of men (and boys), who want to be more active in contraception.
We wanted to know how men “develop a critical consciousness of (their) masculinity” and how that awareness shapes their attitudes toward family planning and contraception.
The men we interviewed all live in Germany. While not all identified within the gender binary, all were assigned male at birth and comfortable being referred to as men. In the interviews we saw a pattern of questioning what it means to be a “real” man. Topics included traditional gender roles, social expectations, the possible harms of these enacted expectations, and ways to redefine them by thinking and acting differently. All names here are pseudonyms.
Negative and Positive Role Models
Rejecting male role models —like the stereotypical “primitive soccer fan”—came up often. Many men spoke about emotionally distant fathers, especially when it came to expressing feelings. They shaped their own masculinities by rejecting these toxic traits and choosing instead to care for their own and their partners’ physical, emotional, and sexual wellbeing.
Some men found more inspiring role models in pop culture. Gerrit admired Mufasa from The Lion King as a strong, loving father figure. Friedrich, 48, looked up to Leonardo DiCaprio in the ’90s, describing him as a “counter-image to masculine gender norms” because of his soft features and non-muscular build. Many participants talked about the value of therapy and counselling, which helped Michael to understand his sexuality as fluid. He playfully challenged gender norms, through crossdressing and kissing other men in public spaces. A gay male friend showed him that deep, loving connections between men don’t have to involve sex or romance. Other participants emphasized their caregiving responsibilities—for children, partners, and other family members.Evolving to Wanting to be More Active
Most participants wanted to take a more active role when it came to contraception, although meanings of “active” differed widely. Several described how their views had changed over time. In the past, they hadn’t thought about contraception much at all, often because “it wasn’t their body.” Their stories and reflections were central to our study:Michael, for instance, shared:
“in relation to masculinity, I used to be cold and distanced like saying: ‘it [contraception] is
a woman’s job; you do you. I do not want anything to do with this. I am here to have fun.’
But now I am more like: ‘No, I also have responsibility, so we share responsibility.’ So, you
just empathize with another person and recognize that their desire or need is not to become
pregnant. So, I left behind this hard and rigid ideal of masculinity […]. [C]ontraception is
part of living healthily and living responsibly.’”
At the time of the interviews, none of the men had had a vasectomy but the topic came up frequently. Their reasons varied: some felt too young, some wanted to be in a stable relationship with someone who didn’t want children, and others simply didn’t know where to begin.Manuel talked about his involvement in a collective of men working for reproductive justice. His political and activist engagement showed how men can also take action outside of their relationships and sexual encounters. The group explored alternative ways to prevent pregnancies, like mild testicular heating, a method that temporarily reduces sperm count. These grassroots approaches offer promising directions for future research.
Being Critically Supportive
In our study, being critically supportive meant that men had strong opinions about contraceptive methods but still supported their partners’ decisions. Many were concerned about the negative side effects of the pill. Still, as Justin said, it was his girlfriend’s body and therefore her choice.
Justin described a time when he and his girlfriend tried to get the morning after pill, but the pharmacist refused to provide it. Even though they were both upset, Justin took the lead and insisted they go to another pharmacy, knowing the refusal was illegal.
Georg talked about his long-time partner’s gender transition. Because sterilization was required at the time to legally change gender in Germany, pregnancy was no longer a concern. He reflected:
“Yeah, that was exciting, because in my head I was never homosexual, but in the
end, in this context, I was kind of indirectly made homosexual. It does not really
matter to me, but to come to terms with this societal pressure… [was hard] So, that
was a moment where I thought to myself: ‘OK, this is a whole new challenge to my
identity.’”
What Needs to Change
Regardless of sex or gender, people need universal entry points to access to family planning and contraception services.
As the interviews showed, developing this kind of critical awareness requires emotional stability, curiosity, health literacy, time, and sacrifice (or at least compromise).” That’s why supporting men in gaining these resources should be part of their education. Critical supportiveness —especially from men who have sex with people who can get pregnant—is essential. I hope that this blog post encourages you–no matter your gender–to become (or stay) actively involved in conversations and decisions about contraception, especially if you’re having sex that could lead to pregnancy.
Ranita Ray is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico, where she holds an endowed chair. For 15 years, her research program has centered on youth, education, and gender and racial injustice. Ray is a 2019 National Academy of Education/Spencer fellow, as well as a 2018 Racial Democracy and Criminal Justice Network fellow. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation several times, including in 2018 when her team was awarded a large grant to study urban inequalities in Las Vegas. Slate, The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Las Vegas Review Journal, Las Vegas Sun, and the Las Vegas Weekly have featured Ray’s research and original writing. She is author of The Making of a Teenage Service Class, which won four prizes and is widely adopted for classroom use. In addition, Ray’s TED talk is often used by educators. And, Slow Violence was shortlisted for the 2024 Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize. You can find her on her website or on Instagram or Bluesky: @ranitaray1
AMW: In Slow Violence, you point to the ways school personnel including teachers often bully students in the form of racial harassment, anti-fat talk, gender based harassment and other forms of indifference and cruelty. How widespread is this and why isn’t there more conversation about this?
Cover: Slow Violence
RR: Honestly, when I first entered schools in Las Vegas, back in 2017, I had an entirely different vision for the book that eventually became about the slow violence our most marginalized children encounter behind closed classroom doors. I wanted to write about resource-deprived schools with no textbooks or running air conditioning, and their underpaid and overworked teachers.
All of the above is still true and these are stories you encounter every day. We all know about the racial and class achievement gap, about underfunded schools, and underpaid teachers. What I was astonished to find, and the untold story I want to expose, is the breadth and depth of everyday racial, gendered, anti-immigrant, anti-fat harassment 10-11-12-year old children faced inside the classroom daily. Often, this was under the pretext of discipline and order. For example, teachers harassed one 10-year-old Black boy for googling a picture of two people kissing—which in the case of white children is considered average curiosity as I discuss in the book. For years, teachers cast him as a predator and implied his family was despicable because he had googled this picture. Brown immigrant girls were asked to summon grit when their parents were deported, and a Black math pro was asked to summon grit when her baby sibling passed away. When these girls of color grieved, they were cast as worthless and harassed. On the contrary, when a teacher grieved her friend’s untimely death during the Vegas shooting, she was granted all the grace (of course, deserved in all cases).
Not only were these extremely common place inside the two schools and many classrooms I spent time inside, but they are commonplace across the nation’s schools. We often see media stories (for example, a teacher walked over the backs of Black students during a lesson on Slavery or teachers who dressed as the “Wall” or the beating of disabled children—I cover these in the book as well). Social media is also replete with these conversations. When I wrote a piece for Slate on this issue, I heard on social media from marginalized people who had similar experiences. When I lecture on the topic, often people come up to me after to discuss their own experiences or those of marginalized family members or friends.
There is a dearth of conversation on this because we are so focused on constructing teachers either as paragons of altruism or evil people invested in inculcating liberal values in our children. Both these conversations justify their meagre pay—you shouldn’t get paid if you indoctrinate children with the wrong values and you don’t need pay if you do it as altruistic higher calling. Teachers are people. They come to the classroom with their strengths and their dark sides. And children often fall prey to their everyday anger, their exhaustion, their racism. And we don’t talk about this—this slow violence tears down the spirit, political consciousness, and the love for learning in our children. I followed a group of children for three years and saw how the most enthusiastic scholars became back-of-the room sleepers by the end of the year—many had been torn down by their teachers for little things.
AMW: Your book introduces the concept of “slow violence” to describe the cumulative, often unnoticed harm inflicted on marginalized students through routine practices in schools. Could you elaborate on how this form of violence operates within daily classroom interactions and the systemic factors that perpetuate it?
RR: First, Slow Violence is not physical or sexual violence, but it is often subtle/hidden (as opposed to theatrical), and it accumulates into grave harm over time. I draw this concept from environmental scholars who use the term to indicate the destruction of our environment over time that has serious consequences for ecosystems as well as marginalized communities (for example oil spills).
Inside the classroom, school personnel including teachers, for example, often mocked children, made racist, misogynist, anti-fat, anti-trans comments or belittled immigrant parents. Children are always listening to us. Even our four-year-old is constantly picking up on things we say. So, imagine the 10-11-12-year olds who heard these directly addressed to them or sometimes as water-cooler talks; they internalized these. One teacher mocked an “Asian accent,” another called immigrants “dirty,” and still another publicly humiliated one child assumed to be on the Autism Disorder Spectrum. One teacher chided two brown boys attempting to draw a connection between Rosa Parks and Colin Kaepernick—dismissing their bourgeoning political consciousness. These things happened on the daily.
One of the systemic factors that perpetuates this is, of course, that teachers are overworked and underpaid a lot of the times BUT this should not preclude us from talking about the grave harm they cause and should not allow us to erase the experiences of our most vulnerable children. For example, some will say that police have a hard job hence let us overlook or justify the violence they perpetuate. But many of us have now acknowledged that we cannot do that!
Also, we need to acknowledge that schools are workplaces and in this workplace teachers, who are workers, have enormous amount of power over children. They have almost unbridled authority behind closed classroom doors and when these children are the most vulnerable, this power is exacerbated. Power is always vulnerable to exploitation—why have we assumed this won’t happen inside classrooms? And why have we assumed that children being mistreated by teachers inside classrooms—where they spend almost 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, most months of the year—won’t be impacted by this?
AMW: How might schools begin to undo these harmful narratives? What structural changes within teacher training and school administration do you believe are necessary to disrupt these patterns and create more equitable learning environments?
RR: First, I think it is imperative I acknowledge the strength and importance of teachers’ unions. By the way, I should mention that while teachers’ unions have historically leaned democratic, there was overwhelming support for Donald Trump and JD Vance among teachers in the 2024 election (majority of teachers under 40 wanted to vote for them). Teachers’ unions can advocate for teachers—for better pay and better working conditions.
You see, research now shows that most teachers don’t want the job. And my own research shows that most of them did the job as a placeholder. They had other dreams and ambitions, and this was a job with decent and stable pay, and benefits and retirement. Many felt stuck in a job they did not want and punched down on students and their communities. Students paid a heavy price.
Much like other existing research on sexual harassment trainings in workplaces, I also found that antiracist and other DEI trainings often caused teachers to become further hostile. For example, one white teacher became angry that “white culture” was not valued in the same way as other cultures given that she had to celebrate Native American Heritage Month in her classroom but there was no white history month. Some teachers even mobilized language they learned through trainings to cause more harm—they would say something racist and then forgive themselves by stating it was just their “implicit bias.”
We must, then, remain vigilant in how we envision and operationalize these teacher trainings. But before all else, we must begin by hearing this other story about the classroom that is almost nom-existent in the public discourse. We must acknowledge the harm little children are enduring behind closed classroom doors before we can actually do something about it. We must ask: how is a teaching force that overwhelming voted for Trump (which, as someone who has been inside schools for a while, did not surprise me) treating our children?
Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: Unexpected Lessons for Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd
William Hoynes is Professor of Sociology on the Jane Baker Nord ’42 Chair in Media Studies at Vassar College. Hoynes served as Vassar’s Dean of the Faculty and Chief Academic Officer from 2019 to 2024, and previously served as Chair of the Sociology Department and Director of both the American Studies Program and the Media Studies Program. Hoynes is a cultural sociologist whose research explores contemporary media and culture in the United States, with a focus on professional journalism, the structure of the media industry, consumer culture, youth sports, and practices of democratic citizenship. His newest book, More Than Just a Game: How the Youth Sports Industry is Changing the Way We Parent and What to Do About It, was published by Central Recovery Press. You can find out more about William’s work on his website and his author’s page. You can follow him on Twitter @wihoynes.
Here, I ask them about their new book, More Than a Game, which is out now from Central Recovery Press.
AMW:Your book argues that the youth sports industry often pulls families into a system that works against their values, even when they’re trying to do what’s best for their kids. What structural or cultural forces make it so hard for parents to resist the pull of “keeping up” in this competitive landscape?
Cover of More Than a Game
CB & WH: Over the past decade or so, the assumptions that guide parents as they make decisions about their children’s extra-curricular activities have been upended. In many locations, playing for a community-based sports team is no longer considered adequate—even for many parents who consider their child to be an “average” athlete. Recreational leagues with limited seasons are facing new challenges. The youth sports industry has evolved into a complex system with multiple layers and shifting expectations, and most parents are only vaguely aware of what’s expected of them or their children. In this environment, we learned that many parents are struggling to maintain a sense of equilibrium. The growing emphasis on competitive success, which is often tied to the goal of playing on an elite travel team and ultimately earning a college scholarship, has increased pressure to begin high-intensity training for very young athletes, often under age 10.
The youth sports industry has become big business, and its influence on family decision-making has intensified. As we observe in More Than Just a Game, parents often sign their children up for travel teams in response to a kind of community peer pressure rather than thoughtful planning. Many of the adults we interviewed did not initially intend to make sports such a central component of their children’s lives. Their commitments to youth sports escalated rapidly, often becoming a central activity dominating their child’s (and family) schedule, and their perspective shifted to a focus on nurturing their child’sburgeoning athletic “career.”
In this context, parents must grapple with thorny questions related their children’s social, ethical, and physical development: How much stress should they place on sports? Should they push their children to set ambitious goals for themselves, or provide their children with the space to make those decisions for themselves? What sacrifices are worth making if they increase a young athlete’s chances of achieving excellence?
A generation ago, most parents did not feel compelled to consider questions like these until their children were in high school. Today, in the context of the recent expansion and commercialization of youth sports, parents may feel compelled to start plotting their children’s sports careers before they finish elementary school. As we learned, the pressure to specialize, training year-round in one sport and eschewing other athletic activities, can be difficult to resist, especially for adults whose understanding of youth sports is limited.
AMW: Your research shows how youth sports participation can stretch families financially, logistically, and emotionally. In your research, what patterns emerged about how these pressures vary by class or community? And how do those patterns deepen inequality?
CB & WH: The parents we interviewed typically began with the assumption that the most talented and hardworking athletes would gain the rewards they deserve, but immersion in the youth sports world led many parents to question this understanding. That’s because it has become common for families with money and time to push their children ahead of young athletes who must rely solely on their athletic talent to compete. In many locations, playing in a local recreational league or earning a spot on a school team is no longer considered enough. Many parents of pre-teens now feel obligated to sign up their kids for activities designed to accelerate their athletic development—and attract the attention of coaches and scouts. That could involve playing for an elite travel club or signing up to train with an expensive private coach.
For some parents, spending large sums of money on their children’s extra-curricular activities is not a major concern, even when the cost is a bit of a stretch on their family budget. Many of the people we interviewed for our research believed that the benefits their kids derived from elite training justified the costs. They were happy to invest in their children’s athletic development. Of course, not all families can afford to sign their children up to play for privately-run teams or hire a private skills coach. Still, no matter how much parents would like to support their children’s athletic careers, the increasing costs associated with travel sports prevent many from even considering that option.
Today, rates of sports participation are tightly linked with family income. Elite teams allow children of any background to try out. Yet many families lack the resources or knowledge to take advantage of those opportunities. Joining a travel team is simply too expensive or places too many demands on families to be a realistic option. As we might expect, race and class are often linked when it comes to youth sports. Children who are poor, or from Black or Hispanic households, are less likely to participate in organized sports than middle class white kids. A number of factors are responsible for the disparities. The most obvious is affordability. Many parents do not have the funds to finance their children’s athletic careers, especially as the expectations, demands, and costs continue to escalate. For many families, the growth in private club-based sports and the decline in community-based programs has reduced the options available to their children. Time constraints, limited access to athletic facilities, and parental priorities can also make it difficult for lower-income children to participate in sports, which can limit the opportunity for children from marginalized backgrounds to have the full range of youth sports experiences and live up to their athletic potential.
AMW: You write about the tension between letting kids play for fun and the adult-driven intensity of competitive youth sports. What does your book suggest parents should look for—or actively push back on—if they want to support their child’s development without feeding into the “win at all costs” culture?
CB & WH: We heard from many parents that managing their children’s athletic activities was complicated and stressful. Popular media images, pervasive consumerism, stories circulating on social media all convey to parents the notion that they should do whatever they can to make sure their children are exceptional.
For adults seeking to mitigate the intensity of youth sports, a central concern is that youth sports have come to imitate professional sports in a way that narrows the experience for young players. They hope to open a window for young children to enjoy the experience of playing sports, being part of a team, and learning new skills before a culture of competition shifts the attention of players and parents alike to winning and achievement.
The world of youth sports contains a richness that is rarely recognized: emphasizing competition as well as community, celebrating both accomplishment and connection, recognizing both the joy of victory and resilience in the face of failure. We learned that a significant portion of parents see something more than a culture of competition in youth sports: a road to friendship and social connection, experiencing the joy of teamwork, physical activity that can be both healthy and fun, the opportunity to learn about one’s own body, and a powerful arena for young people to develop resilience. While an overemphasis on competition and achievement can overshadow other ways of experiencing youth sports, it is important to recognize the range of possibilities that often hover just below the surface of our shared conversations about what parents and children might find within the world of youth sports.
For this reason, we encourage parents to operate under the assumption that their child can lead very rewarding lives without letting sports dominate their daily lives. Rather than let sports dreams guide the decisions they make, parents could view athletic accomplishment as one of many possible indications of success. If their child ends up playing for a highly ranked college softball team, that will be worth celebrating, but she might find just as much personal satisfaction if she decides to choose a college based on her academic goals, and play softball at the intramural level. We interviewed many college students who played sports competitively as adolescents but decided to focus on other activities in college; none of those former athletes regretted that decision. Not a single one.
Our research suggests that the essential ingredient in this endeavor is balance. Rather than offer a formula that can be followed to ensure a young athlete success or happiness, we encourage parents to make decisions that create balance in their children’s lives. Kids who participate in a variety of activities, interact with all sorts of people, and have a chance to relax and decompress on a regular basis are more likely to thrive. The specific activities that children participate in will vary according to individual interests—and may change over time. Encouraging kids to sample different pursuits and recognizing that failure is an inevitable part of growing up will help create balance in the lives of young athletes and their families. Children who take part in a variety of activities are more likely to bounce back from defeat than those whose lives are dominated by a single interest.
The most well-adjusted athletes we observed invested time and energy in sports but also participated in other extra-curricular activities. Parents of these well-rounded young people resisted pressure to make decisions based on the assumption that their children would be recognized for their athletic accomplishment and receive offers to play at the college level. Leading balanced lives made them aware of the multitude of opportunities, both on and off the athletic field, that could bring their children satisfaction in the future.
Anna Strhan, co-author Growing up Godless. Photo credit Racheal Shillitoe
Anna Strhan is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Sociology at the University of York (UK), where she leads the Culture, Values, and Practices Research Cluster. She also co-leads the Social Studies of Ethics, Morality and Values Network. Her research explores the culture and politics of religion, childhood, parenting, and education. She is the author of a number of books, and her work has appeared in various media outlets, including The Guardian and BBC Radio 4. You can find her on BlueSky @annastrhan.bsky.social or on her website.
Rachel Shillitoe, co-author of Growing up Godless. Photo credit Anna Strhan.
Rachael Shillitoe is a sociologist and a senior social scientist in the civil service. She was previously a research fellow at the Universities of Birmingham and York (UK). Her research interests focus on the formation of beliefs and values across generations. She is the author of Negotiating Religion and Non-Religion in Childhood with Palgrave Macmillan.
AMW: Your research highlights how non-religious children still engage with questions of meaning and morality. What were some of the most striking ways these children made sense of such big ideas outside of religious frameworks?
AS & RS: We were working with children aged 7 – 10 years old, and one of the most striking things was how reflective they were in talking about big questions! They were, in fact, highly articulate and thoughtful in discussing what made life meaningful to them, as well as about their views about the origins of the universe, their thoughts on the existence of God and other supernatural phenomena, life after death, ideas of morality, and how their beliefs related to the views of their parents, siblings, grandparents, friends and peers.
Several ways that the children were making existential meaning in their lives were especially striking. Firstly, when we asked the children about what was important and mattered in their lives, they all spoke about relationships: family, friends, and pets. And when they spoke about particular objects – for instance, special toys – they talked about how these were special to them because they had been given by a particular family member or were something that their friendship group had a shared love for, rather than being about consumerism. Secondly, many spoke about how they were sceptical about belief in God because they felt that the ideas of God they had encountered were at odds with their own scientific worldview – and they often elaborated on how they believed in the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution. However, despite their acceptance of science, many of them had fun, playful beliefs in magical figures like unicorns, dragons, or ghosts, and again, linked these to their friendships – commenting that it was fun to talk about these things with their friends. Thirdly, many also spoke about how animals and the natural world were important to them – indeed, many mentioned that they admired figures like David Attenborough or Steve Irwin who had inspired their love of nature.
Across all these ideas, it was striking that the children had a sense of meaning and purpose as based in this world, rather than some heavenly, transcendent realm. The decline of religion has often been portrayed as leading to a loss of meaning and enchantment. But our book shows that this non-religious world wasn’t disenchanted or meaningless for these children – it was rather, a site of fullness and wonder. Indeed, several said that they didn’t have any need for religion, because the needs that religion might fulfil were for them being met in other ways, for instance, through their sense of belonging with friends and family.
In terms of morality, a really prominent issue for the children was equality. They really cared about fairness, and many spoke about how important it was to treat others equally and to respect differences in relation to religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. In fact, while their parents were often quite critical of religion, very few children expressed moral critiques of religion and instead emphasized the importance of respecting religious diversity. They also often mentioned the importance of trying to understand others’ viewpoints and experiences, and the importance of not judging. For instance, when discussing whether a particular action was wrong, they felt it was important to try and understand the reasons why the person had acted in that way.
AMW: The book challenges the assumption that secular upbringings are neutral or empty of tradition. What patterns did you observe in how non-religious families construct and pass down values or rituals?
AS & RS: A core value that all the parents emphasized was autonomy and the importance of supporting their children’s own worldview choice. Although a few expressed a sense of discomfort about the idea that their children might, say, become a conservative evangelical, by and large, they generally spoke much more about how they wanted their children to have freedom and self-confidence to make their own choices in life.
In terms of patterns across generations, it was striking that some parents spoke about how they’d experienced religion as stifling or undermining freedom in their own upbringings, and they saw their own desire to ensure their children’s sense of freedom and authenticity as a reaction against that. In the book, we look at how the parents’ emphasis on enabling the children’s freedom in relation to religion is part of a broader cultural change. This shift is something the cultural theorist Raymond Williams called ‘the long democratic revolution’, in which ideas of choice and voice have been extended to previously more marginalized groups of people. And we argue that this includes children. This is part of a long-term process in which ideas of individual freedom and rights have been ‘made official’ in things like international treaties, and professional ethics codes, and these have also infused parenting and educational cultures with ideas of respectful parenting and child-centred education. All of this means that the children are growing up with a strong sense of their own rights and freedoms, as well as those of others.
The question of rituals is an interesting one. Because historically, rituals have often been most clearly linked to religious institutions, there’s quite a strong narrative in social theory about the decline of rituals. But actually, all the families still celebrated things like Christmas, Easter, Eid, or Hanukkah – depending on their religious heritage. However, they mostly did not see the meaningsof these festivals as linked to religion, even if for some of the families, they might go to church, for instance, at Christmas. Instead, they spoke about these rituals as about celebrating or honouring family, caring for others, or creating a sense of childhood magic.
Some parents described Christmas and Easter as meaningful in relation to pre-Christian seasonal rituals, for instance, pagan midwinter festivals. Some families also created new rituals to mark important life events – for instance, one family held placenta-burying rituals in their allotment and garden, with a plum tree and a rose bush planted to mark their daughters’ births. Birthdays and Halloween were, of course, also important for the families too.
Besides these annual, seasonal or lifecycle rituals, more regular ritual practices varied quite a bit between families. A few engaged with things like meditation and mindfulness together, while others spoke about the importance of getting out into nature together regularly at the weekend – for instance, a walk by the seaside. Some also spoke about the importance of watching nature documentaries on TV together. Although not exactly a ritual, the weekly routine of watching a programme like Blue Planet or Planet Earth together on a Sunday – evoking a sense of awe and wonder in the natural world – was something that several parents spoke about as an important way they were encouraging their children to care about the planet.
But as well as rituals, the parents were shaping the children’s values in more implicit ways – through what they signalled to children were things of interest and importance, the things that are worth their attention. So, what they talked about with their children and how they talked about it – and what they didn’t talk about – influenced what the children were coming to value for themselves. And here, in relation to religion, the fact that the parents generally didn’t talk much about religion with their children meant that the children were picking up the idea that religion wasn’t something that was especially important to them.
AMW: In documenting the everyday lives of non-religious children, what did your findings reveal about how schools shape—or sometimes clash with—their developing worldviews?
AS & RS: Many children we spoke to were growing up in homes where there was relatively little engagement with religion. For these children, it was therefore actually in schools that they first really encountered forms of religion – for instance, through classmates who were religious or through learning about religion – and it was through these encounters that they began to reflect on their own stances in relation to religion, and to think of themselves as non-religious. But schools and friendships both also played an important role in shaping the children’s sense of what mattered to them and what they felt was significant or interesting. So, the fact that the schools prioritized teaching about maths and science and tried to make these lessons fun (with games-based learning, for instance) meant that many children spoke about liking science or maths, and seeing these as things that mattered in life. One child, for instance, said ‘almost everything involves maths’, while others said they wanted to be scientists when they grew up.
But as well these ways of thinking about knowledge, the schools were – like the parents – strongly reinforcing ideas of individuals’ rights and freedoms, and principles of equality. Indeed, the value of ‘respect’ was a core value at each of the schools, and the children took it for granted that this was just a basic principle of how you should treat others – even if they didn’t always do so in practice.
We didn’t find very strong clashes between the children and the schools, although many of them did find some aspects of school boring (including, often, religious education lessons). But the children were sometimes critical of classmates who expressed beliefs that were at odds with their own more pluralist stances – for instance, one child criticized a conservative Christian classmate who had said that another child’s Muslim beliefs were wrong.
In general, we found that the schools and the parents were encouraging the same kind of broadly liberal values. What’s interesting here is that these values are often seen as taken-for-granted and something you just figure out for yourself, autonomously. But our book shows how, actually, they are being encouraged by wider institutions – such as schools – and other cultural resources and traditions, linking with recent work by Galen Watts about how a liberal imaginary is often seen as intuitive, but in reality it is shaped by cultural structures and institutions. In our book, we call this a broadly ‘humanist’ culture – which emphasizes the agency, achievements and significance of humans – even though most of the parents and children wouldn’t have necessarily called themselves humanist.
Overall, we suggest that rather than just thinking of what is happening here as the decline of institutional Christianity, it’s important to pay attention to the question of what these children are becoming and what they are learning to value, and how this is being fostered through particular traditions, institutions, and everyday practices.
When same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the United States in 2015, it was heralded as a monumental victory in the long struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. For many, this legal shift symbolized full citizenship—access not only to tax benefits and hospital visitation rights, but also to social legitimacy and recognition. However, nearly a decade later, we’re still left with important questions: Do queer people want to get married? And perhaps more importantly—why, or why not?
Despite growing acceptance and legal recognition, scholarly work about marriage has often overlooked the voices of LGBTQ+ young adults, many of them who also self-identify as queer. Much of the research predates 2015. More recent work has primarily focused on legal debates surrounding same-sex marriage, demographic trends, or public sentiment toward the legalization of same-sex marriage. Less attention has been given to the personal narratives and desires of queer individuals—especially queer women.
In a recent study, I interviewed 36 college-educated women of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds who also self-identified as queer. I asked about their desires—or lack thereof—for marriage in a time when it is legally possible, yet still politically and socially complicated. I find that most women in this sample want to marry someday, but a relevant portion are ambivalent or reject marriage. I argue that the reasons they provide for their attitudes toward marriage demonstrate that sexual minorities are not fully accepted in American society, even though they can now be included in one of the most exclusive institutions in the US.
First, most of the queer women in this sample express a desire to marry someday. Additionally, queer women of color are more likely to desire marriage than their white counterparts. Interestingly, queer women of color are more likely to desire marriage than their white counterparts—representing the most notable racial and ethnic difference in the study. Among queer women who desired marriage, the meaning of marriage often extends beyond personal fulfillment. The women recognized that marriage made them eligible for the over 1000 rights, rewards, and privileges that are exclusive to married individuals. More importantly, however, they also see it as an opportunity to assert their equality and claim space within a society that has historically marginalized their relationships. Annabelle, a 24-year-old white woman, explained that she wants to get married because her marriage would symbolize the triumph of the legalization of same-sex marriage. “I think that I would want to be legally married as opposed to just in a committed relationship, because it was such a triumph when gay marriage was passed into law. I want to celebrate that by being married.
Women who want to be married also see marriage not only as an opportunity to resist traditional, heteronormative norms about marriage, but also to queer marriage itself. For them, the desire to queer marriage is intimately connected to the desire to be married. Stella, a 27-year-old Middle Eastern woman, stated, “I think that while marriage is a legal arrangement that is traditionally understood to imply exclusivity, couples can decide for themselves, under mutual terms, what that exclusivity extends to. Being part of the queer community has definitely normalized this concept for me. I’ve had far more friends in queer relationships opt for an open long-term partnership…Seeing that polyamory can be implemented successfully, peacefully, and happily in a variety of forms has definitely empowered me to feel more comfortable breaking from the more traditional, monogamous model.” Additionally, as Stella and other women mention, being members of a community where married queer couples are practicing alternative forms of romantic partnership gives them the confidence and support to challenge heteronormativity and homonormativity in their future marital relationships. It also makes marriage even more appealing to them. While debates persist about whether the institution of marriage inherently conflicts with the goals of queerness, the desires these women express—for marriage as both a declaration of humanity and a site of resistance—demonstrate that queering marriage can be a way to resist homophobic structures without compromising deeply held personal values.
A significant, but smaller, portion of the sample expressed ambivalence about or resistance to marriage. These women cite serious reservations about participating in an institution that has historically perpetuated inequality, particularly against women and queer people. They also question the state’s outsized role in a deeply personal decision and highlight the financial burdens associated with modern weddings. At the same time, they overwhelmingly acknowledge that marriage confers class privilege, which could maintain or elevate their current social standing. Hope, a 30-year-old white woman, reflects on the class advantages of marriage even though she is unsure about being married in the future. “There is the one situation where I’m okay with that [being called a wife] actually…if it’s gonna gain you capital. Let’s say I do get married to an attorney or something. They’re at posh networking dinners. This is kind of your class power, for someone to say, ‘I have a wife. This my wife.’ There is a kind of power in that.” Hope’s insight is particularly striking because she points out that the class power marriage can confer is often rooted in the inferior status traditionally associated with the “wife” role. Her comment encapsulates the ambivalence that many queer women feel: desiring the social capital of marriage while being critical of its embedded inequalities.
Some women in the sample also expressed concerns about the legal precarity of same-sex marriage. Given the 2024 presidential election of Donald Trump and the rightward turn of the United States Supreme Court, they fear that same-sex marriage may not remain legal in the future. Furthermore, their ambivalence to marriage allows them to resist gender inequality and heteronormativity in ways that are more in line with queerness. Kamilah, a 27-year-old white woman explained, “I know I would like a long-term relationship; and marriage offers security and benefits that cohabitation does not…the current political landscape— if I ended up in a queer relationship, would marriage even be an option?” It is difficult to desire an institution whose legality for queer people feels uncertain. For some, this precarity fuels skepticism. For others, it becomes another reason to resist gender inequality and heteronormativity through non-marital forms of commitment more aligned with queer values.
In conclusion, whether desiring marriage, feeling ambivalent about it, or rejecting it altogether, the queer women in this study articulate complex reasons for their perspectives. Their reflections suggest that the legalization of same-sex marriage has not erased the structural inequalities that LGBTQ+ people face. They also demonstrate that while the granting of civil rights to marginalized groups is essential, it is not sufficient. More must be done to dismantle the systems and institutions that disproportionately privilege married and heterosexual individuals.
Sarah Adeyinka-Skoldis an assistant professor in the Sociology department at Loyola Marymount University. She can be reached at sarah.adeyinka-skold@lmu.edu.
Anna Kirkland has been studying law, health, and discrimination for twenty-five years. She is a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan and the author of multiple books and articles, many available for download on her website. Here, I ask her about her new book, Health Care Civil Rights: How Discrimination Law Fails Patients, which is out now from University of California Press and available free and open access. You can follow her on Bluesky @annakirkland.bsky.social
Cover Health Care Civil Rights
AMW: You argue that civil rights law in health care is “set up to fail.” Can you unpack what structural features of the U.S. health care system most undermine the effectiveness of civil rights protections, especially for trans patients?
AK: One way to think about this problem is through both push and pull – that is, what other operations and incentives in U.S. healthcare pull towards something else and what barriers and outright hostilities push rights away? The pulling incentives in healthcare that I focus on are patient safety and patient experience, and the ways laws incentivize those priorities through funding and accreditation. Now, it’s good to care about those things, but that’s not the same as thinking through how healthcare systems exclude, ignore, devalue, and harass trans patients in ways that go far beyond a patient experience or even a quality-of-care problem. But it also means that hospital administrators, for example, are doing a lot of things that seem like they might help but actually do not (issuing fake apologies but not fixing anything). And then they don’t see what they’re missing because they’re doing what is required. The push away from rights protections comes from many places. Catholic healthcare systems are allowed to refuse whole categories of care while taking public dollars. A right wing social and legal movement has installed very conservative judges throughout our courts and set up cases to block extensions of rights to trans people. The very structure of our government (every state gets 2 Senators regardless of population, for example) means that our courts have been able to become much more conservative than the median voter, for example, and we’re stuck with it. In addition, our healthcare system is a massive public-private partnership with insurance carriers and businesses and our federal civil rights bureaucracy has always been underfunded deliberately. So there aren’t many investigations and insurers are allowed to have their own rules about what they do and don’t cover. When there is regulation of these things, enforcement options are either weak or non-existent.
AMW: One of the most striking arguments in your book is that insurance companies—not courts or doctors—often end up deciding which civil rights matter. How did we get here, and what does that reveal about the political economy of health care?
AK: Most working age adults have employer-sponsored health insurance through their jobs. Trans people are more likely to be on public programs like Medicaid, but even so, most trans people have employer-based insurance, too. We got here for lots of reasons, but the main ones are that employer-sponsored health plans served a lot of interests historically, like presenting a group of people who were an organized set but not for any reasons related to their health but rather because of their jobs. Giving benefits instead of wages has also been a nice thing for employers to offer, especially when costs were lower. Another big reason is that doctors have opposed any kind of national health insurance alternative that would take away some of their independence. Once the employer-based system is in place and national health insurance efforts failed (and I mean back in the Truman administration), it’s very hard to change. Health care as an employee benefit managed by insurance carriers means that the care you get from your doctor is mediated by what your insurer will pay for. Insurers use sophisticated business practices combined with medical knowledge to say what’s medically necessary and to manage our usage of our health insurance. Laws regulate this, but in a federalist system that is fragmented. State insurance laws have some say, but national laws intervene over them and sometimes make it hard for states to protect rights or innovate. So you have all these layers of control: the corporate insurance carrier, your employer, state laws, and federal laws. These entities are very sophisticated, but the patient and the doctor often know very little about insurance even though people pay $9,000 as an individual or $25,000 for a family per year for it. Consider the alternative: we could have a national health plan and it could say what care is required for health equity. We would have to organize politically to say what that should be, and we should have a conception of rights, constitutional and statutory, that protect people even when their care is costly or politically unpopular. We don’t have any of that in place right now, and where we sort of have it, it is fragmented, privately determined, or undercut.
AMW: Many readers may assume that antidiscrimination law is a solid safeguard for vulnerable patients. What do you most want the public—and policymakers—to understand about the limits of current civil rights frameworks in medical settings?
AK: The main limitation is that there is no real enforcement mechanism for health care civil rights. The setting in which you may encounter discrimination has been subject to wildly shifting rules between administrations, and they may not be very well informed at all about your needs or their obligations. There is a structure in place to respond to your complaints, and if you feel comfortable, you should use it because they don’t want you to give them poor survey ratings. It may be a useless process, but you might find someone who cares who can help you. If you work for an employer that self-insures for your health benefits, you should consider lobbying them to improve coverage for things you need. Employers have been somewhat responsive to LGBT employees, employees with infertility, and others who want expanded benefits. They can change the benefits because they design them. Engage at multiple policy levels, from your own workplace to state civil rights boards to professional groups to national advocacy. Often when one area is hostile, others are more hospitable.
Corey Moss-Pech is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida State University. His research focuses on the relationship between higher education and labor markets to better understand stratification and social mobility outcomes. His scholarship places particular emphasis on gender inequality and its intersection with race and class. Corey has published in Sociology of Education, Social Forces, Qualitative Sociology, the Washington Post and other outlets. His first book, Major Trade-Offs: The Surprising Truths about College Majors and Entry-level Jobs, is out now from University of Chicago Press. You can find him on X @CoreyPech, Bluesky cmpech.bsky.social or learn more on his website https://coreymosspech.com/ Here, I interview him about his book.
Cover of Major Trade-Offs
AMW: Your book highlights how liberal arts majors often end up using their degree skills more directly than their peers in so-called “practical” majors, yet they receive less institutional support and lower pay and receive cultural messages that devalue their degrees. What does this suggest about how we define success and value in higher education vis-a-vis the job market? And how does this reproduce inequality across fields of study?
CMP: Understandably, there’s a lot of discourse—both in public commentary and among higher education practitioners—about the return on investment (ROI) of a college degree. When we think about the value of a degree, we often focus on whether it pays off financially. This makes sense. College has become significantly more expensive, public funding for higher education has declined, many students take on substantial debt to attend college, and labor markets have become more uncertain and unstable. So, it’s reasonable for people to wonder whether their degree will ultimately pay off.
As a result of these concerns, many colleges have placed greater emphasis on so-called “practical arts” majors—fields of study directly tied to specific occupations. For example, engineering is both a college major and a job title. From a narrow ROI perspective, these practical majors do tend to yield higher short-term earnings than liberal arts majors. But this framing undervalues other important aspects of people’s work experiences—such as the opportunity to use their skills and find meaning in their jobs.
Popular narratives often assume that high-paying jobs are also the most skilled. Think of engineers designing robots, writing code, and developing algorithms—work that’s seen as both in-demand and skill-intensive. But that assumption doesn’t always hold true. In my research, as discussed in my book, I found that liberal arts graduates are actually more likely to report using their skills in their entry-level jobs. So, if we think about the value of a degree in terms of doing interesting, skill-intensive work, not just short-term earnings, we see real advantages in liberal arts education.
In fact, liberal arts graduates tend to catch up in earnings over time. They’re not handicapping themselves in the long term. This matters especially when we consider who is choosing which majors. Students aren’t randomly assigned to fields of study. Many college majors are highly gendered, and liberal arts disciplines—which are often devalued in the labor market—are disproportionately chosen by women, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and people of color.
This creates a double devaluation: the majors themselves are seen as less economically valuable, and so are the students who pursue them. As a society, we need to recognize that liberal arts degrees provide critical skills that are in demand—even if they’re not immediately rewarded with high salaries. If we want to promote equity among college graduates, we must acknowledge that all degree fields impart a mix of practical and general skills. It’s not just students in practical majors who go on to use those skills in the labor market—liberal arts graduates do too, and commentators often miss this essential truth about the college-to-work transition.
AMW: Your book challenges the assumption that a college degree guarantees meaningful or intellectually engaging work. How does this mismatch between degree field, employment conditions, and job content affect how young adults think about work, identity, and purpose after graduation?
CMP: That’s a great question—and an interesting one—because you’re right: there’s a real disconnect between people’s employment conditions and the actual content of their jobs. What I found in my research is that many graduates from practical majors, particularly in business and engineering, often land high-paying jobs that are overwhelmingly clerical in nature. These positions frequently involve routine tasks like data entry or sending emails, and many of the people I interviewed were unhappy in those roles.
One example I write about in my book is a student named Courtney, who graduated with a business degree and started working for a greeting card company. On paper, it looked like a solid job. But in reality, 90% of her day was spent emailing salespeople in the field to check if they had any problems. The role required very few of her actual skills—and not much of her time, either. In the introduction of the book, I talk about how, on a good day, Courtney had maybe two hours of work. She’d go on long lunches, come back to no emails, and her bosses wouldn’t even notice she was gone. She was extremely dissatisfied with the lack of challenge and meaning in her job.
That said, liberal arts graduates didn’t always have it easy either. Many found roles where they could use their skills, but those jobs were often low-paid, unstable, or short-term. Another example from my book is Jennifer, who moved to New York City to work for a social media firm. She enjoyed the creative writing aspect of the job and found the media work fulfilling. But the pay was low, and there was no room for advancement.
So yes, it’s a real struggle for graduates to find work that is both meaningful and well-compensated. Some do manage to get both—and I wish I had the secret formula for how that happens—but I don’t. At the end of the day, students face real choices. They can pursue high-paying, stable jobs that often end up being clerical and corporate in nature. Or they can look for work that feels meaningful and makes use of their skills, even if it pays less and offers fewer opportunities for advancement.
Ultimately, most people want to feel like they’re using their skills. And I think employers could do a much better job at actually utilizing the full range of talents their employees bring to the table. For young people, it’s important to understand this trade-off. If you go for a more practical, so-called “safe” major, you might end up in a job that’s financially stable but not very intellectually engaging. If you follow a liberal arts path, you might find the work more fulfilling but less financially secure.
Everyone’s definition of purpose is different, and people need to choose what’s right for them. One of my favorite examples is a graduate I call Vance in the book. He worked at an African American community center, earning just $23,000 a year—the lowest salary among full-time workers in my study. But he loved what he did. He believed in the center’s mission and found the work genuinely interesting. Still, like many others in similar situations—including a number of English majors—he eventually left the role to pursue something with more stability.
So yes, it’s a tough balance. But I hope my book gives students and graduates a clearer, more informed perspective as they navigate these decisions. It’s not just about choosing a major—it’s about figuring out what you want out of your work and career.
AMW: Given your findings, how should parents, educators, and policymakers rethink the advice they give students choosing college majors?
CMP: I think it’s important to start with the scope conditions of my book. My research focused on a large Midwestern public research university—one that isn’t particularly selective or what people might consider “elite.” This context matters. If you’re at a highly elite institution, like Princeton, where they only offer liberal arts majors, then major choice might not have much of an impact on long-term outcomes. On the other end of the spectrum, if you attend a low-income serving, open-access institution, you might also see less variation in outcomes by major. But for this broad middle—large research universities that aim to serve multiple constituencies and offer a wide range of programs—the trade-offs are more pronounced.
For students at these kinds of institutions, I would say: major in something you find interesting but go in with your eyes open. One of the key things my book helps clarify is the trade-off many students face—between high-paying but often clerical work, and lower-paid but more meaningful or interesting work. Understanding that trade-off can help students make more informed choices.
It’s also important to note that the gaps between majors are the biggest early in graduates’ careers. Over time, liberal arts students tend to make up ground. What my book really shows, though, is that liberal arts graduates often start using their major-specific skills right away in the workforce, something that’s frequently overlooked.
There’s often a tendency—even among liberal arts advocates—to talk about college as either preparation for the labor market or as a place for personal and intellectual growth, as though those two goals are mutually exclusive. My book challenges that idea. It actually defends the liberal arts using the very criteria that are usually used to justify practical majors: workforce readiness. Liberal arts graduates do have market-relevant skills immediately after graduation. And that’s something parents, educators, and policymakers should recognize.
So, while practical majors do offer certain advantages, it’s not always because of the specific skills they teach. A lot of their benefits come from things like institutional support, connections with employers, and broader cultural ideas about what types of knowledge are seen as “useful.” As I discussed earlier, these forces shape how we value different fields of study.
In the end, at these large, comprehensive universities that offer a wide range of majors, students should feel empowered to study what interests them. And we, as a society, should invest more in the liberal arts and be less dismissive of their application to the workforce.
“I’m asexual bisexual,” Scott, 37, told me in 2018 as we sat in the Southern California sun.
That summer I was collecting interviews for a project on gay, bisexual, and queer men’s relationships with masculinity. Frankly, Scott’s description of his sexuality baffled me. How could someone be both asexual and bisexual?
It wasn’t until years later when my research focus turned fully toward asexuality that I began to understand: Scott, like many other people under the asexuality umbrella, was drawing on a concept of sexuality often unacknowledged outside of asexual circles. Scott later clarified that his sexual attraction was asexually oriented while his romantic attraction was bisexually oriented. In this explanation, Scott, like many others under the asexuality umbrella, was drawing on the idea of split attraction.
Although this idea is common in asexual spaces, there is (to my knowledge) no research specifically on the split attraction model… until now.
As an asexuality studies scholar, I cannot avoid encountering the idea of split attraction. Although hardly explored in academic literature, the concept of split attraction is prevalent in asexual communities.
Split attraction models frame various types of attractions/orientations (e.g., sexual, romantic, platonic, sensual, and esthetic)as operating separately from one another. They might “match” (i.e., someone might be romantically and sexually attracted/oriented exclusively to women) or they might not (i.e., someone might be romantically attracted/oriented to women but sexually attracted/oriented to men).
This conception of split orientation stands in contrast to prevailing understandings of orientation. As queer theorist Eve Sedgwick explains, “the common sense of our time presents [sexual identity] as a unitary category” in which one’s sexual and emotional feelings, behaviors, and affiliations should all align. Under this normative framework, which operates both in the heteronormative and queer worlds, knowing someone’s sexual identity also leads us to assume with whom they prefer to fall in love, cohabit, procreate, and form cultural and political communities.
Although social scientists have largely embraced the idea that sexuality is multifaceted—composed of behavior, desire, and identity—far less attention has been paid to how desire and identity can themselves be broken into differentiated parts.
In my research, I draw on interviews with 77 individuals who identify under the asexuality umbrella to define and describe frameworks of split attraction/orientation. I also put my findings and the scholarly literature related to this topic into conversation with community theorizing on split attraction. I argue that this conceptual framework reveals that, broadly in U.S. culture, sexual identity is typically treated as a “unitary category” in which “sexual orientation” and “orientation” are used interchangeably and romance and sexuality are assumed to necessarily be intertwined and aligned.
The concept of split attraction helps reveal and deconstruct sexuality as a unitary category. The concept challenges three core ideas to the model of unitary sexual categories: (1) that “sexual orientation” and “orientation” are interchangeable, (2) that romance and sexuality must necessarily be intertwined and aligned, and (3) that people’s attraction/orientation can and should be described in a single word (straight, gay, asexual, bisexual, etc.).
As a result, I consider split attraction as a helpful framework not only for scholars of asexuality but also for the study of sexuality more broadly.
Is split attraction specific to asexuality?
I suspect that split attraction is prevalent among asexual individuals not because asexual individuals are necessarily more likely to experience split attraction, but rather because prevailing unitary category models of sexuality pose unique challenges for asexual individuals.
When asexual individuals experience an absence of sexual attraction but a presence of romantic attraction, it is difficult to resolve within a unitary sexual category framework. This is particularly true given the lack of knowledge about and invalidation of asexual identities as well as the presumption that all humans experience sexual attraction.
Conversely, when a non-asexual person experiences a “mismatch” between their romantic and sexual feelings, these feelings may be more easily resolved through labels like pansexual and bisexual—or even through concepts like sexual fluidity. Thus, even though the concept of split attraction could be applied to both asexual and non-asexual experiences, the need for the concept of split attraction may simply be more pressing for asexual individuals than for non-asexual individuals.
In other words, as we introduce the idea of split attraction to people outside of asexual communities, I strongly suspect we will find that it’s useful for many non-asexual people too. Splitting attraction opens up new frontiers in the study of sexuality, intimacy, romance, family, and beyond. Let’s embrace it.
Canton Winer is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northern Illinois University and a leading scholar of asexuality. You can keep up with his research on Substack or find him on Bluesky at @cantonwiner.bsky.social.
Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where she studies religion, politics, and money and directs the Meanings of Democracy Lab. She is the the host of the new documentary podcast When The Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, and the author of My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, which delves into how paying taxes became a moral battleground in public life. Dr. Braunstein’s award-winning research has appeared in top scholarly journals and been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine. She also writes op-eds for publications including The Guardian, Religion News Service and The Conversation. Here I ask about My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America. You can find Ruth on Bluesky @ruthbraunstein.bsky.social and at https://www.ruthbraunstein.com.
Cover of My Tax Dollars
AMW: Much of the public debate around taxes focuses on policy (rates, deductions, fairness). But My Tax Dollars shifts the focus to culture and meaning-making. What do you think we miss, politically or socially, when we overlook the emotional and moral dimensions of taxation?
RB: In doing research for this book, I spent a lot of time reading about the history of the antitax movement in the United States. This is a movement that has grown in size and intensity over the past century. And yet, over that same time period, the highest marginal tax rate has *declined*—from a peak of more than 90% to around 37% today. So if we think this movement is just about tax rates (and other technical nuts and bolts of tax policy), we are missing something more fundamental about what drives their concerns.
When I went looking for those deeper answers, I heard a lot about the form that the income tax exchange takes. Essentially, the idea that most individuals are required to chip in a portion of what they earn each year; that the more they earn, the more they owe (which is the basis of a progressive tax system); that all of these “tax dollars” go into a big pot controlled by the federal government; and that this pot of money is then used to fund the myriad programs and services that Congress includes in the federal budget each year.
This approach to taxation raises a number of concerns among antitax groups. Some people don’t like the idea that individuals would not have complete control over the “fruits of their labor.” Some would be comfortable donating the same portion of their money to a church or charitable organization, but not to the government. Some focus on the progressive nature of the federal income tax, which they view as unfairly punishing hardworking people while rewarding those who choose not to work.
When we take these arguments seriously, we see that it hardly matters how much one’s tax bill is at the end of the year. What matters is that the current tax system embeds Americans in political relationships (with their government and with their fellow citizens) that are inconsistent with some people’s understanding of how those relationships should be structured.
So a central theme that runs through the book is that we need to be attuned to how different tax arrangements imply different kinds of political relationships; how our perceptions of these relationships actually vary significantly and are contested; and how different groups respond when taxation presents them with a “relational mismatch.” My hope is that by being attuned to these questions, we can have more constructive public conversations about what we hope to achieve together as a society, and about the tradeoffs of varied fiscal strategies for achieving those ends.
AMW: You write about the sacred and profane meanings people attach to how their tax dollars are used. How do those meanings play out when it comes to funding programs for families, like public education, childcare, or parental leave?
RB: So as I mentioned, many Americans are focused on the form that taxation takes. But many are also focused on the uses of their tax dollars. In large part, this is because Americans across the political spectrum tend to think of public revenues not as something we share collectively, but as aggregations of their personal tax dollars.
This means that at the very least, they want to feel like they getting good value for their money, much as they would when they make an investment or a consumer purchase. In addition, many Americans also assess whether the ways their tax dollars are being spent aligns with their values. This assessment often involves fixating on a few specific uses of tax dollars that are perceived as morally concerning, or even as profane threats to one’s vision of what is sacred.
So what does this mean for the many funding programs that would benefit American families, like public education, childcare, or paid parental leave. We know that large shares of Americans either currently do or would benefit personally from these programs. Put differently, the programs offer high value for one’s money, especially as the costs of raising families increases. In this light, it seems perplexing that these programs would be controversial. Especially in a moment when the Trump administration is publicly lamenting low birthrates and supporting the “pronatalist” cause, it seems counterintuitive to also be defunding public education and dismantling programs that help people build families.
The approach I propose offers an answer to this puzzle. It directs us to consider how these policies, which provide empirically good value to many Americans, are also viewed by some Americans (and the elites and movements that speak for them) as undermining their values. Public education, which religious conservatives often refer to disparagingly as “government schools,” are viewed by many on the Right as promoters of secular values and knowledge that challenge white Christian privilege in society. Publicly funded or subsidized childcare gets the same bad rap. And, along with policies like parental leave, it is viewed by some on the Right as encouraging women to abandon of their “proper” role in society, which is to be mothers and caretakers of children.
When conservatives argue these programs are simply too expensive, that is not the whole (or perhaps even the real) story. If we accept such arguments on their face, we will never have a real conversation about what we value as a society, and what we don’t; what kinds of families we want to support, and under what conditions. People are entitled to different opinions on these big questions—but our leaders also have a responsibility to speak clearly about them so citizens can make informed decisions about who will represent their best interests.
AMW: You write about very different groups—antiwar activists, tax defiers, antiabortion protesters—who all claim moral authority over “my tax dollars.” How do these competing claims shape the legitimacy of government and civic belonging in today’s polarized political climate?
RB: One of the background themes of the book is that the United States is a country marked by profound diversity, deep political polarization, and also an individualistic streak. Given all of this, it is an actual marvel that we manage to have a functioning tax system and to pass a federal budget every year. Like truly, we should recognize this as a profound accomplishment of our pluralistic democracy.
Even more astonishing is that Americans have famously high “tax morale,” which translates into extremely high levels of voluntary compliance with the tax system. This reflects a widespread understanding that part of the deal of living in a country like this is that, as individuals, we are never going to agree with every single thing that our tax dollars are spent on. As long as the process is viewed as legitimate, and is responsive to citizens’ input through mechanisms like elections and advocacy and, yes, even antitax protest, most Americans are willing to accept their responsibilities as taxpayers.
But we are living in a precarious moment, and the delicate balance we have managed to strike on this issue could easily be knocked off-kilter. The activist groups I write about in this book all shape our public debates about taxation. But they do not all represent the same degree of threat to the viability of this system.
Antiwar activists, for example, employ one of the most radical tactics I write about in the book: they publicly refuse to pay the taxes that they owe. But, they do this as a form of civil disobedience intended to display their moral opposition to war, not because they believe the tax system is illegitimate. In this sense, their tactics are radical, but their position toward the tax system is not and does not represent a major threat to its legitimacy.
On the other hand, the current presidential administration and many elected members of Congress may appear to be promoting the relatively mainstream goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government by cutting wasteful spending. But in reality, they are implementing a far-right antigovernment playbook that was developed over the past century by activists operating at the radical fringes of American politics.
Within only the first few months of this administration, they have dealt blow after blow to the legitimacy of the tax system: they have promoted conspiracy theories about the IRS that paint the underfunded agency as an armed and dangerous shadow army of the deep state. Ironically, it is the administration itself that has recently breached the privacy of taxpayers’ data and is using that data to surveil and punish those they view as enemies. Meanwhile, they have made cuts to the IRS that will decimate its capacity to collect unpaid taxes, especially from the super rich. This naturally undermines ordinary people’s sense that everyone is paying their fair share, a key condition on which people are willing to pay their own share.
Each of these alone would raise concerns about the ongoing legitimacy of the tax system; together, they could be catastrophic. Whether or not one likes to pay taxes or has different spending priorities, the implications of these attacks should be chilling. Without a functioning tax system, we would lack sufficient revenues to fund even the most basic functions of government, including the military. We would not be able to pay our debt, or raise more funds. Even if we had a well-designed tariff system that could generate some revenue (which we do not), relying exclusively on this as the president has proposed would make us wholly financially dependent on foreign countries.
We have reached this moment, in part, because Americans have settled for an impoverished conversation about taxation, one that reduces all tax questions to tax rates, and paints one party as wanting to lower them and the other as wanting to raise them. This conversation has convinced large swaths of Americans that these attacks on the tax system are being done in their best interest, or at least in the interest of lower taxes. But at what cost? We need a conversation that involves a much fuller accounting of what is at stake.
LGBQ+ youth raised in conservative Christian spaces often struggle to develop a positive understanding of their sexuality. Home, church, school, and other community institutions can ideologically align in ways that teach them to hate, fear, and suppress, rather than embrace and explore, their emerging sexual desires. Counternarratives can be hard to come by.
As a result, and despite scholarly critique, there is a persistent narrative that in order to thrive, LGBQ+ people must leave these spaces and find more supportive communities. For those with the resources to do so, a four-year college away from home is one pathway out. LGBQ+ students are almost five times as likely as heterosexual students to select a college away from home in an effort to find a more welcoming space.
These students have high hopes for college, but does college live up to their expectations?
We interviewed 26 LGBQ+ college students in order to understand how their transition to college affected their emerging sexual identities and sense of self. In particular, we focused on how this process is impacted by opportunities for and barriers to sexual and romantic relationships. As we found in our recent article in Social Currents, while community support was important to positive identity-development, so, too was the ability to enact their sexual desires through sexual and romantic relationships.
Most students quickly built supportive communities that gave them new ways of understanding themselves. Sydney, a pansexual cis woman, said, “Everyone is just incredibly accepting, and their beliefs correlate with mine. I feel like it’s the family I wanted growing up… It’s exciting to meet somebody who also feels the same as you do in that regard. Growing up as a member of the LGBTQ community, it was hard to enjoy normal things because you felt so different all the time.”
This created a newfound freedom for students to be open about who they were to those around them. Tyler, a gay cis man said, “I used to be really conscious about [being gay]. But now I don’t even think about that. I mean I think people can tell that I’m gay. I don’t try to conceal it here anymore and I never faced any sort of retaliation or anything.”
New communities replaced their old ones. Almost all of the students we interviewed had distanced themselves from the Christian churches of their youth and instead involved themselves in spaces such as the LGBT Center or other LGBTQ+ organizations on campus. As Riley, a queer transmasculine person, said, “When I was younger, I very strongly believed in God. But it made me feel really shitty because of my sexuality and gender identity. I just couldn’t connect to [Christianity] once I realized it conflicted and I wasn’t going to be in line with it.” Instead, they joined a social justice advocacy organization for trans people on campus, explaining, “[It helped] me get resources initially and it made me feel like part of the community. Which I hadn’t had before because I didn’t know that many trans people.” Many now had social networks mainly comprised of LGBQ+ people.
But these communities did more than just make people feel good about identifying at LGBQ+; they also helped students broaden their understanding of their sexuality, which many found deeply affirming. Specifically, opportunities to explore their sexuality through sexual and romantic relationships mattered a great deal.
Just being able to act on their sexual desires validated their sense of self. As Benjamin, a gay cis man, explained, “After experimenting throughout college a little bit, I became more comfortable with myself.” Nicole, a queer cis woman, had hooked up with ten people since arriving at college, but only once with a woman, which she ranked that as her most enjoyable hookup, saying, “I think it’d be the one with the girl, just because it was the first time [having sex with a woman], and it really validated me. It validated my sexuality – like confirmed how I was feeling.”
Students also had the opportunity to experiment with BDSM, threesomes, and polyamory, which they found revelatory as each new opportunity taught them something about themselves and their desires.
But despite these positive experiences, LGBQ+ students still faced challenges finding sexual and romantic opportunities. And because these opportunities were so valuable for feelings of inclusion and positive identity development, students who struggled to find partners felt like they were missing out.
Given the contrast with their communities of origin, the LGBQ+ scene felt big when students first arrived on campus. But they quickly realized how small it was. Not only was it hard to find partners who hadn’t hooked up with a friend, a potential source of drama, it was also difficult to find LGBQ+ social spaces. Most of the parties and bars on campus were dominated by heterosexual students.
LGBQ+ students were left with organizations and spaces that felt better suited for advocacy and community building than for finding sexual and romantic partners. And through this, it became clear that LGBQ+ students had different ideas about what these spaces should be doing.
Hailey, a lesbian cis woman, said, “I feel like the LGBTQ Center should have some kind of resource. Whether it be a speed dating situation or a potluck, just creating the space. Cause the space isn’t working.” Owen, a gay cis man, avoided the LGBT Center because he felt it was more about activism than a space to meet other LGBQ+ people, explaining, “It doesn’t really appeal to me much. I feel like it’s more political than I’d like to be involved with. The main reason I would want to go to that is to meet other LGBT people, not necessarily to get involved with more political aspects.”
But other students felt that LGBTQ organizations should be more focused on social justice issues, calling out people like Owen as the privileged face of the community. For example, like Owen, Nashe, a queer genderqueer person, avoided the LGBT Center, but with a different critique, saying, “The spaces definitely feel uncomfortable to me…. It’s uncomfortable being the only Black queer person in a space.” In both instances, the spaces weren’t working in ways that facilitated desired connections and the resultant tensions spilled over into the hookup scene. Students felt like they missed out on opportunities for sexual and romantic relationships as a result.
This matters, because as our research makes clear, sexual and romantic exploration is critical to positive identity development in emerging adulthood. These experiences affirmed LGBQ+ students’ desires and allowed them to reconceptualize what they wanted from sex and relationships. Thus, any barriers to exploration are not minor for LGBQ+ students. Colleges must take the lead in creating spaces that attend to the diverse social needs of LGBQ+ students. This includes attention to sexual and romantic inclusion, which is vital to developing positive self-concepts, sense of self, and a feeling of belonging on campus.
Ellen Lamont is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Appalachian State University. She can be reached at lamontec@appstate.edu. You can follow her on X @EllenCLamont.
Teresa Roach is specialized teaching faculty and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. She can be reached at tar09c@fsu.edu.
About Council on Contemporary Families
The Council on Contemporary Families is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best-practice findings about American families. CCF seeks to enhance the national understanding of how and why families are changing, what needs and challenges they face, and how these needs can best be met.
