Many of the issues facing families today touch on parental gender: high childhood poverty rates, mass incarceration, battles over same-sex marriage, transgender rights, assisted reproductive technologies, and access to abortion. Due to these issues and more, questions of parental gender remain at the forefront of cultural commentary and political debates in the United States. Do kids “need” a mother and a father, or are two parents of any gender sufficient? Do fathers contribute something unique, just for being men? Are there contributions to families that mothers provide that fathers cannot possibly replicate (and vice versa)? What do kids lose–resources, opportunities, crucial socialization, social acceptance–when they don’t have both a mother and a father?    

Social science has established a consensus on these questions, indicating that parental gender is not important for children’s development and success. Instead, economic resources and social factors, like positive parent-child interactions, are stronger predictors of children’s well-being. Despite the evidence suggesting parental gender is not essential for children’s development, we continue to see these “parental essentialist” ideologies–ideas that parental gender offers unique qualities to childrearing–permeate the public sphere. Parental essentialism is especially salient in the panic over same-sex families, as well as manufactured crises of “fatherlessness.”

We are two sociologists who conducted separate studies on fatherhood that provide unique insight into questions about parental essentialism from the perspectives of two groups of fathers with specific stakes in these debates: poor men of color at the center of controversies over children without residential dads and gay men raising children without women. Through this work (recently published in Men & Masculinities), we found patterns that help explain the persistence–as well as the harms–of parental essentialist discourse. 

Jennifer Randles spent two years studying “responsible fatherhood” policy and programs by doing ethnography and interviews with very low-income fathers of color enrolled in a fathering program intended to help marginalized dads improve their job prospects, co-parenting relationships, and fathering skills. Megan Carroll did an ethnography of gay fatherhood groups, interviewing gay men raising children, most of whom were white and economically advantaged. In comparing our findings about these two socially dissimilar groups of fathers, we noticed that the men we studied had very different responses to parental essentialist ideas. 

For poor fathers of color, Randles found, parental essentialism was valorizing. Many of these fathers did not have a diploma, were unemployed, had a criminal record or incarceration history, or were not with children’s mothers. Yet the idea that they could still contribute something unique and valuable to childrearing by virtue of being men made marginalized fathers feel as though they were essential for their kids and their social and economic opportunities. As one dad said, “I teach [my kids] responsibility and give them motivation and the confidence they need to survive in school. It’s something about being a man. It’s in our DNA, I guess.”  

On the other hand, as Carroll discovered, for mostly white, wealthy gay fathers, parental essentialism was marginalizing. The idea that their children were deprived of something by not having a mother was threaded through their lives in ways that limited their access to parental opportunities and legitimacy. One married gay father in Texas, for example, expressed frustration with parental essentialism, arguing that parents of any gender play a mixture of masculine and feminine roles: “The thing that really gets me sometimes, this assumption that kids have to have a mom and a dad, and if they don’t … you’re somehow depriving them. … If you’re only thinking that you’re gonna be maternal and you’re never gonna have to do something that is dad-like, it’s ridiculous. Same goes for dads. That day has come and gone.”

Understood collectively, we realized that fathers’ social positions at the intersections of race, class, and sexuality fundamentally shaped how they responded to parental essentialist ideas. Studying these two differentially situated groups of fathers in tandem taught us valuable lessons about the persistent salience and harms of parental essentialism. The idea that fathering is essential – as in, important, unique, and innate – is especially powerful in the absence of viable economic and social support for disadvantaged families and especially for marginalized men still beholden to white middle-class norms of “responsible” fatherhood. On the other hand, the notion that families are somehow incomplete without mothers perpetuates dangerous and demoralizing views of gay fathers raising children as essentially lacking.  

Understood as both valorizing and stigmatizing, men’s views of parental essentialism urge us to consider other crucial questions in social and political debates over why parents’ gender matters and how. Why do essentialist views of fathering persist and influence men’s identities and experiences of fatherhood? How does social position shape how fathers grapple with and make sense of ideas that they are both necessary and insufficient for children’s well-being? What can and should we do to promote ideas that fathers matter because they love and care for their children, not because they are men? These are the questions that get us closer to sustaining families and understanding how parents of all genders and sexual orientations can make essential – rather than essentialist – contributions to children.  

Jennifer Randles (she/her) is Professor of Sociology and interim Associate Dean in the College of Social Sciences at California State University, Fresno. A scholar of families, policy, and gender/race/class inequalities, she is the author of Proposing Prosperity and Essential Dads. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Council on Contemporary Families. Her social media handle is @jrandles3. 

Megan Carroll (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at California State University, San Bernardino. She is a queer families scholar who founded the Ace/Aro Scholar Support Network. Her research on gay fatherhood can be found here and here, and her research on asexualities can be found here and here. Her social media handle is @MCsociology.

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Report published on May 3, 2023

When we talk about domestic labor, we often talk about the physical activities of doing work around the house and caring for family members. But running a household is more than cooking, cleaning, and transporting kids to practice; it’s also monitoring the pantry to know when groceries are getting low, weighing options about (and deciding on) which vacuum cleaner to buy, and remembering that little league signups are the last week of March and that cleats typically go on sale the week prior to the season.  

Domestic labor therefore is not just the physical activities of doing housework and caregiving, but also anticipating and monitoring family needs, organizing and planning, and making decisions on which courses of action to pursue. These sorts of activities, known as cognitive labor, are often hidden (i.e., a parent might be planning their children’s schedules in their head while doing other tasks) and are never-ending as there are always things to think about and plan.

Most research on housework and childcare focuses on routine physical tasks but does not account for hidden cognitive labor. This is problematic because mothers perform more physical domestic labor than fathers, and this disparity contributes to negative consequences such as to the gender pay gap as well as to greater stress and less leisure time for mothers compared to fathers. Yet, mothers also perform more cognitive labor than fathers, and the constant need to anticipate and monitor family needs may be a significant source of additional stress for mothers. In sum, the lack of attention to cognitive labor may mean that the enduring gender gap in domestic labor—and subsequent inequalities in well-being—may be even larger than often estimated.

Our new study recently published in Society and Mental Health focuses on the division of cognitive labor between mothers and fathers during the pandemic, and the implications of this division for parents’ psychological well-being.  

Using data from the Study on Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC) on 1,765 partnered parents, we examined parents’ time in, and division of, cognitive labor in Fall 2020. Popular press articles illustrate how mothers are increasingly overwhelmed and experiencing burnout due to the sheer volume of things they are trying to juggle. Results from our study provide some empirical support for these colloquial ideas. Among parents in the SPDLC, mothers spent over twice as much time per week performing cognitive labor (5 hours) compared to fathers (2 hours). When asked how cognitive labor was divided between themselves and their partners, mothers reported that they did more of this labor. In addition, mothers reported that the division of cognitive labor was more unequal than the division of housework and childcare—suggesting that the gender gap in domestic labor may indeed be even larger than we commonly think it is.

In addition to understanding how cognitive labor was divided among parents, we also wanted to know if there were consequences of performing this hidden labor. The results were striking; being primarily responsible for cognitive labor was associated with psychological consequences for mothers. Specifically, mothers who were more responsible for cognitive labor reported being more stressed and more depressed. The combination of mothers being primarily responsible for all of these hidden tasks and spending more time doing them means that cognitive labor may act as a chronic stressor that increases mothers’ risk of experiencing psychological distress.

But what about fathers? Do fathers who perform cognitive labor also report negative psychological consequences? Based on our study, the simple answer is no. Our findings show that when fathers perform more of the cognitive labor in families, they actually experience lower stress and fewer depressive symptoms. Similarly, mothers’ stress and depressive symptoms were also lower when fathers took on more of the responsibility for cognitive labor. Thus, whereas mothers’ involvement in cognitive labor may reduce their well-being, fathers’ involvement in cognitive labor appears to benefit both their own and their partners’ well-being.

Research on stress shows that the effects of stressors vary by context, and we find that gender conditions the effect of cognitive labor on parents’ psychological well-being. Fathers are not expected to manage the household and constantly monitor family needs. While fathers increasingly desire to be more engaged parents, they do not face strong social pressures to perform domestic tasks. Consequently, fathers may receive praise and positive reinforcement for performing cognitive labor as they are seen as going above and beyond what is expected of them. In contrast, mothers are expected to be primarily responsible for household tasks and may be penalized and judged if they do not meet these expectations. This makes mothers uniquely susceptible to the hidden, enduring burdens of cognitive labor.

Overall, our new findings suggest that gender inequality in housework and childcare extends to hidden domestic tasks, and also that performance of these tasks likely contributes to inequality in well-being between mothers and fathers. As long as gendered norms of care and the parenting double standard persist, gender inequality in domestic labor and well-being will continue. We need to change our cultural expectations about caregiving and provide more structural opportunities for fathers to be more engaged at home (e.g., remote work, paid leave) to reduce the burdens on mothers, reduce mothers’ stress, and promote greater gender equality at home. Increased opportunities for engagement will likely increase fathers’ awareness of family needs and empower them to take ownership in sharing both physical tasks as well as the hidden cognitive labor.

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Richard Petts, Professor, Department of Sociology, Ball State University, and Daniel L. Carlson, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah.

Popular culture tells us that women think with their hearts while men think with… other body parts. As a result, you might not be surprised to hear that men are far outnumbered by women and nonbinary people in identifying as asexual, a sexual identity that refers to those who experience low/no sexual attraction. But what about aromanticism, an identity that refers to those who experience low/no romantic attraction? If the stereotype of romance being a more feminine pursuit and sex being a more masculine pursuit is correct, surely there are more aromantic men than women. Right?

As it turns out, women are more likely to identify as asexual, but they’re also more likely to identify as aromantic. Our study, Sexuality, romantic orientation, and masculinity: Men as underrepresented in asexual and aromantic communities, examines men as a minority in asexual and aromantic communities. We draw on survey data from the 2020 Asexual Community Survey and the 2020 Aromantic Census as well as interviews from two samples (collected by the study authors) with individuals who identify on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums. 

While 48% of asexual respondents in the Asexual Community Survey identify as women and 41% as outside of the gender binary, only 11% identify as men. Meanwhile, in the Aromantic Census, 33% of respondents identify as women and a mere 8% as men, with the remaining 59% identifying outside the gender binary. Our analysis suggests that men are vastly outnumbered by women and people outside the gender binary in asexual and aromantic communities.

Masculinity as Inherently Sexual 

While our survey data shows that men are a minority in the asexual community, we turn to the interview data to understand why this may be the case. We find that men in our study faced pressure from their peers, family, and community to participate in sexual relationships (with women). In the interviews, asexual men described how masculinity was tied in with notions of sexual voracity, and that they had been expected to seek out sexual experiences and enjoy having sex. As Richard, an aromantic asexual white man put it, “…you’re entitled to sex and you’re defined by sex and how much you want sex and the content of your conversations is going to be based around sex and conquest and competition and all those sorts of things. I think that duality plays into the fact that men are inherently less likely to identify as asexual.” Richard goes on to explain how this became an internalized belief such that when he first heard about asexuality “that doesn’t cross my mind as a possibility.” Unsurprisingly, because masculinity is framed as inherently sexual, this may help to explain why men are a minority in the asexual community.

Prince Charming and Romance 

What is more puzzling is why aromantic men are a minority in the aromantic community. Prior research has established that women often face pressure around partnering, but men are also expected to take the lead in initiating romantic relationship scripts with women. Although it seems likely that the consequences of not being in a romantic relationship are more severe for women than men, our findings suggest that not being in a romantic relationship also defies expectations of “ideal” manhood.

We argue that romance is also core to hegemonic masculinity. We find that men described “romantic gestures” as something that they were expected to perform within dating and relationship contexts. Additionally, some aromantic men explained that if they weren’t in a romantic relationship, they were often assumed to be gay or immature. 

Another likely explanation for why men are a minority in the aromantic community is that many people only learn about aromanticism after hearing about asexuality. We find that many interview participants describe finding out about aromanticism after finding out about asexuality. Given men’s underrepresentation among asexuals, it makes sense that this means men would be less likely to even learn about aromanticism.

Research Implications

Even as scholars and activists have challenged the stereotype that women want romance and men want sex, scholars have still devoted much more attention to the role of sexuality in constructing masculinity. The role of romance and romantic relationships in structuring masculinity has received far less focus. 

Our findings suggest that sex and romance both play a role in structuring culturally idealized masculinities. As a result, asexuality and aromanticism both fall outside these cultural ideals. These ideals frame asexual men as inadequately masculine, failing to live up to men’s supposedly universal voracious sexual appetite. Aromantic men, conversely, face the risk of being painted as too masculine, potentially even being interpreted as players or f-ckboys. 

In other words, our study helps us see that heterosexual desire and romantic relationship formation are both core to what sociologists often call hegemonic masculinity. Yes, men are expected to have an active sexual appetite–but they’re also expected to (eventually) settle down and pursue a romantic relationship. 

Hannah Tessler is a sociology Ph.D. candidate at Yale University. Her research centers on sociology of the life course and transitions to adulthood, including pathways to higher education, and union formation. She explores how race, gender, and sexuality shape experiences with intimate relationships and family life. You can find her on Twitter at @TesslerHannah or learn more about her work on www.hannah-tessler.com

Canton Winer is an assistant professor of sociology and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Northern Illinois University, and the 2023–2024 Stephen O. Murray Scholar in Residence at Michigan State University. A leading sociologist studying asexuality, Dr. Winer’s work explores asexuality’s generative potential for the sociology of gender, the sociology of sexuality, and queer theory. You can find him on Twitter at @CantonWiner.

Reprinted from the Council on Contemporary Families Brief Reports published on April 20, 2023.

It is widely known that mothers’ employment has suffered most during the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, however, most discussions about the causes of the pandemic-induced “she-session” have focused on the impact of school closures and lack of child care. Yet, none of those factors explains the slow initial recovery of women’s employment after businesses and school reopened following lockdowns in Spring 2020 and, most recently, a striking decline in women’s labor force participation in Fall 2022 after it had finally rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels. This recent decline occurred in spite of low unemployment, high demand for labor, increased bargaining power for workers, and new concerns to increase family income because of inflation.

Our new study recently published in Socius reveals a largely overlooked factor driving mothers’ employment after initial COVID lockdowns – their concerns for public health.

Using data from the Study on Parents’ Divisions of Labor During COVID-19 (SPDLC) on 263 partnered US mothers who were employed prior to the pandemic, we examined how mothers’ concerns about COVID (whether they worried that someone they know will contract COVID) shaped their labor force participation in the Fall of 2020. Indeed, polls in 2020 showed that Americans were markedly concerned about contracting and spreading COVID in Fall 2020. Three-quarters of mothers polled in one survey worried that their child or someone in their family would fall ill if their child returned to in-person school. Results from our study echoed these findings. More than three-quarters of mothers in the SPDLC agreed or strongly agreed that they worried that someone they know would contract COVID. Importantly, mothers who were more worried about COVID were less likely to be employed, and among those that were still employed, worked fewer hours per week.

Our aim was to examine not only whether – but also why – mothers’ COVID concerns affected their employment and paid work hours. We examined three possible pathways through which mothers’ COVID concerns could have impacted their labor force participation: 1) the frequency of children’s attendance of in-person school/childcare, 2) mothers’ remote work, and 3) mothers’ stress.

One of the primary reasons worried mothers worked less was because their concerns about COVID were associated with children spending more time at home and less time at school or daycare. Simply put: the more time children spent at home, the less likely mothers were to be employed. Mothers’ COVID concerns help us understand not only their delay in returning to the labor force, but also why despite substantial efforts to reopen schools across the U.S. in Fall 2020 so many children continued to learn remotely.

Among mothers who were still employed in Fall 2020, their concerns about COVID were associated with fewer work hours not only because these concerns led to more time with children at home, but also because keeping children home resulted in more stress for mothers. Working remotely was associated with fewer paid work hours for mothers. While the flexibility that remote work seemingly provides is often assumed to be a means of managing work-family conflict for mothers, it may actually exacerbate gender inequalities in families. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely in response to keeping children home to reduce COVID exposure appears to have constrained mothers’ abilities to work.

Though our study focused on Fall 2020, its findings have important implications for our broader understanding of mothers’ employment, particularly in regards to recent declines in the face of the “tripledemic” of flu, RSV, and COVID cases in Fall 2022/Winter 2023. Our study suggests that the sudden downturn in women’s employment in Fall 2022 despite what had been a steady increase in labor force participation since 2021, is due at least in part to processes similar to those observed in Fall 2020.

Every fall, Americans are warned about the upcoming cold and flu season. Now with COVID becoming seemingly endemic, and seasonal threats of surges in other diseases like RSV and strep throat, these warnings have become particularly dire. Alongside risks to families’ and children’s health, surges in serious transmittable disease, which are becoming more frequent post-COVID, pose a threat to gender equality. Because of a lack of widespread paid sick leave, rising rates of infectious diseases can make it difficult for parents – and especially mothers – to continue working. Whether it’s strategizing ways to keep kids from getting sick or caring for them when they fall ill, mothers are generally the family health manager and the parent to cut back on work hours to care for kids at home when illness strikes.

As long as COVID and other infectious disease transmission mitigation is largely dependent upon vaccines and antibiotics rather than other public health measures (masking, paid sick leave, etc.), mothers will remain less likely to make a full return to the labor force due to legitimate concerns about their children’s and family’s members health and safety or will see wild seasonal fluctuations in employment that may negatively affect their careers and job prospects. Indeed, approximately 3 in 5 Americans remain concerned about coronavirus and the ‘tripledemic’ further increased fears of illness among parents. Though mothers’ labor force participation appears to have once again recovered from its dip at the end of 2022, if we fail to address mothers’ concerns about COVID and other infectious diseases as they arise, not only is it likely that mothers’ employment will continue to oscillate wildly during periods of high transmission but current and future pandemics are likely to also continue to dampen mothers’ employment and have substantial consequences for gender equality.

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Daniel L. Carlson, Associate Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Priya Fielding-Singh, Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Consumer Studies, University of Utah, Richard Petts, Professor, Department of Sociology, Ball State University, and Kristi Williams, Professor, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University.

Jessi Streib is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University. She is the author of three books: The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages, Privilege Lost: Who Leaves the Upper Middle Class and How They Fall: Who Leaves the Upper Middle Class and How They Fall, and The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College. Her work can be viewed on her website: www.jessistreib.com.  Follow her on Twitter @JessiStreib

Below I interview Dr. StreiB:

AM: What is “luckocracy” and how does it work?

A luckocracy is an opportunity structure that awards outcomes based upon luck. By basing outcomes on luck, it does not base them upon class. And so people from unequal class backgrounds receive equal chances to get ahead.

AM: How does hidden job information and class neutrality work to level the playing field?

The luckocracy is formed by two joint pillars: hidden information about where and how to get ahead, and class-neutral selection criteria. Hidden information forces people from each class background to guess where and how to get ahead, and class-neutral selection criteria mean that their guesses have the same chance of paying off. In this way, luck shapes outcomes because guessing well is what gets people ahead, not class or the resources associated with it.

The luckocracy operates in the mid-tier business labor market: the labor market for business majors from non-elite universities hired to do jobs such as tracking inventory, monitoring marketing campaigns, overseeing payroll, recruiting workers, and managing projects. In this labor market, information about where to get ahead is hidden: most candidates don’t know what jobs pay until they get an offer since this information isn’t in job ads, revealed in interviews, or knowable to students’ connections. Information about how to get ahead is also hidden from students of all classes and their connections. Students know the general competencies that hiring agents seek but don’t know how the person evaluating them defines or evaluates those competencies. Are strong communication skills shown through speaking concisely or giving thorough answers? If employers are looking for leadership and teamwork, should students talk about their accomplishments by saying “I” or “we”? Hiring agents often feel strongly about these issues, but students don’t know their criteria, and so have to guess how to present themselves to each evaluator.

At the same time, hiring agents in this labor market tend to use class-neutral criteria. They often have a low bar of employability, one that students from all classes can meet. So they look for interns who have done anything in the past—worked, joined a club, or volunteered. They look for recent hires who can answer their questions while not demeaning their teammates, swearing, or wearing ripped clothes. They also don’t care how high over their bar students go. If they want students with internship experience, three internships may not be better than one. If they want students with at least a 3.0 GPA, a 4.0 is no better than a 3.0. They also don’t care where students learn their skills, whether from working at McDonald’s, singing in a church choir, or leading an exclusive club. They ignore signs of prestige regarding where students interned, focusing on what students did and learned instead. They define their criteria in class-neutral ways too. “Polish” can mean not chewing gum, yawning, and avoiding too many “ums.” “Fit” can mean being outgoing or reserved, depending on the position, or showing integrity. And when employers do use class-biased criteria, they tend to use standards that favor each group. So the hiring agent who looks for students in Greek life might also look for students who pay for college themselves, with the first criteria favoring the advantaged and the second the disadvantaged. Then, of course, applying for jobs is free, and employers cover most expenses related to interviewing. Finally, many employers refuse to negotiate over pay with recent college graduates, neutralizing any difference that may arise from class-advantaged students’ greater propensity to negotiate.

In this situation, class-advantaged students’ higher GPAs and greater internship experience don’t give them a leg up. Students from all classes earn high enough GPAs and often intern once, and differences beyond that are ignored. Class-advantaged students’ status symbols don’t help them; they’re ignored too. Their connections to professionals don’t get them higher pay either. Because information about where and how to get ahead is hidden from their connections too, the people they talk to advise them to prepare for interview questions that are never asked, recommend answers that aren’t what evaluators prefer, and get them jobs that are just as often low-paying as high-paying. Indeed, in a luckocracy, more advantaged students’ resources don’t help them, and students from all classes end up in the same place: needing to guess where and how to get ahead, with the highest pay going to those who happen to guess the best.

AM: What are the implications of your findings for the future of higher education and the middle class?

My findings provide another argument against college being the great equalizer. Not only do they not equalize admission into college, but they don’t equalize the resources needed to get a job. Instead, it’s the luckocracy that exists within the labor market that is the great equalizer.

Many employers only admit students into the luckocracy with a college degree. This should change; many entry-level jobs don’t require skills that students learned in college. But as long as employers hire college graduates for these jobs, colleges can get closer to becoming an equalizer by graduating more students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This will let them enter the true great equalizer, the luckocracy.

Alicia M. Walker, Ph.D. is an associate professor at Missouri State University. Her research focuses on intimate relationships, gender, sexual behavior and identity, closeted behaviors, and online initiation of sexual relationships.

Who do you call on when you are facing a problem or need someone to talk to? Conventional wisdom argues that most people first turn to a spouse in their time of need. If one does not have a spouse, or that spouse is unavailable, you are most likely to turn to your parents (and more specifically, your mother). Sons and daughters, and then siblings, round out the order of contact. This follows the Convoy Model, where relationships fall into levels of closeness and that people would go to their closest connections first. One’s spouse, parents, children, and siblings are all common members of the inner circle.

Where would your cousins fit in this scenario? How about your grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, or stepfamily? Prior research has focused strongly on the nuclear family network, obscuring the relationships with other family members and how these may be enacted in times of need. Extended family often live nearby and play an important role in family members’ lives.

These extended family members may even be a source of resilience in times of crisis by providing practical, financial, or emotional support or alleviating loneliness. Some studies have aimed to count available extended kin or record the interactions with family beyond parents, children, and siblings, but only get as specific as “other relatives,” but little is known about how people rely on these extended family networks for support, particularly in times of great need.

To better understand these relationships, my coauthors (Megan N. Reed, Linda Li, Luca Maria Pesando, Frank F. Furstenberg, and Julien O. Teitler) and I investigated the patterns of extended family communication in the wake of crisis, in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed a survey module for the Robin Hood Poverty Tracker survey, which began in 2012, and that module was administered in New York City between August 2020 and September 2021, meaning respondents were still experiencing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  With a sample of over 2,300 respondents, we analyzed frequency of communication and change in communication by gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, and household composition.

Findings reveal that respondents were frequently in contact with non-residential family members, with more than half (55.7%) stating they communicated several times a week and only 6% communicating less than once a month or not at all. Further, respondents reported increased communication compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Convoy Model would suggest, the increase in communication was focused on the family members generally thought to be in the inner circle – siblings (31.0%), parents (22.3%), and children (15.6%). However, after those groups, it was not grandparents (4.3%) or grandchildren (4.9%) that were most common for increased communication, but cousins (14.2%), aunts and/or uncles (13.9%), and other relatives (7.1%). It may be that respondents were already in frequent communication with grandparents or grandchildren, or that they did not have these family members to communicate with, but even so, the sizable increase in communication with extended family illustrates how these family members are called upon in times of crisis or uncertainty. We do not just rely on our parents, siblings, and children, but we reach out to extended family networks for support.

Increased communication with family, both nuclear and extended, is expectedly not uniform across demographic groups. We found class (as measured by income and education) correlated with frequency of communication and whether that communication increased. One may expect respondents living in poverty to increase contact with family members in times of need, but respondents living below the poverty line reported less frequent communication with non-residential family. One may expect that it was primarily those living in poverty who would have increased their contact with family members during the pandemic, but we found no difference by poverty status in increased frequency of communication with non-coresidential family. Those with a college degree had higher odds of increasing communication with non-residential family during the pandemic, particularly with siblings, parents/grandparents, and collateral (aunts, uncles, cousins, and other) kin. This supports other findings that this population reported greater concerns over safety during the pandemic. (See the article for analysis and discussion of racial/ethnic differences!)

Past research has mainly focused on the nuclear family, which has long seen to be a source of support, but this study uncovers how family, and even extended family, can serve as a support, particularly in times of need.Future research should recognize how we do not rely only on close family, but that extended family, including cousins, aunts, uncles, and others, play a substantive role in our lives. This may be more so the case in times of great crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and should be studied to understand when and how these networks are enacted, and if frequent communication and support are maintained, decline, or increase after the crisis is over. Further study should investigate forms of support other than communication, including practical and financial, provided by extended family, to better understand the complexity of family networks and functions. Lastly, additional investigation is required to understand the role of education and income on the frequency and increase of extended family contact. The research described here is an important step toward recognizing the role of extended family in a time of crisis, and one of the major contributions is illustrating the need for more research on the subject.

Lauren Harris is an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on the structures and meanings of family, and the processes associated with developing romantic relationships, currently among older adults. You can learn more about her work here and here, and her take on The Golden Bachelor on twitter @lauren_e_harris.

Reprinted from UCI School of Sciences October 3, 2023 by Heather Ashbach

In her new book, Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services(Princeton University Press), UCI sociology assistant professor Kelley Fong offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the impact CPS policies, practices and procedures have on the vulnerable families caught in their crosshairs. Drawing upon interviews with low-income mothers and experience embedded with CPS, Fong sheds light on what happens when we turn to an agency focused on parental mistakes as our primary solution for families facing adversity. Below, she shares her findings as well as alternative strategies for ensuring child and family well-being.

What motivates your research on Child Protective Services (CPS) and its impact on marginalized mothers and families?

Many people don’t realize how pervasive CPS is in the US. Taking children is one of the most powerful and terrifying things the government can do, so we might think we would only wield this threat in the most extreme circumstances. But it turns out that today, one in three kids experience a CPS investigation during childhood, and these rates are even higher in low-income families, Black families, and Native American families.

I’d been interested in children and families for a while. As an undergrad, I took several classes that touched on CPS in various ways, and then I worked on foster care reform after graduating. When I started grad school, there was a lot of sociological research coming out about the impacts of proactive policing and mass incarceration on social life, especially for young Black men. I thought there might be something analogous happening with CPS and the women in these same communities. I wanted to hear from them. I started by interviewing low-income mothers. Then, I wanted to look at the other side of these encounters. Researchers have rarely been able to embed with CPS, but I had some wonderful research partners in Connecticut who enabled me to shadow CPS workers as they conducted investigations.

Could you share some of your key findings and what they mean for those most impacted?

Fundamentally, CPS is oriented around child abuse and neglect. This means that they’re focused on how parents themselves are harming their kids or exposing them to harm and, as I mentioned, they have the power to remove kids from home. But today, so much of what comes to CPS is essentially family adversity in some form, like domestic violence, substance misuse, mental health needs, and homelessness. And while affluent White parents may have the resources to keep these conditions from affecting their kids or from coming to the attention of authorities, low-income parents and parents of color often don’t have that luxury.

So my research considers what it means that an agency focused on parents’ wrongdoings has become our go-to for dealing with families facing adversity. It amplifies mothers’ sense of precarity, even when children remain home, as is typical. The investigation itself is terrifying and digs into all aspects of families’ personal lives. Those facing the greatest challenges are seen as “risky” and shuttled deeper into the system. And it makes mothers think twice about reaching out for help or confiding in those who reported them to CPS. Essentially, our response to family adversity is structured around destabilizing mothers, around surveilling and evaluating and correcting them, no matter how respectful and well-meaning CPS and adjacent professionals may be.

How does reliance on CPS as a “first responder” to family misfortune and hardship affect the way society addresses family poverty and adversity?

It means that rather than actually addressing the root causes of poverty and adversity – low wages, insufficient labor protections, a weak and paternalistic welfare state, disinvestment in communities beyond the affluent, and so on – we are instead focused on what individual mothers are doing wrong. This is misguided and not actually getting at the problem. It continues a legacy of racism, threatening Black and Native American families in particular. And it’s unjust, as those in power make parenting extraordinarily difficult, then blame and penalize families for those challenges.

Based on your insights and observations, what changes or reforms do you believe are necessary in the current approach to addressing family adversity and child protection? What are some alternative strategies or models that could be used as a more effective response to ensure child and family well-being?

There’s a lot we can do right now to “narrow the front door” to CPS specifically, so that fewer families come into contact with the agency. I am inspired by grassroots efforts to educate mandated reporters on how to respond to families they are concerned about by offering support rather than rushing to report. It’s also great to see organizations that frequently report, such as hospitals, revising their reporting practices, and even jurisdictions like LA County trying to rethink the reliance on CPS reporting. CPS agencies themselves could shift screening practices to ensure that only situations posing serious child safety issues require CPS intervention. Clarifying child maltreatment statutes – for instance, to state that homelessness does not constitute child neglect – could help with this.

But of course, we don’t want to leave families homeless. So we also need to develop and invest in supports for families facing adversity. It’s a different approach to child protection, one that tries to ensure families have what they need to raise their kids. Fortunately, we know what works. There’s a growing research base on how material supports like cash assistance and childcare subsidies prevent abuse and neglect. The Expanded Child Tax Credit, which recently expired, was an enormous boon to child welfare. Supporting families and investing in community amenities like libraries and parks is child protection work. It may feel easier to turn the task of child protection over to CPS. But as I heard one CPS official say, it’s not CPS but communities that keep kids safe.

Kelley Fong is assistant professor of sociology at UC Irvine. She studies social inequality and family life, with a focus on families’ interactions with state systems. Twitter: @kelley_fong

Reprinted from Psychology Today October 8, 2023

Copyright: Deborah Carr

The “Golden Bachelor” can teach us five things about losing (and finding) love.

More than 4 million viewers tuned in to the premiere of The Golden Bachelor, captivated by 72-year-old widower, restaurateur, and grandfather Gerry Turner’s search for love the second time around.

I was among those 4 million viewers. As a sociologist who has spent more than two decades studying older adults’ romantic lives and losses, I feared the worst. Would the long-running ABC franchise match up septuagenarian bachelor Gerry with 40-year old women, considered “old” by Bachelor standards? Would the series rely on cheap ageist jokes about Viagra and senility? Would it make a mockery of older adults in their quest for love, playing up tired old tropes of sexual desperation?

My fears were quickly put to rest after watching the premiere. The 22 women vying for Gerry’s affection are smart, accomplished, witty women ages 60 to 75. They support each other, laugh together, and even help one another glam up for their dates with Gerry. The vibe in the mansion, where the 22 contestants live together during the show’s taping, was playful rather than competitive.

Encouraged by this auspicious start, I watched – with trepidation – the second episode. It was remarkable, and one of the few raw portrayals of widowhood, grief, and loneliness that I can recall seeing on network TV. Gerry lost Toni, his wife of 42 years, to an unexpected bacterial infection. About half of the female contestants also are widowed, and the other half are divorced — all after decades-long marriages. This aligns with statistical snapshots of older women’s family lives today; about 18 percent of U.S. women aged 65 and above are divorced, while an equal share are widowed. (Most are currently married, while less than 5 percent are lifelong singles).

Here are five important truths about widowhood, grief, and loss that we can learn from The Golden Bachelor.

Grief doesn’t follow a predictable schedule. The pain of loss lessens with time, thankfully. But feelings of sadness and yearning for one’s late spouse can pop up when you least expect it. Some widows and widowers have difficult moments on their late spouse’s birthday or their wedding anniversary. Simple sights, sounds, and smells can trigger bittersweet memories of one’s late spouse. That’s what happened to 60-year old interior designer Nancy on her group date with Gerry.

The women were donning fanciful costumes as part of a mock photo shoot, and Nancy chose a demure white lace wedding gown. While her fellow contestants were laughing and hamming it up for the camera in their biker jackets and psychedelic mini-dresses, Nancy was overcome with deep emotion and started to sob. The dress reminded her of her wedding day – 36 years earlier — to her late husband, a moment she still calls “the best day of my life.” Gerry soothed her by sharing a similar experience: He had recently walked past a bakery, and the smell of cinnamon instantly triggered memories of his late wife, who baked cinnamon rolls every Christmas. They both described their grief flashes the same way: “I didn’t expect it…it came out of nowhere.”

But despite the raw emotions and initial pain of these flashes, both Nancy and Gerry recognized that these moments were reminders of how fortunate they were to have had a great love. Grief, as the saying goes, is the price we pay for love.

Sudden deaths can be especially hard. For most older adults, the death of a spouse comes after a long chronic illness, like cancer or heart disease. That often means a long and grueling spell of caregiving, and the experience of anticipatory grief – or the sadness of knowing that death is near. But for several Golden Bachelor contestants, their spouse’s death came quickly and unexpectedly after a short illness. Gerry’s wife fell ill to a lethal bacterial infection just days after the couple purchased their dream lake house – robbing them of a happy retirement together. That’s part of the reason why he bonded so quickly and deeply with Theresa, a 70-year-old securities professional, who lost her husband Billy suddenly after 42 years of marriage. Although Billy was managing kidney disease, he had an unexpected turn for the worse. Theresa ran home from work to find an ailing Billy, who then died in her arms.

All losses are devastating, but the kinds of supports that widow(er)s need, and their personal timetable for re-entering the dating world may vary dramatically based on how sudden or anticipated the loss was.

Moving on is healthy. Don’t feel guilty for finding a new love. Widows and widowers sometimes feel social pressure to stay single for life, out of respect for their late spouse. But norms have changed over the past century. Widows no longer wear black clothing for life, or withdraw from the social world. Bereaved persons who wish to find a new love should re-enter the dating world, once the initial sting of loss has passed.

For many, that’s what their late spouse would have wanted. Joan, a 70-year-old private school administrator, shared that when her late husband was dying of pancreatic cancer, he urged her to someday date again and find happiness. At that time, she wasn’t ready to accept that her husband would die, and closed her mind off to dating. But with time, she, like Gerry, felt it was appropriate to honor her late spouse’s wish that she find love again.

Yet others prefer not to date – cherishing their new freedom and independence after a decades-long marriage. For some, friendships fill the emotional void left by their loss. Some feel that their late spouse was their “one and only,” and aren’t interested in pursuing a new relationship. Widows and widowers know best what makes them happy, and should pursue their happiness however they see fit.

Children can help (or hurt) new relationships. Gerry made it clear why he was named The Golden Bachelor. His daughters urged him to apply, wanting their grieving dad to find love again. Gerry’s not alone. Children (and even grandchildren) can be one’s greatest supporters and helpers in their pursuit of new love. The younger generation can teach important lessons about romance in the 21st century, sharing tips on how to use dating apps and websites to find a partner and the best way to construct a text message. This encouragement is important and can help erase any feelings of guilt a widow(er) might feel when dipping their toe back into the dating pool.

Of course, not all children are helpful. They are sometimes so overcome with their own grief for their deceased parent that they don’t want their surviving parent to move on. Others worry about bringing a new person into the family, skeptical that the new love might be insincere, or worse yet, scam a parent out of their life savings. Well-meaning skepticism can be healthy, but children – especially those who have had warm and loving relationships with their parent – should trust their parent to make wise romantic decisions.

There’s no single way to cope with loss. Gerry and the widows he’s dating have each coped with loss in different ways. While Gerry found comfort in looking at old photos of his late wife, Joan admitted it was too painful to see images of her deceased husband. Some of the women leapt back into work and socializing because they couldn’t bear to be alone, while others sought solitude and quiet nights at home reading, dreading the company of others.

The contestants’ experiences gibe with research on widowhood showing that there are many ways to cope, some more productive than others. In general, people tend to cope with distress in two ways. Problem-focused coping means finding a solution to the source of one’s suffering. This might involve volunteering or going out with friends, to fight the pain of loneliness. Emotion-focused coping, conversely, involves changing one’s emotional response to the situation. There’s no way to bring back one’s deceased spouse, but it is possible to squash negative feelings by recalling happy times with one’s spouse, or talking through one’s feelings with friends.

Dulling one’s emotions through drugs or alcohol is considered the least healthy way to cope.

Going on a national TV show and searching for love might not be a typical strategy for coping with loss, and it’s not available to everyone, but it does help Gerry and the 22 women in one important way: It gives them hope for the future. Even if they don’t find love on the show, they will all hopefully leave the series feeling that something new, exciting, and fulfilling lies ahead in the future. Optimism and the belief in new possibilities may be best gifts these older widows and widowers receive from their time in the spotlight.

Deborah Carr is a professor and chair of the sociology department at Boston University. She studies stress and health, and the ways our relationships can help (or hurt) us. Follow Deborah on Twitter @DeborahCarr723

Reprinted with permission from The Conversation October 3, 2023

The term “daddy” has exploded in popularity in recent years. Actor Pedro Pascal was recently crowned the internet’s daddy. There is an app called Dream Daddy where players can date a daddy. Saturday Night Live even ran a skit about daddies.

While there is no shortage of discussions about daddies, there is little research about what the term means to the men who are classified as daddies themselves.

My new book, Daddies of a Different Kind: Sex and Romance Between Older and Younger Adult Gay Men, investigates this topic. I talked to 39 men in their 40s, 50s and 60s who saw themselves as daddies, and 26 men in their 20s and 30s who liked dating older men. I focused on gay and bisexual men because they are more likely to form partnerships with large age gaps than any other group in the western world.

What is a daddy?

Many of the men I talked to agreed that daddies were experienced, stable, had leadership abilities and nurtured and mentored younger adult men. This mentorship involved a range of topics, from how to come out to family to how to advance in their careers. The connection between older and younger adult men was not just physical, it was emotional too.

As Tomas (44) explained, a “daddy is typically somebody who is an older man who feels comfortable being with a younger person and is there to help and support them and work through things with them.” This tender connection existed in many of the relationships men formed, from casual dating to friends-with-benefits to romantic partnerships.

In contrast to stereotypes, there was little evidence of widespread power differentials that harmed either older or younger adult men. One reason why is that men viewed nurturance of younger adult men as key to daddyness.

Mateo (55) noted: “You want to leave somebody in better shape after you’re not with them. So as a daddy you want the best for that person throughout the relationship and even afterwards.”

Older men’s daddy consciousness developed in midlife. It usually began in response to interest from younger adult men. “I didn’t expect to be a daddy, it just kind of happened,” Jordy (57) explained. “It was gradual. They started [calling me daddy] in my early 40s and probably when I was around 45, 46, I accepted the role.” Daddyness is not just a state of mind. Most men agreed that daddyness is connected to age.

Why are younger men interested in daddies?

In addition to mentorship, younger adult men described a variety of reasons they enjoyed the company of older men. These reasons were, notably, not financial. Michael (30) described, “I’ve never been one to ask for money or to gain benefit from it. I’m financially stable. I’m my own man.”An SNL skit about daddies. The term has increased in popularity in recent years.

Of course, sugar daddies do exist among both heterosexuals and LGBTQ people. Yet the younger adult men I talked to desired older men for their emotional maturity and other non-financial traits.

“I’ve noticed that I’m drawn to older guys mostly because there’s an emotional maturity there,” Joshua (23) offered. DaShawn (27) agreed: “Sometimes I feel like people my own age are immature.” Overall, the younger adult men felt like they connected better with older men.

Unsurprisingly, they also described physical attraction to older men. William (29) noted: “I love gray hair, I like a beard. Signs of age I find are things that are attractive. I like men that wear glasses. Those sorts of physical features I find really are the things that draw me most.” Younger adult men did not desire older men despite their appearance, but in part because of it.

Connecting generations

The connections men formed were both physical and social. Older-younger pairings between adults help to connect different generations of gay and bisexual men. “I feel like I am creating a connection with previous generations of queer people. I feel like that’s part of being a daddy for me,” Graham (51) explained.

Younger adult men can learn from older men what life was like for gay and bisexual men in prior decades. They can also learn about practices that are more common among gay men, including open relationships.

LGBTQ people comprise a small share of the population: 7.2 per cent in the United States and four per cent in Canada. For this reason, one may expect that age gaps are more common among same-sex couples simply because there are fewer available partners.

It is true that age gaps are less common among different-sex (woman-man) couples than same-sex couples. Yet it is also true that age gaps are more common among man-man couples than woman-woman couples, even though both groups face a similarly small dating market. This shows that gay and bisexual men are more open to, or interested in, older-younger pairings between adults than other groups.

For many men, older-younger pairings between adults are an important part of what it means to be a gay or bisexual man today. In many western countries, LGBTQ+ people enjoy more legal rights and social inclusion than they did even 10 years ago. Yet unique aspects of their cultural life have continued, including a greater likelihood to form older-younger pairings between adults. Given that dating apps make it easier to meet adults much older or younger than oneself, these pairings will likely continue for a while.

Tony Silva has received funding from the Sexualities Project at Northwestern University (SPAN) and the Graduate School at Northwestern University.

Tony Silva is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia. You can follow Tony on Twitter at @Sociology_Silva

Members of the LGBT community are no stranger to the many stereotypes and cultural
explanations from those trying to understand their identities. New research conducted by Emma
L. McGorray and Dr. Christopher D. Petsko in Social Psychological and Personality Science
focuses particularly on the stereotypes that bisexual men and women face in comparison to
their gay and straight counterparts. Despite robust evidence that proves the genuine existence
and validity of bisexual men and women, bisexual people often face identity denial – the
experience of having one’s identity questioned or challenged – more often than gay men or
lesbian women. It is safe to assume that stereotypes about bisexual individuals often lead to
these identity-denying sentiments. Thus, it is important to understand these stereotypes to
figure out how to disrupt identity-denying experiences that bisexual individuals face.
It is important to examine the relationship between stereotypes and identity denial
separately for bisexual men and bisexual women because bisexual denial or erasure can occur
differently for each group. One study found that bisexual men were often viewed as “actually
gay” more than bisexual women. Another study found that men’s bisexuality was seen as similar
to homosexuality, whereas women’s bisexuality was seen as similar to heterosexuality.

Stereotyping bisexual men and women by comparing them to their homosexual and
straight counterparts may contribute to the identity-denying experiences these individuals often
face. This is likely because of the fact that stereotypes are linked to expectations and behavior
and may contribute to the negative experiences these individuals face. These expectations may
be influenced by the trend of greater behavior in sexual fluidity by women than men, which can
be explained by various social, psychological, and evolutionary factors. By understanding the
stereotypes that arise at the intersection of sexual orientation and gender, specifically for
bisexual people, we can better intervene on the identity-denying beliefs that specifically affect
bisexual men and women.

To find out more about the public’s perception of bisexual men and women, 358
participants were assigned to choose from a list of 99 traits what they believed to be most
stereotypically representative of the group they were assigned. Each participant was randomly
assigned to rank the personality traits for one of the following: heterosexual men, heterosexual
women, bisexual men, bisexual women, homosexual men, homosexual women. In order to find
out if bisexual men are stereotyped towards straight men, and bisexual women are stereotyped
towards straight women, they compared the similarities between the chosen stereotype traits for
each group. From these findings, they found that bisexual men were in fact more stereotyped
with gay personality traits. However, bisexual women were not stereotyped similarly to straight
women.

In a second study, they asked participants to freely write stereotypical traits for one of the
groups (bisexual men, heterosexual women, etc). They once again ranked the most frequently
occuring stereotypes from each group, and analyzed the rate of differences in stereotypes
between the groups. The findings replicated, with bisexual men stereotyped to be more similar
to gay men, and bisexual women NOT to be stereotyped similar to straight women.
In the third experiment, participants were assigned specific stereotypes coupled with a
specific sexual orientation. For example, they were asked ‘According to cultural stereotypes,
how feminine is a bisexual man? In addition, participants were asked to what extent they
believed bisexual men or women were ‘actually gay/straight.’ The findings show that once
again, bisexual men are more so stereotyped with straight personality traits, and bisexual
women are NOT stereotyped with straight personality traits. However, bisexual women are more
likely to be identified as ‘actually straight’ than ‘actually gay,’ and bisexual men are more likely to
be identified as ‘actually gay’ rather than ‘actually straight’

Is there a difference in the way bisexual men and women are culturally stereotyped?
These findings suggest so. Bisexual men across the board are stereotyped to be similar to gay
men. Bisexual women, although not stereotyped to be similar to straight women, are more likely
to be directly identified as “actually straight” compared to bisexual men.

This research provides important insight into the differences in cultural stereotypes
surrounding the sexual orientations of men and women. Although this study points out that a
difference does exist, there needs to be further analysis into the causational relationships
between these perceptions. That is, there needs to be more research into what factors
contribute to, or cause these sex differences in cultural stereotypes of bisexuality. In addition,
this study confines its stereotypes into the gender binary of men and women, and the binary of
sexual orientations of simply gay, straight, and bisexual. There is a rapidly growing community
of people (primarily in younger generations) with gender and sexual identities that don’t conform
to traditional sexuality labels (gay, lesbian, bisexual), which is becoming more important to
consider when thinking about stereotypical viewpoints of the LGBTQ+ community at large.

Melis Demiralp is a junior undergraduate research assistant for the Buss Lab at the University
of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include how evolutionary psychology can inform
bisexuality and other non-traditional human mating behavior. You can find her on Twitter
@meliralp.
Ashni Guneratne is currently an undergraduate research assistant for the
Buss Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Her current research interests include female
intrasexual mate competition, mate-selection, and understanding female bisexuality from an
evolutionary perspective. You can find her on Twitter @ashniguneratne