Many of us can easily identify which child in our families has kept our parents up the most at night—for example, the one who experimented with drugs early in life, suffered a concerningly long “bad luck streak” at the casino, or has been in trouble with the law. Research shows that older parents often experience more disappointment, strain, or complicated emotions in their relationships to their adult children with these sorts of problems. However, there is also some evidence that adult children who reform their deviant behavior are more likely to become their mothers’ favored child.

To build on this research, my collaborators (Marissa Rurka, Jill Suitor, Megan Gilligan, Karl Pillemer, Liam Mohebbi, and Nicholas Mundell) and I examined the reasons why adult children’s behavioral reforms are associated with changes in older mothers’ favoritism. More simply, we wanted to know how and why former “problem children” become “prodigal children” in their mothers’ eyes. To answer this question, we used qualitative interview data from the Within-Family Differences Study (WFDS). The WFDS contains interviews with older mothers (ages 65-75 at the first interview) and their adult children (interviewed separately) at two different timepoints, seven years apart. This dataset was well suited to help answer our research question because it is the same data that originally produced evidence (mentioned above) of the link between adult children’s behavioral reforms and their mothers’ newfound favoritism.

The WFDS measured deviance by asking mothers whether any of their children had experienced trouble with drugs, alcohol, or the law in recent years. Favoritism was assessed by asking mothers to which child they felt most emotionally close. Mothers were encouraged to explain their answers to closed-ended questions like these throughout the interview, thus providing qualitative data for our investigation.

We focused our main analysis on the 20 families that contained a “prodigal child”—a child who was considered deviant and not favored at the first interview, but was no longer deviant, and was favored at the second interview (seven years later). Our analysis revealed two reasons why these children’s behavioral reforms were related to newfound favoritism by their mothers: perceptions of familism and perceptions of need.

First, as they reformed their behaviors, mothers grew to see these children as more dedicated to their families of origin, and often their mothers specifically. The same children described as having a “mind of [their] own” at the first interview grew to be seen by their mothers as “very family-oriented,” “always checking on me,” or “a little mother to me” by the later interview. This pattern was especially clear in families that also contained a deviant child who did not reform their behavior..

For example, Faye had two daughters who were both deviant at Faye’s first interview—both had experienced teen pregnancies, drug issues, and moved away with romantic partners whom Faye felt were poor choices. Describing Kristen, the younger of the two, Faye said, “I don’t think her life is going, well, the way a mother wants for her children.” However, by Faye’s later interview, Kristen recovered from her substance abuse issues and repaired her bond with her mother by moving back nearby and involving Faye in her granddaughter’s life. In contrast to the new warmth Faye felt from Kristen, Faye felt like her older daughter Mary had fully “alienated” her by her later interview and had abandoned her family commitments due to her still ongoing drinking problem. Describing her disapproval, Faye said, “[Mary] decided she wanted to…be on her own. She thought, ‘well, I’m going out drinking again,’ and disrupted her [family], and now she’s getting [divorced]…Nothing to be proud of.” Faye’s remarks about Mary highlight how deviant behavior can weaken family bonds and negatively impact older mothers’ impressions of a child. Meanwhile, Faye’s relationship to Kristen helps us see why an adult child who reforms their behavior and strengthens their family commitments in the process can bring mothers particularly great joy.

The second pattern that emerged from our analysis was these children’s need for their mothers’ support. Mothers often saw their prodigal children as both needing and appreciating their support in ways that their other children, who they saw as more “on their own,” had outgrown. Feeling like their help and support played a role in their children’s positive changes made them feel like good mothers and created an emotional bond.

For example, when describing the substance abuse issues her son Joey experienced in early adulthood, Dorothy acknowledged “Joey was straying back then,” but became upbeat as she explained the closeness that came as a result of his behavioral reform, saying “He had some problems in the past and he came out of them with our help. And he’s been great ever since. He just shows his gratitude a lot…He shows that he came out of it very well.” If children did not change their behaviors, their ongoing need for help could be depleting, rather than affirming to mothers. But, as Dorothy described, if children “came out of it well,” their changes could be viewed as gestures of gratitude for their mothers. This dynamic allowed mothers to feel that their guiding role in their children’s lives was necessary and valuable, which fostered feelings of favoritism, particularly during a life stage when some had begun to feel like their other children’s need for their guidance and advice was lessening.

Taken together, our findings suggest that even children who engaged in behaviors that their mothers found troubling can become Mom’s Favorite in adulthood. Simply stopping the troubling behaviors may not be a surefire path to favoritism, but if disengaging from these behaviors is coupled with strengthening your commitments to family and showing your mother that you need (and appreciate!) her support, then there is a good chance that you might just become a Prodigal Child.

The full text of our article, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, can be found here.

Reilly Kincaid is a PhD Candidate at Purdue University. Her research focuses on parenting, gender, social psychology, family relationships across the life-course, and work-family issues. You can follow her on Twitter at @ReillyKincaid.  

When we think of older adults, we often conjure an image of a retiree with extra time on their hands. We think of an old married couple traveling together, spending time with grandchildren, volunteering, or maybe enjoying hobbies like gardening. Rarely do we think of older parents or grandparents as single adults, spending their free time seeking a romantic partner, dating, or beginning a new sexual relationship. But as people live longer and more older adults are experiencing “gray divorce,” nearly 20 million older adults are finding themselves single and interested in dating.

However, the common image of daters – young adults seeking a partner to start a family and share decades together – does not fit the single older adult, either. Studies have shown most single older women are not interested in (re)marrying and many older men and women would prefer to cohabit or live apart together (LAT) rather than marry. Further, most older men and women already have children, even grandchildren, to whom they frequently provide practical and financial support. In short, single older adults are quite dissimilar from married older adults but also from single young adults.

My recent research explored how relationships with adult children and grandchildren, particularly caregiving responsibilities and expectations, impact single older adults’ partner preferences. I interviewed 50 women and 50 men between the ages of 60-83, all of whom were single and heterosexual, about their experiences with singlehood and dating. We discussed a range of issues, including decisions to date, online dating, and physical intimacy, but one issue surfaced again and again – the impact of carework on dating. Participants connected the care older adults perform, such as living with and caring for an ailing parent, providing practical and financial support for an adult child, and looking after a grandchild, to desirability and opportunities in dating.

Men and women both recognized carework as a potential influence to partnering, but the impact of carework was overwhelmingly gendered. Women with carework responsibilities were seen as not having enough time or attention for a relationship and were frequently penalized on the dating market. Men, in contrast, were perceived by women as better candidates for partnering when they cared for their families.

Consistently, men discussed being cautious or disinterested when a woman cared for her children or grandchildren. Men wanted to date women who would have time for and would prioritize them and the relationship, rather than being secondary to helping an adult child or babysitting a grandchild. For example, men believed residential adult children would prohibit them from being allowed to sleep over and would make a woman less inclined to spend the night at his home. Essentially, men assumed women would be less available for sex if they shared a home with their adult children. Even if a woman would be open to spending the night together, she did not have the opportunity to meet or date the men who made these assumptions.

In contrast, women lauded men who were close to or cared for their families. Women perceived these men to be stable and committed partners and someone who was also family-oriented, all qualities they sought in a partner. Women were looking for a “family man,” someone who valued their family relationships and who would be open to incorporating a partner into his family life. When women came across a man who cared for or was involved in his family, they saw a man who prioritized his family, not a man who would prioritize a woman over his family. Women were only turned off by family-oriented men if those men had very young children, often defined as younger than high-school aged, as older women did not want to be pushed into the position of caring for these children.

Women’s dedication to caring for their family members and men’s disinterest in these women highlights the continued role of family in (re)partnering. Historically, parents played a role in their children’s partnering decisions, but this research shows that families still exert influence on one’s partnering, whether they intend to or not, even for older adults. Past research has shown having young, residential children can make it difficult for single mothers to find partners and (re)marry, but this research expands these findings by showing how providing care for non-residential adult children and grandchildren still impacts one’s dating opportunities.

Men judged a woman as a poor romantic partner due to her carework responsibilities, possibly because men perceive that they have plenty of dating options. In later adulthood, there are anywhere from 1.5 to 4 women for every man of the same age. Women live longer and men tend to date and remarry younger women, and so the gender ratio of single older adults puts disproportional power for partner selection in men’s hands.

Men also seemed to misunderstand women’s sense of responsibility to their families and the joy they received from their family relationships. A few men were incredulous that a woman would put looking after her grandchild ahead of her own happiness, defined by men as being in a romantic relationship. What men did not seem to understand, however, was that women felt great responsibility to their families and derived great pleasure from caring for them. Where men saw women needlessly spending time on adult children and grandchildren, women saw an opportunity to maintain close relationships with their children and be an important part of their family’s lives.

In this way, men’s preference for women without responsibilities means fewer women will meet men’s partnership requirements and women will lose out on romantic relationships. But in another way, men are losing out on the possibility of being with happy, fulfilled, caring women. In the end, assumptions and biases about caregiving women leaves women with rewarding and enriching relationships with their children and grandchildren, and leaves men in an ongoing pursuit of women without family attachments.

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

On a Tuesday afternoon, over a Zoom video call, Shannon – the mother of two sons (24 and 17) and one daughter (10) – begins to explain what being a mother means for her. Her smile widens as she discusses the happiness her children bring to her life, while also highlighting her role as their mother consisting of attending parent-teacher conferences, assistance with schoolwork, providing financially, and overall making sure that they feel loved and supported emotionally. While these aspects of mothering are consistent with dominant notions of motherhood, the tone of the conversation shifted when I followed up to ask: “how does being a mom differ by race?” With her once joyful smile no longer visible, Shannon looks at me and says: I think for African American mothers, I think it’s pressure and the worry. We always had to fight. We always had to advocate. We always have to be ready. Shannon continues discussing how there is a constant preparation and hyperawareness surrounding the realities of anti-Black racism and the mistreatment of Black children, specifically as a Black mother, is central to how she mothers her children.

Black mothers have long carried the burden of protecting their children from institutional and interpersonal racism in the United States. Because of the incessant threat of anti-Black racism and racialized violence, racism and motherhood intersect to create a racialized context for Black women, specifically the utilization of hyperawareness – acute alertness of what it means to be racialized as Black for their children. Black mothers have developed a number of strategies stemming from their hyperawareness around their children’s experiences, such having “the talk.”

Black women, knowing all too well how race and anti-Black racism are inseparable from their mothering, engage in what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as motherwork – efforts to protect and empower their children in the wake of multiple forms of racism. Because the lives of mothers are so intrinsically tied to their children’s, Black mothers prioritize the protection of their children in efforts to mitigate the consequences of these experiences of racism. However, while Black mothers are being held up as pillars of bravery and strength, there is little recognition of the toll that their children’s experiences are having on the mothers themselves. Specifically, what is the cost of the hyperawareness of black mothers?

My research explores this question through in-depth interviews with Black mothers across the United States with children in adolescence and emerging/young adulthood (ages 10-24). From 2019 to 2021, I interviewed thirty-five Black mothers to discuss their children’s experiences of anti-Black racism, and how they perceive these experiences shaping the mother’s own well-being. In a recently published paper, I argue that hyperawareness surrounding their children is a major source of stress for Black mothers in the study. Additionally, this hyperawareness is not solely in the presence of tangible experiences (actualized), but also surrounding experiences of racism that have not come to fruition (anticipated). The stress that mothers identified experiencing would manifest through either an actualized event and rumination – replaying an instance of racism over in one’s mind, or an anticipated event and hypervigiliance – preparation or defensive action taken to mitigate children’s experiences of racism. Mothers identified the stress of this hyperawareness shaping their emotional, mental, and physical well-being. For example, Shannon (discussed above) described how having to constantly be aware of the racism her children have/will face impacts her mental health due to feelings of anxiety. Shannon says, “I think it’s stress. I think it’s anxiety…. You’re not relaxed…. I think that’s things that other people don’t have to experience.” Other mothers in my study described having crying spells, sleeplessness, and sweaty palms surrounding their children’s experiences of racism.

What is key to take away from this study is that, regardless of whether the experience was actualized or anticipated, mothers identified hyperawareness as a source of stress that shapes their overall well-being. Additionally, because many of the mothers in the study had multiple children and discussed the role of hyperawareness at various life stages (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood), the stress experienced could be chronic. Where much of Black maternal health and well-being conversations have focused on pre- and post-natal outcomes, this project more broadly suggests that we expand our understanding of Black maternal health to recognize the role of children’s experiences of anti-Black racism in shaping the stress burden of Black mothers over their life course. The chronic and persistent nature of anti-Black racism in the lives of Black families reveals the burdens of motherhood for Black women.

The hyperawareness Black mothers possess is a double-edged sword, allowing them to protect their children, but at the cost of their own well-being. In highlighting the burdens of Black mothering that often go overlooked, I hope to reveal the insidiousness of racism in the lives of Black families, and the pervasiveness of racism on overall Black maternal well-being.

Mia Brantley (@_MiaBrantley) is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University, and an incoming (2023) Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of race, gender, and family within the context of health. Using a Black feminist lens, she provides insight into the multiple ways racism affects the health and lived experiences of Black families.

Between 1989 and 2021, the National Registry of Exonerations recorded 2970 exonerations in the US, 161 of which occurred in 2021 alone. Wrongful convictions arguably represent the most egregious form of miscarriage of justice in the criminal legal system, and their consequences are far-reaching: Exonerees face immense difficulties in finding employment, reestablishing their sense of belonging, and even securing housing. Wrongfully-convicted persons’ psychological traumas often impede their post-prison reintegration, including in the family setting. In a recent paper, I studied the shifting social processes through which the experience of wrongful conviction harms family life over time. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 15 exonerated men, I explored what I called the “relational costs of wrongful convictions”: The harms that men’s familial relationships sustained at 1) the moment of wrongful conviction, 2) during the period of wrongful imprisonment, and 3) in the men’s post-prison lives. In examining how these costs shift and accrue over the course of participants’ wrongful conviction journeys, I reframed the familial disruption associated with wrongful convictions as a fluid social process, rather than primarily the product of exonerees’ psychological traumas.

I found that the moment of wrongful conviction represented an experience of shared trauma that was borne equally by participants and their family members. Benito (a 52-year-old, Hispanic exoneree who served 30 years of wrongful imprisonment), for example, described this moment as a “family affair of horror” that he and his family members “actually experienced together.” For socioeconomically-disadvantaged family members (most of whom were also people of color), the shock of witnessing a loved one get wrongfully convicted was exacerbated by the helplessness of being unable to offer much in the way of financial support. Steve (a 45-year-old, Black exoneree who served 26 years of wrongful imprisonment) captured this pain when he said, “See, your family can believe you, but they don’t know what to do and they only have so many resources.”

Despite the force of participants’ familial support when they were wrongfully convicted, the sense of solidarity that the men shared with their family members faded over time as many of them endured their prison sentences in relative isolation, sharpening the pain of their wrongful imprisonment terms. Even privileged participants like Tim (a 49-year-old, white exoneree who served 17 years of wrongful imprisonment) reported that “when an innocent person goes to prison, their family, their friends, their loved ones, strangers, go to prison with them.” Many of these more affluent participants nonetheless retained their ties with family members on the outside, who continued to advocate on their behalf and offer them both material and emotional support. For less privileged men, on the other hand, wrongful imprisonment represented a period of radically-diminished support as their family members grew weary of supporting them. For men like Alfred (a 46-year-old, Black exoneree who served 17 years of wrongful imprisonment), the hardest part of his wrongful imprisonment was “the absolute loneliness of being there” with no support on the outside.

When participants later reentered society after serving years in prison as innocent men, they found it very difficult to rebuild the few familial ties that had survived their prison terms. Although exonerees may comparatively be better off than individuals on parole in terms of the social support that they receive when they are released from prison, participants struggled to overcome the feelings of hostility they had toward family members who they felt had not adequately supported them when they were incarcerated. The men experienced the relational costs of wrongful convictions in reentry even more sharply because—unlike individuals released on parole—they felt entirely abandoned by the state when they were released, and they were moreover forced to confront familial challenges generated by the single unique pathway to state support that was available to them as exonerees: Financial compensation. Benito, for example, felt that people in his social circle began to show their “true colors” when he received compensation for his wrongful conviction, and he ultimately had to “cut the umbilical cord” and move to an entirely different state to get away from his family because of conflict over money. Familial tension over compensation underscored how conflict during reentry could be traced back to rifts that emerged during participants’ period of wrongful imprisonment. Highlighting the accruing and evolving nature of the relational costs of wrongful convictions, Samuel (a 38-year-old, Black exoneree who served 15 years of wrongful imprisonment) expressed frustration toward family members who he felt “gave up” on him while he was incarcerated but somehow now expected him to spend his money on them. In his words, “that drive a wedge between people.”

            Importantly, many men who felt abandoned by their family members during their wrongful imprisonment were still trying to rebuild their relationships with these relatives when they were released, despite their pessimism about ever being able to restore the relationships fully. Reconciliation can in fact be possible for exonerees under these circumstances, and restorative justice programs that support exonerees’ efforts to reestablish their familial ties following wrongful conviction and imprisonment may be particularly valuable. Although I focused on exonerees’ perceptions of their family members’ response to their wrongful imprisonment, we must learn more about the decisions that may motivate family members to distance themselves from (or remain supportive of) their loved ones during periods of wrongful imprisonment. Above all, therefore, my findings point to the need to explore the symbiotic harms of wrongful imprisonment more fully.

Janani Umamaheswar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at George Mason University with research interests in punishment and social inequality. You can follow her on Twitter @jananiu.

Given that more than 60 million kids play organized sports today, there is a good chance that in the next few months you will consider signing your son or daughter up to play for a team. If you are like most parents, you will not give this task a great deal of thought. Instead, you will follow the lead of other adults in your social circle. I urge you to resist that temptation.

Sports have long been embedded in youth culture. However, the form and intensity of kids’ connections with sports has shifted in some troubling ways over the past 20 years. Only a generation ago, most kids played for a local team for a few months, then moved on to a different activity. Today, community-based leagues must compete with clubs that play year-round and offer higher levels of competition to participants.

Between the years of 2010 and 2017, the youth sports industry increased by 55% and now constitutes a $17 billion market—larger than the NFL. As a result, parents today are challenged to navigate what has become a profit-driven enterprise that treats their children as high-value customers. They often lack the information they need to make decisions that are in their kids’ best interests.

The combination of a rapidly evolving youth sports industry and dearth of dependable information puts many parents in a bind. Without a clear understanding of where their children fit into this convoluted web of sports activities, parents tend to follow the lead of their friends. When confronted with uncertainty, adults chose the path of least resistance. Personal connections tend to trump all other considerations.

For the past six years I have been conducting research on the youth sports industry. Over that period, I attended hundreds of practices and games, interviewed dozens of parents, and studied scholarship that documents the effects of athletics on kids. One thing that has become clear to me is that most parents make decisions about their children’s athletic activities without thinking carefully about the consequences.

As you start to plan your children’s extra-curricular activities, I encourage you to keep the following information in mind:

• The most highly ranked or prestigious team is not necessarily the best option for your child.
• Many successful athletes do not begin playing sports year-round until middle or high school.
• Only 7% of all high school athletes in the U.S. go on to play a varsity sport in college. For this reason, it is important to make decisions based on your child’s current interests and talents rather than on the dream of receiving a college scholarship.
• Early sports specialization can lead to over-use injuries, deceased enjoyment in athletics, and burnout.
• The majority of youth sport coaches report that playing multiple sports during childhood is the most effective way to develop athletic ability.

My research provides strong support for the last item on this list. The most well-adjusted athletes I have observed invested time and energy in sports, but also participated in other extra-curricular activities. Parents of these kids resisted the temptation to make decisions based on the assumption that their children would one day receive offers to play at the college level.  Viewing a college athletic scholarship as one of many possible outcomes—rather than the ultimate sign of success—helped them to make decisions in a more holistic way.  They encouraged their sons and daughters to play multiple sports, act in school plays, and participate in school government. In other words, their children led balanced lives.

Many young athletes do benefit from the high levels of coaching and competition that club sports can offer. However, before committing to a team that plays year-round, parents should have an extended discussion with their child. During this chat, they can ask their kid about their athletic goals, the amount of time they are willing to devote to sports, and how the decision to play for an elite club will affect their ability to do other things.

If, based on this conversation, the family decides that it is in the child’s best interests to play sports for only part of the year, they can look for community-based leagues that might make a good fit. Organizations like Little League baseball or softball, AYSO soccer, church-sponsored basketball, and neighborhood swim teams will give them the opportunity to work on their athletic skills in a less-intense environment.

Parents who conclude that their child will benefit from higher levels of competition should also consider their options carefully. Most of the adults I interviewed were not aware that those options existed. In retrospect, many told me, it would have been a good idea to take the following steps before making a final decision:

• Learn as much as you can about the goals and expectations of the nearest travel team. How often do they practice? Are players permitted to participate in other extra-curricular activities?
• Interview potential coaches. Ask them to explain their coaching philosophy. Another way to get a sense of a person’s coaching style is to observe their behavior at a practice or game.
• Research the costs of playing for the team. In addition to participation fees, families may be required to pay for special equipment, supplemental training, and costs associated with playing in tournaments.
• Look into travel teams based in other nearby towns that might have different expectations than the organization you initially thought of joining. Unlike community-based leagues, travel teams will usually accept players from any location. Take advantage of this option.

This type of work places some additional demands on parents but should pay off in the long run. With rates of mental illness and the demand for counseling reaching record highs, the implications of decisions like these can be significant. Taking the time to think carefully about what makes the most sense for your child will significantly increase the chances that they find success—on and off the field.

Christopher Bjork is a Professor of Education on the Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Chair & Coordinator of Teacher Education. You can reach them on Twitter @chrisbjork6

A college degree is often a ticket to the middle class, but not everyone has the same chance to obtain one. Social scientists have long known that parents’ education matters a lot: the children of college-educated parents graduate from college at higher rates than the children of parents without a bachelor’s degree.

But this widely known fact hides another one: there’s a lot of variation in graduating from college among students whose parents have the same education level. Among students whose parents do not have a college degree, 29% go onto become first-generation college graduates. And among students with at least one parent who graduated from college, 34% do not graduate from college themselves.

What differentiates the students who become first-generation college graduates from those who don’t? And what differentiates students who become continuing-generation college students from those who don’t?

To answer these questions, we drew upon The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a longitudinal dataset of American youth.

We find that first-generation college graduates are often the advantaged members of their disadvantaged class. Though their parents did not graduate from college, they are disproportionately from higher income families, have parents who work in jobs with more authority and autonomy, and have parents with higher expectations that they go to college. They also live in higher income neighborhoods, and are more likely to work with mentors. They are more often healthy. Contrary to how we often think of advantage, more are girls than boys.

Likewise, students who do not become continuing-generation college graduates are often the disadvantaged of the advantaged. Compared to other kids with college-educated parents, they are more likely to have parents with lower incomes and who work outside the most authoritative jobs, and they see their parents as being more accepting of not graduating from college. They also are more likely to live in lower income neighborhoods that have higher unemployment rates and to attend schools that are less funded. They more often have health issues and learning difficulties. But, departing from the pattern, more are boys than girls.

Interestingly, we also show that a lot of what parents do and don’t do that we all tend to think could matter for helping their children graduate from college, actually doesn’t. Among parents who did not graduate from college, it doesn’t matter if they talk to their children about school and work, work on school projects with them, or choose their neighborhood for its schools—their kids have the same chances of graduating from college either way. It also doesn’t matter if these parents put their kids in schools with low class sizes, more experienced teachers, or high school funding.

Among parents who have a bachelor’s degree, many things we tend to worry about also don’t matter for whether their children graduate from college. This includes putting their kids in schools with high achieving peers, small class sizes, and more experienced teachers, as well as helping their children find mentors.

There’s also another surprising fact: among students whose parents have the same resources, there are no white/black or white/Hispanic differences in becoming a first-generation or continuing-college graduate. Black students are less likely to graduate from college than white students, but this seems to be driven by their parents having fewer resources.

About a third of students who could become first-generation college graduates do so, and about a third of students who could become non-continuing-generation college graduates do so. Does this highlight the openness of the class structure? We don’t think so. As it’s the advantaged members of disadvantaged groups who graduate from college and the disadvantaged members of advantaged groups who don’t, our findings reinforce the idea that college is mostly closed to the disadvantaged and open to the advantaged. It’s mostly students whose parents have high levels of resources for their educational background who graduate from college—hardly a ringing endorsement of an open system or a meritocracy.

Anna Manzoni is Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University. Her current research interests include youth transition to adulthood, intergenerational support, inequalities in college access and returns and social mobility more broadly. Her work has been published in Advances in Life Course Research, European Sociological Review, Journal of Family Research, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Higher Education, PLOS one, Research in Higher Education, Social Forces, Sociological Methodology, The Sociological Quarterly, among other journals. Follow her on Twitter @theitalianna

Jessi Streib is a sociologist at Duke University. She is the author of three books on class, including the forthcoming The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College. Follow her on Twitter @JessiStreib

Reprinted with permission from The Society Pages

All of us depend, in early age and often at the end of life, on the care of others. We are shaped by individual, consequential but highly contingent acts of care, or their absence. To think about care is to shuttle back and forth between social totality and the irreducible complexity of individual needs, from feeding or washing to dignity or meaningful attention, explains James Butler in a new LRB essay.

A friend shared James Butler’s recent essay in the London Review of Books, “This Concerns Everyone.” For me it was a compact UK complement to Jean Tronto’s Who Cares? How to Reshape a Democratic Politics. Both pieces ask readers to cut across economic, moral, emotional, and social approaches to care so we can do better at addressing the crisis of care that is everywhere and everything all at once, so to speak. And yes, I am writing a review of a review article that points you to even more articles.

“This Concerns Everyone” reviews several books and leads with worry about how aging and disabled people are cared for in England; other forms of family care are in the scope of the piece. Butler covers the harms of private equity and corporate approaches to the business of care that we should make front-and-center in the U.S. (as Rose Batt and Eileen Appelbaum are doing). He presents what one might call an inequality as policy (an oldie but goodie that helps with this idea) argument about how government austerity has reduced access to care and increased suffering, by design.

Butler writes:

It would be a failure if the only answers sought were economic. The problem of care raises questions that lie outside the typical bounds of policy work…. What degree of indignity, pain, degradation or abuse are we prepared to see the people around us suffer?

Yikes. He goes on:

And what, if we are unable or unwilling to do it ourselves, are we prepared to pay for the work most intimate and essential to human life? Politicians may not wish to acknowledge these issues, but circumstances will force them on us regardless.

In short: Care is about suffering, care is about money, and care is about labor. Butler illustrates the labor conditions for a growing UK care workforce with diminishing wages: 

One case recently investigated by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority found nine Indian care workers in the UK on student visas, sleeping in cold and cramped conditions, with evidence their recruiters controlled their wages. Coworkers had raised the alarm after noticing them eating leftovers from residents’ plates.

In the U.S. context, we understand these conditions to be a form of anti-Blackness. See, for example, a key essay on  #BlackWomenBest regarding Black women workers during COVID.

Now: hold that “systemic reliance on diminished power” of targeted groups in your mind as you turn to his next point: Butler asks us to consider seriously the existential, enigmatic place that care takes as both work and love. To face that question–the question of feeling about care work–is not easy. It is irritating. 

The irritating bit comes from the strategic and naturalized way that care is made to be sentimental and sweet:

Key [an author he profiled] cared for people with psychosis, and confesses to his naivety when he started the job. He detects a similar naivety in artists or professors for whom care is a fantasy of universal benevolence, a weakly secularised Christian caritas. Where’s the wiping up of blood or piss, the frustration and resentment, the sheer exhaustion? It would be easier if the fantasy were baseless, but the attention to the individual that care work requires does generate love, of a kind, sometimes. It isn’t a reward – that would be better pay – but a contradiction in the work itself, not something that can be reasoned out of it. ‘The love I feel in fleeting bursts at work is painful and complicated,’ Key writes, ‘and it would probably be better to not feel it. It’s a job. I scrub a lot of toilets.’

What to do?I’ve been doing this reading as a Sociology of Families professor–and as a person who needs care and gives care. I am looking for innovations to help college students know our subject beyond charts, graphs, or ethnographies. I’m also asking them to know themselves. In my Families classes, my mainly working-class students face this joint dilemma: They think about care and the realities of the double- and triple-shift lives of caring, working (often in caregiver jobs), and schooling on the one hand, and that commonplace sentimentality of care (referenced above) on the other. We can’t get anywhere without finding a way to recognize all of it.

Some students have taken the opportunity to join a photography project about wrkxfmly created by Working Assumptions. Photography allows students to go beyond the measurement of all things social that we typically do in sociology. Through photography, students are guided to see and share each unique case of the contradiction between the pain and the love of care described by Butler.

Where “This Concerns Everyone” isn’t on point for the U.S., it is often as revealing as where it is: Butler bemoans the slide away from a social safety net system in the U.K.; here in the U.S., there has hardly been one to slide away from. Despite the pandemic, we still have no federal requirement for paid leave. The toll on women is pronounced. A colleague recently asked me if there’s a chance that care can be or ever will be elevated–in economics and in culture? It was a rational question that made me sad. I think she was asking if we can get more people to see that it has never been a choice? 

In line with that, Butler wrote:

[Another author] counterposes the logic of care and the logic of choice, arguing that a narrow focus on choice can amount to patient neglect. The reality of care exposes our dependence on others and shows how constrained, even illusory, our choices are.

The sad part of the “will care ever be elevated?” is that we face care one way or another. Getting a glimpse of my father’s last few days in hospice last week—and sitting with his wife’s labors for him, for herself, for countless others during his long and yet sharp decline—was a reminder that the need for care and the human cost of care are as inescapable as his death was.

Will care ever be elevated and centered in our politics to reflect how it is central to our lives? Essays like Butler’s on the U.K., the monograph by Tronto on the U.S., other pieces linked here, and even my students working through it all using photography make me think: maybe? I can’t show you my students’ work today. Expert and artist visions of the enigmas of care, though, are here, where we recognize the tensions Butler describes in a 24-hour daycare center and here in an intimate portrayal of those same tensions in the ordinary care of children at home during the pandemic. To be continued.

Virginia Rutter, Professor (emerita), Department of Sociology, Framingham State University, vrutter@framingham.edu. Dr. Rutter is editor, with Kristi Williams (Ohio State University) and Barbara Risman (University of Illinois at Chicago), of Families as They Really Are (Norton).The third edition is out Fall 2023. Follow her at @virginiarutter

Parents today are trying their best to do what’s best for their children. That isn’t always easy. In many cases, making sure that your kids are safe and happy is no longer considered enough. Images in the media, pervasive consumerism, and social media all convey to parents the idea that they should do whatever they can to make sure their children are exceptional. The barrage of photos that appear in their daily Instagram feed alone could convince even a devoted parent that they should be spending more preparing exotic meals for their families, taking their children on extravagant vacations, attending as many school events as possible—and sharing evidence of their parental devotion with the world.

I am currently writing a book about the youth sports industry. To gain a better understanding of how changes to that industry are affecting families, I have attended countless practices and games, interviewed of parents of young athletes, and asked coaches to reflect on their experiences working with kids. My research indicates that rapid expansion of the youth sports industry has intensified the pressure that parents feel to increase the time, money, and energy they invest in their children’s athletic careers. Overseeing their children’s athletic careers has become more complicated and stressful.

Although my current research focuses on sports, the tendency to do whatever it takes to get ahead seems to have infected many other areas of contemporary culture. Parents of budding ballerinas, debaters, and singers are all likely to experience pressure to set their sons and daughters up for success as early as possible. This can lead parents to fork over large sums of money to pay for private lessons, specialized summer camps, and social marketing campaigns. Would it surprise you to learn an industry has emerged to meet the growing demand for coaches who prepare linguistically talented youngsters to compete in spelling bees? Or that some of those coaches charge more than $200 per hour for their services?

This emphasis on performance over development extends into the classroom as well. In my work as a professor of education, I spend a great deal of time in schools. As you have probably experienced yourself, the importance attached to test scores now overshadows many of the core responsibilities our society has traditionally entrusted to schools. Over the past two decades, I have noticed a gradual decline in attention paid to students’ social development and love for learning. As long as students receive acceptable scores on standardized tests, the system is judged a success. One by-product of this shift is that schools may prepare children to win competitions, but they lose their motivation to learn along the way. 

Parents are constantly bombarded with messages that emphasize the need to provide their children with competitive advantages—in the classroom, on the playing field, and on stage. This can create a sense of information overload that makes it difficult for parents to make sound decisions for their children. In that situation, I have observed, they tend to follow the lead of their peers, who are unlikely to be better informed than themselves. This can prompt parents to make choices that they later regret. Uniformed consumers make excellent customers.

When faced with uncertainty, parents usually opt to expand the volume and intensity of the activities their children participate in.

So, what can be done to address this situation?

Though I would like to slow that trend toward commercialization of athletics (and other extra-curricular activities), I also recognize that this would be an enormous undertaking. The business interests that profit from parents willing to pay for services with the potential to give their children competitive advantages have become deeply entrenched in our society. For this reason, I encourage parents to focus on the long-term goals they have for their children and make decisions with careful attention to those objectives. What do they ultimately hope their sons and daughters will get out of participating in extra-curricular activities?

Interestingly, when I asked parents what they hoped their children would learn through sports, they mentioned the value of “life lessons” more often than winning. Those lessons included things like persistence, the ability to work with others, overcoming adversity, and time management. Yet while almost everyone I interviewed recognized the importance of those lessons, many failed to back up their words with action. When an invitation to an elite summer camp or to try out for a highly ranked team, they found it difficult to resist those opportunities.

The most well-adjusted athletes I observed as I conducted my research invested time and energy in sports, but also participated in other extra-curricular activities. Parents of these well-rounded young women and men resisted the temptation to make decisions based on the assumption that their children would one day receive offers to play or perform at the college level. Regarding a college scholarship as one of many possible outcomes—rather than the ultimate sign of success—had a ripple effect; it allowed them to make decisions in a more holistic way, after considering many different factors. They encouraged their sons and daughters to play multiple sports, act in school plays, participate in school government, etc. In other words, parents created a sense of balance in their children’s lives.

Children’s interests and priorities shift over time. Their developmental needs evolve. A kid who seems intent on becoming a professional basketball player at age 8 might decide that playing the violin is more gratifying only a couple of years later. If parents can maintain a focus on life lessons rather than competition, they can create a solid foundation for their children’s long term physical, social, and cognitive development.

Christopher Bjork is a Professor of Education on the Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. Chair & Coordinator of Teacher Education. You can reach them on Twitter @chrisbjork6

The age at which adults first marry has slowly risen since the 1970’s. In 2021, the average age at first marriage in the U.S. was for 30.4 for men and for 28.6 women. Delaying marriage until the late 20’s or early 30’s has become both common and normal as a response to cultural, economic, and educational shifts. These include the decline of manufacturing and growth of knowledge and service economies, the increased importance of college degrees to opportunities for middle-class jobs, and the increasing acceptance of pre-marital sex and cohabitation. A predominant narrative around marriage today is that young adults should wait, especially if they are enrolled in college, so that they can establish themselves financially and develop maturity before forming their own families.

Still, some young adults marry in the late teens or early 20’s, notably in the U.S. South. 6.44% of 18–23-year-olds in the United States were married, separated, divorced, or widowed as of 2017, and 7.41% in the South. To understand why some marry “early,” I interviewed 45 18-23 year old engaged or married young adult college students in Mississippi. Most of the engaged students would marry in the Summer just after their college graduation.

I found that these young adults hadn’t always planned to marry as early as they did (or would). As they entered college, in fact, they had adopted the idea that marriage would take their focus away from school and had expected to wait until closer to average ages. However, they compromised this earlier marriage timeline due to a set of four factors, some of which reflect their childhood environments and others that reflect influences during college.

First, in students’ personal orientations to marriage, marriage was a central life goal and an important marker of social standing in their families, peer networks, neighborhoods, or religious communities. Students described a preference for committed relationships over casual sexual or romantic ties, with some embracing the idea that dating was intended only to explore marital compatibility.

Second, students were located within a marriage-oriented culture. All had witnessed family members, friends, or peers marry early and had met other students on campus who were engaged or married. While many of their college peers had no interest in commitment, those who did had opportunities to connect with one another, for instance through organized religious groups or sorority chapters that held ritual celebrations of engagement.

Third, the “right” relationship led students to consider marriage. These relationships were emotionally close and positive, with some describing a self-transformation that their partner had enabled. A relationship was also “right” when a partner was supportive of existing goals in school and work, which signaled that marriage was unlikely to throw a student off track. Finally, students had been in their relationships for several years, and a sense of inevitability around marriage had often crept in. For those who had lived together, the familiarity of a shared household made them feel “ready” to get married.

Finally, students had experienced social and financial support for marriage. Their families and friends were excited about the idea of their marriage, and only a very few expressed reservations. In addition, students had confirmed that the financial support their parents gave them for college would continue following marriage or, if it would not, planned their weddings for after graduation. Marriage also allowed some to access additional financial resources such as military spousal benefits or Pell grants for college. And among those who did not approve of living together outside of marriage, marriage could reduce the costs of housing.

Ultimately, marriage at a young age began to make sense to students when they were in quality long-term relationships, when they felt confident that their partner would not hinder their future goals in school or work, when their marriage had the support of family members, and when they would gain financially or at least not lose by getting married. Many said things like “why not?” or “why wait?” to express the feeling that barriers to marriage had been removed. Going forward with an early marriage was also made likely by the orientations towards relationships and marriage that had formed earlier in life in students’ families and communities, and by the prevalence of early marriage in students’ networks.

These young people were certainly aware that they were doing something somewhat unusual by getting married while in college. Yet instead of rejecting the social norm of delaying marriage, they applied it to others while making themselves an exception. Students distanced themselves from the potential stigma of marrying “too early” by talking about themselves as more mature than others, and thus more ready to get married. For instance, Natalie concluded that, “I like being married. I’m perfectly happy being married and being a student. I love it. But if you’re not ready for it, like most people aren’t, you don’t see how anybody else could be.”

Acknowledgement: This study was funded by a Presidential grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.

Rachel Allison is an Associate Professor of Sociology and affiliate of Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. You can follow her on Twitter @rallis2.

Interviews with undergraduates during COVID-19 lockdowns illuminate how social class shapes the most intimate dimensions of family life, including how we understand what we deserve from and owe to our parents.

“Once quarantine started in March, one of my first thoughts was, ‘Shit, I’m not going to see my parents for a long time,’” Lexie told me that November over Zoom. A college junior from a low-income family, Lexie was just finishing her second semester of remote instruction at an elite university in the northeastern United States.

Although many of her classmates had returned to their parents’ homes when students were ordered to vacate the dorms the previous March, Lexie had not. The risk of bringing COVID-19 to her parents was too great, she told me, explaining,

My parents are 75 and 63. They both have every single health condition you could think of: diabetes, asthma . . . they’re both really overweight . . . which means that for COVID, if they get it, they will die.

Lexie’s mom had begged her to come home. “I don’t know what [my mom was thinking], because my mom knows that I’m a very stubborn person,” Lexie told me. “When I make a decision about something, especially when it regards her safety, I’m not going to budge on that.”

Crowdsourcing information from friends, Lexie found an apartment to sublet from a classmate who had returned home. Although Lexie felt fortunate to have found a place to stay, she struggled with the isolation of living alone in lockdown. “Everyone I knew went back home and lived with their parents,” Lexie said, describing the end of the spring 2020 semester. She told me, “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was the worst time in my life.”

About a month later, I interviewed Lexie’s classmate, Bella. The daughter of two Ivy-educated professionals, Bella said she occupied two empty bedrooms in her parents’ spacious suburban home – one for sleep, the other for schoolwork. “My parents were willing to do whatever would make the spring more fun for me and for them,” Bella explained, recounting that they ordered a wine subscription and meal prep kits. Bella’s parents also ensured that she was set up with the technology she needed for remote classes: “they bought me a monitor and all these other accessories to help make studying easier,” Bella said.

Although Bella was already living in an off-campus apartment when the dorms closed that March, she explained that it was more appealing to move home because she knew her parents could take care of her there. “Because it was such a scary virus, I was like, ‘OK, I’ll just come home and let you guys take care of me,’” Bella explained, adding, “It didn’t hurt that [my parents] were going to pay for all of my food and stuff for that time.”

At face value, Lexie’s and Bella’s pandemic housing trajectories may be surprising. Lexie’s mother wanted her to return home, and she could have saved money by doing so. Bella was already living in an off-campus apartment, and she could have stayed put. So what explains their housing decisions?

My research demonstrates that understanding why Bella moved home—and why Lexie did not—requires understanding their underlying relationships with their parents.

Privileged dependence, precarious autonomy

Lexie and Bella were two of the 48 undergraduates I interviewed to understand how students from different social class backgrounds navigated COVID-19 campus closings. These students all attended the same elite residential university, but half were from working-class families and the other half were from upper-middle-class families. As their disparate experiences suggest, I observed striking class divides.  

When I began this study in March 2020, I expected to see inequalities in the material resources parents would be able to provide—and I certainly did. Yet the class divides I observed went beyond immediate resource constraints. As I wrote in the Journal of Marriage and Family, I found that students’ housing decisions also reflected dramatically different understandings of their relationships with their parents.

My interviews revealed class divides in students’ understandings of (a) their parents’ authority, (b) their own entitlement to parents’ resources, and (c) their obligations to their families. Together, these understandings informed how students made decisions about where to live and how to interact with their families during remote instruction. Upper-middle-class students became more dependent on their parents—what I term privileged dependence—while working-class students took on more adult responsibility than ever—precarious autonomy.

Authority

Class divides in students’ understandings of intergenerational authority came through most clearly in their initial decisions about where to live when the dorms closed in March 2020. Upper-middle-class parents tended to be highly involved in students’ housing decisions and travel arrangements. Their children typically felt they had to live where their parents wanted them to. This reflected both students’ respect for their parents’ expertise about how to stay safe and students’ feeling that the people who pay the bills call the shots.

Working-class students, by contrast, typically made decisions more independently. These students often felt they knew more than their parents. Further, working-class parents lacked financial leverage: students like Lexie were typically paying all or most of their own college expenses (here, it’s important to consider how institutional context shaped the dynamics I observed: at the highly-resourced university in my study, working-class students benefitted from unusually generous financial aid packages – this gave them financial leverage their working-class peers at other colleges wouldn’t have had).  

Entitlement

Second, students’ narratives revealed class divides in the extent to which they felt entitled to parents’ resources. Upper middle-class students like Bella generally viewed parents’ homes as their homes and parents’ money as their money. They typically described child-centered relationships in which both parents and students prioritized the student’s comfort, health, and academic progress. Bella’s decision to return home illustrates this dynamic well—she wanted to be at home so that her parents could take care of her.

In contrast, working-class students like Lexie actively considered parents’ needs, vulnerabilities, and constraints when making decisions about where to live and how to interact with their families. They typically felt far less entitled to parents’ resources—which were, of course, far more limited. Many working-class students (including many who moved home) expressed fears of being a health risk, a financial burden, or an inconvenience to their families.

Obligation

Finally, there were class divides in students’ understandings of their obligations to their families. Whereas privileged students like Bella generally took it for granted that their parents would run the household while they focused on school, working-class students who went home typically had more responsibilities. These included running errands, driving parents to work, caring for elderly family members, and helping manage young siblings’ remote schooling. Some working-class students purposefully avoided returning home because they anticipated such responsibilities would interfere with schoolwork. Others who did return home often put academics to the side to tend to family members’ needs.

The uncertain future

My findings suggest implications for inequality, both during the immediate context of the pandemic and beyond. There were clear short-term benefits to privileged students’ greater dependence on parents during remote instruction. Privileged parents’ socioeconomic resources and the shared assumption that their young adult children would continue to rely on these resources protected upper-middle-class students like Bella from a variety of financial and academic disruptions. These protections—which were not available to less advantaged peers like Lexie—may yield longer-term payoffs, thus amplifying inequalities between students.

Comparing the experiences of Lexie, Bella, and their peers also offers a window into underlying differences in these young adults’ relationships with their parents. Students’ options for dealing with the campus closings were clearly constrained by their own and their parents’ immediate circumstances at the onset of the pandemic. But the class divides I observed extended beyond immediate resource constraints. The students I interviewed made decisions that reflected class-specific understandings of intergenerational authority, their entitlement to their parents’ resources, and their obligations to their families. My findings underscore the need to consider students’ relationships with their parents in understanding their educational decisions, experiences, and outcomes, both during the pandemic and beyond.

Elena G. van Stee is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2021-2023 Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Fellow. Elena’s research examines culture and inequality, focusing on social class, families, higher education, and the transition to adulthood. Her dissertation explores how social class intersects with race/ethnicity and immigration to shape young adults’ relationships with parents after college. You can read more about Elena’s research on her website and follow her on Twitter at @elenavanstee.