It was just over 20 years ago, in 2000, when the US Census first offered the option to identify with more than one race.  President Obama helped to amplify this message when he referred to himself as a “mutt” in reference to his parents’ Nigerian Black, White, and immigrant background. Fast forward to Kamala Harris’ election as not only the first woman but also the first mixed-race woman of color Vice President.  Harris openly identifies as South Asian and Jamaican Black, and her identity was a point of celebration for many who identify as multiracial themselves.  Interracial marriage didn’t even become legal in the U.S. until 1967 yet by 2020 the “two or more races population” was 33.8 million people, a 276 percent increase since 2010. In just a few decades, multiraciality has reshaped the ways we think about racial identification and posed challenges to strict divisions within the racial hierarchy.

Since about the 1970s, research began into what a “multiracial” identity means and the implications of multiraciality for society.  In 1993 Maria P.P Root wrote the now famous “Bill of Rights for Mixed Race People,” which lays out a series of rights related to personal racial identity for those who identify with more than one race. The scholarship on mixedness has rapidly grown since then, with work on not only the complex facets of a mixed-race identity but also on varied intersecting topics such as discrimination against multiracials, psychological and emotional development of multiracials, multiracial identity across the life course, and the presence of multiraciality in marketing and popular culture.  In my new book, Multiracial: The Kaleidoscope of Mixedness, I provide a critical synthesis of the scholarship on mixedness, from the 1970s until today.  In analyzing the “field of mixedness” I engage with how mixedness, and multiraciality specifically, present key opportunities to challenge hegemonic racial thinking as well as potentially conform to that same hegemonic racial framework.  While the book has 6 chapters that each take a different focus, in this post I am focusing on Chapter 3 that looks at the dynamics of mixedness in families. 

The institution and practices of family are essential to understanding mixedness.  There is a co-creative process between race and family wherein family creates and reproduces race and race shapes family formation.  In the chapter on family, I review three main topics: interracial relationships, racial socialization, and in vitro and adoption.

Interracial relationships are an integral part of mixed studies because at the root of mixedness is recognition of a couple as interracial.  Approval of interracial marriage is at an all-time high.  The coupling that has faced the greatest resistance are Black and White couples but a recent Gallup poll shows 94 percent of US adults now approve of marriages between Blacks and Whites, compared to 20 percent approval a year after interracial marriages were made legal.  Despite this increase in approval ratings, the celebration needs to proceed with caution.  First, some interracial marriages are much more common than others, which reveals patterns in how some racial groups are seen as more acceptable than others.  For example, relationships between Hispanics and Whites are the most common while White men with Black wives are rarer.  sSecond, marriage does not always signal an end to discrimination; this point is true both for interracial couples with a White partner and also for interracial couples among people of color.  Some individuals seek an interracial relationship to increase their social mobility and/or to distance themselves from their own familial background.  Other research shows that sometimes the White partner expects high degrees of conformity from their non-White partner while others have a blending of cultures within the relationship.  Interracial marriages, thus, can continue to conform to the rules of a racial hierarchy even while crossing the color line.

A second line of inquiry among mixed families is racial socialization.  Racial socialization identifies how families teach their children about racial identity, racial discrimination, and race relations through explicit and implicit conversations and modeling behaviors. Parents of mixed-race children face the particular task of deciding upon their child’s racial identity as a child of an interracial couple could choose to have one or more racial identities that reflects their parents’ background.  Parents may have a racial identity preference for their child, which can complicate the racial identity formation for mixed children.  Some parents may want a specific monoracial identity out of group loyalty while other parents, particularly if one is White, tend to want their child to identify as multiracial.  Such messages and preferences from parents range from supportive to combative, and have been shown to have a significant effect on how mixed-race people identify as an adult.

A third main line of inquiry is how adoption and assistive technologies are creating new types of mixed families.  While these types of families are less included in the scholarship on mixedness, it’s important to recognize the formation of mixed-race families via adoption, gamete donation (sperm or ova), and gestational carriers.  In the case of adoption, the majority of mixed families are White parents who adopt children of color.  Current approximate estimates are that one in four adoptive households is transracial, one in six adopted children is foreign born, and 84 percent of international adoptions are transracial.  Children of European and Asian descent are the most desired among potential parents.  Of great concern within these families is how adopted children with White parents often reside in segregated White communities and explicit conversation around racial identity and racial discrimination is often lacking, which can lead to an unstable or complicated racial identity.  While the children in these families may be monoracial themselves, the experience of residing in a mixed-race family household can lead to identifying as multiracial.

The interactive effects between race(ism) and family are present and salient for all families, but in the case of mixed-race families some questions are more particular.  What patterns do we see among interracial couples? How do racial socialization messages shape racial identity preference? How are changes in technology and resources creating new pathways for forming mixed-race families? If the past twenty years is an indication, the amount of people choosing a multiracial identity will increase, and so we must continue to ask how multiraciality is informing our future.

hephzibah v. strmic-pawl is the author of Multiracial: The Kaleidoscope of Mixedness published with Polity Books. She is also the author of Understanding Racism (SAGE) and the facilitator for the Support Ella Baker Day campaign. Twitter/IG: @hephzibahvsp  www.hephzibahvsp.com

Ten years ago, my husband and I eloped. We invited no one to observe the exchange of vows, but my family eagerly awaited the change of my surname. Three days after the ceremony, when we joined my family for a Christmas celebration, they asked why I hadn’t changed my name online. They were shocked when I told them I did not intend to change my name at all. A few minutes after the news settled, my family informed me that I was treating my husband poorly and that they really thought I should change my name. The experience left me feeling ill, and wondering whether most people in the U.S. thought women who kept their names were less than ideal romantic partners.

Researchers have shown that people view heterosexual women who change their names as more committed than women who keep their names, but it is unclear whether this is because name-keeping women don’t share a surname with their husband or because they break gender norms. To date, most studies have only compared women who took their husbands’ surnames (women who follow gender norms and sharea surname with their husband) with women who kept or hyphenated their surnames (women who break gender norms and do not share a surname with their husband), so prior research could not disentangle whether negative views of women are caused by their gender deviance or by their lack of a shared surname.

In a paper recently published in Socius, I report results from a survey experiment that asked people what they thought about the commitment and love of women and men in couples in which 1) women changed their surnames to their husbands’ surnames, 2) both partners kept their surnames, or 3) both partners hyphenated their surnames (women who share a surname with their husbands, but break gender norms). Comparing views of women across these three couples allowed me to isolate the potentially negative impact of breaking gendered marital name norms from the impact of not sharing a surname.

I found that women who break marital name norms are judged, even when they share a surname with their husband. This suggests the public (un)consciously judges norm-breaking women because of their gender deviance, not because they’ve failed to construct a family identity. The figure below shows that women who shared a hyphenated surname with their husbands were rated as 12% less committed and loving than women who changed their surnames. Women who kept their surnames were viewed as 13% less committed.

Predicted values based on linear regression models with covariates presented in Table 3 of Kelley, Kristin. 2023. “The Effect of Marital Name Choices on Heterosexual Women’s and Men’s Perceived Quality as Romantic Partners.” Socius 9:1-14.

Are men also rated as less committed and loving when they break marital name norms? I found that men in couples in which both partners kept their surnames were viewed as 5% less committed and loving than men whose wives changed their surnames. However, men in name-hyphenating couples were viewed similarly to conventional men. It appears that women’s commitment and love is more scrutinized on the basis of their marital name choices than men’s commitment and love. However, people do perceive men as having lower social status and less power when they or their wives break marital name norms.

Norm-breaking penalties likely discourage women and men from making egalitarian marital name choices. In light of these findings, it is no surprise that  87% of heterosexual women in the U.S. still change their surnames at marriage. According to Ellen Lamont, many heterosexual couples conform to traditional gendered dating rituals due to cultural pressure. My family’s opinions of my own marital name choice did not push me to the county clerk’s office, asking to change my name after all, but the experience has made me more likely to think about how I conform to standards of femininity in their presence, i.e. my own accountability to gender norms.

How might things change? Although unconventional marital name choices may initially result in backlash, the belief that norm-breaking women are less committed and loving may weaken as more couples keep, hyphenate, and blend their names. Given their higher status in society, men may be able to fast-forward progress if they choose to hyphenate or change their own names. Same-sex and queer couples are already showing us what name change utopia might look like. Lesbian, gay, and queer couples are more reflexive, flexible, and purposefully egalitarian about their marital name choices.

Kristin Kelley is a Research Fellow at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. You can read more about her research at here and follow her on twitter @kelleykristink and LinkedIn.

Family dynamics have become more complex and differentiated over time, generating a new context of family relationships and support structures. At the same time, individuals increasingly rely on family support. Shared values and interpersonal relationships play an important role for intergenerational exchange, but the provision of support is ultimately contingent on individual needs and resources available to exchange. Therefore, the question arises about how events altering individual needs and resources may in turn have negative implications for individual’s well-being over the life course.

In a new study, we draw from rich panel data from Germany to investigate the role of one such event, parental separation, for support exchanges between parents and adult children.

We looked at 4,340 German adults who participated in in-depth surveys conducted every other year between 2009 and 2016, which explored the extent to which parents and children gave and received support to each other. We focused on the interdependencies across multiple dimensions of support. Specifically, we looked at three types of support: emotional support, which includes things like personal advice; material support, which refers to things like financial support and gifts; and instrumental support, which includes things like helping out around the house, babysitting and eldercare. As intergenerational support is a bidirectional transfer process, in which parents support their children and children support their parents when parents get older, we examined both directions of support: from parents to children (downward) and from children to parents (upward). Furthermore, we considered mothers and fathers as separate but interdependent sources and recipients of support.

Our results suggest that the effects of parental separation, which affect the resources and well-being of parents and children, as well as their relationships, extend to their ability and opportunities of exchanging support. We find evidence of interdependence across several dimensions. Both upward and downward support are lower when parents did not separate for most dimensions and directions of support. The only exchanges which do not differ for children of separated and non-separated families are emotional support exchanges with mothers in both directions, and material support to mothers.

Differences emerge for support exchanges with mothers vs fathers, with separation being less disruptive of support exchanges between adult children and mothers, which may relate to their kinkeeper role during marriage, longer co-residence with children after separation, and lower likelihood to remarry and establish a new family.

Education makes a significant difference for mothers, but not for fathers. More educated mothers are better able they are to provide material support to their children after separation, suggesting that the socio-economic position of mothers buffers some of the negative consequences of union dissolution for intergenerational relations.  

Parental separation in childhood is associated with lower support exchanges with fathers, but not with mothers. This result aligns with those of studies showing that parental separations earlier in life are negatively associated with intergenerational contact than parental separations later in life, particularly with fathers.

Overall, our study shows that children in separated families are at a disadvantage not only as kids but also as adults, highlighting the social challenge and the need to provide additional support for separated families.

The fact that separation is associated with lower intergenerational assistance across a range of support dimensions and flows contributes to increasing disadvantage for those already disadvantaged. As the family plays an increasing role as safety net, lower intergenerational assistance among families who experienced separation may translate in increasing disadvantage for those who traditionally were in disadvantage. Individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are far more likely to be exposed to parental separation, suggesting that a gap exists for non-intact families between support exchange and need of support, which might have significant implications for how family dynamics contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities.

We welcome research to expand on our findings by addressing what explains the associations we documented between parental separation and intergenerational support. Among other factors, it would be interesting to investigate the role of resources related for example to employment status, financial situation, as well as health; family structures, such as presence of (step-) siblings or parental remarriage; and relationship quality, such as emotional closeness or frequency of contact.

Anna Manzoni is Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University (USA). 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, Journal of Family Research, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Higher Education, PLOS one, Research in Higher Education, Social Forces, Sociological Methodology, among other journals. Follow them on Twitter @theitalianna

Many transgender and non-binary (TNB) older Americans face challenging social conditions when managing their health. TNB older adults, for example, disproportionately report lower socioeconomic status and higher rates of chronic illness compared to their counterparts. TNB people often face mental health challenges over the life course due to stigma, discrimination, and violence against LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities. TNB populations are at risk for experiencing poor mental and physical health outcomes, discrimination, and multiple health risk behaviors such as suicide ideation and attempt. Consequently, TNB older adults continue to experience health inequities in older adulthood. Overall, TNB older adults constitute a medically-vulnerable population with substantial health and healthcare disparities.

The COVID-19 pandemic also poses substantial social and health challenges for TNB older Americans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, older adults (65 years or over) have a heightened risk of COVID-19-related severe illness, hospitalization, and death among older Americans compared to their younger counterparts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found that about 1 in 4 older Americans had at least one potential long-COVID health problem up to a year after an initial COVID-19 infection. While prior research has notably examined TNB health and healthcare disparities during COVID-19, less is known about how TNB people manage such conditions in older adulthood. Examining such disparities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is important since COVID-19 has heightened the social and health instabilities of many TNB older communities across the globe.

At the same time, these conditions make it difficult for TNB older Americans to receive adequate social support and resources in protecting their health. For example, family caregiving of older TNB adults can assist with TNB health and healthcare management. However, researchers have demonstrated the social and health challenges LGBTQIA+ caregivers face when caring for a loved one. LGBTQIA+ family care partners, for example, frequently perform more healthcare management tasks than their counterparts. Additionally, LGBTQIA+ caregivers often report increased employment and income insecurity due to their informal caregiving responsibilities and commitments. Researchers have also established connections between chronic illness management among TNB couples and families. Most importantly, many TNB older adults do not have access to informal and formal caregiver support systems in US society. Prior scholarship is limited in addressing effective support and resource provision strategies for TNB older adults and their family care partners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Present Study

Using qualitative data from 47 in-depth interviews, my primary project examines how TNB adults 65 years or over – as a medically and socially vulnerable population – navigate healthcare, advance care planning, and health inequities in US society. Recently published in Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, I investigate how TNB older adults manage and maintain their health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such findings offer potential ways to improve health services and resources for TNB older Americans in protecting and maintaining their health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

Overall, interview respondents’ narratives revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic was an unanticipated life course disturbance that drastically impacted their health management attitudes and experiences. For example, regardless of interview respondents’ demographic and social backgrounds (e.g., political and religious affiliation), most reported socially distancing themselves from others outside of their household during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, interview respondents had various reasons why they chose to physically distance themselves from others outside of their household, aside from the US government stay-at-home orders (e.g., spending more time with family). The primary explanation for why respondents physically distanced from others was due to the fear of being exposed to and managing COVID-19 infection. This fear shaped TNB respondents’ decisions in managing their physical and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nearly all TNB older adults from my research sample described their health management decisions and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic through four, primary themes: (1) exacerbated mental health challenges, (2) disrupted social relationships and support, (3) adopting cost-effective health management strategies, and (4) incorporating family care partners in health management. In addition to worsening pandemic conditions, interview respondents’ health management decisions and experiences were heavily influenced by their privileged and marginalized social locations, such as financial security (or lack thereof), informal and/or formal care partnerships, and reliable access to technology. These broader patterns of inequity affect how TNB older Americans manage their health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, I investigate how pervasive social inequity and injustice (e.g., lack of familial caregiver support) harm TNB older adults’ ability to maintain their health and well-being in later life, while pinpointing how these processes are shaped by worsening pandemic conditions and interview respondents’ privileged and marginalized social locations in US society. I further describe how trans and non-binary older adults protect (e.g., incorporating family care partnerships) and struggle with (e.g., exacerbated mental health challenges) their health management during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Implications

This study magnifies how understanding TNB people’s health management in older adulthood as a dynamic process — influenced by social inequities, privileges, and sociopolitical contexts — is a critical step toward reducing health and healthcare disparities among TNB older Americans. Integrating research findings and clinical competencies of TNB older patient populations into medical education, training, and practice is essential to fully meet the health and healthcare needs of TNB older Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, there is limited research addressing health management that pays particular attention to TNB older adults and how they respond to the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic while working to maintain, protect, or better their health independently and with family care partners. This research begins to fill that gap by revealing the structural barriers (e.g., disrupted social relationships and support) to achieving TNB older adults’ health management goals during COVID-19.

Nik M. Lampe, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society and the Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab at Vanderbilt University. You can follow them on Twitter: @nik_lampe

Young adults in the United States are increasingly relying on their parents for economic support. This is due to long-term changes in the labour and housing market that have made it harder for young people to become economically independent after leaving full-time education.

Most parents, at some point, will provide some form of economic support to their young-adult children. However, the type of support that parents provide – and its consequences – depend strongly upon each family’s socio-economic position. Parents from upper-class families (that is, with higher wealth, incomes, and educational attainment) tend to support their children by giving them large sums of money. This helps children achieve financial security and independence early on, for instance by enabling them to make riskier and more rewarding career decisions, or by giving them preferential access to good-quality housing. Parents who are less well-off are instead more likely to help their children by letting them live at home, in what is known as prolonged intergenerational “co-residence.” Co-residence helps children with living expenses, allowing them for example to repay student debt while securing a stable job. The problem, however, is that co-residence is not as beneficial as direct money transfers for the economic outcomes of young adults. While receiving money that can be flexibly spent opens up the employment and housing opportunities of children, living with parents in young adulthood limits the geographic range of job searches, and it can delay the transition into economically independent adulthood. Clearly, social class differences in parental support to young adults are problematic insofar as they represent a way for socio-economic advantage and disadvantage to be transmitted along generational lines.

In the past thirty years, the United States have experienced consistently high or rising levels of income inequality. Sociological theory and research suggest that such inequality can act to exacerbate social class differences in parental support, which does not bode well for social mobility. By definition, rising inequality implies that, in real terms, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, or both. As such, inequality enables the rich to give disproportionately more money to their children than the poor. Moreover, inequality can raise the stakes of maintaining a high social status for upper-class families, by making lower social positions much less attractive. In a context of high inequality, upper-class parents may be motivated to give more money to their children to avoid them falling into lower-status occupations and housing, in what is known as “fear of falling” effect. Thus, as inequality increases, those parents who have the resources to do so may intensify their monetary support, enabling children to wait longer for the “right” position to open, or to spend long periods of time in prestigious but unpaid internships. Meanwhile, disadvantaged parents will find it more costly to transfer large sums of money to their children, because the risks associated with financial investments are higher. Instead, they may help children by allowing them to live at home while they secure a stable position. If these or similar mechanisms are at play, then high or rising inequality will make it harder for young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve independence from the parental home.

In a recent preprint, I study the relationship between income inequality across 50 U.S. states and class gaps in parental transfers of money and co-residence to young adults between 1992 and 2018. I analyse a large sample of families from the Health and Retirement Study, where children are aged 22-35 and parents are aged 50-75 and in good health, so as not to require practical assistance. I link the data on these families’ social class and transfer behaviour to indicators of state-level inequality, unemployment, and housing prices over the same period. I find that, as inequality increases within a given state, wealthier and college-educated parents give more money to their young-adult children (by around £1,000 per year for 0.1-point increase in the Gini coefficient for income inequality, see Figure 1). By contrast, poorer and lower-educated parents are less likely to give money, and more likely to provide co-residence in times of higher inequality. These changes are not explained by other state-level trends such as the spike in housing prices, giving support to the idea that they are brought about by contextual levels of inequality. The data show that upper-class families mainly intensified their money transfers in the years immediately after the Great Recession (2009-2014), as if shielding their children from the crisis. By contrast, the relationship between inequality and the shift from money to co-residence among lower-class families holds for the whole period under study (1992-2018).

Decades of high inequality and the increasing difficulties faced by young adults in the labour and housing markets in the United States make poor prospects for social mobility. My findings are suggestive of a “vicious cycle” by which inequality increases socio-economic disparities in parental transfers and, in turn, the widening disparities in transfers exacerbate inequalities in outcomes in the children’s generation. These problems are difficult to tackle from a policy perspective, because is not possible to force parents to withhold support to their children. The focus should be on equalising access to higher education, labour and housing markets instead.

Ginevra Floridi is a Lecturer in Sociology and Quantitative Methods at the University of Edinburgh. She is also affiliated with Nuffield College and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on contextual influences on individual and family behaviours including intergenerational transfers, fertility, and the provision of care. Follow her @ginevra_floridi

Figure 1. Change in inequality within a state and predicted amount of money given to children by parents’ educational attainment

Linked references

Fingerman, K., Kim, K., Davis, E. M., Furstenberg Jr., F. F., Birditt, K. S., & Zarit, S. H. (2015). “I’ll Give You the World”: Socioeconomic Differences in Parental Support of Adult Children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 77, 844–865. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12204

Floridi, G. (2023). Inequality and class divides in parental transfers to young adults in the United States. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/g8yv2

Manzoni, A. (2018). Parental Support and Youth Occupational Attainment: Help or Hindrance? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 47, 1580–1594. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0856- z

Mitnik, P. A., Cumberworth, E., & Grusky, D. B. (2016). Social Mobility in a High-Inequality Regime. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 663, 140– 184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215596971

Schneider, D., Hastings, O. P., & LaBriola, J. (2018). Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investments. American Sociological Review, 83, 475–507. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418772034

Sironi, M., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2012). Trends in the Economic Independence of Young Adults in the United States: 1973–2007. Population and Development Review, 38, 609–630. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2012.00529.x

Toft, M., & Friedman, S. (2021). Family Wealth and the Class Ceiling: The Propulsive Power of The Bank of Mum and Dad. Sociology, 55, 90–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/003803852092253

Family members know very well how positive it is for our children to have real friends, those who always will support them and especially in the most difficult moments of their lives. Top scientific journals publish research about the concrete contributions to the well-being of children from reading and dialogue about the book Creative Friendships. The most important result is the promotion of the motivation and capacity of children to select and take care of the best friends. This is also the main source of the development of their dimensions of beauty, goodness, truth and freedom.

The book is scientific but it is written in a narrative that catches the attention of children from eight-year-olds to adults. It is the result of a PhD thesis followed by eight more years of research by two university professors in education, mothers, who also have a lot of practical experience working with children from zero to eighteen years old. Much scientific research is focused on successful cases and their replicability in diverse contexts and individuals. This book analyzes a successful case of one individual with wonderful friendships from his birth until his sixties.

One scientific article explained some of the testimonies made by children who have read and dialogued about this book:

I’ll tell you things from the book but also things I’ve thought . . . I mean . . . that while reading the book I have also thought many things of my own, you know? Things that are not in the book, that the book has made me remember and think, things of mine … But that have to do with the book . . . Do you understand? [Luca, eight years old]

Ramón since he was a child learned to decide well, looking for the reasons for things, that means that he has spent more years than the rest knowing how to decide . . . [Pau, thirteen years old]

Readers of Creative Friendships talk and think a lot about how important it was for the main character to decide freely without submitting himself to the dominant discourses of each moment. When he was fourteen years old (1966) all his peers smoked and pressed him to do the same. Most of them recognized they did not like the first cigarette they smoked, but they continued because they considered it to be a manly thing, and something necessary to be successful with girls.

He did not want to do something that was not pleasant and there was already evidence that it was detrimental for health. He told his friends that he did not need to smoke to feel like a man or to be successful with girls. Now, at seventy, he has much better health than his peers and sadly several of them have already died. As they read and talk about this, children understand the importance of not smoking, but more importantly the significance of making the best decisions without folding to peer pressure. Diverse anecdotes clarify how that would have been impossible without having real friends supporting him and understanding that they had different positions. But the most relevant thing is the narrative’s clarification that he had those extraordinary friendships precisely because of being secure enough to not submit himself to their preferences. Many children think that they will have no friends if they do not do what their friends do, reading and talking about this book helps clarify that this is the best path to have many real friends.

The narration provides plenty of tales inspiring children to self-betterment of their relationships and their lives. For instance, how he was always active against any kind of bullying, which ensured that he never suffered it and always helped his friends to overcome those situations. Children readers become very conscious that by not accepting any kind of disdainful attitudes towards them, they will be free and happy, and that it can help them develop good relationships with family and friends, and develop their leadership in their professional lives. In fact, the main character of the book is now the director of the European report entitled “Achieving student well-being for all: Educational contexts free of violence.” He has friends from when he was seven years old, and they have weekly meet-ups. Some of them are also leaders in different professional areas including medicine, companies, engineering, and culture.

Some people think that they need to choose between prioritizing the instrumental learning of children or their well-being. Almost each page of the book includes a different anecdote and different evidence about why it is important to substitute this “or” with “and.” There is no evidence at all that being good in mathematics means you need to sacrifice your well-being or vice versa. On the contrary, your well-being is much better when it includes instrumental learning of all subjects. Instrumental learning fosters well-being. So, the priority is to have well-being and to be good in all subjects; one fosters the other. The book motivates children towards languages, physics, music, literature, mathematics and all dimensions of their lives.

Marta Soler, Former President of the European Sociological Association. Twitter: @MartaSolerUB

Ane Lopez de Aguileta, PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona. Twitter: @AneLdaEng

Family members know very well how positive it is for our children to have real friends, those who always will support them and especially in the most difficult moments of their lives. Nevertheless, scientific research is being published in top scientific journals about the concrete contributions the reading and dialogue about the book “Creative Friendships” is doing to the well-being of children. The most important result is the promotion of the motivation and capacity of children to select and take care of the best friends. This is also the main source of the development of their dimensions of beauty, goodness, truth and freedom.

The book is scientific but it is written in a narrative that catches the attention of children since they are eight years old and of adults. It is the result of a PhD thesis followed by eight more years of research by two university professors in Education who have a lot of practical experience working with children from zero to eighteen years old, besides being mothers. Much of the scientific research in many areas is focused on successful cases and their replicability in diverse contexts and individuals. This book analyzes a successful case of one individual with wonderful friendships from his birth until his sixties.

One scientific article explained some of the testimonies made by children who have read and dialogued about this book:

I’ll tell you things from the book but also things I’ve thought . . . I mean . . . that while reading the book I have also thought many things of my own, you know? Things that are not in the book, that the book has made me remember and think, things of mine … But that have to do with the book . . . Do you understand? [Luca, eight years old]

Ramón since he was a child learned to decide well, looking for the reasons for things, that means that he has spent more years than the rest knowing how to decide . . . [Pau, thirteen years old]

Readers of “Creative Friendships” talk and think a lot about how important it has been for the character of the book to decide freely without submitting himself to the dominant discourses of each moment. When he was fourteen years old (1966) all his peers smoked and pressed him to do the same. Most of them recognized they did not like when they smoked the first cigarette but they did because they considered it to be a manly thing and something necessary to be successful with girls.

He did not want to do something that was not pleasant and there was already evidence that it was detrimental for health. Besides he said to his colleagues that he did not need to smoke to feel a man and to have success with girls. Now, being seventy, he has much better health than his peers and sadly several of them have already died. Reading and commenting this, children understand not mainly the importance of not smoking, but the importance of taking freely the best decisions without accepting any pressure of the peers. Diverse anecdotes of the narration clarify how that would have been impossible without having real friends supporting him and understanding that they had different positions. But the most relevant thing is the narrative’s clarification that he had those extraordinary friendships precisely because of being secure not submitting himself to their preferences. In the opposite way to the dominant discourse making most children think that they will have no friends if they do not accept the impositions, the reading and dialogue about this book clarify that this is the best path to have many, diverse and real friends.

The narration is plenty of tales inspiring children for the self-betterment of their relations and their lives. For instance, how he was always active against any kind of bullying, which ensured that he never suffered it and always helped his colleagues to overcome those situations. Children readers become very conscious that not accepting any kind of disdainful attitudes towards them, they will be all their lives free, happy and with excellent family, friends and affective relations, besides developing their leadership in their professional lives. In fact, being now seventy, the character of the book is now the director of the European report entitled “Achieving student well-being for all: Educational contexts free of violence”. He has friends from when he was seven years old and they have weekly relations. Some of them are also leaders in different professional areas including medicine, companies, engineering and culture.

Some people think that they need to choose between prioritizing the instrumental learning of children or their well-being. Almost each page of the book includes a different anecdote and a different evidence about why it is important to substitute this “or” by “and”. There is no evidence at all that being good in mathematics does not mean to not have well-being and that to have well-being does not mean to be bad in mathematics. On the contrary, the well-being is much better when it includes to be good also in instrumental learning of all subjects and, at the same time, to be good in instrumental learning fosters the well-being. So, the priority is to have well-being and to be good in all subjects, one fosters the other. The book includes and motivates children towards languages, physics, music, literature, mathematics and all the other dimensions of their lives.

Marta Soler, Former President of the European Sociological Association. Twitter: @MartaSolerUB

Ane Lopez de Aguileta, PhD candidate at the University of Barcelona. Twitter: @AneLdaEng

College-educated young men and women expect to work for pay and expect the same of their spouses and romantic partners. These young people also expect to share household chores and childcare with their partners. Yet research shows that past cohorts of dual-career couples who say they want gender-egalitarian relationships often fall short of this ideal in practice: men’s careers are more likely to be prioritized while women trade off paid work to shoulder a heavier burden of unpaid domestic labor. The new book Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions follows the lives of twenty-one couples who were embarking on their working lives to see if dual-career couples today come closer to living out their values – and what barriers continue to prevent them from acting on their intentions.

The consistent compromisers experienced an egalitarian work-family ecosystem over time. These partners had consistent access to supportive workplace conditions, held fast to their egalitarian beliefs, and regularly coordinated their actions to share resources and navigate constraints together. In particular, consistent compromiser men used their workplace advantages (like greater access to lucrative job opportunities, autonomy over where and when to work, and policies for partner hiring and parental leave) to support women’s careers and enable their own participation in domestic activities. Over the six years of the study, the biggest threat to this ecosystem was workplace discrimination and harassment against women that made it harder for them to advance in their careers as quickly as their husbands did.

Like the consistent compromisers, autonomous actors had good access to workplace support to facilitate gender equality in work and family. However, they held unique attitudes about “gender egalitarianism” that prevented them from making the most of these resources. First, they expressed support for men’s and women’s equal right to pursue their best individual opportunities. Second, they believed men and women were equally responsible for preserving their partner’s autonomy by refraining from holding each other back in their pursuits. This gender-neutral logic was paired with a gender-unequal pattern of action in which men passively stated their support for whatever women wanted to do without seeking resources to empower them, but many women actively compromised their careers for the couple. Over time, men’s growing confidence in their professional security shifted their attitudes away from autonomy and toward collaboration, spurring better coordinated action to enact an equal division of labor with their partners.

Lastly, tending traditional couples fell into a gender-unequal work-family arrangement early on and got stuck there over time. These partners faced relatively greater work-related challenges (namely a lack of two professional jobs in the same city), were more open to temporarily having a gender-unequal division of labor, and took gender complementary actions to meet work and family responsibilities. Tending traditional men’s prolonged unemployment violated masculinity norms dictating that men should work, so partners mobilized to get men a job, no matter the cost to women’s careers. Despite expecting women to eventually take a turn as the career leader, couples found it difficult to change their work-family ecosystem over time as men became specialized as earners and women specialized as caregivers.

Equal Partners? shows that it takes three main ingredients for an equal dual-career partnership – but that these ingredients are currently in short supply and are not always easily combined. Structural support is necessary for egalitarian relationships. Consistent compromisers, autonomous actors, and tending traditional couples would benefit from spousal hiring and partner job placement services; formal remote, part-time, and other flexible work options; fully paid parental leave; and affordable high-quality childcare. Employers should also ensure that women specifically receive adequate mentorship and protection from workplace harassment. However, the existence of these sorts of workplace policies are not sufficient on their own to produce equal partnerships without widespread cultural support for using them. Expanding the cultural models available to professional men and women for their work and family lives can help them imagine better and additional possibilities for equality in their relationships. And finally, couples need to effectively take joint action to leverage their external resources to put their cultural beliefs into practice. Partners, especially men, can actively look for professional opportunities for each other; be mindful of whether they are acting too autonomously; and take caution when trying to “trade off” being career leaders.

Jaclyn S. Wong (@JaclynSWong) is the author of the book Equal Partners? How Dual-Professional Couples Make Career, Relationship, and Family Decisions and other relevant articles published in Gender & Society and Journal of Family Issues. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina who does multi-method research on gender inequality within and between couples and families over the life course.

Reprinted with permission from Knowable Magazine

OPINION: Systemic inequity means women in the US die younger and suffer more than they should. It’s time for health for all.

One of the big news stories of 2022 was the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which threw America’s appalling treatment of women’s reproductive health into the international spotlight. But the problem of how the US is failing women’s health goes far beyond abortion rights. This wider issue deserves more attention.

The state of women’s health in the US is shocking — even to us, medical sociologists and demographers with a history of studying gender and health. Population health statistics paint a sobering portrait. Women in the US fare poorly in one way or another compared with women in other high-income countries, compared with US men, and even compared with previous generations of American women. And there’s no sign that these patterns are improving.

Mortality statistics show that US women live substantially shorter lives than women in other high-income countries. While US women’s life expectancy at birth was similar to the average across 23 comparison nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1980, by 2019 the US had fallen to the bottom of the pack. That year, US women’s life expectancy was 81.4 years — 3.2 years lower than the average across those comparison nations and more than four years lower than in Italy, Switzerland, France, Spain and Japan.

US rates of maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity — “near-miss” events that could have resulted in death — are inexcusable. They have been rising for decades, with troubling increases in recent years. Between 2018 and 2020, the US maternal mortality rate increased from 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births to 23.8. For comparison, in 2020, the US maternal mortality rate was more than three times higher than that of 10 other high-income countries, including Canada, the UK and Germany. A 2022 CDC report suggests most pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable.

Delivery isn’t the only risk to pregnant people in the US: They die even more often from homicide than they do from pregnancy-related causes. Homicide also ranks among the top five causes of death for girls and women up to age 44 in the US overall.

Women’s health in the US and elsewhere also suffers needlessly from the silence and stigma about female bodies that persist in science, medicine and society. The lack of science on the clitoris, even its basic anatomy, is a notable example. Experts agree, too, that our understanding of basic uterine and menstrual physiology is lacking. Endometriosis, a painful and poorly understood condition that involves endometrial tissue growing outside the uterus, affects over 11 percent of women aged 15 to 44 in the US, many of whom wait years for a diagnosis. Millions more suffer during menopause from night sweats, memory lapses and sleep difficulties. Too many dismiss all this pain and suffering as natural — something to be endured.

The leading cause of death among US women is heart disease. A 2022 study of emergency room visits by adults 55 and under revealed that women who came in with chest pain waited longer to see a doctor or nurse and were less likely to be admitted for observation than men. A 2009 experimental study found that when women and men reported exactly the same cardiovascular symptoms, doctors were less certain of how to diagnose women than men, and were twice as likely to misdiagnose middle-aged women with a mental health condition compared with men.

Similar things happen with other health conditions. For example, women who came to an emergency room with abdominal pain in the US waited longer for pain medication, and were less likely to be given opioid analgesics, than men.

These statistics all point in the same direction. The United States is failing women’s health. But why?

People often assume that the main reason for women’s poor health is underlying sex-based biology. But biology is unlikely to explain why women in the US die younger than women in other high-income countries. Neither is health care spending. The US spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world.

The root cause of US women’s poor health is non-medical. It is systemic inequity: everything from unfair structures and practices that benefit the advantaged, to gender bias in science, to cultural expectations about what can and should be. Scientists have shown how sexism — together with racism, nativism, ablism, and other systems of privilege and oppression — shape the scientific questions we ask, as well as our everyday experiences, with profound implications for health.

It’s powerfully telling that Indigenous women and Black women in the US are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. That less educated women die years earlier than more educated women, and that women in Mississippi die younger than women in Massachusetts. Some suggest that the source of these inequalities lies in preexisting chronic conditions and things like obesity, smoking and individual actions labeled “health behaviors” that are assumed to be a matter of personal choice. But this misses the point. These differences, too, reflect systemic inequity. Our bodies — indeed, our biology — do not exist apart from our social surroundings.

To make change, a shift towards equity — in and out of science — is needed.

Inclusive science means, among other things, equitable funding. Despite progress, a 2021 study reported that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the largest public funder of health research in the US — tends to overfund research on diseases that disproportionately affect men, while underfunding those primarily affecting women. Funding for research on the health of transgender and gender non-binary people also lags. On the hopeful side, the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, among others, are working to advance research on the social foundations of health. That should be applauded.

The overturn of Roe v. Wade, and recent moves to legislate abortion bans, undermine everyone’s health. Laws matter, and changing laws in the direction of equity (instead of away from it), would be an important step. But laws alone can’t create the shift we need. Systemic injustice courses through all sectors, and will give rise to unjust legislation or practices again and again. We need a wholescale social movement that is broader.

We need to think things can and should be different, and make them so. Systems and structures rely on people to create and maintain them. The progress of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements are signs of hope. We can get there: It’s time to double down and advocate for health for all.

Susan E. Short and Meghan Zacher are sociologists at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University. They research the social foundations of health.

Does stigma and discrimination influence the parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people (i.e., people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, etc.)? Laws barring same-sex couples from fostering or adopting children have been in place in many states, especially prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015. There are only a handful of research studies that focus on how experiences of discrimination and perceptions of stigma may shape parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people. A new study in the Journal of Family Psychology examines the effects of felt stigma, internalized homophobia, and discrimination on the desire by lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to have children, as well as the belief in whether having children is a possibility.

What prior studies haven’t done is consider how younger generations of sexual minority people may differ in their parenthood aspirations than those in older generations. Recent cohorts of LGB people who came of age during the period leading up to marriage equality may have very different family life expectations compared to older LGB people who came of age, for example, in the era of HIV/AIDS.

This new study shows that a younger generation (ages 18-25 in 2016) of sexual minority people both desire to have children more than a generation that came of age before marriage equality (ages 34-41), and believe in a greater likelihood that they will have children. For both generations, those who reported more negative feelings about being LGB (“internalized homophobia”) also reported a greater desire to have children. This finding may seem surprising: it suggests is that having children may help some LGB people conform to society’s heterosexual norms, feelings that would be consistent with internalized homophobia. At the same time, the study also found that those who felt greater stigma related to being LGB believed it was less likely that they would ever have children. People who experience or feel discrimination for being LGB may feel discouraged about the possibility of having children, regardless of how much they may want to have children. The discrepancy between the desire to have children and the belief it is likely is referred to as a “parenting expectation gap.” This expectation gap – about a very typical and important life goal – may be harmful to mental health.

These findings show that prejudice and stigma can negatively impact the parenthood aspirations of sexual minority people. For counselors and social workers that work with sexual minority adults who want to be parents, it is critical to understand how internalized feelings of stigma or shame may affect their aspirations for having children. Counselors can help sexual minority adults recognize the discrepancy between the desire to have children and the belief that they will be parents in the future, a process that could protect mental health.

Acknowledgments: The Generations study is funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD; Grant 1R01HD078526) and through supplemental grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and Office of Research on Women’s Health. Generations study investigators are I. H. Meyer (principal investigator), D. M. Frost, P. L. Hammack, M. Lightfoot, S.T. Russell, and B. D. M. Wilson. The research was also supported by an infrastructure grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, P2C HD042849) awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Armin A. Dorri is a Doctoral Candidate in Human Development and Family Sciences at University of Texas at Austin. You can follow them on Twitter @armin_dorri

Stephen T. Russell is a Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor in Child Development and Director of the School of Human Ecology at the University of Texas at Austin. You can follow them on Twitter @StephnTRussell