Archive: Jul 2008

USA Today reports that new Census data released this week suggest that 6.4 million opposite sex couples live together (as of 2007), up from less than one million thirty years ago. This means that cohabiting couples now make up nearly 10% of all opposite sex couples, including those who are married. 

In comparison, the Census bureau reported 5 million unmarried, opposite-sex households in 2006, but that figure was based on a question that many respondents found to be unclear. In the 2007 supplemental survey sample of 100,000 households, the Census questions asked more directly whether respondents had “a boyfriend/girlfriend or partner in the household” and found 1.1 million more couples.

The USA Today article included comments from two sociologists:

Pamela Smock,. a sociologist at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor who studies cohabitation, says the new data gets closer to the truth, but because it’s a point-in-time survey, it still misses the extent of cohabitation in today’s society.

“It’s a snapshot,” she says. “It’s not telling you how many people have ever cohabited, which is much more than that.” …

Sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago, who has done extensive research into marriage and cohabitation, says living together in the USA isn’t very stable or long-term, compared to some Scandinavian countries where it’s more likely to be a long-term committed relationship.

But in the USA, she says, it’s become “part of the life course.” “It’s something people do that leads to somewhere,” she says. “If it doesn’t lead to marriage, it leads to splitsville.”

The full story.

The Economic Times reports on a new study from Riley Dunlap and Richard York published in the summer issue of The Sociological Quarterly. The study suggests that poor nations ARE conscious of the need to protect the environment “notwithstanding assumptions that they are too preoccupied to do so.” 

Riley E Dunlap of Oklahoma State University and Richard York of Oregon University compared results from four large cross-national surveys, each conducted in several dozen nations ranging with differing economic statuses. Results showed that citizens of poorer nations were equally if not more concerned about the environment compared to citizens in wealthier countries. The citizens of the poorer nations were supportive of efforts to solve environmental problems. The authors believe that previous studies failed to recognise that environmental problems are often a threat to material welfare and not just quality of life. 

The study’s authors assert: “Our results suggest that well-designed policies to promote sustainable development will have more appeal to citizens of poor nations than is often assumed.”

Today’s Washington Post featured an article about how Muslim women in France attempt to resist prevalent stereotypes by attempting to balance the traditions of their faith with the secular society in which they live. The Post article cites the example of a young woman in France who goes out to movies and dinner and dates men (although usually with a chaperone), but wears form-covering clothing and a headscarf, and remains dedicated to her pledge to abstain from sex until marriage.

“The large majority of Muslims tinker,” said Franck Fregosi, a sociologist who has written extensively on Islam in Europe. “The girls will try to go out with boys but hide it from their families. And most of them have a normal life. Some will have sexual relations before marriage. But they will still try to preserve appearances so their families won’t know.”

 

Young women, Fregosi said, also struggle to break free from the cultural traditions of their immigrant parents, including shunning arranged marriages.

“Their priority is to have a pious husband, not a cousin or another man chosen by the family,” he said. “And that is something new.”

 

And additional commentary from an anthropologist…

Religious anthropologist Dounia Bouzar sees two factors at work: a “return to belief” but also a “questioning of the Western model, of the woman who knows what she wants with her body. A lot of young girls are wondering whether that really means more liberty.”

Read the full story.

A posting from Judith Warner on the New York Times blog ‘Domestic Disturbances‘ titled, ‘The Other Home Equity Crisis,’ takes a look at how women are increasingly affected by job loss in times of economic downturn. As further evidence that the opt-out revolution is a myth, beyond Warner’s book, the article cites a report from Congress that was just recently released.

This week, Congress issued a report, titled “Equality in Job Loss: Women are Increasingly Vulnerable to Layoffs During Recessions,” that may — if read in its entirety — finally, officially and definitively sound a death knell for the story of the Opt-Out Revolution. The report, commissioned by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, states categorically that mothers are not leaving the workforce to stay home with their kids. They’re being forced out.

Women — all women, mothers or not — were hit “especially hard” hard by the recession of 2001 and the recovery-that-never-really-was, the report states. “Unlike in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, during the 2001 recession, the percent of jobs lost by women often exceeded that of men in the industries hardest hit by the downturn. The lackluster recovery of the 2000s made it difficult for women to regain their jobs — women’s employment rates never returned to their pre-recession peak.”

While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.

Read the full post. 

The San Francisco Chronicle recently published an article on how presumptive democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has raised the profile of mixed-race Americans. When the social scientists weigh in, they add a level of complexity to Tyche Hendricks’ report on the issue:

The debate over what to call Obama – and the growing recognition of mixed-race Americans – is also a reminder that there’s no such thing as racial purity and, indeed, that “biologically, race is a fiction,” said sociologist Jorge Chapa, the director of the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at the University of Illinois.

Still, prejudices based on conceptions about race continue, said Michael Omi, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. “The prospect of having an African American presidential candidate has led some people to think we’re now in a post-racial society,” Omi said. “What’s disturbing are the ways in which that ignores the persistence of racial inequalities – in health care, home-mortgage loan rates – it shouldn’t make us think we’ve gotten beyond that.”

But the expanding conversation about race that has been prompted by Obama’s candidacy and his complex heritage could advance America’s understanding about race. “I want the history of miscegenation to be part of our discussion, and I think Barack Obama could catapult us there,” said Vest, the iPride co-director. “If these (mixed race) kids are able to normalize their difference by looking at Obama, then my work is done.”

The Columbus Dispatch looks back to the 1968 olympics where a famous image of two men with raised fists left a legacy with important implications for the relationship between race and athletic competition. See image.

David Davis of the Columbus Dispatch writes: 

United they stood, two men with black-gloved fists thrust into the night. In solidarity, they bowed their heads as the national anthem played. Together, in harmonious synchronicity, they defied history. On Oct. 16, 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos finished first and third in the 200 meters at the Olympics. Smith set a world record with a time of 19.83 seconds, powering through the thin air of Mexico City and across the finish line, arms upraised, with a mark that endured for 11 years. But it was their demonstration on the victory podium afterward, medals dangling around their necks, that still resonates today. Their purpose was to draw attention to the plight of blacks at the height of the civil rights movement. As Smith told ABC announcer Howard Cosell, “My raised right hand stood for the power in black America. Carlos’ raised left hand stood for the unity of black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power.”

Although the two athletes had a rocky relationship with one another, their symbolic gesture still holds an important place in olympic history… and is worthy of sociological commentary…

The backlash was immediate. The International Olympic Committee pressured the U.S. Olympic Committee to banish both. The Associated Press accused them of a “Nazi-like salute.” Brent Musberger, then a columnist with the Chicago American newspaper, called them “black-skinned storm-troopers.”

“It was a polarizing moment,” said University of Minnesota sociology professor Doug Hartmann, author of Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete: The 1968 Olympic Protests and Their Aftermath, “because it was seen as an example of black power radicalism. Mainstream America hated what they did.”

A recent article from the LA Daily News discusses the Alvarez death penalty case in California and the recent verdict to sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Juan Manuel Alvarez, 29, was charged with eleven counts of murder in connection with the Glendale train crash that occurred just north of downtown Los Angeles in 2005. The crash was the deadliest in MetroLink history, killing 11 people. 

More about the Glendale train crash…

The LA Daily News writes: 

University of Colorado at Boulder sociologist Michael Radelet, one of the nation’s leading criminologists and most-cited experts on the death penalty, said that often the extent or even the depravity of the crimes alone does not guarantee death sentencing convictions.

“This case reminds me a great deal of the Jeffrey Daumer case in Wisconsin where so much emotional testimony was allowed during the sentencing phase but Daumer wound up (with) 15 life terms in prison and eventually died there,” said Radelet.

“In this case, the jury agreed that this guy is going to die – it’s just going to be in prison and a few years down the road.”

Read the full article. 

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports on the difficulty graduates face finding employment after completing college. Some of these students are choosing programs like the Peace Corps which are becoming increasingly difficult to be placed in.

Star-Tribune reporter Emma Carew writes:

This year, as the economy hit a downturn and employers cut jobs instead of creating them, a record number of graduates applied to programs that try to change the world — something experts believe is a top priority for today’s youth.

At Teach For America, a two-year program that places college graduates in low-performing schools around the country, the number of applicants fell in 2007 but this year jumped 36 percent to nearly 25,000 would-be teachers. Only 3,700 are placed. When the program began in 1990, 2,500 students applied. Even the Peace Corps, now in its 47th year, has had a 14 percent increase in applicants so far this year over last.

And the sociological commentary…

Teresa Swartz, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, said current college graduates are experiencing an extended period of adolescence, as the gap between high school and adulthood widens.

It’s harder for students to make livable wages right out of school, so they spend a few years exploring, she said.

Read more.

Check out this past Sunday’s episode of ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,’ on National Public Radio where one of the quiz questions references the work of Contexts Magazine contributor, sociologist Robin Simon.

Listen online.