The San Francisco Chronicle reported today on new research from sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University about the impact of living together before marriage. The Chronicle reports: 

Spurred by the sexual revolution and buoyed by recent economic concerns and marital trends, cohabitation – as a temporary situation, a lengthy arrangement or something in between – has become a unique, multifaceted institution in its own right, and a hot field of study among sociologists.

It’s not without controversy. Conventional wisdom – backed up by studies in the 1980s and ’90s – has held that so-called serial cohabitants have higher divorce rates than those who wait until marriage to live together. However, new data suggest that when someone cohabits only with a future spouse, divorce rates are the same or lower than if they didn’t live together before marriage.

But new research from a number of sociologists suggests its time to revise our views on the effects of living together:

A study published in November by sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University found that the odds of divorce among women who married their sole cohabiting partner were 28 percent lower than those of women who never cohabited. (See “Behind the numbers” story on D3.)

“They used to say that cohabitation was a risk factor for divorce. Now that we have broader samples, that’s not true,” says Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and author of “Marriage, a History.”

The majority of Americans now live together before getting married. Of couples married after 1995, 65 percent of men and women in first-time marriages lived together beforehand, according to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.

“For most people, cohabitation is still a transition point,” says University of Michigan sociologist Pamela Smock. “This is not the case for everyone, as there is an increase in the percentage of cohabiters who live together for a long period of time – a subgroup for whom it’s not just a train stop. But by and large, cohabiting relationships tend to be short, as the couple either breaks up or marries within a number of years.”

She expects that in coming years, as much as 80 percent of the population will live together unmarried at some point in their lives, up from the current 70 percent.

One can’t talk about cohabitation without also talking about marriage. As the average age of a first marriage in the United States has risen to 27 years for men and 25 for women, young adults are filling in before that with “marriage lite,” in Coontz’s words.

Read more.

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about how kids these days aren’t into planning in advance – attributing this ‘new’ phenomenon to the rise of mobile communications via text messaging and web-based chat. The Inquirer reports:

The ubiquity of cell phones and text messaging, especially among young people, has changed the whole idea of the word plans – most significantly, it allows people not to make any.

“One of the consequences of the mobile phone is that you can postpone any decision until the last minute,” said James E. Katz, chair of the Rutgers University communications department, where he directs the Center for Mobile Communications Studies. “Since you have up to that last minute to obtain information for the decision, cell phones can give you the opportunity to delay it. What do you want for dinner? Hmmm, I’ll tell you when I am really hungry.”

But a sociologist isn’t so sure that this is a new trend…

Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers-Camden, is not nearly as worried, saying that the late-planning habit, especially for young people, started at least a generation ago, or even before, with the countercultural 1960s and ’70s.

“There was a value of being spontaneous and free of entanglements,” said Goertzel, 66, whose own children, now 43 and 39, weren’t big on making long-term plans when they were younger. In comparison, when he and his wife were younger, she had to know Tuesday what they were doing Saturday.

“Even with wired telephones, there was a lot of last-minute communication,” he said. “It might also be cyclical, a matter of generational culture, an ‘uptight’ generation followed by a ‘laid-back’ one.”

Read more.

An article on technology and sociological research recently came across the Crawler’s radar, originally published in the New York Times. The story describes how nearly 100 students living in Random Hall (an on-campus dormitory) at MIT have traded in their personal privacy for free smartphones used to study their movements. The smartphones generate information beamed to a central computer, including individual actions, to map the dorm’s social network. The Times writes: “The students’ data is but a bubble in a vast sea of digital information being recorded by an ever thicker web of sensors, from phones to GPS units to the tags in office ID badges, that capture our movements and interactions. Coupled with information already gathered from sources like Web surfing and credit cards, the data is the basis for an emerging field called collective intelligence.”

About the researcher…

Alex Pentland, a professor at the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is leading the dormitory research project, was a co-founder of Sense Networks. He is part of a new generation of researchers who have relatively effortless access to data that in the past was either painstakingly assembled by hand or acquired from questionnaires or interviews that relied on the memories and honesty of the subjects…

Dr. Pentland calls his research “reality mining” to differentiate it from an earlier generation of data mining conducted through more traditional methods.

Dr. Pentland “is the emperor of networked sensor research,” said Michael Macy, a sociologist at Cornell who studies communications networks and their role as social networks. People and organizations, he said, are increasingly choosing to interact with one another through digital means that record traces of those interactions. “This allows scientists to study those interactions in ways that five years ago we never would have thought we could do,” he said.

Once based on networked personal computers, collective intelligence systems are increasingly being created to leverage wireless networks of digital sensors and smartphones. In one application, groups of scientists and political and environmental activists are developing “participatory sensing” networks.

Read more.

This morning the New York Times ran a story about new research indicating that teen pregnancies are on the rise once again. The Times’ Tara Parker-Pope reports, “Parents have worried for generations about changing moral values and risky behavior among young people, and the latest news seems particularly worrisome. It came from the National Center for Health Statistics, which reported this month that births to 15- to 19-year-olds had risen for the first time in more than a decade.”

Building the case that this is a myth:

The news is troubling, but it’s also misleading. While some young people are clearly engaging in risky sexual behavior, a vast majority are not. The reality is that in many ways, today’s teenagers are more conservative about sex than previous generations.

Today, fewer than half of all high school students have had sex: 47.8 percent as of 2007, according to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, down from 54.1 percent in 1991.

A less recent report suggests that teenagers are also waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. A 2002 report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent from 43 percent.

The rates also went down among younger teenagers. In 1995, about 20 percent said they had had sex before age 15, but by 2002 those numbers had dropped to 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys.

Call in the sociologist!

“There’s no doubt that the public perception is that things are getting worse, and that kids are having sex younger and are much wilder than they ever were,” said Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University. “But when you look at the data, that’s not the case.”

One reason people misconstrue teenage sexual behavior is that the system of dating and relationships has changed significantly. In the first half of the 20th century, dating was planned and structured — and a date might or might not lead to a physical relationship. In recent decades, that pattern has largely been replaced by casual gatherings of teenagers.

In that setting, teenagers often say they “fool around,” and in a reversal of the old pattern, such an encounter may or may not lead to regular dating. The shift began around the late 1960s, said Dr. Bogle, who explored the trend in her book “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus” (N.Y.U. Press, 2008).

And another…

“There is a group of kids who engage in sexual behavior, but it’s not really significantly different than previous generations,” said Maria Kefalas, an associate professor of sociology at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and co-author of “Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage” (University of California Press, 2005). “This creeping up of teen pregnancy is not because so many more kids are having sex, but most likely because more kids aren’t using contraception.”

“For teens, sex requires time and lack of supervision,” Dr. Kefalas said. “What’s really important for us to pay attention to, as researchers and as parents, are the characteristics of the kids who become pregnant and those who get sexually transmitted diseases.

“This whole moral panic thing misses the point, because research suggests kids who don’t use contraception tend to be kids who are feeling lost and disconnected and not doing well.”

Read the full story.

Newsday has also reviewed Dalton Conley’s latest book, ‘Elsewhere USA,’ and presented some strong feelings about the substantive focus of the book.

“Only in these times of economic meltdown could the common reader be persuaded to feel sympathy for the rich; in the past few months, multimillion-dollar portfolios evaporated and the noblesse oblige were bilked out of dollars destined for philanthropic causes. Into this unsteady new reality comes Dalton Conley’s “Elsewhere, U.S.A.,” in which the author argues that for the first time in our history, America’s rich are working harder and feeling more stressed out than our poor.

Is that the sound of a million tiny gold violins screeching? (Or should I say billion, since everything seems to have inflated to 10 figures these days?) Conley, author of six previous books, including the memoir “Honky,” is a member of the upper-income professional class that he writes about. But he also is chairman of the sociology department at New York University, and “Elsewhere” is a measured mix of social science, first-person reporting and historical research that is sometimes awkward but ultimately compelling.

Throughout, Conley traces the origins of “Elsewhere,” the nebulous location of the book’s title. As the disparate spheres of work and home collide and interpenetrate, it creates a sense of “elsewhere” at all times, presumably because one is never fully here nor there but in some murky in-between world.

In drawing a line from the past to the present, Conley sets his first pin squarely midcentury, highlighting “the growth of women’s work in the formal economy; the rise of information technology that allows many professionals to blend work and leisure on a 24/7 basis; and increasing inequality at the top of the ladder, as disparity grows between the upper-middle and upper classes.”

Conley makes clear that the confluence of these forces – not just working mothers or Blackberries alone – inspired a crippling mixture of guilt and anxiety in our upper class.”

Read on.

The idea that virginity has a high value harkens back to the days of early humans — if a man has sex with a virgin woman, he knows for sure that her children will be his, anthropologists reason. In early civilizations, women were also considered the property of men, said Laura Carpenter, assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

Through the 1950s in America, women were expected to remain virgins until marriage, Carpenter said. But with the availability of the pill and the IUD in the 1960s, combined with youth counterculture and gay rights movements, it became more common for women to engage in premarital sex, she said.

Attitudes shifted toward the conservative side in the 1980s with the worldwide HIV/AIDS pandemic, which made the stakes much higher for choosing a sex partner, especially for men. Abstinence-based education programs also took off around that time, with government support, she said.

Today, about 95 percent of Americans have sex before they’re 25, Carpenter said. But worldwide, virgin prostitutes can claim larger fees, certain cultures still attach larger dowries to virgin brides, and some women undergo reconstructive surgery to restore their hymens.

In looking at Dylan’s auction, “To some extent it’s not new. The new part is the Internet,” Carpenter said.

And Dylan’s take?

Some men may seek virgins because they want them as trophies, or desire purity. But as to why men would bid so much money on virginity, she said she has no answer.

“I honestly don’t know what they see in it,” she said.

If you think Dylan’s auction amounts to prostitution, she completely agrees. She also said she’s not breaking any laws — after all, prostitution in Nevada is legal.

“I feel people should be pro-choice with their body, and I’m not hurting anyone,” she said. “It really comes down to a moral and religious argument, and this doesn’t go against my religion or my morals. There’s no right or wrong to this.”

Read more.

Newswise has highlighted a new study by Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins titled the ‘Changing Contours of Work.’ In the study, the authors present a picture of the ‘new economy’ characterized by a lack of job security or upward mobility experienced by the majority of workers. Sweet and Meiksins call for a ‘new deal’ to address these issues, including a new worker’s bill of rights. Sweet notes, ““If you look back to the Fair Labor Standards Act —that said if you want to employ a worker more than 40 hours a week you have to pay them overtime at time-and-a-half. This is a wonderful way of reorganizing and creating a disincentive for employing workers for long hours; it could also benefit potential workers who are not in the labor force. The Act did exactly what it was intended to do. Now, it is not working as well, so we have to rethink how we are going to provide health care, how we are going to keep workers from being overworked and how we are going to provide levels of security that currently don’t exist. In short, we need to rethink what we need to expect from employers, what we need to expect from our government, unions and from each other in the workplace.”

About the study…

“Make no mistake, there is a new economy,” says Stephen Sweet, lead-author of “Changing Contours of Work” and an assistant professor of sociology at Ithaca College. He explains how the new economy has opened up prospects for working in new ways and created opportunities for new groups of workers. “But one problematic feature of the new economy is the way it segregates opportunity into ‘good jobs’ (that are increasingly fragile) and ‘bad jobs’ that lack benefits, livable wages and prospects for mobility,” says Sweet. Thus, he explains that the new economy creates chasms that separate many workers from reasonable working conditions, reasonable chances of upward mobility, reasonable chances of job security and reasonable chances to earn a living wage.

But what should we do about it? (According to the authors…)

“As we consider social policy, a key question concerns how to make the new economy work for everyone. This includes dismantling gender and racial chasms, but also addressing the needs of workers laboring in jobs that provide few resources.”

Read on.

The Washington Post reports on how the idea of America as an ‘ideological melting pot’ – in the context of the progress marked by the inauguration of our 44th President – may not be entirely true. This article highlights how researchers find that people want to live in diverse communities, but clump together with those most like them…

“Americans tell survey researchers they prefer to live in diverse communities, but this country’s residential patterns suggest otherwise,” said Paul Taylor, who directs the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends Project. The question is why.

“Do some people gravitate toward communities so they can be among neighbors who share their political views?” Taylor and his colleague Richard Morin asked in a recent report. “Alternatively, does living in a politically homogeneous community diminish people’s appetite for diversity?”

And sociologists?

Sociologists have a term for this birds-of-a-feather-flocking-together phenomenon: Homophily. Some explanations for America’s political homophily suggest that a president who is determined to be a uniter might be able to help the nation reverse course; other theories suggest that the forces of polarization are beyond the powers of any individual to influence.

Sociologist Michael W. Macy at Cornell University argues that political homophily is largely the result of network dynamics: Neighborhoods coalesce around certain viewpoints because people don’t want to feel at odds with those around them. As views in a neighborhood become more homogenous, outliers feel like outcasts. They move if an opportunity arises, leaving their old neighborhood less politically diverse.

Read more.

The Boston Globe reports, “Husbands do it by gassing up their spouse’s car. Wives do it by having a heart-to-heart confessional. Each is expressing intimacy, but in a stereotypical Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus fashion. As Framingham State College sociologist Virginia Rutter notes, “Both men and women value a feeling of closeness with their partner, but they get to that feeling by somewhat different routes.” And they often think their partner is taking the wrong route.”

Stephanie Cootz (for the Globe) writes:

Over the past 30 years, however, husbands and wives have become much less likely to specialize exclusively in either breadwinning or nurturing. As men and women try to mix and match the traits that were once parceled out between them, the 19th-century gender differences in emotional orientation hamper a couple’s ability to sustain relationships that are now based on equality and friendship. A growing body of research confirms that men and women who hold traditional gender attitudes have lower-quality relationships than couples with more gender-neutral values.

Rutter’s response…

Rutter argues that we can “learn to draw from both the masculine and the feminine tool kits.” She points to studies showing that children who combine what are usually thought of as masculine and feminine coping skills have higher academic and social skills than more “traditional” boys and girls. Such flexibility also translates into higher marital quality later in life. This may be why University of Washington researcher John Gottman finds that same-sex couples, who tend to combine “male” and “female” emotional styles, remain calmer and more positive with each other during disagreements than do heterosexual couples.

Take home message?

So where men need to learn how to connect with painful feelings, women need to learn when to step back from such feelings to engage in activities that calm both partners down. And sometimes, when deciding whether to use the “female” or the “male” way of making up after an argument, couples might be better off splitting the difference. Instead of talking it out before sex or having sex before talking it out, why not head off to a movie and hold hands in the dark?

Read on…

The Telegraph (UK) reports on recently published research about the ‘puppy love’ phase of a romantic relationship. The investigators behind this study suggest that the ‘euphoria’ experienced by young people may lead to difficulty in the future for finding happiness with another partner. 

Dr Brynin, the principal research officer at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, said a passionate first relationship can make those that follow seem unfulfilling. “Remarkably, it seems that the secret to long-term happiness in a relationship is to skip a first relationship,” he said. “In an ideal world, you would wake up already in your second relationship.

“If you had a very passionate first relationship and allow that feeling to become your benchmark for a relationship dynamic, then it becomes inevitable that future, more adult partnerships will seem boring and a disappointment.” He makes the claim in Changing Relationships, a book collecting new research papers by other leading sociologists, which he has edited. Adults who take a calm, steady approach to finding love and do not try to replicate teenage excitement tend to be happier in later life, Dr Brynin found.

Brynin says:

“The problems start if you try not only to get everything you need for an adult relationship, but also strive for the heights of excitement and intensity you had in your first experience of love. The solution is clear: if you can protect yourself from intense passion in your first relationship, you will be happier in your later relationships.”

But Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University (New Jersey) disagrees…

Prof Fisher said that seeking to maintain the initial intensity of a youthful affair can help relationships to endure. She said that couples happily married for more than 20 years had shown similar brain activity to people who had been in relationships for less than six months.

“I found incontrovertible, physiological evidence that romantic love can last,” she said. “It appears that romantic love exists not only to initiate pair-bonding but to maintain and enhance long-term relationships.”

Read more.