This morning the Guardian (UK) reported on the battle over Proposition 8 in California. Proposition 8, also known as the ‘California Marriage Protection Act,’ is a proposed amendment to California’s state Constitution which will only recognize heterosexual unions, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Guardian article describes this battle as emblematic of a larger cultural divide in the United States. 

The Guardian reports:

Conservative and evangelical groups were freshly mobilised by the California supreme court’s decision in May to overrule voters’ approval of a ban on same-sex marriages in 2000.

But the movement has its roots in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, says University of California-Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout.

“They got as far as they could on abortion and have embraced marriage laws as the next step in their agenda,” said Hout, co-author of The Truth About Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe. “Their main agenda remains the reversal of Roe v Wade, but they’re trying to gain new allies who look askance at gay marriage.”

Not that it’s a purely Machiavellian manoeuvre. Proponents of bans on same-sex marriage are “truly concerned that the state should not be licensing immoral behaviour”, Hout said.

“In their interpretation of the Bible, they see a prohibition on homosexual activity. Gay marriage condones a lifestyle that’s ruled out by their reading of the scripture.”

Read the full story.

The Telegraph (UK) reported today on a new results from a survey by parenting website Netmums which revealed that one in six mothers favored one child over others. The website surveyed more than 1,000 parents, and found that nearly 20 percent of them said that they love one of their children more than the others. Netmums also revealed that one-third of parents said they loved all their children equally, and half said they love their children equally but ‘in different ways.’ And of course, they couldn’t resist seeking out sociological commentary…

The Telegraph reports:

There can be negative impacts to having a favourite child, however, which can lead to undesirable personality traits in later life for both the child itself and other siblings.

Dr Martina Klett-Davies, a sociologist specialising in families and sibling relationships at the London School of Economics (LSE), said: “If there is a favourite child, they probably become too spoiled and find it difficult in later life.

“But the imbalance could prepare siblings for unfairness in later life when you leave the family circle by teaching them to be fighters.”

The full story.

US News and World Report ran a story entitled ‘A Sociologist’s Take on Abortion‘ on Adam Voiland’s ‘On Men’ blog. 

Voiland writes:

Earlier this week, I blogged about a conference on how abortions impact men emotionally. I pointed out that there’s a dearth of dispassionate research exploring whether the controversial procedure affects men’s mental health. That’s very much the case, but I’d like to follow up with perspective, as well as some data, from one of the few academic researchers who has tackled the issue: Arthur Shostak, an emeritus professor of sociology at Drexel University. We weren’t able to connect before that post.

Since the early 1980s, Shostak has been periodically surveying and interviewing what he calls “waiting-room men”—the 600,000 or so guys who sit and wait each year as their partners undergo an abortion, and who help them return home afterward. Though firmly pro-choice, Shostak says he considers every abortion “a tragedy” and cites reducing the need as one of the reasons he studies how the procedure affects men. Thirty years ago, he went through an abortion with his partner; since then, he has surveyed upward of 3,000 waiting-room men about their experiences.

After reading about Shostak’s work, Voiland conducted an interview with him and posted excerpts on his blog. Read it here.

New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks recently wrote about individualism and decision-making in a piece entitled ‘The Social Animal.’ In his analysis, Brooks discusses scholarly work that reveals the interconnectedness which informs our decision-making processes, even broadly highlighting the work of sociologists. Brooks’ piece is centered around political decision-making and the potential for both parties to learn from this knowledge about the influences on our individual behavior.

Brooks writes:

Geneticists have shown that our behavior is influenced by our ancestors and the exigencies of the past. Behavioral economists have shown the limits of the classical economic model, which assumes that individuals are efficient, rational, utility-maximizing creatures.

Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior.

What emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another. Recent Republican Party doctrine has emphasized the power of the individual, but underestimates the importance of connections, relationships, institutions and social filaments that organize personal choices and make individuals what they are.

This may seem like an airy-fairy thing. But it is the main impediment to Republican modernization. Over the past few weeks, Republicans have talked a lot about change, modernization and reform. Despite the talk, many of the old policy pillars are the same. We’re living in an age of fast-changing economic, information and social networks, but Republicans are still impeded by Goldwater’s mental guard-rails.

Read more.

National Public Radio (NPR) commentator Dick Meyer reported on the work of sociologist Wayne Baker in his recent piece titled ‘September 11th and The Non-Crisis of Values’ as part of the series ‘Against the Grain.’

Meyer writes:

Baker is a sociologist at the University of Michigan and the author of America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception(2005). I won’t bury the lead for you: The answer is perception, not crisis. It’s a useful big-picture view of American values at a time when it’s easy to be lost in the worm’s-eye view.

Baker is a wise social thinker who studies our values from the perspective of public opinion research, specifically data garnered from large polls conducted regularly all over the world called the World Values Surveys. He rightly notes that the idea that America faces a crisis of values, or “moral values,” is pervasive and is essentially assumed to be true.

But what exactly would a “crisis” of values entail? Would it be that Americans lost their traditional values? Or American values eroding in comparison with other countries? Are Americans deeply divided on fundamental beliefs? He answers no to each question; he found no crisis in America.

From a broad, global perspective, Baker examines human values on two planes. The first is a range of values from traditional to secular-rationalist. Societies with traditional values emphasize the importance of God and religion; of family and parenting; of national identity and pride; of absolute standards of morality, not relative ones. Secular-rationalist values are pretty much the opposite: nonreligious; open to abortion and euthanasia; skeptical of national pride or patriotism; tilted toward individualism over family, duty and authority.

The second axis of value runs from survival values to self-expression ones. In less developed and stable societies, survival values reign: Physical security and meeting basic material needs are paramount; cultural change, foreigners and ethnic diversity are seen as threatening; intolerance is exaggerated and authoritarian regimes tend to flourish. When material needs are well met, self-expression, self-realization, environmentalism, gender equality and creativity become more important.

Read on…

This morning a CBS news station out of Birmingham, Alabama featured commentary from sociologist Stephen Parker on the impact of 9/11 today. Parker’s commentary was part of a larger piece titled ‘9-11: Looking Ahead’ that featured interviews with other academics.

The station reports:

Sociologist Stephen Parker says that the mindset of the American People has changed in the years since. Now many Americans have lost a sense of security that comes when the only knowledge of such terrible acts of violence comes from newscasters reporting such hatred occurring anywhere else but on American soil. “When you look at the recognition of terrorism throughout Europe for much of the last 25 to 30 years, we shouldn’t have been surprised.”

Parker’s remarks were supplemented by comments from historian Jim Day:

Dr. Jim Day is the Dean of History at the University of Montevallo. He says looking ahead the United States will struggle with international relations because of its post 9-11 strategy. “I think we’ve compromised our position on a global scale and I think we’re going to have to do some repair work as we move on into the 21st century and get farther away from that cataclysmic event of 9-11.”

Day and his colleagues believe it will be extremely difficult to mend those relations. That job will fall to a new generation of American leaders who will need to be more proactive to succeed. And that’s something Sociologist Stephen Parker fears may not happen. “People on college campuses are unaffected by it. It doesn’t affect them in that way.”

Watch the video of the interviews with Parker and Day.

The Washington Post recently posted comments from sociologist Andrew Cherlin on the state of the American family. The online forum was developed to address vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s remarks about her own family.

The Post reports: 

“If the candidates wished to convince viewers that their families were just like ours, they were undone by a 21st-century reality: There is no typical family anymore — at least not in terms of who lives in the household and how they are related. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin noted as much on Wednesday when, while introducing her clan to a cheering crowd of the Republican faithful, the GOP vice presidential nominee said: ‘From the inside, no family ever seems typical. That’s how it is with us.'”

View the transcript of the online forum here.

The exchange features topics like homosexual family formation, and Cherlin’s own work, but centers mostly around families currently in the political spotlight. The exchange was in part a response to a piece by Cherlin in the Post in the ‘Outlook’ section this past Sunday. 

Cherlin writes: 

That traditional family unit has been replaced by a wide variety of living arrangements. Today, only 58 percent of children live with two married, biological parents. Many others live with stepparents or with single parents. Even having a pregnant teen in the home is not that unusual: About one out of six 15-year-old girls will give birth before reaching age 20, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

The candidates seemed to realize that none of their families is typical in the old sense. None of them tried to look like the ’50s family. Instead, they focused on being “typical” in a different, 21st-century sense: They worked hard to show us how emotionally close they are.

Read more.

A reader of the Crawler recently brought to my attention a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) about health inequalies around the world. This Crawler fan also pointed out that sociologists are becoming increasingly concerned with problems of health inequality, as illustrated in a 2007 Annual Review of Sociology article (Volume 33, Number 1) by Kathryn Neckerman and Florencia Torche titled, “Inequality: Causes and Consequences,” which highlights this trend in the discipline. 

The WHO report, from the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, is titled “Closing the Gap in a Generation.”  From the World Health Organization:

What is the Commission on Social Determinants of Health?
The Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) is a global network of policy makers, researchers and civil society organizations brought together by the World Health Organization (WHO) to give support in tackling the social causes of poor health and avoidable health inequalities (health inequities).

What was it expected to do?
The CSDH had a three year directive to gather and review evidence on what needs to be done to reduce health inequalities within and between countries and to report its recommendations for action to the Director-General of WHO. Building partnerships with countries committed to comprehensive, cross-government action to tackle health inequalities was integral to this. Experts were brought together to gather evidence, and civil society organizations also participated in the process.

Read more about the Commission on Social Determinants of Health. 

As sociologists study these inequalities, the opportunities for collaboration and the development of policy proposals and program initiatives seems limitless, but there is work to be done in the U.S. as well. 

Health inequalities are not limited to the wide disparities between countries described in the WHO report, but can also be present within countries, even the United States. An article published by the Independent (UK) this summer reports:

The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.

The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being – more familiar to observers of the Third World – with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world’s prisoners.

…Despite the fact that the US spends roughly $5.2bn (£2.6bn) every day on health care, more per capita than any other nation in the world, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of every western European and Nordic country, bar Denmark..

Check out these interactive maps from the American Human Development Project — the group who published the report referenced in the article above.

Recently the headlines have been filled with commentary on Republican VP pick Sarah Palin. Two articles that caught the Crawler’s attention brought in the sociologists to answer current questions about Palin’s future.

Reuters generated an article on Palin’s ability to galvanize the political ‘left.’ For this article they drew upon the expertise of Michael Lindsay.

“Everybody pays attention to the mobilizing affect on the right but equally important is the mobilizing affect that Palin’s nomination makes for the left,” said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston who has written extensively on the U.S. evangelical movement.

“In many ways she is a much more mobilizing figure for both sides than John McCain because he is seen as much more of a moderate middle of the road political figure,” he said.  [Full article]

But will a ‘middle of the road’ image win the Republican ticket the election?

The second article supplemented by sociologist expertise ran in the LA Times and purported to explain the ‘new feminism’ offered by Palin’s candidacy. 

Debbie Walsh, director for the Rutgers Center for the American Woman and Politics, said Palin had already been caught in a bind between her political obligations and her family. That happened when she and her husband, Todd, issued a news release announcing that their daughter Bristol was pregnant.

“It’s terrible, like a Sophie’s choice situation, where you are in this horrible position as a mother,” said Walsh, “to feel that you have to reveal this piece of information about your daughter and not just to a few people in your family but to the national press corps?”

Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist, agreed that the parenting questions came up more readily for Palin because she is a woman.

“I’m all for being a working mom,” Schwartz said. “But I do have a sense from having two children how totally unsuited and uncapable I would be with five.” [Full Article]

Can Palin convince the American voters that she can successfully balance work and family?

NYU sociologist Dalton Conley published an op-ed piece entitled ‘Rich Man’s Burden,’ in honor of Labor Day. This did not go over well with Slate.com writer Timothy Noah, who wrote a response entitled ‘Stress and Class: An NYU Sociologist Claims, Preposterously, That It’s More Stressful to be Rich than Poor.’

Dalton Conley writes about how many people probably didn’t take the Labor Day holiday to relax with their families but instead remained tied to their Blackberries and connected to their laptops. Conley suggests that Americans working on holidays is not a new thing, and dexterously tied is to Weber’s concept of the ‘Protestant ethic.’ But Conley notes a significant departure from Weber’s notion in current times:

But what’s different from Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent.

It was this statement that prompted Slate.com writer Timothy Noah to respond. He writes:

Dalton Conley, chairman of the Sociology Department at New York University, has written extensively about race, poverty, and social classand was himself raised in a housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. This ought to inoculate him against the popular notion, cherished by the professional classes, that the BlackBerry-punching haves experience more stress in their daily lives than the indolent poor. Apparently, it hasn’t….

Now, it may be true that the bottom fifth is working fewer hours while the top fifth is working longer hours. The authors of the study in question claim no insight as to why this should be so and note that because the observed shift took place fully two decades ago, it “is not likely related to advances in communications technology (such as the Internet) that facilitate additional work from home.” Scratch the BlackBerry and the easy availability of wireless Internet off your list of possible culprits. Remember, too, that these findings may be distorted by the survey’s exclusion of women and the self-employed. Still, for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that the haves are now working longer hours than the have-nots. How does Conley make the leap from saying the haves consume more time on the job to saying, “[I]t is now the rich who are the most stressed out”?

Read the full story from Conley.

Read the full story from Noah.

Is this just about interpretation?

Noah suggests: 

It’s easy to imagine that “It is now the rich who are the most stressed out” is what readers of the Times op-ed page want to hear. But that doesn’t make it true.