The latest edition of Newsweek reports that among those serving in the military, minorities and women report the highest job satisfaction.

Newsweek reporter Sarah Kliff writes,

“Any list of the best places to work is sure to include cool favorites like Google. The U.S. military? The sacrifices and risks required of its members seem to make it an unlikely pick. But new research suggests that it may well belong on such a list, particularly for minorities and women. The members of those two demographics in the military consistently rate their jobs as more satisfying than white males do, according to new research in this month’s American Sociological Review. Much like Manning’s military experience, the study of over 30,000 active duty personnel suggests that the armed forces‘ social hierarchy—explicitly based on rank—overrides many of the racial or gender biases in civil society, which tend to act as barriers for women and minorities in career advancement.”

“Whites are far and away the least satisfied [in the military],” says Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts and the study author. “Black females tend to be the most satisfied. It’s a direct opposite and complete reversal of what we know about civilian job satisfaction.”

“It’s not that the military environment treats white males less fairly; it’s simply that, compared to their peers in civilian society, white males lose many of the advantages that they had,” Lundquist says. “There’s a relative deprivation when you compare to satisfaction of peers outside of the military.”

The latest issue of the New York Times Magazine has a cover story titled “When Mom and Dad Share It All” about the division of labor in American families and how childcare and housework are balanced by working mothers and fathers.

This article notes recent findings from Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and features commentary from University of Buffalo sociologist, Sampson Lee Blair.

Social scientists know in remarkable detail what goes on in the average American home. And they have calculated with great precision how little has changed in the roles of men and women. Any way you measure it, they say, women do about twice as much around the house as men.

The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner’s work.

But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.

The lopsided ratio holds true however you construct and deconstruct a family. “Working class, middle class, upper class, it stays at two to one,” says Sampson Lee Blair, an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo who studies the division of labor in families.

“And the most sadly comic data is from my own research,” he adds, which show that in married couples “where she has a job and he doesn’t, and where you would anticipate a complete reversal, even then you find the wife doing the majority of the housework.” — New York Times Magazine

A press release this morning reports on new research published in the June issue of the American Sociological Review, which conclude that steep employment gains for women disprove the idea that more women are ‘opting out’ of full-time employment in favor of staying home.

Sociologist Christine Percheski studied employment trends among college-educated women, born between 1906 and 1975. She found that women’s employment levels had sharply increased and has especially changed for mothers with young children and women employed in traditionally male fields. She also concludes that the gap between childless women and mothers has diminished over time.

And debunking the ‘opting out’ myth…

“Despite anecdotal reports of successful working women returning to the home to assume child care responsibilities, less than 8 percent of professional women born since 1956 leave the workforce for a year or more during their prime childbearing years, according to the study.”

Full summary.

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A recent article in the New York Times alludes to a recent trend in social science research towards studying committed heterosexual couples for insights into what makes marriages healthy.

The Times reports:

“A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.

The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can be solved.”

Although this article deals mostly with the findings from psychologists, many well-documented sociological trends are also discussed in this piece.

Read more.

A recent piece from the Week in Review by the New York Times included commentary on the upcoming elections and the racial divide. Times reporter Marcus Mabry writes, “whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as ‘postracial.'”

Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson was asked to comment.

“Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, argues that the one arena where black grievance is acceptable is in music, particularly in hip-hop, where an estimated 70 percent of listeners are white. But the generation exposed to hip-hop, mostly under 40, are part of what Mr. Patterson calls a growing “ecumenical” American culture that is unselfconsciously multiracial.

This Obama Generation came of age in the post-civil-rights age when color, though still relevant, had less impact on what one read, listened to or watched. It was the common crucible of popular culture, he said, that forged a truly American identity, rather than the “salad bowl” analogy cherished by diversity advocates.

Mr. Obama’s campaign so de-emphasized race that for most of the 17-month nomination contest much of the news media became obsessed with the question of whether he was “black enough” to win black votes.

Most African-American Democrats were for Hillary Clinton early on, until voters in Iowa proved to them that whites would support a black candidate.”

Full story.

Reuters reports that the likelihood of a person entering a nursing home or another type of long-term care facility is elevated immediately following the death of a spouse according to recent research from Elina Nihtila, of the department of sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Nihtila suggested several reasons behind this pattern.

The Times Colonist reports on Nihtila’s interview with Reuters Health:

“It may be related to the loss of social and instrumental support, in the form of care and help with daily activities such as help in cooking, cleaning, and shopping formerly shared with the deceased spouse,” Nihtila told Reuters Health.

“Second, grief and spousal loss may cause various symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, fatigue and loss of concentration that could increase the need for institutional care. Furthermore, grief may cause increased susceptibility to physical diseases.”

The latest issue of Esquire Magazine featured an article entitled “Why the F%$# Do People Talk on Cell Phones at the Movies?” and solicited commentary from sociologist Rich Ling.

“Response No. 1, by Rich Ling, sociologist and author of New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication is Reshaping Social Cohesion: There’s a mismatch between people’s understanding of what’s going on around them and their need to be in touch with other people. When someone calls you or texts you, it’s a random positive reinforcement, a little gift. ‘Somebody’s noticing me and that makes me feel important.’ Being noticed by other people is a real narcotic. You have to weigh the importance of your social life with your involvement in the collective film-watching experience. We need a balance between appropriate use and tolerant expectations.”

The Associated Press reports that Charles Moskos, sociologist and creator of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy towards homosexuality in the military has passed away at the age of 74 after battling cancer.

The Chicago Tribune noted:

“Moskos helped design AmeriCorps, a public service organization, and studied Greek-Americans. But his most noted accomplishment was his advice to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that led to the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.

Under the policy, passed by Congress in 1993, gays are allowed to serve in the military, but they are prohibited from engaging in homosexual activity and to not talk about their sexual orientation.”

The Washington Post reports,

“The resonance of that long-ago predicament is still with us today, as a bitter Democratic presidential primary battle has caused many supporters of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to feel that the campaign has pitted race against gender. Many Clinton supporters, men included, cite openly sexist criticism targeting their candidate — conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asked, ‘Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?’ — and feel that a political defeat would be an unconscionable victory for sexism itself. Obama’s supporters, the majority of whom are white, cite the racism their candidate has faced — large numbers of voters have openly told pollsters they would never vote for a black man. Should Democratic superdelegates hand the race to Clinton, many of these voters would feel racism has won.”

The sociologist weighs in:

“Patricia Hill Collins, a University of Maryland sociologist who is to be the next president of the American Sociological Association, said the error being made by many Clinton and Obama supporters is to see race and gender in unidimensional terms: ‘Obama represents race and Clinton represents gender — this is a flawed model,’ Collins said. ‘Why does Obama not represent gender? He has a race and a gender. Hillary has a race and a gender.’

The reason for our selective focus, the scholars said, is that people are keenly aware of unfair disadvantages but spend no time dwelling on unfair advantages.”