Kudos to University of Illinois sociologist and Council on Contemporary Families head Barbara Risman for putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys, more likely) for CNN.com in an insightful commentary about why it is that the so-called Mommy Wars are a distraction—and how they’re keeping us from truly addressing work-life balance in the United States.

In her short piece, Risman points out just four of the many contradictions between society’s values and actions that put the lie to the valorization of care-giving, using research from sociology and beyond to demonstrate that post-war workplaces don’t (and, quite possibly, can’t) serve millenial families. In one particularly telling example, Risman writes:

Sociologist Mirra Komarovsky pointed out these contradictions back in 1953. She argued back then that if society truly believed caretaking was an important and difficult job, nursery school teachers would rate a salary at least equal to the beginning salary of a street cleaner. Not much has changed since then. As Stephanie Coontz, a historian and co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families, told me: “It’s time for politicians to stop competing over the women’s votes and start competing over who has the best programs to support all parents, whatever their employment status or their gender.”

She concludes with a succinct call to action: “Let’s call a truce on the fictional mommy wars and start a war on workplaces that don’t allow mommies and daddies to live full lives, on the job and at home.”

While it’s still hotly debated whether obesity is, in fact, a health crisis, in today’s New York Times, one-time food critic Frank Bruni considers recent obesity research in evolutionary science, medicine, public health, and beyond, concluding that it will require society-level change if we are to stem “a near inevitable tide.” (See also his blog post from today, “The Girth of the Globe,” which discusses Bruni’s perceptions of American dietary habits in a larger context.) The Centers for Disease Control, Bruni writes, now considers about two-thirds of Americans overweight or obese, but “Our current circumstances and our current circumferences may in fact be a toxically perfect fit.”

This is to say, learning to perfect agriculture in abundance has created “plump savings accounts of excess energy” in both our grain silos and our love handles “for an imagined future shortage that, in America today, doesn’t come.” Bruni interviews John Hoffman, an executive producer on HBO’s forthcoming documentary series “The Weight of the Nation,” who tells him that “We’ve only known a world of plenty for maybe 100 years. Our biological systems haven’t adapted to it.” And quoting from Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin’s book The Evolution of Obesity, Bruni adds, “We evolved on the savannahs of Africa. We now live in Candyland.”

Bruni goes on in his op-ed to consider how one problem in fighting obesity is that we must eat:

“When it comes to smoking or drinking, people generally have to go cold turkey,” notes David Altshuler, an endocrinologist and geneticist, in the documentary. “But fundamentally, we have to eat.” Every meal is a… feat of calibration. “We underestimate how hard it is to change your behavior not once—not for a week or a month until you’re cured—but to change it every day for the rest of your life,” says Altshuler.

In conclusion, Bruni writes we must understand this paradox, cease to vilify the obese, and “rethink and remake our environment much more thoroughly than we seem poised to do.” This may, perhaps, be true well beyond Americans’ own equators.

I never thought I’d be writing the words “fellatio” or “cunnilingus” for an academic purpose (or frankly ever), but here I find myself exploring recent musing on the decline of the, ahem, blow job. Near the end of March, Esquire’s Geoff Dyer reported that the act has fallen on hard times: in an informal survey of 10 of his male friends, 8 preferred pleasing their partners to receiving oral sex.

It’s easy for sociologists to pooh-pooh the methodologies of this “survey,” as surveying 10 friends is hardly scientific.  Further, an increase in cunnilingus does not necessarily signal a decrease in fellatio.  But still, several intellectuals have recently explained why they think Dyer’s article might be on to something.  In an essay on his own website, Pasadena City College history and gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer explained,

In an era of rising male body dysmorphia, we know that more men than ever before are self-conscious about their appearance; it’s conceivable that anxiety about their size (driven by comparison to well-hung porn stars) or even how their penises’ smell has some guys anxious to avoid the intense focus that comes with a woman’s mouth on their manparts.

In essence, Schwyzer thinks that cunnilingus has become a new way for men to demonstrate sexual competence and deal with performance anxieties.

Sociologist Michael Kimmel also believes that Dyer may be on to something, though he finds some fault with an assumption in Schwyzer’s article: that giving and receiving head mean the same thing.  In fact, sexuality research suggests that the meaning of the act may not be symmetrical.

When straight men describe their experiences with oral sex, they talk about power. This holds whether receiving fellatio: “I feel so powerful when I see her kneeling in front of me,” or performing cunnilingus: “Being able to get her off with my tongue makes me feel so powerful.” Heterosexual men tend to experience the giving and receiving of oral sex as an expression of their power. By contrast, straight women perceive both giving and receiving oral sex from the position of powerlessness—not necessarily because they are forced into these acts, but because “it makes him happy” to receive oral sex and to perform it. So oral sex, like intercourse, allows him to feel “like a man,” regardless of who does what to whom.

So what happens to men’s sexual experience when women desire reciprocity and actually want to perform oral sex?  According to Kimmel, in a traditional sense, sex was a conquest for men.  But is there still victory if women like the “conquering”?

It’s difficult to say, though if the answer is “no,” perhaps we need to rethink what sex means to straight men.  Kimmel asks,

Can we both conquer and surrender to pleasure? Or can we dispense with martial metaphors… entirely, and simply pleasure and be pleasured? In other words, can heterosexual men embrace the liberatory promise of queer sex—the freeing of sexual pleasure from gender inequality?

As Kimmel puts it, can there really be anything sexier than equality?

According to well-worn stereotypes, boys who have sex are “players” or “studs,” while girls who have sex get stuck with nastier labels. But in a recent New York Times editorial, sociologist Amy T. Schalet argues that boys in the U.S. seem to care much more about romance—and avoiding pregnancy and disease—than they did 20 years ago.

Rates for 15-to-17-year-olds who report having sex have dropped since the 1980s, according to the Centers for Disease Control. “And there are virtually no gender differences in the timing of sexual initiation,” Schalet writes.

She offers a few rationales for the change, based on survey data and her own research:

Fear seems to have played a role. In interviewing 10th graders for my book on teenage sexuality in the United States and the Netherlands, I found that American boys often said sex could end their life as they knew it. After a condom broke, one worried: “I could be screwed for the rest of my life.” Another boy said he did not want to have sex yet for fear of becoming a father before his time.

In fact, Schalet writes, boys seems to be more preoccupied with negative outcomes than girls. She suggests these fears grow out of sex education and an awareness of AIDS, while the drive to have sex with another person might be, in part, quelled by access to Internet pornography.

Schalet suggests there could also be a positive reason American boys are hurrying less to have sex. It might be “because they have gained cultural leeway to choose a first time that feels emotionally right. If so, their liberation from rigid masculinity norms should be seen as a victory for the very feminist movement that Rush Limbaugh recently decried.”

For the first time ever, the National Archives and Records Administration is making the 1940 census public.   Scholars planning to use the data for research, citizens hoping to track down their ancestors, and many others are excited about the release.  In fact, after nearly 37 million hits in 8 hours, the website crashed.  For more, including how the Minnesota Population Center is helping to make the information easier to access, click here!

Here in the Citings & Sightings section at The Society Pages we strive to go beyond simply turning your attention to the social scientists getting their work and names in the news. We also aim to commend journalists who, in the pursuit of bringing depth and context to their pieces, reach out to social scientists and take advantage of the unique perspective and data they provide. Without further ado, we are proud to announce the winner of our  TSP Media Awards for Measured Social Science for the month of March 2012:

Stephanie Hegarty, “The myth of the eight-hour sleep.” BBC News, February 22, 2012.

As we discussed in our write up of the piece, this article uproots conceptions of “the way it has always been” by highlighting the implications of  historical research. Something as common as our nightly sleep patterns and how we understand “normal sleep” are challenged by Hegarty’s treatment of historians and sleep scientists in a rich and though-provoking manner.

We admit the selection process for this award isn’t exactly scientific or exhaustive, but we did, as a board, work hard to winnow down to our favorite bunch of nominees, and then debate more from there. We also don’t have the deep pocketbooks to offer the winning journalists Stanley-Cup-sized trophies or cash prizes, but we hope our informal award offers both cheer and encouragement to continue the important work of bringing social scientistific knowledge to the broader public. Here’s to March’s best!

Cheers!

The Society Pages

It seems a no-brainer that the internet, social media, and cellphones have made homesickness for migrants a thing of the past. But as historian Susan J. Matt reveals in a recent New York Times op-ed, previous generations have found technology no substitute for home sweet home, and today’s immigrants are no different.

More than a century ago, the technology of the day was seen as the solution to the problem. In 1898, American commentators claimed that serious cases of homesickness had “grown less common in these days of quick communication, of rapid transmission of news and of a widespread knowledge of geography.”

But such pronouncements were overly optimistic, for homesickness continued to plague many who migrated.

Today’s technologies have also failed to defeat homesickness even though studies by the Carnegie Corporation of New York show that immigrants are in closer touch with their families than before. In 2002, only 28 percent of immigrants called home at least once a week; in 2009, 66 percent did. Yet this level of contact is not enough to conquer the melancholy that frequently accompanies migration. A 2011 study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that Mexican immigrants in the United States had rates of depression and anxiety 40 percent higher than nonmigrant relatives remaining in Mexico. A wealth of studies have documented that other newcomers to America also suffer from high rates of depression and “acculturative stress.”

Then why does the idea that technology can overcome homesickness persist? Matt cites a pervasive belief about mobility that many hold despite its disappointments.

The global desire to leave home arises from poverty and necessity, but it also grows out of a conviction that such mobility is possible. People who embrace this cosmopolitan outlook assume that individuals can and should be at home anywhere in the world, that they need not be tied to any particular place. This outlook was once a strange and threatening product of the Enlightenment but is now accepted as central to a globalized economy.

Technology plays a role in supporting this outlook.

 The comforting illusion of connection offered by technology makes moving seem less consequential, since one is always just a mouse click or a phone call away.

Further, Matt argues that this illusion of connection may amplify homesickness rather than cure it.

The immediacy that phone calls and the Internet provide means that those away from home can know exactly what they are missing and when it is happening. They give the illusion that one can be in two places at once but also highlight the impossibility of that proposition.

The persistence of homesickness points to the limitations of the cosmopolitan philosophy that undergirds so much of our market and society. The idea that we can and should feel at home anyplace on the globe is based on a worldview that celebrates the solitary, mobile individual and envisions men and women as easily separated from family, from home and from the past. But this vision doesn’t square with our emotions, for our ties to home, although often underestimated, are strong and enduring.

Scientists often assert that climate change is a matter of  empirical evidence, not belief.  But, The Guardian’s Adam Corner notes that decades of social scientific research says that skepticism about climate change is primarily due to beliefs, not a misunderstanding of the science (though there’s certainly misunderstanding as well).

 …..in studies that have asked who is sceptical about climate change and why, we find not a story about scientific ignorance, but a link between social attitudes, cultural beliefs and climate change scepticism. The evidence is starkest in the US , but similar patterns are found elsewhere too: older, white, conservative men tend to be more sceptical about climate change.

Corner is also a research associate at Cardiff University, and in a paper he recently published with several colleagues, he asked what would happen when two groups of people—one group comprised of people who were skeptical about climate change and the other group comprised of people who were not—read the exact same information about climate change in newspaper editorials.  Overall, they found that the two groups of people evaluated the information differently, attributing different judgements about persuasiveness and reliability of the information.

In social psychology, this phenomenon – “biased assimilation” – is well known, and no one is immune from it, so both sceptics and non-sceptics rated the editorials in line with their existing beliefs. The critical difference, of course, is that those who were not climate sceptics had the weight of empirical evidence on their side.  What this experiment illustrates, though, is that “belief” in climate change is very much what matters. Without belief in climate change, scientific evidence simply bounces off. And it is social views and cultural beliefs that predict climate change denial, not people’s level of knowledge about climate science.

Does this mean that people fighting global warming should give up?  Corner says “absolutely not,” though he asserts that we cannot look only to environmental science to provide an answer to a problem that is also social in nature.

While many turn up their noses at the thought, a recent article in the Star Tribune profiles a growing group of people who don headlamps and explore dumpsters for discarded edibles.

Some, calling themselves “freegans,” have a philosophy that shuns spending money and capitalism, and do it to protest waste.

Others just want to take advantage of free food.

The practice is rife with detractors, however, including food safety experts and most of the expiration date-abiding public. Taking food from dumpsters in public areas is not exactly against the law (at least no one has been prosecuted for it). Some cities, however, do have ordinances against dumpster diving, so most divers keep a low profile about their escapades.

Geographer Valentine Cadieux explains why such habits of food procurement might offend some:

 “Food is such a huge part of our lives, wrapped up in our identities and cultures and habits, not to mention survival — so we experience tremendous resistance to questioning the way we get this food,” Cadieux wrote in an e-mail.

While some dumpster divers may do it for practical reasons, like survival or cutting down on food costs, others might be looking to make a bigger statement.

“Dumpster divers are demonstrating a way to call into question something that seems really legitimate and scientific [expiration dates or the convenience of throwing away food],” Cadieux said. “The general guilt that we feel about how many people are hungry is exactly the kind of thing that adds additional meaning to what may not be intended as a part of a social movement — but dumpster diving ends up being legible to people as a critique of throwing away too much food.”

Though perhaps not looking to start a broader social movement, dumpster divers certainly make an impression. And, apparently, their exploits can make for a well-stocked fridge.

“All the produce, just tons of green peppers and red peppers; they looked perfect,” Graham recalled with not a small bit of awe. “This was the first time I was diving, and I couldn’t believe it.”

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment is well-known in social science circles and has provided evidence that relocating residents of poor neighborhoods to more advantaged neighborhoods can have positive outcomes, especially on physical and mental health for some groups. But new evidence cited in The Atlantic this month shows that such interventions may have and unintended dark side for political participation.

MTO’s designers in the mid-1990s hoped to improve conditions of employment, education, and health of low-income families in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent or higher. The experiment included about 4,200 families in five major U.S. cities.

The chance for residential mobility was determined by lottery. Some families remained in their current public housing development. A second group received standard Section 8 housing vouchers. A third set received vouchers that could only be used toward an apartment in a low-poverty neighborhood — areas with a poverty rate below 10 percent. (Families that received vouchers weren’t obligated to use them.)

Despite good intentions, not all of the results of this mobility have been positive. Some researchers have found that moving did not improve residents’ economic well-being and arrest rates for young men actually increased. It seems that Claudine Gay, political scientist at Harvard, has pinpointed another less-than-ideal outcome: decreased political participation.

Gay examined voter registration and turnout data in the 2002 primary and the 2004 presidential election. She compared the political participation of all three Moving to Opportunity groups: those who “lost” the lottery and stayed put, those who moved with Section 8 vouchers, and those who moved into low-poverty areas (as well as those who received vouchers but chose not to move).

Her analysis turned up no negative effects with regard to voter registration, and turnout for the 2002 primary was uniformly low. But Gay did observe a much lower voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election among families that received a voucher. The effects were especially pronounced for the so-called lottery “winners”: adults that moved into low-poverty neighborhoods had a lower voter turnout by 19 percent, compared with those who “lost” the lottery…

While hang-ups in the logistics of moving, like registering to vote in a new neighborhood or not knowing your new polling place, might seem like likely culprits in the decrease, Gay offers a different explanation:

Instead, Gay reasons, the primary source of decreased voter turnout is likely the “social disruption” that occurs when a poor urban family relocates to a higher-income area. Community connections are strongly linked with political participation, and while it takes time for a new resident of any community to connect socially, that difficulty may be greater for residents whose socioeconomic profile doesn’t match that of their new neighbors.

Given the high stake that poor citizens have in many public policy decisions, Gay argues that the effects of residential mobility on political participation must not be ignored.