USA Weekend recently highlighted the growing fascination that Americans have with our favorite blood-sucking friends: vampires.   This phenomenon is underscored by the recent success of the Twilight series, HBO’s second-most watched series ever True Blood, and the popularity of the new CW network show The Vampire Diaries.

Karen Sternheimer, sociologist at the University of Southern California, provides commentary: 

“One reason for the intense teenage interest in newer stories, especially Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, is the sense that the vampires are outsiders among us. In True Blood, they’re simply trying to fit into society. Often, they’re also seen as more vulnerable and less predatory.  Vampires look like us, but they’re different, and those are experiences that a lot of young people can relate to, especially dealing with not just the physical aspects of relationships when you’re young but also the emotional aspects, the danger vs. the draw of that so-called ‘forbidden love’ that really resonates with a lot of young women.”

Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels (upon which True Blood is based), provides additional commentary: 

“Vampires never have to go on Social Security, they never have to have a hip replacement, they’re never going to need bifocals  They just won’t have the problems of aging that humans face, and that’s very appealing, especially perhaps to Americans.”

On that note, pay attention to how many little vampires you see roaming the streets tomorrow night.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that sociological research has motivated Los Angeles city Councilman  Richard Alarcón to take action to make nonpayment of wages illegal.

The issue:

“People think that just because they pick up somebody on the street or at a day laborer center that they don’t have the responsibility to pay them if they don’t like the work,” Alarcón said. “This would make it illegal for somebody to do that.”

Los Angeles would join a handful of cities, including Denver and Austin, Texas, that hold employers criminally responsible for not paying their employees. State and federal laws govern overtime, minimum wage and other labor standards, but the penalties typically are civil. A local ordinance would enable city prosecutors to file misdemeanor charges against employers.

The research:

Alarcón said he was motivated by a recent study that showed many low-wage workers in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago often don’t receive minimum wage or overtime pay. The study, based on interviews with more than 4,300 workers, found that 26 percent of workers weren’t paid minimum wage the week before and that 76 percent of those who worked overtime the previous week weren’t paid the proper overtime rate. According to the report, the violations were widespread and occurred in various industries, including construction, child care and apparel.

“We were shocked ourselves,” said Ruth Milkman, a University of California, Los Angeles sociology professor and one of the authors of the study.

Milkman said employers need to know the laws – and that there are consequences for not following them. “If criminal penalties are what is needed, there is no reason not to try that.”

The recently released 2008 American Community Survey (from the U.S. Census Bureau) finds about 4 million “multigenerational” American households, reports the Houston Chronicle. This trend seems to be enjoying renewed popularity, sociologists note:

While the number of multigenerational households has remained steady since the 2000 Census, sociologists and demographers say they expect to see an increase. Immigration and out-of-wedlock childbearing generally spur high rates of multigenerational households in certain geographical areas, and they will continue to be factors, experts said.

What’s pushing the trend now is the recession and baby boomers. With layoffs and furloughs, people are moving back in with their parents or other family members to save money. Also, many baby boomers are taking care of their elderly parents as the cost of long-term care soars. Baby boomers themselves are growing old, too. Their children will be preparing to take care of them, experts said.

“People are going back to living the way they did in the beginning of the 20th century,” said Ray Eve, head of the sociology department at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Eve said economics was a driving factor then, just like it is now.

This illustrates how the idea of “family” shifts over time:

Society has had a long fascination with the idea of the traditional family — father, mother and children — but the reality is it has never really existed, said Holly Heard, a sociology professor at Rice University.

People often have lived with extended family members, and they do more so now than 20 years ago, Heard said.

For the early part of the 20th century to the 1950s, multigenerational households were fairly common. After World War II, people became more affluent, and family members moved out because they could afford to live on their own. A shift began to occur in the 1980s, when the recession hit, sociologists said.

Despite the day-to-day challenges that may come with three or more generations sharing one home, sociologists note benefits, as well:

Studies show some physical and psychological benefits for multiple generations living together, sociologists said.

People who live with relatives tend to have better health and are less suicidal. Children are also less likely to be delinquent because they have additional family members to nurture and take care of them, they said.

Explore more housing data from the American Community Survey.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad recently reported on research forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology that challenges the idea that increased education leads to decreased religiosity. According to the article,

Stijn Ruiter, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and Frank van Tubergen, a professor of sociology in Utrecht, compared ‘religious participation’ in 60 countries. They found no effect of education, but instead came to the conclusion that social insecurity and the environment people grow up in have a significant impact.

The authors focus on church attendance rather than religious belief as their measure of religiosity, and this may help to explain their findings.  Van Tubergen says,

“Other research has shown that highly educated people are indeed less religious. But at the same time they tend to be more actively involved in political parties, associations and thus also in churches. Less educated people are more religious, but less active about it. There is a higher rate of churchgoers amongst educated believers than low-skilled believers.”

According to the authors, the level of economic security in a country is a stronger predictor of religious participation.

“The US has long been regarded as a special case: a developed country and scientific vanguard that is exceptionally religious. But past researchers did not take uncertainties resulting from the high socio-economic inequality into account. In the US you can quickly climb the social ladder, but you can fall off very hard,” Ruiter explains.

Van Tubergen: “Conversely, the link between religiosity and uncertainty explains why the churches in the Netherlands have emptied out. As a result of the welfare state great security can be found outside the walls of the church. It would be interesting to examine the impact of the current economic crisis on church attendance.”

The Crawler couldn’t resist the Wall Street Journal headline from yesterday’s paper: “The Sex-Housework Link: Housework Pays Off Between the Sheets.” The WSJ article begins…

Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?

A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.

Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.

But whoever thought vacuuming was sexy?

But for some high achievers who take a “work hard, play hard” approach to life, researchers say, working hard in one domain produces more energy for others. The study also found a correlation between hours spent on paid work and the frequency of sex in marriage.

“Rather than compromise their sex life” because of time demands at work or at home, “this group of go-getters seems to make sex a priority,” says Constance Gager, lead researcher and an assistant professor of family and child studies at Montclair State University, Montclair, N.J. The study doesn’t measure what proportion of spouses fall into this group, but she believes “they are on the leading edge of couples we expect to see more of in the future.”

More from the authors, one of whom is a sociologist…

Dr. Gager and her co-author, Scott Yabiku, associate professor of sociology at Arizona State University, Tempe, controlled the results for “gender ideology” and found the housework-sex link remained true, regardless of people’s views on roles. Results from the data, taken from the National Survey of Families and Households, were controlled for age, health, duration of couple’s relationship, religion, income, education and marital satisfaction.

The study defined housework as nine chores: cleaning, preparing meals, washing dishes, washing and ironing clothes, driving family members around, shopping, yard work, maintaining cars and paying bills. Wives in the study spent an average 41.8 hours a week on these tasks, compared with 23.4 hours for husbands—a split that is fairly typical, and often regarded by wives as unfair. However, the effects of any fairness concerns among wives weren’t measured in this study.

Outside the home, husbands spent an average 33.8 hours a week on paid work, compared with 19.7 hours for wives. Couples reported having sex 82.7 times a year on average, or 1.6 times a week, about the same as in other studies.

After a long national decline in time spent on housework, the study joins a growing body of research on how chores shape the dynamics of marriage. A survey of 2,020 U.S. adults placed “sharing household chores” as the third most important factor in a successful marriage, behind faithfulness and a happy sexual relationship, says the nonprofit Pew Research Center. That’s a sharp increase; 72% of respondents gave high importance to housework, up from 47% in a comparable study in 1990. In respondents’ minds, housework outranked even such necessities as adequate income and good housing, Pew says.

The article also links to another sociological study:

A 2003 study by Scott Coltrane, a sociology professor at the University of California, Riverside, linked fathers’ housework to more feelings of warmth and affection in their wives. And a survey of 288 husbands, reported in Neil Chethik’s 2006 book “VoiceMale,” linked a wife’s satisfaction with the division of household duties with her husband’s satisfaction with their sex life.

One husband, Mr. Chethik says in an interview, reported that his wife enjoyed flowers or a candlelit dinner out; but “if he wants to be sure of a romantic evening, he goes for the vacuum cleaner.”

Read more.

Yesterday’s Telegraph (UK) ran a story about divorce trends in the UK, which don’t seem to follow the convention of the seven-year-itch.

The paper reports on new patterns in the UK:

While the old saying refers to couples separating after getting the “seven year itch”, the Office of National Statistics figures appear to suggest that in Britain that is slightly longer.

Of the 144,220 couples who divorced in 2007, the average length of a marriage in Britain was 11.7 years, the figures showed.

The divorce rate is at its lowest level since 1981, with experts putting it down to the fact that fewer people are getting married.

The figures came as a study claimed marriage should be viewed as an “economic partnership”, where relationships failed during times of emotional and economic decline.

One scholar notes:

Malcolm Brynin, co-author of Changing Relationships, a new Economic and Social Research Council book based on five years of research into family life, said the costs and benefits of a relationship were “more fluid than in the past”.

“People come together and stay together only when this is to their individual advantage,” he told The Sunday Times.

But the sociologist adds…

However, sociologist Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and author of Paranoid Parenting, said: “When you get married, if you make this kind of statistical calculation saying, ‘Well, I’m getting married, the chances are we’ll only get to 11 years’, the whole ritual becomes entirely pointless.

“If you adopt the idea, we might as well give up on the concept of durable relationships altogether.”

Read more.

Earlier this week Forbes.com ran a story about pet culture in the U.S. in the 21st century, which has transformed our four-legged pets into our children.

About the trend:

America’s cultural pendulum has swung toward pets. According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), a trade group, 62% of U.S. households own a pet, and most are willing to spend vast amounts of time and money to keep Sparky and Fluffy happy. The pet industry has tripled in the past 15 years. The APPA estimates pet spending will reach $45.4 billion this year, an increase of $2 billion since 2008–despite the crippling recession.

In the last few years, they’ve exploded into popular culture, too. As Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson are splashed across the celebrity glossies with their furry friends, the broader media followed suit. People.com offers the offshoot People Pets.com, AOL draws audiences with its new site Paw Nation, and icanhascheezburger.com gets hundreds of submissions daily of user-generated lol cats (laugh-out-loud funny photos of cats). Bo, America’s “First Dog,” is still making headlines.

And sociological commentary…

“People are fascinated by pets. We act and spend on them as if they were our children,” says NYU sociology professor Colin Jerolmack, who studies animals in society. “We’ve civilized them to the point that they are no longer a part of wild nature.” It wasn’t always so. Just over a century ago in the 1800s it was very rare to have a pet, Jerolmack says. They were luxury items and status symbols of the bourgeoisie, showcasing that a family had the means and resources to own a pet. Animals then were purely functional; dogs were often used to hunt, and cats used to scare off mice. As society developed and technology advanced, the utilitarian use of pets waned.

And from another sociologist…

Author of Understanding Dogs, sociologist Clinton Sanders, says pet obsession has been rapidly growing during the past 20 years. “The danger is that we don’t let animals be animals anymore,” he says. “It does them a disservice and results in some ignorant kinds of treatment.

“Dogs,” he says, “would be perfectly content eating the same food every day for the rest of their lives. It tastes good, fills them up and never disappoints. A dog’s owner, on the other hand, might say, ‘I would never want the same meal again and again, how boring.’ Then she goes to the store and buys her pup a variety of options, which in turn disrupts the dog’s digestive tract.” But, Sanders insists,”Dogs aren’t like us.”

Similarly, interpreting their behavior as if they were human can lead to false assumptions. Says Sanders, “People might believe the dog peed on their bed because she was angry that they were gone, but what if the dog has a urinary tract infection? It’s an inappropriate way of understanding their behavior.”

But why are we so crazy about our pets? NYU sociologist Colin Jerolmack, quoted above, has an answer…

Why have they become so important to us? NYU’s Jerolmack speculates that it may be due to people’s decreasing connection to each other. In an era of online social networks, long work hours and distances between families, we have far fewer strong social ties and many more weak ties, he says. “We’re spending a lot more time alone or with our immediate family. The companionship of pets has become much more valuable today.”

Furthermore, relationships with pets are much less emotionally messy. They love you no matter what you look like or if your breath stinks. And they show affection consistently. Pets have become a relatively easy and loveable replacement of children or a strong community, which, Jerolmack warns, may lead to an impending culture clash.

“In the city, we’re already seeing debates over park space going to kids or dogs,” says Jerolmack. “There will be more people demanding social recognition of pets, wanting to bring their pets everywhere. And with an industry relying on them, I don’t see us going backwards.”

Read more.

Widely read in numerous sociology classes, the writings of Barbara Ehrenreich have become classics. Her most recent book, Bright-Sided, was discussed earlier this week on National Public Radio.

NPR’s ‘Talk of the Nation’ reports:

When author Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was bombarded with wildly optimistic, inspirational phrases. But a cheerful outlook, she argues, does not cure cancer.

In her new book, Bright-Sided, Ehrenreich explores the negative effects of positive thinking, and the “reckless optimism” that dominates America’s national mindset.

“We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles,” Ehrenreich writes, “both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.”

A brief excerpt from the book…

How can we be so surpassingly “positive” in self-image and stereotype without being the world’s happiest and best-off people? The answer, I think, is that positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our ideology — the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within it. That ideology is “positive thinking,” by which we usually mean two things. One is the generic content of positive thinking — that is, the positive thought itself — which can be summarized as: Things are pretty good right now, at least if you are willing to see silver linings, make lemonade out of lemons, etc., and things are going to get a whole lot better. This is optimism, and it is not the same as hope. Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.

The second thing we mean by “positive thinking” is this practice, or discipline, of trying to think in a positive way. There is, we are told, a practical reason for undertaking this effort: positive thinking supposedly not only makes us feel optimistic but actually makes happy outcomes more likely. If you expect things to get better, they will. How can the mere process of thinking do this? In the rational explanation that many psychologists would offer today, optimism improves health, personal efficacy, confidence, and resilience, making it easier for us to accomplish our goals. A far less rational theory also runs rampant in American ideology — the idea that our thoughts can, in some mysterious way, directly affect the physical world. Negative thoughts somehow produce negative outcomes, while positive thoughts realize themselves in the form of health, prosperity, and success. For both rational and mystical reasons, then, the effort of positive thinking is said to be well worth our time and attention, whether this means reading the relevant books, attending seminars and speeches that offer the appropriate mental training, or just doing the solitary work of concentration on desired outcomes — a better job, an attractive mate, world peace.

Listen to the report here.

Read the NPR transcript.

With this week’s vote in the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Olympia Snowe (R) of Maine, along with 13 other Democrats approved the committee’s healthcare bill. The Times’ blog Room for Debate notes:

For months, [Snowe’s] support seemed pivotal to health care’s overhaul in the Senate. For much of the public, it’s puzzling that the politics of reshaping a sector that accounts for 16 percent of the G.D.P. should seemingly hinge on one senator.

Is this a healthy and expected consequence of Congressional politics? What might this say about how partisan politics has evolved? Is there a historical precedent that we might compare this to?

Sociologist Theda Skocpol, of Harvard University, weighs in on the debate:

No, it is not healthy. But the problem is not just Olympia Snowe — it is a set of Senate rules, formal and informal, that privilege a few votes from senators in small states.

This vote is not the final word, however. This is just a matter of getting a bill out of Senate Finance committee. Bills have to be merged for a final vote in each house, and a conference will work out final details between the Senate and House versions in due course. A lot can and will change.

Olympia Snowe is trying to maintain her leverage in this process, and she is in a sense a proxy for various conservative Democrats, too. She wants to try to shape the final “compromise” on a public option — essentially to block it with a “trigger” approach that would prevent a real option.

Remember, in the end, Olympia Snowe really cannot obstruct final passage. She may get in trouble with fellow Republicans in the Senate if she votes with the Democrats, but she will be in bigger trouble at home in Maine if she obstructs. Maine people want reform.

We have a long ways to go and this is not really all that decisive.

Read more from the New York Times.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports this week on a new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts regarding census preparations in a number of large US cities.

The study compared Philadelphia’s census preparation efforts with those of five larger cities – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix – and five cities similar to Philadelphia and its history with the census: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Boston, Detroit and Atlanta.

Although the census is done by the federal government, ensuring the local count is complete and accurate has become a municipal self-promotion campaign.

“Census preparation really matters,” said [Thomas] Ginsberg, [the project manager of Pew’s Philadelphia Research Initiative,] and the census has become a hard sell.

Why is it a ‘hard sell?’

Immigrants, especially those here illegally, are suspicious of the count despite the promise of anonymity. They fear the count could lead to discovery and deportation of them or relatives.

Anti-government campaigns involving the Obama Administration’s proposal for universal health insurance coverage also appear to be affecting the census.

And the economic recession has dramatically reduced local tax revenue, meaning there is much less to spend on municipal census promotion efforts.

And the sociological commentary…

“Nobody is expecting a good census in 2010. I’m not optimistic,” said Joseph J. Salvo, New York City’s population division chief and a sociologist, quoted in the Pew study.

Salvo, who advises and critiques the Census Bureau, noted that “since the last census we had 9/11, privacy issues, trust of government issues. And there’s been no public declaration that we’re going to suspend immigration raids like in 2000.”

Read more.