With the downturn in the economy, there has been significant debate about whether or not Americans’ spending habits have changed for good. An article in the Chicago Tribune explores the debate, with the benefit of some sociological commentary suggesting that the change might not be permanent.

The Tribune reports:

The past decade was one of splurging, as easy access to credit cards and home equity loans enabled Americans to live more lavishly than previous generations. But as the economy has come crashing down, some predict a permanent cultural shift in spending habits. Some anthropologists and economists say more consumers will be like [some Americans] and spend more practically. They’ll buy smaller houses, eat out less and save for big purchases.

Many consumers are being forced into these changes as they watch the value of their homes plummet or find themselves swimming in unmanageable debt. But for others it’s a moral shift as they realize that all that buying doesn’t add much to their lives. “People are at that higher level where they’re saying something is wrong with the way we’re spending and it has got to change,” said Robbie Blinkoff, co-founder and principal anthropologist at Context-Based Research Group. In conjunction with the Carton Donofrio Partners Inc. advertising and marketing firm, it recently surveyed people about the economy’s impact on their spending.

The survey found that a new “grounded” consumer is emerging. These consumers are realizing that life is not defined by what they buy and that credit isn’t a true measure of their financial worth. They’re moving to limit the amount of “stuff” in their lives, the survey found. And they’re learning to live within their means. “The consumer will go through this process of evaluating what stuff they bring into their life to make sure it brings meaning into their life,” Blinkoff said. “They’ll be less superfluous.”

The economist thinks the changes will be permanent…

“It’s going to have to be a new way of life,” he said. Christopher Carroll, a professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, said more people are realizing that things they once saw as necessities are actually luxuries. Debt is forcing many of the changes.

“What we’ll end up with is an economy where there is more investment, less of a trade deficit and spending is more in line with income,” Carroll said.

But the sociologist thinks otherwise…

Sara Raley, an assistant professor of sociology at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., with a specialty in consumerism, said shopping is too big a part of people’s lifestyles to be drastically changed. She recently asked her students to name things they couldn’t live without and many listed cell phones, high-speed Internet and multiple televisions.

She also said television, movies and other entertainment media promote luxury living too much.

“I don’t think we’ll see permanent change unless we see some large structural change in the way we idolize consuming,” Raley said. Jean Johnson, an event planner who lives in Suitland, Md., is being a little more cautious with spending but doesn’t plan to abandon her shopping habits anytime soon–especially her shoe habit. The 46-year-old, who shops about once a week, said it’s something she enjoys.

“There are still going to be plenty of people out there who shop,” she said.

Read more.

Yesterday The Examiner ran a story on an article published in the  American Journal of Sociology – and winner of the 2008 Kanter Award Winner for Excellence in Work-Family Research – about the ‘motherhood penalty’:  the pattern demonstrating that working mothers make less than women without children. The study, authored by Shelley J. Correll of Stanford University, Stephen J. Benard, and In Paik also suggests that, “the mommy gap is actually bigger than the gender gap for women under 35.”

About the methods:

188 men and women participated in the study. Researchers used two types of experiments in the study; a laboratory experiment and audit study. The laboratory experiment was used to determine “how evaluators rate applicants in terms of competence, workplace commitment, hireability, promotability and recommended salary.” The audit portion of the experiment measured “positive responses to applicants based on the number of callbacks from actual employers.”

Researchers created fictitious resumes and cover letters and found that the starting salaries were quite different for the women with children versus their counterparts, even though the qualifications in the resumes were equal. The researchers also created fake resumes for both working dads and men without children and found no difference in starting salary for the male gender.

And the findings…

The study found that “Mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary.” On the other hand, men were not. In fact, according to the study, some working dads actually benefited from being a father.

On average, working mothers were offered $11,000 less pay per year than equally qualified women without children.

According to the report, women without children received 2.1 times as many callbacks as mothers who were equally qualified.

Women without children were recommended for hire 1.8 times more than equally qualified moms, while fathers were recommended for hire and called back at a higher rate.

Read more.

In reporting on President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the New York Times noted that “President Obama may have broken with history by nominating a Latina to the Supreme Court, but in another respect he followed the path of almost every president in modern times who has successfully placed a justice: he chose a nominee groomed in an Ivy League university.”

In a story titled, “An Ivy-Covered Path to the Supreme Court,” the Times reports:

If confirmed, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, would sit alongside seven other Ivy League graduates on the court. Only Justice John Paul Stevens provides a measure of non-Ivy diversity, having graduated from the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law.

In the history of the court, half of the 110 justices were undergraduates, graduate students or law students in the Ivy League; since 1950, the percentage is 70. From the beginning of the 20th century, every president who has seated a justice has picked at least one Ivy graduate. Four of the six justices on President Obama’s short list studied at Ivy League institutions, either as undergraduates or law students.

Whatever a nominee’s origins might be, does attending the same institutions shape them and their views, even subtly? Critics suggest that elite universities shave off the differences in backgrounds and contribute to a kind of high-level groupthink.

A sociologist weighs in…

“There is both a funneling and homogenizing effect from these schools,” said G. William Domhoff, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of “Who Rules America?”

The effect, Professor Domhoff said, “plays out in terms of social networks, cultural/social capital, and a feeling of being part of the in-group.” It is one of subtle conditioning — what Sam Rayburn, the former House speaker, meant when he famously said, “If you want to get along, go along.”

Even those who might not agree with Professor Domhoff’s political critique would like to see more educational variety on the Supreme Court. Limiting the universe of nominees largely to Ivy League graduates “is not good for the court or the country,” said Linda L. Addison, the partner in charge of the New York office of Fulbright & Jaworski. “Educational diversity would strengthen the court, as have racial, ethnic, gender and religious diversity.”

And another…

A president who attended a top university might gravitate toward those with a similar education. Stanley Aronowitz, a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, said the selection of Judge Sotomayor by a president who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law was an example of “people wanting to appoint themselves.”

Professor Aronowitz, who has written extensively on questions of power, higher education and class, jokingly said, “What I think he means by ‘diversity’ is Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.”

Read more.

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend about how our President and his wife Michelle are able to find time for date night, illustrated in their highly-publicized trip to New York for dinner and a show, and what that means for the rest of us.

The Times reports:

THEIRS is a seasoned marriage, 16 years and counting. They are middle-aged. Life is that modern-crazy haze: two girls in the windstorm of year-end school activities, the puppy that must be walked twice daily, the live-in mother-in-law. They both work long hours. Standard recipe for a drive-by relationship.

At the gala celebrating the crowning achievement of his career, he showed her off to cheering throngs: “How good-looking is my wife?”

And yet… In his lock-step schedule, he sets aside daily “Michelle time.”

And last weekend, he fulfilled a promise to her. They got all gussied up and flew to New York, took a limo to dinner and a Broadway show, then flew home. Date night, just the two of them. Michelle and Barack. And their security detail.

And people’s reactions?

While some commentators were grousing about the presidential date’s undisclosed cost to the taxpayers, news of the romantic evening prompted many wives to glare across the breakfast table, trying to remember the last time their husbands made a fuss over them.

Elbowed sharply in the side, husbands felt betrayed by the commander in chief. On “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart reviewed the Obamas’ glamorous foray and screeched, “How do you compete with that?” He warned Mr. Obama, “Take it down a notch, dude!”

The Times even has a sociologist weigh in on the event…

But relationship experts are applauding the first couple for giving life to the modern fantasy that longtime spouses can still be passionate about each other. Intentionally or not, the Obamas have become ambassadors for date night, a term that is a creature of these times. A generation ago, when Saturday night rolled around, parents simply went out. Now parents need to be prodded to date each other, as if they’re singles: take a break from the children, already!

“The Obamas really are products of the culture,” said Christine B. Whelan, a sociologist at the University of Iowa who studies the American family. The Obamas exemplify what sociologists call the “individualized marriage,” she added, where a thriving relationship is marked by love and mutual attraction, not just duty to family and social roles.

Read more. 

Yesterday Newsweek ran a story entitled “Like A Virgin No More: MySpace Generation Brides Go For Sexy, Not Virginal,” and explored “why modern brides are opting for racy gowns, wild bachelorette parties and sexy Maxim-style pre-wedding photo shoots.”

Newsweek reports:

Two decades ago, when young girls wondered how brides were supposed to look and behave, they’d most likely conclude—with some prompting from Cinderella—that on their big day they’d be a princess. They’d be blushing, virginal and wrapped from head to toe in tulle and lace.

So why is it that these days, some brides seem to be taking their cues more from Jessica Rabbit than Cinderella? More vamp than virgin, they’re having bachelorette parties that are as raunchy as their fiancés’ sendoffs. They’re selecting cleavage- or lower-back-baring bridal gowns that might get a gasp from conservative relatives. “A big-selling style is a sheer lace corset midriff,” says Millie Martini Bratten, the editor in chief of Brides magazine. “It’s clearly meant to look like you’re seeing through someone’s shirt.” And today’s wife-to-be is hiring photographers for what are called “boudoir shoots,” where they pose Maxim magazine-style in lingerie or nothing at all and give the prints to their grooms—a trend that Bratten says began about three years ago. “It’s the ultimate display of freedom and empowerment,” says Bee-Bee Kim, the founder of Weddingbee.com, a wedding-planning site that gets more than a million unique visitors a month.

What is going on here? Lucky for us, they consult several sociologists…

Newsweek’s assessment?

While most sociologists agree that women admitting to lust and wanting to be sexually empowered is a good thing, they see a problem with making exhibitionism the centerpiece of the wedding ceremony: it might crowd out other aspects of the marriage. “You’re highlighting what should just be a piece of the relationship,” says Stephanie Coontz, a social historian and the author ofMarriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, which looks at how recent the idea of marrying for love is. “I worry that it can take over. The message you’re sending about your appearance can override other conversations you should be having about your future.” And in what she wants for the future, Jessica Rabbit has got nothing on the average American bride.

Read more.

With the murder of a physician who was a regular target of anti-abortion activists this past Sunday, news outlets have returned to covering the schism in our country on the abortion issue, this time focusing on a new study linking the likelihood of having an abortion to religiosity.

MSNBC reports:

Unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools, according to research in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

“This research suggests that young, unmarried women are confronted with a number of social, financial and health-related factors that can make it difficult for them to act according to religious values when deciding whether to keep or abort a pregnancy,” said the study’s author, sociologist Amy Adamczyk of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

More from Adamczyk…

Adamczyk examined how personal religious involvement, schoolmate religious involvement and school type influenced the pregnancy decisions of a sample of 1,504 unmarried and never-divorced women age 26 and younger from 125 different schools. The women ranged in age from 14 to 26 at the time they discovered they were pregnant. Twenty-five percent of women in the sample reported having an abortion, a likely underestimate, Adamczyk said.

Results revealed no significant link between a young woman’s reported decision to have an abortion and her personal religiosity, as defined by her religious involvement, frequency of prayer and perception of religion’s importance. Adamczyk said that this may be partially explained by the evidence that personal religiosity delays the timing of first sex, thereby shortening the period of time in which religious women are sexually active outside of marriage.

Despite the absence of a link between personal religious devotionand abortion, religious affiliation did have some important influence. Adamczyk found that conservative Protestants (which includes evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians) were the least likely to report having an abortion, less likely than mainline Protestants, Catholics and women with non-Christian religious affiliations.

Regarding the impact of the religious involvement of a woman’s peers, Adamczyk found no significant influence. However, Adamczyk did find that women who attended school with conservative Protestants were more likely to decide to have an extramarital baby in their 20s than in their teenage years.

“The values of conservative Protestant classmates seem to have an abortion limiting effect on women in their 20s, but not in their teens, presumably because the educational and economic costs of motherhood are reduced as young women grow older,” Adamczyk said.

The LA Times also picked up on the story in their Health section this week. They report: 

In a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a sociologist at the City University of New York analyzed the abortion decisions of unmarried teenagers and young twentysomethings. Specifically, she was looking at how those decisions were affected by personal religious devotion, schoolmates’ religious devotion and the type of school (public or religious).

Come decision-making time, religiosity —  the importance attributed to religion and the involvement in it — didn’t make much difference.

Maybe that’s surprising to you, maybe not.

But of note, she writes: “Conservative Protestants appear less likely to obtain abortions than mainline Protestants, Catholics, and women of non-Christian faiths. Regardless of personal religious affiliation, having attended a school with a high proportion of conservative Protestants appears to discourage abortion as women enter their twenties. Conversely, women from private religious high schools appear
more likely to report obtaining an abortion than women from public schools.”

Read more from MSNBC.

Read more from the LA Times. 

The New York Times ran a story today about a new study out of Denmark suggesting that frequent moves increase the risk of suicide for teens. The study found:

Adolescents ages 11 to 17 who had moved three to five times were about twice as likely to have attempted suicide as those who never had changed residences, while those who had moved more than 10 times were four times as likely to attempt suicide. Youngsters who had moved more than 15 times were almost five times as likely to attempt suicide, the study’s authors found. The researchers adjusted the figures to account for other difficulties in the children’s lives that might have influenced the risk of suicide. All changes of residence except those along the same street were defined as moves.

The study’s author elaborates on these findings…

According to lead author Dr. Ping Qin, an associate professor in psychiatric epidemiology at the Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark, the analysis does not prove a causal relationship between frequent changes in residence and suicidal behavior but does suggest “a true connection between the two events.”

“We found a strong association between frequent changes of residence and suicidal behavior among children,” Dr. Qin said. But, she added, “We could not distinguish whether the mobility was a causal risk factor or merely an intermediate variable of other risk factors.”

The sociological commentary…

The report corroborates earlier studies that have found an association between frequent mobility and children’s mental health. But the new report goes further, because it used actual medical records rather than self-reported survey data and looked at moves throughout childhood rather than just at recent moves, said Dr. Scott J. South, professor of sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, who was not involved in the Danish study but has studied the impact of frequent moves on children.

“The evidence is becoming quite compelling that there is a causal effect of children’s residential mobility on a variety of negative behavioral outcomes,” Dr. South said. “[The children] do worse in school, they are more likely to drop out of high school, and I published a study that found they’re more likely to engage in sexual behavior earlier.”

Read more.

In light of increasing media coverage about the drug trade in Mexico, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story yesterday about how the U.S. appetite for illegal drugs appears to be insatiable, fueling drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States.

The Chronicle reports:

The Mexican drug cartels battling viciously to expand and survive have a powerful financial incentive: Across the border to the north is a market for illegal drugs unsurpassed for its wealth, diversity and voraciousness.

Homeless heroin addicts in big cities, “meth heads” in Midwest trailer parks, pop culture and sports stars, teens smoking marijuana with their Baby Boomer parents in Vermont – in all, 46 percent of Americans 12 and older have indulged in the often destructive national pastime of illicit drug use.

This array of consumers is providing a vast, recession-proof, apparently unending market for the Mexican gangs locked in a drug war that has killed more than 10,780 people since December 2006. No matter how much law enforcement or financial help the U.S. government provides Mexico, the basics of supply and demand prevent it from doing much good.

The sociological commentary…

The Mexican cartels are eager to feed this ravenous appetite. Once used mostly to transship drugs from South America, Mexico is now a major producer and distributor; its gangs control cocaine networks in many U.S. cities and covertly grow marijuana on U.S. public lands.

For now, the Mexican government is fighting the cartels and working with U.S. authorities who have promised to stop the southbound flow of weapons and cash – but all parties are aware of the role played by the U.S. market.

“When the U.S. government turns up the pressure a lot, then is when you see a return to the old formula of saying (to Americans), ‘You also have corruption, you consume the drugs, you’re the biggest drug consumer in the world,’ ” said Jose Luis Pineyro, a sociologist at Mexico’s Autonomous Metropolitan University.

Another sociologist weighs in…

Studies of youth drug use in Western Europe show a few countries with serious problems, but overall a far lower portion of young people there are abusing drugs than in America. Elsewhere around the world, drug use also is widespread, though data is generally not as thorough as in the United States.

“There’s no escaping the fact that we have the highest drug rates in the world,” said Craig Reinarman, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Read more.

The Tampa Bay Tribune ran a story today about whether or not environmentalism and ‘green living’ have become truly mainstream. In the article, they include some interesting sociological commentary about the movement and individual behavior.

Brian Mayer, who teaches environmental sociology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said researchers are intrigued by what makes some people embrace a sense of personal responsibility.

The economy definitely can play a role, he said. Some people might hang on to or reuse items that otherwise would have gone to the landfill, but others experience a shift in priorities. Mayer cited a recent health survey in which migrant workers in Apopka were asked to rank their most pressing issues, including the environment. No. 1 was crime. No. 2? Adequate streetlights to prevent crime.

“Environmental issues are not always of concern in populations with unmet needs, even if their working environment is unsafe,” said Mayer, author of “Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities” (ILR Press, 2008).

During the 1960s and 1970s, the ecology movement, with its own green flag, was one of many popular social causes. People vowed to save the planet and clean up its waters. Earth Day was founded in 1970 as an “environmental teach-in.”

Cynicism, a sense of powerlessness, a decline in social involvement and a belief that individual needs were more pressing than collective concerns contributed to the decline in interest.

Mayer said he thinks many people have substituted a sense of personal responsibility for a group effort that would prove more effective in the long haul. “We’ll buy green products or bottled water, but critics say we’re missing the larger problem,” he said. Environmental sociologists call it “inverted quarantine” – people trying to keep themselves safe while keeping out the dangerous world.

Another sociologist considers this part of a larger historical pattern…

In “Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed From Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves,” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) author and sociologist Andrew Szasz argues that people are buying products that give them a sense of safety while ignoring bigger environmental dangers.

Similar behavior occurred when Americans in the early 1960s built bomb shelters in their backyards, Szasz says.

Read more.

Science Daily (a press release service) brought a new study by sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst to the attention of the Crawler today, which examines how “the context in which we meet people influences our social network. One of his conclusions: you lose about half of your close network members every seven years.”

His research offers several important findings…

Limited in your choices

Mollenhorst investigated, for example, whether the social context in which contacts are made influences the degree of similarity between partners, friends and acquaintances. It was expected that the influence of social contexts on similarity in relationships would be stronger for weak relationships than for strong ones. After all, you are less fussy about your choice of acquaintances than your choice of partner. In relationships with partners, Mollenhorst indeed found more similarity than in relationships with friends. Yet interestingly, the influence of the social context on similarity did not differ between partners, friends and acquaintances. This reveals how strongly opportunities to meet influence the social composition of personal networks.

With his research Mollenhorst has confirmed that personal networks are not formed solely on the basis of personal choices. These choices are limited by opportunities to meet. Another strong indication for this came from the fact that people often choose friends from a context in which they have previously chosen a friend. Moreover, the extent to which our friends know each other strongly depends on the context in which people meet each other.

Individualism

Many sociologists assume that our society is becoming increasingly individualistic. For example, it is held that we strictly separate work, clubs and friends. Mollenhorst established, however, that public contexts such as work or the neighbourhood and private contexts frequently overlap each other.

Furthermore, Mollenhorst’s research reveals that networks are not shrinking, whereas American research reveals such a decline. Over a period of seven years the average size of personal networks was found to be strikingly stable. However, during the course of seven years we replace many members of our network with other people. Only thirty percent of the discussion partners and practical helpers still held the same position seven years later. Only 48 percent were still part of the network. Therefore value the friends you have. As long as you have them that is.

Read more.