health

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. 

University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this past weekend entitled “The Real Pregnancy Crisis.”

What sparked this piece? Wilcox writes,

Earlier this month, Bristol Palin turned herself into a poster child for the nation’s continuing effort to prevent teenage pregnancies. She made the rounds on the morning TV show circuit and spoke at town hall meetings to drive home the point that other teens shouldn’t make the same mistake she did. Ms. Palin’s campaign could not have come at a better time. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. — after witnessing a 14-year decline in teenage childbearing from 1991 to 2005 — saw the number rise from 2005 to 2007. In 2007, the latest year for which data are available, about 450,000 adolescents gave birth.

The recent uptick in teenage childbearing has public-health experts, scholars and government leaders concerned. “Let’s hope this sobering news on teen births serves as a wake-up call to policymakers, parents and practitioners,” said Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, “that all our efforts to convince young people to delay pregnancy and parenthood need to be more intense, more creative and based more on what we know works.”

He offers several explanations and recommendations…

Here are three more likely explanations: First, young Americans have been postponing marriage, but they are not postponing sex and cohabitation. Indeed, my own research indicates that cohabiting couples are much more likely to get pregnant than couples who do not live together. Second, working-class and poor men have seen their real wages fall since the early 1970s, which makes them less attractive as husbands to their girlfriends and to the mothers of their children. This also helps explain why nonmarital childbearing is concentrated among blacks, Latinos, and working-class and poor whites.

Third, the meaning of marriage in the U. S. has changed over the past 40 years. As sociologist Andrew Cherlin has noted, marriage used to be the “foundation” for adulthood, sex, intimacy and childbearing. Now, marriage is viewed by many Americans as a “capstone” that signals that a couple has arrived — financially, professionally and emotionally.

This also helps to explain why college-educated mothers are bucking the trend toward having children out of wedlock. It is easier for these women to attain the level of achievement that the newer, luxury model of marriage before childbearing requires. Only 7% of college-educated women are having children out of wedlock, compared with more than 50% of women with a high-school degree or less, according to a recent Child Trends study.

So the next time you hear a college-educated academic or advocate talking about marriage and motherhood, do as they do, not as they say.

Read more.

In reporting on the recent swine flu panic that has swept the globe, The Australian
ran a story over the weekend about “sorting panic from pandemic,” citing how “some health experts say that although the latest developments are cause for concern, the extent of the threat has arguably been exaggerated even by other experts and some organisations.”

Luckily, they call in a sociologist…

Sociologist Claire Hooker, co-ordinator of the medical humanities program at the University of Sydney, agrees with Collignon that officials here and overseas did go a bit overboard, at least initially.

“At the beginning I was concerned about some comments that seemed to be unwarranted by events as they then sat … (such as) a call that people may want to get prepared by making face masks,” Hooker says.

She was worried this might alarm the public, although there was scant evidence this happened. “Although there was a run on Tamiflu at the time, which would be a problem if you really had the flu and wanted to get some,” she says.

“Early on there was an attitude that you have to scare people enough to get them to wash their hands properly, but not so much that they turn up in droves to be tested.

“In my view that’s a silly way to look at it: there’s no way you can make people what you imagine to be the right amount of frightened. What’s more important is to treat the general public with respect, and expect them to be able to understand the complexity and the uncertainty.”

Hooker thinks the degree of hype applied to swine flu was modest, and evident only early into the outbreak. Official pronouncements more recently have been measured, she believes. But that doesn’t apply to some measures given the big news treatment, such as thermal image scanners, used to detect feverish passengers disembarking from an airliner.

“I know that thermal scanners were used to scan about 180 million people during SARS, and they detected maybe three cases,” she says. “But they look good on TV.”

Read more.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg has been called upon by several media outlets seeking to understand the panic surrounding the swine flu epidemic including On the Media (NPR) and World Focus.

In a piece entitled ‘Stop, Drop and Roll,’ On the Media asked Klinenberg to explain the situation. They write, “While some news outlets have been trying to put the H1N1 flu virus in perspective, others just can’t resist a good panic story. They’ve been contacting New York University Sociology Professor Eric Klinenberg asking him to talk about the widespread panic in reaction to the flu. Only problem, there is no widespread panic. Klinenberg explains.”

Well, the problem is, if there’s one finding that’s consistent in the sociology of disasters over the last, say, five decades, it’s when there are crises, people don’t panic. And yet no matter how hard we try to make this point, we always get emails and phone calls along these lines.

So I immediately responded in an email and said, look, I’d be more than happy to speak with you, but here’s the thing. It turns out that sociology of disaster mostly tells us that people don’t panic, in general.

And furthermore, if we look specifically at what’s happening here in New York City, I don’t see any signs of panic. I walk to work and haven’t seen a single person wearing a mask at this point, no violence, no screaming, no people keeping their kids home from school en masse.

And I said, look, even, at Mexico City. I’m seeing images of people who are being cautious, far more people wearing masks, but the scenes from the streets that we’ve seen in the news, at least, don’t suggest that there’s panic.

World Focus featured a video interview with Klinenberg…

Read more from NPR.

Read more from World Focus.

The National Center for Health Statistics published a report earlier this week about the increase in unwed mothers having children in the United States. The Washington Post covered the story and included some sociological commentary…

The number of children being born out of wedlock has risen sharply in recent years, driven primarily by women in their 20s and 30s opting to have children without getting married. Nearly four out of every 10 births are now to unmarried women.

“It’s been a huge increase — a dramatic increase,” said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, which documented the shift in detail yesterday for the first time, based on an analysis of birth certificates nationwide. “It’s quite striking.”

Although the report did not examine the reasons for the increase, Ventura and other experts cite a confluence of factors, including a lessening of the social stigma associated with unmarried motherhood, an increase in couples delaying or forgoing marriage, and growing numbers of financially independent women and older and single women deciding to have children on their own after delaying childbearing.

One sociologist weighs in…

“I think this is the tipping point,” said Rosanna Hertz, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wellesley College. “This is becoming increasingly the norm. The old adage that ‘first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage’ just no longer holds true.”

“Women can have children on their own, and it’s not going to destroy your employment, and it’s not going to mean that you’ll be made a pariah by the community,” Hertz said. “It’s much more socially acceptable.”

And another….

Other couples today feel less compelled to marry just because they are having a child.

“It seems to be more wrong to be in a marriage with someone who you don’t love and consider to be your best friend than not to be in a marriage at all,” said Barbara Katz Rothman, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York. “It’s not that people care less about marriage. In some ways, it’s because they care more.”

Read more. 

Both ABC news and the New York Times ran stories over the weekend about the relationship between job loss and health. New research by sociologist Kate Strully, a sociologist at the State University of New York-Albany, examines unemployment data from 1991, 2001, and 2003 and finds that job loss is “linked to a higher risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, diabetes or depression, even when the person finds a new job. Losing a job through no fault of one’s own, if a company shut down, for example, led to a 54 percent increase in that person reporting poor health.” 

She told ABC News:

“Jobs are so fundamental to who you are and where you fall into society,” said Kate Strully, an assistant professor in sociology at the State University of New York at Albany and the author of a new study. “In looking at what happens to people after they lose such a big component of their class position and social identity … [the study asked] did they lose their job because they were sick or did they get sick because they lost their job?”…

Still, Strully’s data is based on situations from the 1990s and early 2000s, when the economic climate was not as universally challenging as it is now. People who lost their jobs may have been in a better position to find alternate employment or receive financial help via credit, mortgages or family and friends.

“We were looking at a situation where the economy was better than now and there were still sizable health hazards associated with job loss,” Strully said. “Common sense suggests that the situation today for displaced workers is probably worse.”

The New York Times reported:

Workers who lost a job through no fault of their own, she found, were twice as likely to report developing a new ailment like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease over the next year and a half, compared with people who were continuously employed. Interestingly, the risk was just as high for those who found new jobs quickly as it was for those who remained unemployed.

Though it has long been known that poor health and unemployment often go together, questions have lingered about whether unemployment leads to illness, or whether people in ill health are more likely to leave a job, be fired or be laid off. In an effort to sort out this chicken-or-egg problem, the new study looked specifically at people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own — for example, because of a plant or business closing. The author, Kate W. Strully, said she looked at situations in which people lost jobs for reasons that “shouldn’t have had anything to do with their health.”

Read more from ABC.

Read more from the New York Times. 

The Philadelphia Enquirer reports on new research out of the University of Chicago suggesting that “for older adults, feelings of loneliness can actually be detrimental to their health…  older adults who feel least-isolated are five times more likely to report very good health compared to their lonelier counterparts, regardless of actual social connectedness.”

One of the co-aduthors on the study is sociologist Linda Waite…

“The relationship between social disconnectedness and mental health appears to operate through feelings of loneliness and a perceived lack of social support,” says study co-author Linda Waite, a Professor in Sociology at the University of Chicago and a leading expert on aging.

The study:

Researchers measured the degree to which older adults were socially connected and socially active, as well as whether they feel lonely and expect family and friends to support them in need. The study found that older adults who feel most isolated reported 65 percent more depressive symptoms than those who feel less isolated, despite actual connectedness.

Waite told the Enquirer that the research suggests a need to better understand how adults cope with changing relationships, because older adults who are “able to withstand socially isolating experiences or adjust expectations” are more likely to stay healthy.

Read more.

The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday on the increasingly brazen tactics for crossing into the United States from Mexico. The Chronicle reports, “U.S. Border Patrol agent John Lopez has seen it all: Men hiding in tiny holes in the ground, in car trunks and behind seat backs. He’s even captured an illegal immigrant hiding in a suitcase. ‘You don’t expect to find someone in a suitcase. You never expect that,’ said Lopez, who is based in the Rio Grande Valley.”

These attempts to sneak people and drugs across the border are constantly changing and are often increasingly harmful to the immigrants, an alarming trend illustrated in several recent incidents.

• In Presidio County along the Texas-Mexico border, a man trained illegal immigrants who had just crossed the border to fake illnesses and call 911. Unwitting ambulance attendants took them to an Alpine hospital beyond the Border Patrol checkpoint near Marfa. The immigrants would refuse treatment and run away. Lionel Armendariz-Cabezuela, 38, was arrested in March and pled guilty to smuggling charges in the scheme.

• In the past few months, officials have intercepted three ultralight aircrafts attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S. The small planes fly so low they evade radar and have been particularly active on the Arizona-Mexico border.

• In California, smugglers meticulously painted vehicles to resemble DHL package delivery trucks and a company contracted to help build the border fence. They used the vehicles to transport illegal immigrants to the U.S. in March and April. Some people in the construction company truck wore reflective vests and hard hats.

But the debate about reform versus enforcement is a complex one, and the Houston Chronicle calls upon sociologist Nestor Rodriguez, who has studied these migrants based at the University of Texas.

Immigrant rights advocates warn that it’s flawed and dangerous to put more focus on enforcement instead of reform. As it becomes more difficult to cross the border, people will take extreme risks, said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Arizona’s Border Action Network.

“People have to rely on smuggling networks. This means that smuggling networks continue to grow and become more costly, and they become more professionalized,” Allen said, adding that she expects smuggling to increase in remote areas.

Said Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas: “What I have learned from talking with migrants is that smugglers try a variety of old and new approaches to cross the border, so I don’t think there is just one approach.”

And another sociologist weighs in…

Unless officials reform immigration laws, though, it doesn’t matter whether border officials step up enforcement, said David Spener, a sociology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio.

“If the past is prologue, this will just mean more danger for migrants and more risky crossings,” Spener said.

Read more.

This past weekend Pink News, a UK-based media outlet, ran a story on a new study out of the University of Derby suggesting that lesbian women in abusive relationships may resist seeking assistance for fear of being outed. Findings from the study were presented at the British Sociological Association’s annul meetings last weekend in Cardiff and indicate that abusive relationships between gay women “can can include physical assaults, sexual coercion and emotional cruelty but victims are put off seeking help because of fear of being outed to friends, colleagues and family.”

The scale of the problem:

Forty women between the ages of 21 and 70 were chosen for the study, believed to the most detailed research into abusive lesbian relationships to date. All of those who took part had experienced abuse in some capacity.

Around 88 per cent of those questioned had suffered physical abuse such as punching, kicking and slapping. Forty five per cent reported had been bullied into performing unwanted sexual activities and ten per cent admitted to having been forced into having sex.

Thirteen per cent had been threatened with being outed by their partner to friends, family and colleagues or outed altogether by the abusive partner, while 18 per cent had felt suicidal or had attempted suicide during the abusive relationship.

The author’s comments:

Dr Rebecca Barnes, who led the study, said: “Only women who had been abused by a previous female partner were invited to participate in the study, with the aim being to examine these relationships in detail rather than trying to establish what proportion of lesbian relationships as a whole is abusive.

“The findings show that women in abusive same-sex relationships experience very similar challenges to women in abusive heterosexual relationships.

“However, being in a same-sex relationship poses additional barriers to seeking and receiving effective support. My findings also showed that abuse in lesbian relationships can involve wide-ranging forms of emotional, physical, financial and sexual abuse, as it can in heterosexual abusive relationships.”

“One of the key differences with same-sex abuse is the secrecy which surrounds many same-sex relationships – a few of my participants had had relationships lasting years which their family or colleagues knew nothing about or which only a few close friends were aware of. This particularly applied to women who were in their first same-sex relationship.”

Read more.

United Press International issued a release this morning about new findings on the spread of AIDS across sub-Saharan Africa, out of Penn State University.

A U.S. sociologist says increased schooling across sub-Saharan Africa might be lowering the number of new HIV infections among younger adults.

If that is true, Penn State University Professor David Baker says it would suggest a shift in a decades-long trend in which a formal education was considered an AIDS risk factor.

“Before the 1990s, in the impoverished regions of sub-Saharan Africa, even modest amounts of education afforded males higher income, more leisure time and, for some males, greater access to commercial sex workers,” said Baker. “HIV-infected higher-status males then spread the infection to both educated and uneducated women, which moved the disease into the general population.”

Baker and graduate students John Collins and Juan Leon report their research findings in the U.N. journal Prospects.

Read more.