The spring real estate market is right around the corner, and the annual frenzy of home buying and selling will begin again. For many parents, the residential search means finding a house in a neighborhood and school district with desired characteristics. But new research shows that not all families have the luxury of taking these factors into account. 

To better understand how people choose a home, Hope Harvey, Kelley Fong, Kathryn Edin, and Stefanie DeLuca interviewed 156 parents with young children in metro areas in Ohio and Texas. They interviewed about two-thirds of the parents again one year later, and also accompanied about two dozen residents who moved between interviews on their search for a new home. 

Regardless of their financial resources, parents of all racial and ethnic backgrounds expressed similar desires for high-quality homes in safe neighborhoods with strong schools where they could live for many years. However, parents thought about the goals of their searches differently depending on their income level. Higher-income parents’ searches were geared toward finding “forever homes,” and these parents attempted to come as close as possible to achieving their long-term preferences. In contrast, nearly all of the lower-income parents in the study were seeking to rent rather than buy. Because circumstances like eviction often pushed them to relocate, these parents tended to look for a new rental unit that would meet their immediate needs. Thinking of these rented homes as “temporary stops,” lower-income parents deferred their plans to search for homes that better matched their preferences until they were ready to buy a home. 

Understanding why lower-income parents may be willing to settle for houses that don’t match their long-term preferences is key to reducing a number of social inequalities, like disparities in school and neighborhood quality across income groups. This study shows that parents who decide to relocate before they can afford to purchase a home often turn to rental units that are better than their previous residences, while falling far short of their ideals. As a result, solutions that provide families more time to evaluate their options–like giving evicted residents longer to move–could help lower-income families forced to move on a tight timeline. 

Third places, or gathering spaces that are neither work nor home, are important social sites for many Americans. Third places can often act as buffers against loneliness, physical inactivity, and alienation. Yet since the start of the Great Recession, communal spaces like nail salons, diners, barbershops, and sites of religious worship have closed at increasing rates across the U.S. At the same time, other categories of third places,
such as libraries and commercial banks, have grown in number. In a new paper, researchers highlight the role of third places in promoting wellbeing and public health. 

By analyzing U.S. business trends from the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS), the authors examine changes in sectors including food and beverage, civil and social organizations, religious institutions, and arts and entertainment. Almost all categories–especially privately-owned establishments–have declined since 2011. Some of the declines are striking (for instance, grocery stores, bakeries, farmers’ markets, and butcher shops decreased by 23 percent and hobby shops by 28 percent) and seem counterintuitive, given ongoing and persistent gentrification movements and their emphasis on shopping local.Third places–like barbershops, diners, and nail salons–can often act as buffers against loneliness, physical inactivity, and alienation, but since the Great Recession, they’ve closed at increasing rates.

Against a backdrop of the “retail apocalypse,” rising rents, and the food delivery boom, what do widespread third place closures mean for health and well-being? The authors find that by creating a sense of belonging, third places can build security and rapport. As a “home away from home,” third places not only foster social connections, but also encourage physical activity, particularly for the elderly. Over time, some third places have evolved to act as community centers, as in the case of some libraries which train staff to administer Narcan to those who have suffered an opioid overdose.

This study took a “bird’s eye” view of national business trends, and raises interesting questions about when and where third place closures are occurring, whose role it is to protect against them, and how they impact communities. It provides one example of how increased attention on vanishing third places matters not only for socialization and wellbeing, but for our understanding of the social and geographic determinants of health.

Today, the average length a refugee spends in a foreign country is between 10 and 25 years, which is three times longer than it was 30 years ago. Historically, refugees sought temporary residence in a foreign country until it was safe to return. But because violent conflicts are lasting much longer, refugees often never return home. Thus, host countries must decide what the future looks like for refugees. Countries view education as an agent of socialization — creating ideal citizens and incorporating children into the nation’s fabric — which makes access to education a key factor in how a country will seek to integrate refugees. 

In their most recent article, Dryden-Peterson and authors ask: if the purpose of education is to create a better future for students and the nation, then what does this look like in the context of refugee education? The authors study 14 refugee-hosting nation-states, conducting interviews, participant observation, and content analysis of educational documents and policies. Global actors like the UN focus on getting refugees into national education systems, but the authors find that inclusion means different things to different countries.Countries view education as an agent of socialization — creating ideal citizens and incorporating children into the nation’s fabric — which makes access to education a key factor in how a country will seek to integrate refugees.

Countries like Malaysia and Bangladesh do not officially resettle refugees, so they assume refugees will leave the country and not become integrated into their societies. As a result, refugees attend their own schools. In countries like Uganda and Pakistan where the refugee population has become urbanized instead of living in isolated refugee camps, refugees are incorporated into the existing school systems due to convenience. While these countries recognize the prolonged exile of refugees, these countries believe that refugees’ long term futures would eventually be outside of the host country. Lastly, in host countries like Chad, refugees are integrated into schools because it is assumed that refugees will integrate into their society. This model of inclusion is driven by a lack of predictable external funding, and thus, national actors integrate refugees into schools to mitigate some of the volatility of international funding. 

Despite these national differences, at the school level nearly all schools struggled over whether and how refugee education was to enable belonging. The inclusion of refugees into their host country’s national education systems is merely inclusion into a low quality education system. Thus, the authors find that just because refugees have been able to access education through these different systems, education does not promote a route to belonging, nor does it guarantee a quality education or better future.

Society has always put a lot of pressure on parents, but in the past, parenting standards have differed by social class. In the late twentieth century, middle- and upper-class families differed from poor and working-class families in terms of both their beliefs about good parenting and the actual parenting practices they used. But recent research suggests that, nowadays, people from all social classes have begun to share beliefs about “good” parenting. 

To understand how people’s beliefs differ by social class, Patrick Ishizuka surveyed American parents with children living at home. Because parenting pressures have historically targeted women, he also investigated how “good” mothering differs from “good” fathering. He asked people to rate examples of parenting behaviors on a scale from “poor” to “excellent.” The parenting behaviors described had previously been found to be popular among either working class or middle class families, and the examples varied in whether the parent described was a mother or a father.Recent research suggests that, nowadays, people from all social classes have begun to share beliefs about “good” parenting.

Ishizuka found that participants from all social classes gave the best ratings to parenting behaviors which were previously associated with middle class families. Described in 2003 by Annette Lareau as part of a parenting model called “concerted cultivation,” these behaviors included signing kids up for structured, adult-led extracurricular activities; encouraging children to explain their thoughts and feelings, discussing misbehavior, and negotiating; and prompting children to speak up about their individual needs to adults in settings like school and the doctor’s office. Ishizuka’s participants rated these behaviors more positively regardless of whether a mother or a father was using them.

This study demonstrates that cultural norms of child-centered, time-intensive parenting are now widespread. But even when people believe certain parenting strategies are ideal, they don’t always act on those beliefs, often because they lack the necessary resources. While survey research cannot tell us how people are parenting in practice, Ishizuka’s findings are important because they reveal the high expectations people now hold for mothers and fathers of all social classes. 

Social scientists assume that people want to feel certain about their beliefs and identities and that religion helps people find this sense of security. Thus, the modern rise in people who do not identify with a religion must have led to increased anxiety, depression, or social isolation. However, in this new article, Jacqui Frost demonstrates that some nonreligious people have certainty in their beliefs and others experience uncertainty as positive and motivating. 

Frost conducted interviews with fifty non-religious people, including those who identified as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. Frost interviewed people involved in either social or political nonreligious organizations and people not involved in any belief-based groups. In these interviews, Frost asked people to explain how they came to their current nonreligious beliefs.
Rather than being anxious and socially isolated, nonreligious people find meaning and connection whether they are sure, or not-so-sure, what they believe.

Frost found that some nonreligious individuals felt certain in their beliefs. For some, this confidence led them to join nonreligious organizations and have frequent discussions about their beliefs. Other nonreligious people were sure in what they believed but did not consider these beliefs important in their daily life.

Other nonreligious people in Frost’s study were not sure what they believed, but were okay with that. These individuals found the uncertainty associated with their nonreligious beliefs to be “freeing.” For these nonreligious people, not being sure about their religious beliefs motivated them to remain skeptical and ask questions throughout their life. Their embrace of uncertainty turned some of these individuals away from nonreligious social and political groups whose beliefs and values they found too narrow and specific.

Popular culture suggests that the decline in religious affiliation is one sign of increasing social chaos. However, Frost’s new article shows that uncertainty is not always a bad thing. Rather than being anxious and socially isolated, nonreligious people find meaning and connection whether they are sure, or not-so-sure, what they believe. 

Married couples are sharing household chores more than ever before, but women still do more than men. While sociologists already know a great deal about gender differences in couples’ physical and emotional work, new research shows that there’s even more to gendered differences in household labor. Women are often responsible for the lion’s share of another form of invisible household work: cognitive labor.

Allison Daminger interviewed middle- and upper-middle class, married couples living in the Boston area. All were between 35-50 years old, had at least one Bachelor’s degree, and were living with at least one child younger than 5 years old. Most of the couples were heterosexual. Daminger interviewed each partner separately to encourage respondents to share their honest perspective. 

Respondents discussed the typical chores of household labor: cooking, cleaning, shopping, mowing the lawn, etc. But many couples also talked about a sort of “project manager” category of family responsibilities, which includes anticipating the needs of family members, identifying options for meeting those needs, deciding among the options, and monitoring the results. Daminger labeled these tasks “cognitive labor,” and identified nine domains in which cognitive labor occurs: food, childcare, scheduling and logistics, cleaning and laundry, finances, social relationships, shopping, home and car maintenance, and travel and leisure. Cognitive labor in the food domain, for instance, includes responsibilities like deciding what meals to cook and ensuring a consistent supply of groceries. These responsibilities are added on to the work that must be done, for instance, soothing a tantruming toddler displeased by the dinner menu. The burden of “cognitive labor,” which includes anticipating the needs of family members, identifying options for meeting those needs, deciding among the options, and monitoring the results, often falls more heavily on female partners.

Daminger found that, like emotional labor, cognitive labor is often invisible and is a frequent source of conflict. Overall, the women in the study were responsible for a larger amount of the anticipation and monitoring work than their male partners. But when it came to decision-making — the part of cognitive labor most closely linked to power and influence — partners shared the work of decision-making much more equally. Daminger argues that cognitive labor is thus an overlooked, yet potentially consequential, source of gender inequality at the household level. 

To read more about emotional labor, check out these posts here and here.

In October there were four women out of twelve presidential candidates on the Democratic debate stage. But that ratio is far from the norm in political and business leadership. Why does this continue to be the case, 100 years after female suffrage and 50 years after the women’s movement went mainstream? New experimental research finds that anticipating harsh consequences for failure may be one reason women do not say yes to leadership opportunities.

Susan Fisk and Jon Overton performed three studies to test how women’s leadership ambitions are affected by the belief that female leaders are punished more harshly than men. They first confirmed through a survey that both men and women believe that female leaders will face harsher consequences for failure. They then tested whether “costly” failure would decrease leadership ambitions as compared to “benign” failure, using survey questions about whether the respondent would be willing to take on a hypothetical leadership opportunity at their job. In the “benign” circumstance the respondent’s supervisor had encouraged them to take the leadership opportunity and had expressed that the respondent could return to the original team if the initiative failed. In the “costly failure” circumstance the respondent had not received support from their supervisor and did not know what would happen if the initiative failed.New experimental research finds that anticipating harsh consequences for failure may be one reason women do not say yes to leadership opportunities.

Both men and women were less likely to say yes to the leadership position in the costly failure circumstance, but women’s leadership ambitions decreased an additional 20% over the men’s decrease. These results demonstrate that simply encouraging women to say yes to more opportunities misses why they might say no. Women in the workplace are aware that they may be judged more harshly and face more reputational or employment consequences if they fail. This study helps us understand the micro-level reasons behind the stalled gender revolution and how gender inequality can continue to exist within gender-neutral organizations. 

College teaching has undergone a revolution in recent years. Traditional styles of teaching and lecturing have been supplanted by a more interactive, student-centered approach known as “active learning.” In active learning classrooms, students practice skills, receive feedback from teachers, and then get a chance to implement teachers’ corrections as soon as they are given. While the benefits of active learning for liberal arts fields seem fairly intuitive, it is less obvious whether this approach can be successful in more technical and scientific fields where “knowledge” is seen as more concrete, universal, and fact-based. To find out whether active learning is beneficial in STEM classes, Scott Freeman and his colleagues conducted a metaanalysis of 225 studies comparing the outcomes of different teaching methods.

Freeman’s team found that undergraduates enrolled in STEM lecture courses were 1.5 times more likely to fail than those who took courses with elements of active learning. Students in active learning sections got higher exam scores (by 6%) and their vocabulary scores rose. The results held across STEM disciplines class sizes, although the greatest benefits were seen in classes with fewer than 50 students.

Carl Wieman, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner for Physics, is among a group of experts who also believe that active learning is the most effective instruction style for STEM. In an interview with Anna Kuchment for Scientific American, Wieman states that active learning works because it teaches students to think like scientists in the field, moving from background reading to applied work with targeted feedback and revision. In other words, active learning is a direct application of what cognitive psychology tells us about how we learn: by practicing, with feedback from an expert about what we’re doing right and wrong and how to get better.

Wieman believes that if future elementary and high school STEM teachers are taught with active learning, they could, in turn, potentially develop a much higher level of content mastery among their students. Wieman says, “[K-12 students] really require more subject expertise from the instructor than a lecture,” and these teachers will be better able to pass expertise on to their students.

Finally, better teaching and learning is expected to help attract and retain undergraduates in STEM majors. Because STEM degrees continue to be in high demand among employers, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has now set a goal of increasing the number of STEM bachelor’s degrees awarded each year by 33%. Adopting empirically validated teaching practices like active learning may be the best bet for meeting this objective while improving K-12 STEM education to boot.

In Western societies, girls are starting to outperform boys at all levels of schooling. At the same time, many families are immigrating to these countries from areas of the world where boys still have the educational advantage. This means that there’s likely a difference in the educational expectations for boys and girls held by immigrant parents and those held by the receiving country. So what matters more for a kids education – the homeland or the new home country? To find out, a research team led by Fennella Fleischmann and Cornelia Kristen investigates whether second-generation immigrant girls are benefiting from the Western patterns of female success they encounter after the move.

The team draws on nationally representative data from nine receiving countries. They focus on outcomes including test scores, choice of major, college-going, and completion. To analyze this data, they use a twofold strategy, comparing gender outcomes within racial and ethnic groups. Then they compare the size of each ethnic group’s gender gaps to those of other immigrant groups and to those of the Western host country’s majority population. This tells them not only whether immigrant children have assimilated to majority trends by the second generation, but at which stage of their educational careers this happens.

The research team finds that, with very few exceptions, the female advantage in education extends to second-generation immigrant girls, regardless of their parents’ country of origin or the male advantage in that society. While those who choose to immigrate may have more progressive gender views, which may help explain these trends, the takeaway is an important one – when given the opportunity to succeed, girls will take it.

As seasonal aisles are taken over by backpacks and Elmer’s glue, there’s no denying the start of a new school year. For parents of preschoolers whose birth dates are on or near the cutoff, thinking about school means deciding how early their child should begin kindergarten. While there is lots of evidence that children who are old for their grade tend to have better long-term academic outcomes, Fabrizio Bernardi’s new study shows that this is not necessarily true for everyone. It turns out that the importance of a child’s age relative to his or her classmates’ depends on the family’s socioeconomic status.

Using data on elementary school children in France, where about 20 percent of students have to repeat a grade in primary school, Bernardi investigates who is getting held back. By looking at how likely children born in different months are to be successfully promoted every year in primary school, he determines that indeed, the older students have the upper hand. However, when Bernardi compares the patterns for children of different social classes, there are stark differences among the groups. For the children of university- educated parents, there is almost no difference between being older or younger at the start of school. For the children of less educated parents, however, relative age matters significantly.

Bernardi hypothesizes that upper class children who experience an early disadvantage are more likely to catch up because they benefit from compensatory advantages. One such advantage may be in the way upper-class parents react to their children’s setbacks. For example, upper class parents might invest more resources to help a son who fails, whereas, in contrast, lower-class parents might respond by redirecting their scarce resources to his siblings, resulting in a smaller investment in him.

Looking at the big picture, this means that compensatory advantage contributes to vast educational inequalities among children from different social classes. Understanding how it operates may be a step in a journey of a million miles, but it is a step in the right direction.