health

Recent estimates from Child Trends indicate that nearly seven percent of children in the U.S. have experienced parental incarceration. And this rate is twice as high among black children. Most of the current research on the negative impacts of parental incarceration focuses on the effects of a father’s imprisonment on boys’ behavioral problems — boys with incarcerated fathers often act out in school and at home. To expand beyond this research, Anna R. Haskins examines the effects of paternal incarceration on both young boys and girls’ cognitive development and across racial lines.

Haskins analyzed a sample of over two thousand children from the Fragile Families project, a longitudinal study that tracks children and their parents across twenty large U.S. cities. Focusing on the first 9 years of the child’s life, she observed four skills representing cognitive development: verbal ability, reading comprehension, mathematical problem-solving, and attention span. She then determined if a father’s incarceration negatively impacts these key developmental areas during middle childhood. If white Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as African Americans, the black-white achievement gaps at age nine in reading, math, and attention skills would reduce by a range of seven to fourteen percent. 

Findings suggest that the experience of paternal incarceration diminishes a child’s reading, math, and attentional capacities, but not their verbal abilities. But these effects differ between boys and girls. While girls experience reduced reading and math skills, boys are more likely to exhibit a reduced attention span. Preliminary estimates also indicate that racial disparities in paternal incarceration contribute to racial inequality in the achievement gap. In other words, if white Americans were incarcerated at the same rate as African Americans, the black-white achievement gaps at age nine in reading, math, and attention skills would reduce by a range of seven to fourteen percent.

Haskins argues that children of an incarcerated parent may face undue stress, trauma, or stigma, which may latently impact cognitive capacities. In addition to perpetuating racial inequities in educational attainment, the collateral consequences of paternal incarceration extend “beyond boys’ bad behavior,” negatively impacting both young boys’ and girls’ cognitive skills.

In U.S. culture, we get a lot of messages about what a “good” mother should do. A good mother should always make time for her kids, model healthy eating habits, throw her kids a birthday party, and so on. Sociologists have  acknowledged how motherhood is raced and classed, but fewer studies recognize the ways that constructions of motherhood are dependent on ability status. In her new article, Angela Frederick argues that popular ideas about “good mothers” assume these women are able-bodied. As a result, mothers with disabilities are excluded from mainstream images and parenting advice, perceived as threats to their children’s well-being, and disciplined by medical professionals because of this perceived risk.

Frederick conducted 42 interviews with women who had sensory (blind, deaf, hard of hearing) or physical disabilities. In the interviews, women highlighted the ways doctors perceived them as risks to their children. For instance, one doctor initiated a social services investigation because he assumed a mother who was partially paralyzed on one side could not care for her child. Doctors also pressured women into submitting their children for genetic tests, even when the mothers’ disabilities were not genetic.  Even when women with disabilities follow standard expectations of “normal” mothering, they remain suspect as a potential risk to their children.

While in some ways their disabilities made these women targets of greater attention from doctors, in other ways medical facilities rendered them invisible by disregarding their needs. Blind women, for instance, were often forced to verbally provide confidential medical information because the medical office did not have an online option to fill out paperwork. And parenting advice materials, like magazines and parenting books, often ignore the experiences of mothers with disabilities in the advice they offer.

The way medical professionals interact with mothers who have disabilities and the way mothers are constructed in parenting advice materials reflect a “normalcy project,” according to Frederick. “Good” mothering has become synonymous with able-bodied mothers. Even when women with disabilities follow standard expectations of “normal” mothering, they remain suspect as a potential risk to their children.

When people have health concerns, they typically turn to doctors because of the years of medical training that makes doctors experts on human health. When it comes to the health of trans people, however, doctors often lack knowledge and experience, and the typical evidence-based guidelines (EBM) for making medical decisions can be more confusing than helpful for trans health cases. In a new study, stef m. shuster finds that “uncertainty” characterizes most provider’s experiences with trans patients, though they navigate this uncertainty in different ways.

To understand how healthcare providers treat trans patients, shuster interviewed 23 physical and mental healthcare providers. These providers included primary care physicians, OB/GYN, family and internal medicine specialists, physician’s assistants, psychologists, therapists, and counselors/social workers. Rather than asking about specific interventions with transgender patients, which could breach ethics of confidentiality, shuster engaged in conversations about the providers’ backgrounds, their professional associations, their workplace climates, and general experiences with trans patients. Very few providers have actual experience with trans patients, so many turn to bureaucracy to navigate their uncertainty. 

shuster found that providers use two strategies to negotiate EBM guidelines when it comes to treating trans patients: following them to the letter or interpreting them as flexible strategies they use in other cases of medical uncertainty. More senior providers draw on their experience in the field when faced with uncertainty, while newer providers more often consulted the evidence-based medical guidelines to inform their decisions. However, for cases with trans patients, few providers had much prior experience, and turned to the EBM guidelines. shuster described how close followers of the guidelines act as medical gatekeepers; particularly for patients who want to physically transition via hormones and surgery, care providers try to contain uncertainty surrounding gender, identity, and health by insisting on following long bureaucratic processes for obtaining these expensive, difficult to reverse interventions. On the other hand, some providers interpret the EBM guidelines more as suggestions than law, and embrace the uncertainty of how to tailor their care for specific patients’ needs. 

Researchers and policymakers are divided over which approach to use in order to effectively change corporate behaviors so they uphold laws. Some believe that punishment will deter organizations from violating rules, while others believe that financial incentives and self-monitoring are more effective. These issues are particularly important when creating policies to reduce pollution and increase energy efficiency. Should the government enforce standards and punish violators or should companies monitor their own behaviors and be encouraged through incentives?

Paul B. Stretesky and colleagues assess whether criminal prosecution or self-monitoring lead to greater reductions in industrial pollution. They use EPA data on regulated toxic chemical releases from the late 1980s, as well as corporate self-policing reports and cases filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office about natural resource and pollution crimes, to trace changes in pollution levels and policy actions.

The authors find that both legal actions and self-monitoring are associated with declines in the release of toxic chemicals, although there was a larger impact from criminal punishment. However, when the authors accounted for broader economic conditions — measured by GDP and total number of industrial facilities — neither type of policy had an impact on the amount of pollution. The economy itself, particularly the rate of growth, was the largest factor in how much a company pollutes — as GDP increased, so did the amount of toxics. Environmental regulations alone will not reduce public health and environmental hazards from chemical pollution. 

The authors argue that new policies are needed that get companies to redesign production so it is cleaner and more efficient, rather than just limiting the emission of particular chemicals. The findings suggest that environmental regulations alone will not reduce public health and environmental hazards from chemical pollution; instead, policymakers need to be thinking about addressing broader economic growth and overhauling production methods to make them greener.

Sexual activity is, for many, one of the defining features of a romantic relationships. While there has been a lot of research investigating sexual activity and its consequences among young people, social science pays little attention to the health and emotional effects of sexual activity for older men and women. Sex among older individuals is particularly relevant because they are more likely to have sex and are more at risk for serious health problems. As such, Hui Liu and colleagues investigate how the sexual activity of older men and women affects cardiovascular risk.

The authors draw from interviews and screenings among individuals 57 to 85 in two waves of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project. The participants were asked about frequency of sexual activity and sexual quality — the physical pleasure and emotional satisfaction of sex. The authors used screenings for hypertension, rapid heart rate, elevated C-reactive protein, and general cardiovascular disease events as measures for cardiovascular risk.  These findings challenge the assumption that sex brings uniform health risks and benefits to everyone. 

The researchers find that older men who have sex at least once a week have a higher chance of cardiovascular disease events such as heart attack, heart failure, and stroke when compared to men who were sexually inactive. In contrast, the relationship between sex and cardiovascular risk among women has more do with quality than quantity. Older women who report having high quality sexual activity experience better emotional connection and intimacy with their partners, which reduces stress levels and cardiovascular risk, while women who have poor quality sexual relationships or have experienced marital loss are more likely to experience cardiovascular problems due to increased stress. Interestingly, high quantities of sex did not negatively affect older women’s health, and high quality sex did not protect men from cardiovascular risk. These findings challenge the assumption that sex brings uniform health risks and benefits to everyone, and highlight the ways that the gendered dynamics of sexual activity continue into old age. 

In 1897, sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote one of the first empirical studies of population health with his book Suicide. Over a hundred years later, students still learn about suicide and its causes from Durkheim. But in a recent study, Anna Mueller and Seth Abrutyn find that the type of suicide that Durkheim found least probable — fatalistic — is actually much more likely to happen today. While Durkheim concluded that suicide was more often caused by a lack of societal regulation or integration, Mueller and Abrutyn find that too much regulation or integration is just as likely to be a cause of suicide today. 

To understand why people commit suicide today, the researchers chose a small, upper-middle class, primarily white community with an unusually high rate of teen suicide — Poplar Grove. They used Poplar Grove as a case study of the social causes of suicide, asking residents about the community’s culture and their own personal understandings of the causes of suicide. The researchers conducted interviews with 71 people who lost loved ones to suicide, as well as with 13 focus groups made up of residents from Poplar Grove. In addition, the interviews included responses from mental health professionals and school personnel, who could act as expert informants about why these teens may have taken their own lives.  While many residents described a caring community where “everybody knows everybody,” the close-knit environment made some people feel constantly under a microscope. 

After talking with numerous individuals from the Poplar Grove community, Mueller and Abrutyn concluded that the community’s intense, close-knit social ties created strong pressures for adolescents to conform to high standards of excellence in things like sports and academics. This environment had created a pressure-cooker that drove some teenagers to suicide. While many residents described a warm, caring community where “everybody knows everybody,” the darker side was that the close-knit environment made some people feel constantly under a microscope. Some respondents reported that the individuals they knew who committed suicide achieved great popularity and academic success, but that their support networks also pressured them to maintain appearances and be “ideal citizens.” In Durkheim’s terms, these high levels of social integration and moral regulation can create an environment conducive to “fatalistic” or “altruistic” suicides in which individuals commit suicide because they feel overwhelmed by the expectations of their tight-knit community. This is a troubling finding, and disrupts common assumptions that small towns and tight social networks are always and everywhere good for mental health and social relationships. 

Parents undoubtedly play a role in their children’s understanding of gender and sexual health. But can children have any effect on their parents? In a study investigating how becoming a father influences men’s sexual behavior, sociologist Abigail Weitzman finds that the gender of a father’s firstborn child has a significant influence on that father’s likelihood of being sexually promiscuous later in life.

Using 61,801 Demographic and Health Surveys from 37 developing countries, Weitzman looks at how the sex of a firstborn child influences the father’s sexual health and behavior. The survey provides information about whether or not fathers pay for sex, use condoms, have extramarital sexual partners, and report having genital ulcers or genital discharge, which may be signs of an STI. Through fixed effects models that control for differences between countries, Weitzman finds that fathers with firstborn sons are significantly more likely than those with firstborn daughters to pay for sex, and they are also less likely to use condoms. Fathers of firstborn sons also have a higher probability of reporting genital ulcers or genital discharge. Additionally, fathers with firstborn sons reported having slightly higher opposition to women’s sexual autonomy. In short, fathers with firstborn children who are male are associated with higher rates of promiscuity.

Interestingly, these differences among fathers tend to emerge when their firstborn child reaches adolescence, suggesting that family gender dynamics shift as children reach puberty and young adulthood. Though the data cannot fully explain why firstborn adolescent sons are associated with more promiscuous behavior among fathers, Weitzman speculates that perhaps fathers of firstborn adolescent males are more likely to engage in sexual promiscuity as a means to maintain, reinforce, and teach masculine behavior and identity. Weitzman’s study may have just scratched the surface of an important set of new questions about how fatherhood, gender identity, and sexual behavior around the world intertwine with family.

Binge drinking has been tied to both genetic propensity (nature) and peer influence (environment). Using data from the College Roommate Study and National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Guang Guo, Yi Li, Wang Hongyu, Cai Tianji, and Greg J. Duncan investigate the interplay between these social and biological influences in the case of college binge drinking.

The authors hypothesize that genetics modify the effects peer influences on binge drinking. For example, the impact of peer pressure on one’s likelihood to engage in a drinking game would depend genetic predispositions toward heavy drinking. Guo and colleagues use a type of “natural experiment” – where randomization is present, but not introduced by the experimenter via manipulation – in which college roommates are randomly assigned, thus removing the influences of friend selection (since people who are more likely to drink are more likely to be friends) and potential correlations between the genes and environment. Based on genetic markers empirically linked to alcohol use, the researchers split the sample into three groups in terms of their genetic propensity for alcohol use (low, medium, and high).

Controlling for various respondent and roommate characteristics, the researchers find that having a roommate who drinks increases binge drinking, on average, by 20-40%. Peer influence, though, only has an effect among those with a medium propensity to drink: the influence of peer influence is eight times higher for medium propensity drinkers than for either low or high propensity drinkers. In other words, low propensity drinkers and high propensity drinkers are largely unaffected by peer influences to drink in college, whereas those “on the bubble” are more likely to drink when their roommate imbibes. The study highlights how social and biological factors work in tandem, illustrating a further mechanism by which social interventions can impact individuals differently. In the meantime, universities’ “one size fits all” safe drinking initiatives are unlikely to make much difference in students’ binge drinking behaviors.Low and high genetic propensity drinkers are largely unaffected by peer influences to drink in college; those medium-propensity students “on the bubble” are, however, more likely to binge drink when their roommate does.

Keeping secrets, both your own and others’, may seem like very personal business. However, it turns out that what sensitive information gets shared, and with whom, follows some clear social patterns. This is one of the big take-aways of Sarah Cowan’s study of how information about abortion and miscarriage circulates through social networks.

Cowan starts from the fact that even though abortion is a more frequent event in the U.S. than the miscarriage of a recognized pregnancy, “more Americans hear of women who have had miscarriages than they hear of women who have had abortions” (483). Using a nationally representative survey of 1,600 American adults, in fact, Cowan finds that each miscarriage “secret” was told to 2.63 people and kept from 0.2 people on average, whereas abortion secrets were told to only an average of 1.24 people and kept from 0.8 people.

Cowan suggests that the data show that abortion is a more stigmatizing than miscarriage (that is, it deviates further from social norms) as a piece of personal information. She cites higher levels of social disapproval and previous studies indicating that women frequently report their abortions as miscarriages to their doctors. In other words, stigmatized or potentially stigmatized information is less likely to be shared with others.

In addition, Cowan finds that secret telling/keeping is impacted by the presumed attitudes of its potential recipient. In this case, respondents who have more accepting views toward abortion are more likely to hear others’ abortion secrets. Controlling for how likely one is to hear secrets, for example, Cowan shows that staunch “pro-life” Americans are 58% less likely than are those who think abortion should be “generally available” to hear an abortion secret.

Cowan’s results highlight how selective information sharing and secret telling is, and that people are often only told of secrets with content they already approve of. This selective information flow can lead us to perceive that our social networks match our beliefs at a greater extent than they actually do.

Films like An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me, and Blackfish can heighten attention to issues by disseminating important facts to a wide audience in ways that books and other media often cannot. But can they actually help social movements achieve change?

A new study in the American Sociological Review takes up this question by evaluating shifts in public opinion about fracking in response to Gasland, a documentary about the mining practice’s negative effects on nearby communities. The authors evaluate the film’s initial effects in a given community by measuring how the number of Google searches and Tweets about fracking changed after a showing and assessing whether Tweets about fracking were more likely to be negative in tone after a showing than before. They investigate screenings’ longer term effects by charting whether increased web searches and Twitter chatter amplified the likelihood that an anti-fracking demonstration would take place or a ban on fracking would be adopted nearby. They also explore the film’s national effects by evaluating web searches and Twitter chatter after the film was covered in mainstream national newspapers or nominated for awards.

Results suggest that Gasland did, indeed, increase public discussion about fracking, help sway public opinion, and spur mobilizations around the subject. After showings, discussion about fracking comprised more of both social media discourse (as measured by Twitter posts) and mass media discourse (as measured by newspaper articles) than otherwise. The tone of Tweets was also more negative, containing significantly more words like “contamination,” “pollution,” and “chemicals,” “ban,” and “moratorium.” Showings also increased the likelihood of anti-fracking demonstrations and the enactment of fracking bans in communities where the film was screened.

The findings shed light on how movements work in the age of social media. While the effects of screenings upon Twitter chatter were largest in the days immediately following the showing, the increase was usually noticeable as much as four months later. In addition, the communities which had the most Twitter activity were also the most likely to host demonstrations, suggesting that activists were able to capitalize on Twitter’s potential as an organizing tool.

In other words, documentary films and social media have a role to play in changing public opinion and enhancing social movements by helping activists disseminate and act upon information.