research

Taking a moment away from BlogHer to note that tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine article, “Family-Leave Values” by Eyal Press, features the work of two stellar scholars, Joan Williams and Shelley Correll. Here’s a sneak-preview, courtesy of Steve Mintz of the Council on Contemporary Families:

The results, as reported in the May 2007 issue of The American Journal of Sociology, are striking. Among the volunteers, mothers were consistently viewed as less competent and less committed and were held to higher performance and punctuality standards. They were 79 percent less likely to be hired and, if hired, would be offered a starting salary $11,000 lower than nonmothers. Fathers, by contrast, were offered the highest salaries of all. Meanwhile, in the test run with real-world employers, the hypothetical female applicants without children were more than twice as likely as equally qualified mothers to be called back for interviews.

Sigh. The mommy gap is alive and well.

Hard as it is to pull myself away from the cushy comfort of my hometown (Mom, Dad: thanks for the memories!), Courtney and I head to St. Charles, IL for the National Women’s Studies Association conference first thing tomorrow. If you’re there, come say hi. On Friday and Saturday, we’ll be signing books together (depending on how much sleep we’ve had, we may start signing each others’…) and then on Sunday at 10am, I’ll be leading a workshop on publishing books for trade — here’s what it’s about:

Publishing in Women’s Studies: A Public Voice
Sun, Jul 1 – 10:00am – 12:30pm
Women’s studies scholars and students write about topics central to public debate. Yet too often our work fails to reach an audience outside of the academy. At the same time, to write a book in today’s competitive publishing climate, scholars must appeal to a broader audience than was necessary in the past. This session brings together the people who can help facilitate these translations-literary agents and editors-with scholars who are currently negotiating the traverse. Panelists will discuss the components of a successful book proposal, the writerly and professional payoffs of “crossing over,” and the scholarly challenges of writing “pop” while pursuing tenure.


Session Leaders
Deborah Siegel, Author and Consultant
Jean Casella, Editor

Nancy Crossman, Crossman Literary Agency

How much am I loving the Women’s Leadership Initiative at Demos? They’re sponsoring a forum on my book on July 26 in NYC (save the date!). But I also love them for highlighting “fresh thinking, research and writing by and about the importance of women’s leadership in building a strong democracy and securing economic prosperity.” I mean, what’s better than that?

If in the area, don’t miss their forum this week on Moms Who Work: Myth and Reality

Thurs., June 28, 2007
Program from 12:15-1:45 pm at Demos
220 Fifth Ave, 5th Floor
New York, NY

Here’s the deal:

Join Demos and co-sponsors for a discussion with E.J. Graff on the realities faced by working mothers (and their families) in the U.S. today. Drawing upon her article “The Opt Out Myth” published in the March/April 2007 edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, Graff will dispel myths perpetuated by misleading reporting and media hype, such as the “opt-out revolution” and the “mommy wars”– and will discuss how those storylines can harm public policy.

Panelists will respond to Graff with research, analysis, and discussion about the real issues facing various groups of working women; how advocates are creating policies to support women and their families; and what more still needs to be done: Carol Jenkins, Women’s Media Center; Linda Lisi Juergens, National Association of Mothers’ Centers (NAMC); and Lois K. Backon, Families and Work Institute. This event will be moderated by Linda Tarr-Whelan, Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos.

Co-sponsored by: The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, Women’s Media Center, Families & Work Institute, National Association of Mothers Centers, The Columbia Journalism Review

I love that, along with her own original and beautifully rendered work, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, author Courtney Martin is also bringing renewed visibility to a 2006 study, The Supergirl Dilemma, from Girls Inc, the organization that empowers girls to be strong, smart, and bold. Courtney even did a Q&A on the Girls Inc website.

Jenn Pozner on WIMNs Voices Blog links to Courtney’s appearances on The Today Show, MSNBC, and Fox News and in Newsweek and Glamour. And check out in particular this piece by Lakshmi Chaudry in The Nation. Now how’s that for strong, smart, and bold.

(Women’s research/org strategy ALERT: Want mainstream coverage? Cultivate relationships with sensitive, brilliant popular writers like Courtney who get it. Run! Don’t walk!)

O.M.G. Check this out from Inside Higher Education, a nifty little update that comes to my Inbox but rarely gets read. (Guess I’ll start reading it more.)

With no advance warning and no calls to her, Hillary Anger Elfenbein, an assistant professor of organizational behavior and industrial relations at UC-Berkeley’s business school, found her research being discussed on the House floor last week. Republican lawmakers wanted to bar the National Science Foundation from continuing a grant to support it. Why? They thought its title was, well, silly. Here’s the scoop:

Rep. John Campbell, a California Republican, cited the budget deficit in going after the social science research, including Elfenbein’s work as well as studies on bison hunting and on sexual politics in Dakar.

“I am sure that some believe that these are very fine academic studies. That’s excellent. Within the realms of academic halls, they may think a number of things are fine academic studies. That’s not the question,” Campbell said on the House floor. “The question before us is, do these things rise to the standard of requiring expenditures of taxpayer funds in a time of deficits, proposed tax increases and raiding Social Security funds?”

Nu? So what is this silly and questionable research project, you ask? It’s an investigation of “Accuracy in the Cross-Cultural Understanding of Others’ Emotions.” And here’s the best part: Elfenbein’s research had recently been praised by Army officials as potentially providing insights that would be useful to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Not only that, this kind of research can benefit American businesses.

But wait! Former psych professor-turned-representative to the rescue:

Leading the opposition to Campbell was Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington State Democrat who formerly was a psychology professor at Pacific Lutheran University. He stressed the role of peer review and the necessity of actually knowing about the research grants being discussed.

Um, yes.

I had a blast at the Council on Contemporary Families conference this past weekend. Many of the members of that group — now celebrating its 10th year – are personal heroes. True models of engaged scholarship. And incredibly nice people to boot. Kudos to Stephanie Coontz, Steve Mintz, Josh Coleman, Waldo Johnson, Virginia Rutter, Ashton Applewhite, Barbara Risman, Phil and Carolyn Cowan, and others for making it all come true. (Coverage of the conference – well, sort of – here: in The Washington Times.)

At the conference, CCF released a great new “product”, called “Unconventional Wisdom: New Data, Trends, and Clinical Observations about American Families”. Look past the lengthy title and delve into over 75 well-delivered, highly relevant findings that provide a snapshot of what some of the nation’s leading authorities are thinking about how marriages, families, parenting, and intimate relationships succeed or fail. To wit:

AND BABY MAKES THREE
In a study of 130 couples from wedding until their first babies were three years old, John and Julie Gottman found that 67% of couples had a big drop in relationship happiness and a big increase in hostility in the first 3 years of the baby’s life. In addition, the parents’ hostility during pregnancy was associated with baby’s responsiveness at three months. Based on this, they designed and tested an intervention to help new parents: the workshop reversed the drop in couple happiness and the increasing hostility. They also found a reduction in postpartum depression. At three years old, the babies whose parents had been to a workshop were more advanced in terms of emotional and language development. Part of this was due to father’s involvement: the workshops improved father’s involvement.

John Gottman and Julie Gottman, Co-Directors, The Gottman Institute (Seattle, WA). Contact: johng@gottman.com

WHEN COUPLES DISSOLVE: HOW THEY FARE
What happens when couples dissolve their relationship? Both men and women experience income losses, but women experience a sharper drop. Married men whose relationships dissolve see an average decline of 22.3 percent in their household incomes, while married women see an average decline of 58.3 percent. The income loss for men and women in cohabiting relationships is less — 10 percent for men and 33.1 percent for women. But because cohabitors have lower incomes in the first place, their income losses are especially likely to leave them in precarious economic circumstances. Only 9 percent of formerly married men are poor after dissolution, while nearly 20% of cohabiting men are living in poverty after their break-ups. And most vulnerable of all are cohabiting African-American and Hispanic women whose relationships dissolve.

Pamela J. Smock, Associate Vice President for Research – Social Sciences & Humanities, Professor of Sociology & Women’s Studies, and Research Professor, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. pjsmock@umich.edu; Phone: 734.763.2264

GOOD REASONS FOR MEN TO DO HOUSEWORK: HAPPIER MARRIAGES, BETTER KIDS
Numerous studies reveal the benefits to a relationship and family when a father participates in housework. Women are more prone to depression and to fantasize about divorce when they do a disproportionate share of the housework. Wives are more sexually interested in husbands who do more housework. And children appear to be better socially adjusted when they regularly participate in doing chores with Dad. In my clinical experience, men do more in homes when they have stronger egalitarian attitudes, and when their wives are willing to negotiate standards, act assertively, prioritize the marital friendship, and avoid gatekeeping.

Joshua Coleman, Author, Psychologist, Training Faculty San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group. www.drjoshuacoleman.com; 510-547-6500

DO MOTHERS STAY HOME WHEN THEIR HUSBANDS EARN GOOD MONEY?
People often think that women whose husbands make “good money” stay home when they have children. But it takes being married to men in the top 5th percentile (men earning more than $120,000 a year) to seriously reduce women’s employment — only 54 percent of mothers with husbands with these top earnings worked for pay. Among married women whose husbands were in the top 25 to 5 percent of all earners (making salaries ranging from about $60,000 to $120,000), 72 percent of mothers worked outside the home, almost identical to the 71 percent work participation figures among married moms whose husbands’ earnings were in the lowest 25 percent of men’s wages. Women’s own education has a much bigger effect on her likelihood of working than her husband’s earnings; highly-educated women who can earn a lot typically don’t become stay-at-home mothers.

Paula England, Professor of Sociology, StanfordUniversity. 650-723-4912; pengland@stanford.edu

RAUNCH CULTURE ENTERS THE THERAPY OFFICE
Since 2000, my clinical practice has seen a dramatic rise in the number of girls and young women (aged 13 to 21) who’ve found themselves in the midst of some kind of overwhelming sexual experience, usually involving some kind of exhibitionism or trading sex for favors/social standing. The transition in this country towards “porn sex” as normative sexuality is causing intense confusion among many middle-and high-school girls about whether sexiness and sexual pleasure have anything to do with each other, or with the notion of personal choice.

Michael Simon, MFT, Director of Counseling & Student Support, BentleySchool, Lafayette, California. 510-433-295; Michael@PracticalHelpForParents.com

DOES DIVORCE MAKE YOU HAPPY?
Our research shows that it can make you less depressed—if you are in a distressed marriage. When we compare men and women in distressed marriages with men and women who have divorced and left their distressed marriages, it turns out that the people who stay are more likely to be depressed than those who leave in the short run. Over time, some of the relief from divorcing from a distressed marriage wears off, perhaps due to the challenges of being single and taking care of a family. Still, even after the passage of time, people who leave are a little less likely to be depressed than people who stay in a distressed marriage.

Virginia Rutter, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Framingham State College.
vrutter@gmail.com; 508-626-4863

And, of course,

THE ONLY CHILD DISCONNECT
Single-child families are the fastest-growing families in this country and in most industrialized Western European countries as well. Over the past 20 years, the percentage of women nationwide who have one child has more than doubled, from 10% to 23%. In 2003, single-child families in the U.S. outnumbered two-child families – 20% vs. 18%.

Still, according to a 2004 Gallup poll, only 3% of Americans think a single-child family is the ideal family size. There’s a real disconnect between the perception of the ideal and the reality of what people are doing.

Deborah Siegel, Ph.D., Author / Consultant, Fellow, Woodhull Institute.
www.deborahsiegel.net