marriage/family

Cross-posted at Scientopia.

As demonstrated by some figures posted at Family Inequality, the U.S. birthrate has dropped during the recession:

But the birth rate hasn’t dropped for all American women equally.  Women who’ve already had two children were most likely to skip having a child during this period, and women who already had one child were more likely to delay or end childbearing than women with no children.   But women who already had three children were relatively ready to plow forward with a fourth, even more ready than childless women.

To make an even stronger case that the recession inhibited childbearing, Philip Cohen correlated birth data by state and state unemployment rates (both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).  His figure shows that “fertility fell more where the recession hit harder”:

Great stuff, as always, from Family Inequality.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Rising Immigration and Intermarriage

Today we see both increased immigration and rising rates of intermarriage. In 1960, less than 1% of U.S. marriages were interracial, but by 2008, this figure rose to 7.6%, meaning that 1 out of every 13 U.S. marriages was interracial. If we look at only new marriages that took place in 2008, the figure rises to 14.6%, translating to 1 out of every 7 American marriages.

The rising trend in intermarriage has resulted in a growing multiracial population. In 2010, 2.9% of Americans identified as multiracial. Demographers project that the multiracial population will continue to grow so that by 2050, 1 in 5 Americans could claim a multiracial background, and by 2100, the ratio could soar to 1 in three.

At first glance, these trends appear to signal that we’re moving into a “post-racial” era, in which race is declining in significance for all Americans. However, if we take a closer look at these trends, we find that they mask vast inter-group differences.

For instance, Asians and Latinos intermarry at much higher rates than blacks. About 30% of Asian and Latino marriages are interracial, but the corresponding figure for blacks is only 17%. However, if we include only U.S.-born Asians and Latinos, we find that intermarriage rates are much higher. Nearly, three-quarters (72%) of married, U.S.-born Asians, and over half (52%) of U.S.-born Latinos are interracially married, and most often, the intermarriage is with a white partner. While the intermarriage rate for blacks has risen steadily in the past five decades, it is still far below that of Asians and Latinos, especially those born in the United States.

The pattern of multiracial identification is similar to that of intermarriage: Asians and Latinos report much higher rates of multiracial identification than blacks. In 2010, 15% of Asians and 12% of Latinos reported a multiracial identification. The corresponding figure for blacks is only 7 percent. Although the rate of multiracial reporting among blacks has risen since 2000, it increased from a very small base of only 4.2 percent.

The U.S. Census estimates that about 75-90% of black Americans are ancestrally multiracial, so it is perplexing that only 7% choose to identify as such. Clearly, genealogy alone does not dictate racial identification. Given that the “one-drop rule” of hypodescent* is no longer legally codified, why does the rate of multiracial reporting among blacks remain relatively low?

Patterns in Racial/Ethnic Identity

These are some of the vexing questions that we tackle in our book, The Diversity Paradox, drawing on analyses of 2000 Census data, 2007-2008 American Community Survey, as well as 82 in-depth interviews: 46 with multiracial adults and 36 with interracial couples with children.

Turning to the in-depth interviews with the interracial couples, we found that while all acknowledged their children’s multiracial or multiethnic backgrounds, the meaning of multiraciality differs remarkably for the children of Asian-white and Latino-white couples on the one hand, and the children of black-white couples on the other. For the Asian-white and Latino-white couples, they may go to great lengths to maintain distinctive elements of their Asian or Latino ethnic and cultural backgrounds, but they believe that as their children grow up, they will simply identify, and be identified as “American” or as “white,” using these terms interchangeably, and consequently conflating a national origin identity with a racial identity.

The Asian-white and Latino-white respondents also revealed that they can turn their ethnicities on and off whenever they choose, and, importantly, their choices are not contested by others. Our interview data reveal that the Asian and Latino ethnicities for multiracial Americans are what Herbert Gans and Mary Waters would describe as “symbolic”—meaning that they are voluntary, optional, and costless, as European ethnicity is for white Americans.

By contrast, none of the black-white couples identified their children as just white or American, nor did they claim that their children identify as such. While these couples recognize and celebrate the racial mixture of their children’s backgrounds, they unequivocally identify their children as black. When we asked why, they pointed out that nobody would take them seriously if they tried to identify their children as white, reflecting the constraints that black interracial couples feel when identifying their children. Moreover, black interracial couples do not identify their children as simply “American” because as native-born Americans, they feel that American is an implicit part of their identity.

The legacy of the one-drop-rule remains culturally intact, explaining why 75-90% of black Americans are ancestrally multiracial, yet only 7% choose to identify as such. It also explains why we, as Americans, are so attuned to identifying black ancestry in a way that we are not similarly attuned to identifying and constraining Asian and Latino ancestries.

On this note, it is also critical to underscore that a black racial identification also reflects agency and choice on the part of interracial couples and multiracial blacks. Given the legacy behind the one-drop rule and the meaning and consequences behind the historical practice of “passing as white,” choosing to identify one’s children as white may not only signify a rejection of the black community, but also a desire to be accepted by a group that has legally excluded and oppressed them in the past, a point underscored by Randall Kennedy.

Black Exceptionalism

But regardless of choice or constraint, the patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification point to a pattern of “black exceptionalism.” Why does black exceptionalism persist, even amidst the country’s new racial/ethnic diversity? It persists because the legacy of slavery and the legacy of immigration are two competing yet strangely symbiotic legacies on which the United States was founded. If immigration represents the optimistic side of the country’s past and future, slavery and its aftermath is an indelible stain in our nation’s collective memory. The desire to overlook the legacy and slavery becomes a reason to reinforce the country’s immigrant origins.

That Asians and Latinos are largely immigrants (or the children of immigrants) means that their understanding of race and the color line are born out of an entirely different experience and narrative than that of African Americans. Hence, despite the increased diversity, race is not declining in significance, and we are far from a “post-racial” society. That we continue to find a pattern of black exceptionalism—even amidst the country’s new racial/ethnic diversity—points to the paradox of diversity in the 21st century.

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* The one-drop rule was first implemented during the era of slavery so that any children born to a white male slaver owner and a black female slave would be legally identified as black, and, as a result, have no rights to property and other wealth holdings of their white father.

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Jennifer Lee is a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in intersection of immigration and race and ethnicity. She wrote, with Frank Bean, a book called The Diversity Paradox, that examines patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans.  Lee wrote the following analysis of her research for Russell Sage. And we’re happy to post it here.

A while back Yvette sent us a vintage ad for a children’s laxative that was posted over at Boing Boing. It’s a great example of changing expectations of parenting, disciplining children, and parental anger. In the ad, the mom and dad are arguing because the dad wants to use a hairbrush to spank his son, who is apparently crying because he doesn’t want to take a nasty-tasting laxative:

Transcript of dialogue:

“Don’t let daddy lick me again!” An old, old problem solved in an up-to-date way.

1. Mother: Oh, John, why don’t you let him alone? He’s only a child.

Father: Well, somebody has to make him listen to reason.

2. Mother: That’s the first time I ever heard of a hairbrush being called “reason”!

Father: Look! Let’s settle this right now! He needs that stuff and he’s going to take it whether he likes the taste or not!

3. Mother: That’s right, Mr. Know-it-all — get him all upset and and leave it for me to straighten him out.

Father: Aw, don’t get yourself in a stew!

4. Mother: I’m not! All I know is that Doris Smith used to jam a bad-tasting laxative down her boy’s throat until her doctor put a stop to it. He said it could do more harm than good!

Father: Then what laxative can we give him?

5. Mother: The one Doris uses — not an “adult” laxative, but one made only for children…Fletcher’s Castoria. It’s mild, yet effective. It’s safe, and Doris’ boy loves it!

Father: OK. I’ll run down to the druggist and get a bottle. But boy, he better like it!

6. Mother: Would you believe it? I never saw a spoonful of medicine disappear so fast!

The mom wins out, and clearly spanking the boy isn’t being advocated. But the company felt perfectly comfortable presenting a dad as angry and even aggressive, and in need of calming from his wife to avoid him spanking his child with a household item, yet still a perfectly good dad once Mom had intervened and fixed the immediate problem, returning family harmony.

Given increased attention to issues such as child abuse and domestic violence, and changes in expectations of parenting that have replaced the “father as nothing but breadwinner and strict disciplinarian” role, many viewers today would likely interpret the narrative in the ad (not to mention the line “Don’t let Daddy lick me again!”) as inherently problematic, not as a taken-for-granted commentary on family life and the need for helpful products to smooth over domestic conflicts.

Cross-posted at Family Inequality.

It’s been a big week for stories of families denied and disrupted by the state.  Family denial came up in the form of bodily intervention (as in North Carolina’s eugenics program), border control (as when Jose Antonio Vargas‘s mother put him on a one-way plane for the U.S.), parents’ incarceration, or legal denial of family rights (the refusal to recognize gay marriage, or what I suggest we call homogamous marriage).

(1)  North Carolina’s eugenics program was the subject of hearings this week, dragging on with no compensation for the 7,600 people who were involuntarily sterilized between 1929 and 1977. A collection of literature at the State Library of North Carolina includes this 1950 propaganda pamphlet:

(2) Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, recounted his life as an undocumented immigrant. His mother put him on a plane for the U.S. with false papers, maybe never to see him again.

(3) While a judge declared the federal law against recognizing gay marriage unconstitutional, the New York legislature maybe moved toward legal recognition, and President Obama’s support of gay marriage apparently stalled.

(4) The 40th anniversary of the drug war was a bleak reminder of the millions of U.S. families separated by incarceration during that time.

The text says, “more women and mothers are behind bars than at any time in U.S. history,” from (www.usprisonculture.com).

(My graph from data in an article by Wildeman and Western in The Future of Children)

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

Katrin sent along a link to a Los Angeles Times article reporting on how family composition in the LA area has changed in the past decade.  The short story is that families are less “traditional” than they were ten years ago.  Only 23% of households are now made up of a married couple with kids (down 10% since 2000). Meanwhile, single-parent families, non-married partners (with and without kids), and same-sex couples (with and without kids) have all increased by 20-25%.  Married couples without kids are up too (by 4%), they’re now 26% of all households.

The maps below show the percent of households in each census tract that include an unmarried couple living together.  Darker orange means a greater percentage.  You can see that this convention-breaking isn’t evenly distributed.  I think the big orange blob underneath Burbank is Silver Lake/Echo Park, a notoriously hip part of the city where you find lots of “hipsters,” and Hollywood, where the population of same-sex couples is likely higher.

Los Angelenos, do you see anything else interesting?

See also the amusing: What Does a Traditional Family Look Like?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dolores R. sent us a link to some graphics at Mother Jones about work and income. There are a lot of different topics covered, but I thought I’d highlight their inclusion of some maps generated by the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, which gathers international data on government policies about work and family, such as requirements for paid parental leave.

This map shows how much weekly time off from work national governments have guaranteed workers (16 nations require none):

Of course, some nations, like the U.S., don’t regulate whether hourly-wage workers must have a day off each week but require they be paid at a higher rate if they work more than a certain number of hours (40 is usually the magic number in the U.S.), though this often doesn’t really apply to salaried workers, who aren’t paid by the hour.

Here’s paid annual leave (9 nations have none):

Paid maternity leave (6 nations have none):

The McGill Institute has interactive maps that let you compare global policies on a number of family-work balance issues. You can get global maps, such as these, or compare specific countries.

It’s almost Father’s Day, which means it is time for the greeting card business to make tons of money. It also means it’s time for us to visually see the standard narrative about gender, masculinity, and fatherhood. Looking at mass commercial products like greeting cards is an especially useful venue: the greeting card companies, wanting to make money like good capitalists, will sell products that have the greatest widespread appeal. Thus, they will sell the most popular representations of gender, masculinity, and fatherhood.

From a brief perusal of a NYC chain store greeting card aisle, I found plenty of cards that shed light on these representations. I want to focus, though, on two: middle-aged masculinity and the different representations of daughters and sons.

There were plenty of cards like this one, that capture many of the stereotypical narratives about fatherhood, and middle-aged masculinity more broadly:

(Apologies for the poor picture quality, a nearby employee didn’t seem thrilled with my picture-taking).

Here, we see man/father as: head of the household (twice, and once as dictator – king): cooks, but only on the grill; lawn mowing expert; controller of the remote/TV watcher; and “big guy.” What’s not on there? Anything about love for children, caring, affection, equitable distribution of household duties (if part of a couple), etc.

Almost all of the love and affection, though, was saved for cards specifically marketed as ‘Dad from daughter.” Most of the cards in this picture were love-centric and labeled as such:

There were a few rare cards simply marked as ‘Dad’ that include themes of love and/or affection, such as this one:

The cards marked ‘Dad from son,’ however, mostly consisted of attempts at humor involving sports (especially golf), building things (or the lack of ability to do so), and, well, farts:

Obviously, we can’t draw too much from the greeting cards in one store, but in this store, at least, there was only one card explicitly marked for sons that primarily communicated feelings of love and affection; all of these were either marked for daughters to give or did not specify what gender should give them. Pairing this with the kinds of fatherly masculinity represented by the cards, Father’s Day cards are sold through the use of traditional gender representations.

Note: all photos licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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John McMahon is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he also participates in the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. He is interested in post-structuralism, issues relating to men and feminism, gendered practices in international relations, gender and political theory, and questions of American state identity. John blogs at Facile Gestures, where this post originally appeared.

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Yesterday I posted some videos from a story Anderson Cooper did about so-called “sissy boy” therapy, meant to train boys not to act in gender non-conformist ways and, thus, to keep them from being gay (I have now updated the original post with the final segment from the series). The videos provide a horrifying look into the damage that can be done when children are brutally punished and criticized for any signs that adults interpret as evidence of homosexuality.

This type of therapy is still available, and some of the researchers Cooper discusses continue to have lucrative careers assuring parents they have the key to preventing, or eliminating, gayness in their kids. But that said, it’s also clear the cultural attitudes about gays and lesbians have shifted greatly, both within the psychiatric community (the APA no longer defines homosexuality as a mental disorder and does not advocate therapies meant to “cure” gays and lesbians) and among the general public.

For instance, Peter N. sent in a link to a set of graphs by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life illustrating the major changes in attitudes toward gay marriage. Overall support for same-sex marriage has gone up significantly over the last few decades (with polls increasingly showing more people favoring it than opposing it and a few even showing a slim majority of respondents supporting same-sex marriage rights). Attitudes toward same-sex marriage vary widely by age; among those born since 1981, support is quite high:

Not surprisingly, support also varies by religious affiliation:

The Pew Forum also has graphs of differences by political affiliation, etc.

We can also see this change in some instances of corporate marketing that include gays and lesbians or discuss gay rights — something that would have been unthinkable for mainstream corporations to do openly until fairly recently for fear of public backlash. David F. sent in Google Chrome’s contribution to the “It Gets Better” series of videos:

Similarly, Megan B. was struck by this Sealy mattress ad, which, though not unambiguous, she thought would be interpreted by many viewers as implying support for same-sex couples:

Finally, Jacob G.sent in a segment from the ABC News “What Would You Do?” series, in which a waitress openly harasses a lesbian couple to see how other customers will react, and found that about half of onlookers actively intervened: