marriage/family

Rose saw the ad below in a free UK parenting magazine.  She thought it was a great example of how an ad sometimes pays “lip service to being inclusive and PC, while [including] numerous elements [that] make it obvious that it isn’t what they really intend.”

So, yes, the ad specifies that the event is for “mums, dads and carers” and it’s nice that they went that far to include them.  But the event is clearly for mothers or women carers and their girl children (and, more specifically, the transfer of feminine training from mother to daughter).  The color of the ad, the feminine shoes with bows, the title (“Mummy Mornings”), and the feminized activities (including “beauty sessions” and the chance to be “spoilt”) are all elements that mark this as for-girls-only.

Is it better to include dads as an afterthought?  Or should we just acknowledge that we’re organizing parent/child activities around mothers (and in this case, daughters)?

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.

A Pew Research Center report on the changing demographics of American motherhood (discovered thanks to a tip by Michael Kimmel) shows that there has been a significant rise in childbearing among women at the later end of their childbearing years.

Not quite twice as many U.S. women over 35 gave birth in 2008 compared to 1990 (while we see the opposite trend for teen births):

The share of all births that were to women over 35 also increased from 9% to 14%:

A look at the birth rates across women from 15 to 44 shows that fewer women between 15 and 29 are giving birth, but the numbers are up for all women 30 and over.

The data broken down by race also suggests that it is white and Asian women who are driving this trend:

For more from this report, see our post on race trends in motherhood.

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.

A blog post at Gallup, sent along by Michael Kimmel, discussed nearly 25 years of US opinion on the cause of homosexuality.  The data shows a slow decline in the percent of people who think that people are “made” gay or lesbian by their upbringing or environment (the nurture argument) and a slow rise in the number of people who think they are “made” gay or lesbian by biology (the nature argument).  The two meet in the late 1990s and, throughout the 2000s, they’ve been more-or-less neck-and-neck.

I welcome speculation as to why the trend didn’t continue such that nature ended up beating nurture good by 2010.  I can’t think offhand of a reason why.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The new Pew Research Center report on the changing demographics of American motherhood (discovered thanks to a tip by Michael Kimmel) reveals some pretty dramatic changes in the ideal family size between 1990 and 2008.  In the late 1960s and early ’70s, two suddenly overtook three and four or more and it’s never looked back:

Here are today’s preferences (notice how few people want to remain childless or only have one child):

I’d love to hear ideas as to why this change happened at that moment in history.  Is it possible that the introduction of the contraceptive pill, which was the most effective method of contraception that had ever been available to women (I think that’s true), made smaller families an option and that people became interested in limiting family size once they knew that could actually do it?

Interestingly, people still overwhelmingly say that they want children because they bring “joy.”  But apparently two bundles of joy are enough!

UPDATE! A number of commenters have pointed out that both I and the authors of the study are conflating people’s opinions about ideal family size and the number of children they personally want to have (see the second figure especially).  I think they’re right that asking the question “What is the ideal family size?” will not necessarily get the same response as “How many children do you want to have?”   A very nice methodological point.

For more on this data, see our posts on age and racetrends in American motherhood.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Dan S. alerted us to an image, purportedly of an article from the May 13, 1955, episode of Housekeeping Monthly. In it there is a photo of a woman bending over an oven with a list of tips for being a good wife, such as “a good wife always knows her place.” We’ve gotten this image before and never posted on it, much like the list on “How to Be a Good Wife,” attributed around the web to a “1950s home economics textbook.”

So why haven’t we posted the image before? Because it’s a fake. According to Snopes, the list was circulating widely on its own long before it suddenly appeared with the damning image…which is a completely unrelated image from a cover of John Bull magazine (not Housekeeping Monthly) that appeared in 1957, not 1955. Notice the text along the upper right corner of the image–it says “Advertising Archives.” According to Snopes, no one has ever turned up the economics textbook the “How to Be a Good Wife” list supposedly comes from, either.

So what gives? Why do these hoax 1950s-era images/lists keep appearing? I think Snopes makes an interesting case:

It has become fashionable to portray outdated societal behaviors and attitudes — ones we now consider desperately wrongheaded — to be worse than they really were as a way of making a point about how much we’ve improved. When we despair over the human condition and feel the need for a little pat on the back, a few startling comparisons between us modern enlightened folks and those terrible neanderthals of yesteryear give us that. We go away from such readings a bit proud of how we’ve pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and with our halos a bit more brightly burnished.

The juxtaposition of wonderful modernity with a tawdry past also serves to reinforce the ‘rightness’ of current societal stances by  making any other positions appear ludicrous. It reminds folks of the importance of holding on to these newer ways of thinking and to caution them against falling back into older patterns which may be more comfortable but less socially desirable. Such reinforcement works on the principle that if you won’t do a good thing just for its own sake, you’ll surely do it to avoid being laughed at and looked down upon by your peers.

A typical vessel for this sort of comparison is the fabricated or misrepresented bit of text from the “olden days,” some document that purportedly demonstrates how our ancestors endured difficult lives amidst people who once held truly despicable beliefs.

Of course, as the Snopes article goes on to discuss, all kinds of very sexist stuff existed in the ’50s, and there were home-ec textbooks, magazines, etc., that included suggestions along the lines of those listed above.

Given that, it’s not shocking that when we see images of this sort, they immediately seem authentic, and get re-posted around the web despite the sketchy aspects of their origin stories. It’s not like we’ve never posted anything on Soc Images that we later figured out was a hoax (we also get things that we hope, desperately, are hoaxes but turn out to be real).

So there’s a truth behind the general gist of these types of lists, but many of the images themselves are fakes, created to make fun of our hopelessly, and hilariously, sexist past. And given how many real examples of sexist propaganda you could find from the 1950s, it’s worth pondering we find so many fake ones, and how, for some people, they may function to delegitimate concerns about gender inequality or sexism today, because come on, ladies — look how much better we have it than our grandmas did!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework.  The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.”  Ah-mazing.  The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.

And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

Hat tip to Jezebel.

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.

An article at The Economist summarizes the research of Sarah Pearson, who has spent almost 100,000 hours watching British people watch television. People underestimate how much time they spend watching television and listening to the radio (especially the first one), but they overestimate how much time they spend watching online videos.

Pearson found that they also underestimate how much time they spend watching shows as they are being broadcasted. Despite the many ways that shows can now be recorded and rebroadcast, most of our television watching is just like it was 50 years ago. “Even in British homes with a Sky+ box,” she finds, “…almost 85% of television shows are viewed at the time the broadcasters see fit to air them.”

Why? Because television is a social activity. People sit down to watch things together and then they “see what’s on.” And, even when people watch television alone, they like to watch shows at the same time as other people are watching it, or as soon as possible afterward.

Via BoingBoing.

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.

It is commonly claimed and, in fact, I have claimed it on this blog (here and here), that the U.S. is especially individualistic.  Claude Fischer, at Made in America, puts this assertion to the test.  “There is considerable evidence, ” he writes, “that Americans are not more individualistic – in fact, are less individualistic – than other peoples.”

He operationalizes “individualism” as “gives priority to personal liberty” and offers the following evidence.

Question: “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?”

Question: “ Right or wrong should be a matter of personal conscience,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Question: “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Question: “Even when there are no children, a married couple should stay together even if they don’t get along,” strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Fischer entertains several explanations for these findings.

(1) Americans aren’t really individualistic (anymore).

(2) Americans means something else by individualism (like freedom from government or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps).  Fischer thinks that these are different values, though: anti-statism and laissez-faire, pro-business economics.

(3) Americans are individualistic, but they are also religious and sometimes religion outweighs individualism.  If that’s so, Fischer argues, then maybe it is true that we’re not that individualistic.

(4) American individualism is found not in people’s opinions, but in how we organize our society.  Fischer calls this “undemocratic libertarianism.”

Finally, (5) maybe what is meant by individualism is really voluntarism, the right to leave and join groups as we see fit.

The argument and the answers clearly revolve around how we define (or operationalize) “individualism.”  In any case, the comparative data does put the U.S. into perspective and Fischer’s discussion leaves a lot to unpack.

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.