marriage/family

I just discovered the entirely excellent website Asian Nation, run by C.N. Le and full of great information about the Asian American community. Here are some tables showing what percent of various Asian American groups are married to spouses of the same or other groups, updated as of October 2007 using Census data (an explanation of the three columns follows):

Ok, now to explain the three columns of numbers. The first one presents data for all marriages that include at least one Asian American spouse–this will include large numbers of immigrants who were married before they moved to the U.S. The second column includes only those marriages where at least one spouse was raised in the U.S., defined as either born here or moved here by age 13. The third column includes only those marriages where both spouses were raised in the U.S. According to Le, this group represents less than 25% of all marriages including an Asian partner, but “…has the advantage of including only those who were raised and socialized within American society and its racial dynamics. It is this U.S.-raised population that best represents young Asian Americans, since they are the ones who have the most exposure to prevailing American cultural images and media.”

Not surprisingly, endogamous (in-group) marriage rates drop off significantly among U.S.-raised Asian Americans. There are other interesting gender patterns as well. Notice, for instance, that Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Filipina women are quite a bit more likely to be married to a White partner (the most common out-group spouses) than are men, and for the remaining groups, women are slightly more likely to be married to a White spouse. You might discuss the social and historical factors that might cause that pattern, and compare it to the trend in marriages with a Black and a White spouse, in which the gender pattern is usually reversed–Black men are more likely to be married to Whites than are Black women. It might also be worth noting that Korean and Filipina women are significantly less likely to marry endogamously than the other Asian American ethnic groups.

In this video, Campbell Brown analyzesGov. Ed Rendell’s comments, overheard due to standing too close to an open mic, that Janet Napolitano is perfect for secretary of Homeland Security because she has no family (you can also see the video here if the CNN site doesn’t play correctly).

In fact, the wage gap between men and women is made up, almost entirely, by the comparison between men (fathers or not) and mothers. Women without children make significantly more money than mothers. Conversely, fathers make slightly more than men without children.

Women without children do pretty well at work in the U.S. Of course, about 90% of adult women are mothers.

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.

I found these three ads for a private jet service in those magazines for excrutiatingly excruciatingly rich people that I’ve been posting from lately. Each ad–one for Marquis Jet and two for Delta AirElite–are pitching their service by suggesting that having a membership in their private jet service will help them be a good Dad because they can get home–for dinner, the game, or some quality time–from anywhere fast. Comments below.

Text:

It’s not just a card.

It’s a choice.

A choice to escape from it all.

A choice to get closer to what’s important.

Text:

9:00AM.   Meeting with group of investors.

1:30PM.  Meeting with district managers.

7:00PM.  The most important meeting of all.

Text:

Make 120 sales pitches on the road.

Listen to pitches in 25 different company offices.

Be there for the most important pitch.

It’s pretty unusual to see ads that highlight a Dad’s relationship with his children. And that’s pretty neat. But, second, the implication is that only men at the extremes of economic success can “afford” to be an ideal father. Hypothetically, I wonder how many people working for that Dad have the privilege of taking a private jet and getting home in time for dinner? My guess would be: Very few. In that sense, these ads uphold the idea that men’s primary role in their children’s lives involves bringing home the bacon and, if you’re really, really, really good at that (and really, really lucky and, likely, very privileged to begin with), you get to be a part of their lives too.

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.

via MultiCultClassics.

Vintage Ads posted these three ads–one for an electric refrigerator and two for Gold Dust Cleaner–that compare the product to a Black servant. 

The copy in the refrigerator ad reads: “And So Electricity Is Made The Willing Servant.”  The accompanying image includes three white women looking leisurely and a Black servant. 

Similarly, these two Gold Dust ads personify the product as Black twin babies. The motto is: “Let the GOLD DUST TWINS do your work.”
 

I think these are fascinating in that they draw our attention to whose work technology is designed to replace. Earlier on this blog we’ve talked about how ads have offered to replace women’s work with the market and with technology.  In these cases, the market and technology were needed to ease women’s workload (they certainly couldn’t expect their husbands to do it).  In this case, Black servants serve to take women one step further from “women’s work.”  Instead of replacing women themselves, the product replace the servants who replaced women, making the comparison of the product to Black servants completely sensical at the time.

Elizabeth recently posted about an ad for Motrin that suggested that you should take pain medicine so as to keep walking in pain-inducing high heels.  The message was, essentially, “Suffer for fashion, ladies!  Motrin will help!”  I wanted to discuss, also, this second ad in their series (found here) and an anonymous commenter egged me on:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO6SlTUBA38[/youtube]

They start off saying that how mothers make decisions about how to carry their infants according to what is in style (“Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion”).  They then point out that what is currently in fashion is painful for mothers.  But, of course, moms are going to do it anyway, because the sacrifice is for the child (“It’s a good kind of pain, it’s for my kid”).  But also about fashion!  And about how in-fashion it is to be a mom!  (“Plus it totally makes me look like an official mom”).

The ad trivializes motherhood (threatening to reduce it to fashion), equating it, in a sense, to the high heels in the other ad.  At the same time, it legitimizes suffering in the service of your child, which reinforces the ideology of intensive mothering that has ramped up the must-haves and must-dos of mothering like never before in human history.

The good news is that Motrin pulled this ad campaign and has apologized after bloggers took them to task.

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.

Marc sent in a link to some sexist vintage ads found at Blog of Hilarity [note: I had an actual link to Blog of Hilarity, but commenter LillyB pointed out that when she clicked on it, she got warnings from her AntiVirus about the site; I just had the same thing happen, so I decided for safety’s sake to remove the link]. Some of them I’ll be adding to other posts, but I thought these deserved their own post.

This one, for Love’s Baby Soft, is so creepy I can hardly stand to look at it:

The shape of the bottles, the sexualization of young girls…ick. A teddy bear? Really? The text below the bottles:

Love’s Baby Soft is that irresistible, clean-baby smell, grown-up enough to be sexy. It’s soft-smelling. Pure and innocent. It may well be the sexist fragrance around.

Notice it’s not grown up…it’s grown up enough. Jean Kilbourne uses this, or a similar Love’s Baby Soft, ad in her documentary Killing Us Softly 3 when she discusses how young girls are sexualized and adult women are encouraged to infantilize themselves.

Here’s an ad for Kellogg’s PEP vitamins:

I know I always look super cute when I’m scrubbing the kitchen.

Finally, this Trix ad seems sort of creepy to me, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the way the girl is staring at the camera, or that her pupils seem fixed and dilated:

The text isn’t exceptionally interesting, but it does use the word “gay” in the original sense of “happy,” something a company would certainly not do today.

Thanks, Marc!

Michael T. sent in an observation about the Yes on Proposition 8 website, which (successfully) aimed at amending the California constitution to disallow gay marriage.  Along the top of the screen, the four different images below accompanied the slogan “Restoring Marriage & Protecting California Children.”  These marriages, Michael surmises, must be the ones that need protecting.   In addition to reproducing heteronormativity and childbearing, notice that the images are self-consciously diverse, but represent all marriages as within race.

Thanks Michael!