As Black History Month continues, we are reminded of the pivotal role that race plays in the United States. But how does race shape social life in other nations in the Americas? Despite similar historical roots — European colonial expansion and slavery — Brazil and Mexico, for example, witnessed the emergence of race mixing cultures that stood in stark contrast to the distinct racial divisions in the United States.

Ideas about mestizaje — or racial and cultural mixture — have had a powerful effect on racial identity and mobilization across 20th century Latin America. In Brazil, for instance, research suggests that the focus on racial mixture has made racial or color boundaries ambiguous, and racial group membership weak. Mixed-race individuals have been celebrated as national symbols — proof of past and hope for future positive race relations. Because of this, some Latin American countries view themselves as morally superior to the United States, with its history of segregation and investment in White racial “purity.”

• Stanley Bailey. 2002. “The Race Construct and Public Opinion: Understanding Brazilian Beliefs about Racial Inequality and Their Determinants.” American Journal of Sociology 108(2): 406-439.  
• Edward Telles and Stanley Bailey. 2013. “Understanding Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality.” American Journal of Sociology 118(6): 1559–95.

But there are complications. In Brazil, weak racial boundaries made organizing along racial lines for the purposes of racial justice and equity difficult. In Mexico, the popular belief that there can be no racism in a nation where everyone is “mixed” makes the recognition of persistent racial inequalities complicated. Some scholars also suggest that Latin American racial boundaries are more rigid and consequential than often realized.

• Mónica Moreno Figueroa and Emiko Saldívar Tanaka. 2016. “‘We Are Not Racists, We Are Mexicans’: Privilege, Nationalism and Post-Race Ideology in Mexico.” Critical Sociology 42(4-5): 515-533.
• Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. 2006. “From Bi-racial to Tri-racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(6): 931-950.

In the past few decades, Latin American countries have begun to recognize distinct racial and cultural groups and the rights of minority groups, leading to changes in both formal laws and public policies. Social scientists will continue to track how Latin Americans’ ideas about mestizaje evolve and what impacts these cultural shifts have on racial identities, movements, and policies across the Americas.

• Edward Telles and Denia Garcia. 2013. “Mestizaje and Public Opinion in Latin America.” Latin American Research Review 48(3): 130-152.

Duolingo, the free language-learning platform, has reached more than 200 million registered users around the world. For some, learning a new language is a hobby; for others, it’s a necessity. Whatever the reason, social science research demonstrates that learning a new language has significant social and cultural benefits. 

Learning a new language can improve interpersonal skills. For immigrants, it not only can increase earnings and labor market opportunities, but it can also improve adjustment into a new cultural context. Many factors influence this learning process. One study of 180,000 immigrants found that the societies of origin and destination play the biggest role in determining language proficiency — societies that promote the coexistence of multiple languages can actually encourage newcomers to learn a new language.

• Thomas J. Espenshade and Haishan Fu. 1997. “An Analysis of English-Language Proficiency among US immigrants.” American Sociological Review 62(2): 288-305.
• Frank Van Tubergen and Matthijs Kalmijn. 2005. “Destination-Language Proficiency in Cross-National Perspective: A Study of Immigrant Groups in Nine Western Countries.” American Journal of Sociology 110(5): 1412-1457.

Learning a new language also influences the way children form and maintain their friendships. One study demonstrated that fluent bilingual children, and bilingual children whose dominant language was not English, surpassed their peers in getting along with children from different backgrounds, comforting or helping other children, and expressing feelings, ideas, and opinions in positive ways. When children bridge two languages and two cultures at the same time, they are better able to interact with others and build stronger bonds.

• Robert P. Moreno and Deanne R. Pérez-Granados. 2002. “Understanding Language Socialization and Learning in Mexican-Descent Families: Conclusions and New Directions.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 24(2): 249-256.
• Ariela Schachter. 2016. “From ‘Different’ to ‘Similar:’ an Experimental Approach to Understanding Assimilation.” American Sociological Review 81(5): 981-1013.

In sum, learning a new language is not only about studying words, pronunciation, or grammar structure. The process can have substantial payoffs for social skills and integration.

For many across the globe, the Olympics is a chance to celebrate a shared human connection, athletic achievement, and national pride. The Olympic Charter claims the Games encourage friendship, cross-cultural understanding, and world peace, but to do so the games must be free of politics. The Olympics present an opportunity to cross divisive diplomatic lines, like the temporary calming of tensions between North and South Korea. But these ideals may be overly optimistic as these global events have real political effects.

• John J. MacAloon. 1982. “Double Visions: Olympic games and American Culture.” The Kenyon Review 4(1): 98-112.
  

Historically, only the economic and social elite participated in the Olympics, so other versions like the Worker’s Games countered the Olympic Games in the early 1900s. In addition, the Olympics themselves have become a space to challenge the status quo. Protests, or lack thereof, can challenge or reinforce global norms.

• Douglas Hartmann. 2003. Race, Culture, and the Revolt of the Black Athlete. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Arnd Krüger and William Murray (eds.). 2003. The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
• Rob Millington and Simon C Darnell. “Constructing and Contesting the Olympics Online: The Internet, Rio 2016 and the Politics of Brazilian Development.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 49(2): 190-210.

Sporting events like the Olympics may allow nations to compete with each other without the consequences of war. Non-violent competition is even more important in the modern world, where technology allows for increasingly lethal methods of warfare. This may be one reason nations financially invest in producing elite athletes and could be behind recent controversies, like the Russian doping scandal.

• J.A. Mangan (ed.). 2004. Militarism, Sport, Europe: War Without Weapons. London: Frank Cass Publishers.
• Lincoln Allison and Terry Monnington. 2002. “Sport, Prestige and International Relations.” Government and Opposition 37(1): 106-134.

Though intended to be apolitical, nations may attempt to use the Olympics to sway global public opinion. Foreign policy officials report that political rebranding was a key reason to host the games. Modern media channels make this motivation even more powerful than in decades past, as nations know that the Olympics will have extensive global coverage.

• Jarol B. Manheim. 1990. “Rites of Passage: The 1988 Seoul Olympics as Public Diplomacy.” Political Research Quarterly 43(2): 279-295.
• Kevin Young and Kevin B. Wamsley. 2005. Global Olympics: Historical and Sociological Studies of the Modern Games. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
• Alan Tomlinson and Christopher Young. 2006. National Identity and Global Sports Events: Culture, Politics, and Spectacle in the Olympics and the Football World Cup. Albany: State University of New York Press.
• Lee Humphreys and Christopher J. Finlay. 2008. “New Technologies, New Narratives” Pp. 284-306 in  Owning the Olympics: Narratives of the New China. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Valentine’s Day is a time when our rom-com scripts are in high gear. The quintessential V-Day script assumes a man and a woman in a monogamous romantic relationship celebrate by exchanging gifts, sharing a romantic dinner, and then ending the night with a steamy bedroom scene. In reality, many people challenge this script. However, these challenges are made more difficult by gendered socialization that reinforces norms about men’s and women’s bodies, heterosexuality, and sexual pleasure.

Children learn their bodies are gendered early in life. Institutions like sports and education systems often teach and highlight differences between boys and girls. For instance, preschool teachers construct gender norms by disciplining girls and boys differently — telling girls to be quiet more frequently than boys. And since girls and women have fewer opportunities than men to demonstrate physicality, they tend to underestimate their bodily capacities.

• Karin Martin. 1998. “Becoming a Gendered Body: The Practices of Preschools.” American Sociological Review 63(4): 494-511.
• Iris Marion Young. 1980. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality.” Human Studies 3(1): 137-156.


Children also learn to privilege heterosexual relationships in schools. Some preschool teachers encourage what they see as “romantic” affection between boys and girls in their classes, but rarely interpret affection between children of the same gender as romantic. Children reproduce these norms in their own play. For instance, when playing “house” girls rarely play the role of “dad” and boys rarely play the role of “mom.” Further, when parents talk to their children about sexuality they also reinforce gender differences. For instance, mothers talk about relationships, reproductive bodies, and what sexual behaviors are considered “wrong” more with their daughters than with their sons.

• Heidi Gansen. 2017. “Reproducing (and Disrupting) Heteronormativity: Gendered Sexual Socialization in Preschool Classrooms.” Sociology of Education 90(3): 255-272.
• Karen Martin and Katherine Luke. 2010. “Gender Differences in the ABC’s of the Birds and the Bees: What Mothers Teach Young Children about Sexuality and Reproduction.” Sex Roles 62: 278-291.

These early experiences have consequences for how we view and understand our bodies. Despite the increased awareness of the benefits of developing a healthy sexuality, women tend to know less about their sexual bodies than men. For instance, women report lack of knowledge about the functions of their genitalia. They also tend to rely more on their sexual partners than men for sexual pleasure and are more likely to say they are indifferent about their sexuality.

• Eli Coleman. 2003. “Masturbation as a Means of Achieving Sexual Health.” Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality 14(2-3): 5-16.
• Debby Herbenick, Michael Reece, Vanessa Schick, Stephanie A. Sanders, Brian Dodge, and J. Dennis Fortenberry. 2010. “Sexual Behavior in the United States: Results from a National Probability Sample of Men and Women Ages 14–94.” The Journal of Sexual Medicine 7(s5): 255-265.
• Breanne Fahs and Eric Swank. 2013. “Adventures with the “Plastic Man”: Sex Toys, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and the Politics of Women’s Sexual Pleasure.” Sexuality & Culture 17(4): 666-685. 

During the month of February, the United States observes Black History Month, importantly celebrating the accomplishments of African Americans and acknowledging the racist history of the United States. Racism is not only part of the past, nor is it not limited to prejudicial attitudes and overtly discriminatory practices against people of color. Social scientists demonstrate how racism is also institutional and cultural, and how these forms of racism powerfully reproduce racial inequalities — even in the absence of explicitly racist attitudes or beliefs.

Social scientists commonly rely on two concepts to describe racism: institutional racism and symbolic or cultural racism. Institutional racism refers to how institutions and legal systems in the 21st century do not overtly consider race, but still promote racial inequality. Historically rooted inequalities in institutions — economy, housing markets, the education system, and the criminal justice system — help perpetuate persistent racial disparities.

• Thomas Shapiro. 2017. Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future. New York: Basic Books.
• Joe Soss and Vesla Weaver. 2017. “Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race–Class Subjugated Communities.” Annual Review of Political Science 20: 565-591.
• Barbara Reskin. 2012. “The Race Discrimination System.” Annual Review of Sociology 38(1):17–35.
• Jo C. Phelan and Bruce G. Link. 2015. “Is Racism a Fundamental Cause of Inequalities in Health?” Annual Review of Sociology 41(1): 311-330.

Social scientists utilize the concept of symbolic or cultural racism to discuss attitudes. Though explicitly prejudicial attitudes in the United States have declined, Americans today often use coded or symbolic language — especially when discussing political figures, immigration policy, or the criminal justice system. For example, instead of explicitly claiming people of different races are biologically inferior, individuals may point to “problematic” values or attitudes of other racial groups. Such beliefs allow those people to maintain that racial inequality is the fault of racial minority groups themselves.

• Lawrence Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A.Smith. 1997. Laissez-faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology. Pp. 15-42 in Racial Attitudes in the 1990’s: Continuity and Change, eds. S Tuch and J. Martin. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• David O. Sears and P. J. Henry. 2003. “The Origins of Symbolic Racism.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85(2):259.
• Justin Allen Berg. 2013. “Opposition to Pro‐Immigrant Public Policy: Symbolic Racism and Group Threat.” Sociological Inquiry 83(1): 1-31.
• Christopher Sebastian Parker. 2016. “Race and Politics in the Age of Obama.” Annual Review of Sociology 42(1):217–30.

Large-scale sporting events, including the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl, are in the international spotlight this winter. These mega-events are often heralded for promoting economic mobility and social cohesion, and cities across the world bid for events like the Olympics to cement their identities as world-class cities. For sociologists, these events also highlight how inequality operates in urban spaces.

Under the assumption that stadium construction promotes local growth, many cities rely on both tax subsidies from their local populace along with private investment. Financial investors tout the unprecedented trend of stadium-building in the past decades as opportunities for job growth, tourism, and other revenue boosts. However, much research suggests that stadiums and major sport events do not have broad economic benefits for their host cities, as benefits tend to be distributed unequally along racial and class lines. While local resistance has grown substantially in recent years, resource-laden investing firms and political coalitions that advocate for such projects are largely successful at squelching these efforts.

• Kevin J. Delaney and Rick Eckstein. 2003. Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums. Rutgers University Press.
• Jay Scherer. 2016. Resisting the World-Class City: Community Opposition and the Politics of a Local Arena Development. Sociology of Sport Journal 33(1): 39-53.
• Timothy W. Collins and Sara E. Grineski. 2007. Unequal Impacts of Downtown Redevelopment: The Case of Stadium Building in Phoenix, Arizona. Journal of Poverty 11(1): 23-54.

The role of sporting events in perpetuating inequality demonstrates how the geography of urban space reflects a deepening divide between the “haves” and “have nots.” For example, sociologists demonstrate that cities often implement policies and practices that criminalize and punish behaviors of homeless individuals in public spaces. Other studies indicate that sporting events in the United States, especially the Super Bowl, contribute to the militarization and surveillance of public space in the post-9/11 era.

• Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert. 2009. Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America. Oxford University Press.
• Kimberly S. Schimmel. 2006. Deep Play: Sports Mega‐Events and Urban Social Conditions in the USA. The Sociological Review 54(2): 160-174.
• Patrick Sharkey. 2013. Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality. University of Chicago Press.

So, as we watch these sporting spectacles from our television screens, see them up close (if we’re lucky), or experience the negative consequences outlined above (if we’re not), it is important to be aware of how these events are manifestations of both society’s triumphs and social ills.

Every February, people in the United States participate in this strange ritual where we entrust a large rodent to predict whether winter will last six more weeks (about average for much of the northern United States) or if spring will come early. Yep, it’s Groundhog Day. And as strange as this practice might seem, superstitions and rituals like it actually play an important role in how people form identities and communities.

While scholars first studied rituals primarily in relation to religion, eventually they realized that rituals, whether religious or not, were important ways of bringing people together through shared practices. Emile Durkheim was the first to point to ritual’s community forming potential. He argued that rituals are the collective representations of the social group itself — rituals arouse passion, feelings of connectedness, and an experience of something larger than the individual. These features of ritual are conducive to identifying with social groups in an emotional and empowering way.

• Emile Durkheim. 1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press.
• Victor Turner. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Transaction Publishers.
• Douglas Marshall. 2002. “Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: A Theory of Ritual Practice.” Sociological Theory 20(30): 360-380.

However, rituals are not just any set of shared practices — in order to be meaningful, rituals need to feel natural. Rituals present themselves as unchanging and timeless, and until very recently, most people’s experience of ritual was such that to “create” or “invent” a ritual meant it was inauthentic. However, all rituals are products of human creation that become naturalized and taken-for-granted over time.

• Catherine Bell. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tom Driver. 1991. The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Live and Our Communities. New York: Harper Collins.
• David Cheal. 1992. “Ritual: Communication in Action.” Sociological Analysis 53(4): 363-374.

So, Groundhog Day is not celebrated because Americans truly believe a groundhog will predict the coming of spring. Rather, it’s one of many ways we ritualize our life to make meaning out of the passage of time and to feel connected to our fellow humans.

Every year the FBI releases its Uniform Crime Report (UCR), an annual collection of crimes reported to local police agencies across the United States.  When the FBI released the 2016 report last year, it was missing many key tables, spurring a letter from criminologists asking that Jeff Sessions and the FBI director, Christopher A. Ray, release the report in its complete form (as it had been in previous years). Although the FBI claims that the trimming of the report was planned for many years, other reports suggest that this may not be the case. So what exactly is missing from the UCR and why does it matter to social science research?

The 2016 UCR is missing tables from the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), which include data on homicide victims’ relationships to perpetrators and other situational circumstances of homicides. Without these data, researchers — like those studying intimate partner and family violence — will be unable to track these aspects of homicides over time. In the past, researchers used the SHRs to examine how declining marriage rates, increased access to domestic violence services, and the improved economic standing of women contributed to a sizable decrease in spousal homicide from the 1970s to the 1990s. Others used the SHRs to examine the geography of interpersonal homicide, indicating that rural residents may be more susceptible to intimate partner and familial homicides than residents of metropolitan areas.

• Laura Dugan, Daniel S. Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld. 1999. “Explaining the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide: The Effects of Changing Domesticity, Women’s Status, and Domestic Violence Resources.” Homicide Studies 3(3): 187-214.
• Adria Gallup-Black. 2005. “Twenty Years of Rural and Urban Trends in Family and Intimate Partner Homicide: Does Place Matter?” Homicide Studies 9(2): 149-173.
• Wesley G. Jennings and Alex R. Piquero. 2008. “Trajectories of Non-Intimate Partner and Intimate Partner Homicides, 1980-1999: The Importance of Rurality.” Journal of Criminal Justice 36(5): 435-443.

Like many other national databases, the Supplemental Homicide Reports suffer from some data quality issues. One study finds that data establishing the relationship between a victim and perpetrator in the SHRs may be particularly unreliable. While this may suggest that dropping some tables from the UCR may have been a strategic move by the FBI, most studies of the SHR data quality call for more efficient and effective data collection prior to compiling an SHR, as well as better variable measurement by the SHR, rather than complete dismissal of the reports.

• Thomas D. Bazley and Thomas Mieczkowski. 2004. “Researching Workplace Homicide: An Assessment of the Limitations of the Supplementary Homicide Reports.” Journal of Criminal Justice 32(3): 243-252.
• Jesenia M. Pizarro and April M. Zeoli. 2013. “An Assessment of the Quality of Homicide Data in the Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note.” Justice Quarterly 30(4): 711-731.

Beyond homicide data, which also includes gang and drug-related homicides, the 2016 Uniform Crime Report is missing many additional tables. One of these is drug arrests by specific drug types, including synthetic opioids or heroin. This is a particularly surprising omission considering the opioid epidemic is a major policy concern for the Trump administration. The recent call to action by criminologists appears to have been successful — FBI Director Wray indicated at a December House Judiciary Committee hearing (see 3:28:35 for Wray’s statement) that the FBI now plans to republish the UCR with all of the missing tables included. This is good news for social scientists, who argue that we cannot have effective policies on social issues such as crime and drug use without the data that drive these critical decisions.

Of the many so-called crises in higher ed, University of Wisconsin-Superior recently announced its plan to suspend 25 academic programs (including sociology). Administrators claimed their decision is part of a larger effort in higher education institutions to decrease the time students spend in college in order to increase graduation rates and lessen debt for low-income, first-generation students. Social science research, however, suggests curriculum shifts may not address first-generation students’ needs. 

First-generation students are more likely to come from low-income minority families, delay entry into college, attend college part-time, and work full-time while in school — all characteristics that reduce the likelihood of completing a degree. Only 27 percent of first-generation college students at four-year institutions graduate in four years, compared to 42 percent of students whose parents graduated from college. And only five percent of low-income, first-generation students who begin at two-year community colleges completed a bachelor’s degree within six years. Further, first generation students often have limited access to the “cultural capital” that privileges wealthier students.

• Peter Collier and David L. Morgan. 2008. “‘Is That Paper Really Due Today?’: Differences in First-Generation and Traditional College Students’ Understandings of Faculty Expectations.” Higher Education 55(4):425–46.
• Sylvia Hurtado and Deborah Faye Carter. 1997. “Effects of College Transition and Perceptions of the Campus Racial Climate on Latino College Students’ Sense of Belonging.” Sociology of Education 70(4):324-345.

The completion agenda — an effort to increase completion rates, especially among community college students — aims to compensate for differences in cultural capital by making graduation requirements clear and accessible. It can also include limiting course or curricular options in an attempt to reduce “wasted” credits. But simply reducing the number of credits taken does not address the fundamental challenge of how to to pay for both tuition and basic needs, a major reason why students drop courses, take semesters off, and leave school. In addition, a completion agenda may limit low-income, first-generation students to low-quality programs, while more prestigious institutions offer privileged students broad selections that are transferable across many professions.

• Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2016. Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream. University of Chicago Press.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom. 2017. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of for-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. New York: The New Press.

LGBT families are increasingly visible in public life. From famous celebrity same-sex parents like Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka to same-sex family representations in popular television shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family, it may be easy to forget the hurdles LGBT families continue to face. For decades, anti-same-sex parenting activists have challenged LGBT parental rights, arguing that same-sex parenting somehow harms the wellbeing of children. Social science research on LGBT parenting has generally refuted  these claims, providing evidence that good parenting occurs under a diversity of family arrangements.

Families have never truly resembled the so-called “traditional” nuclear family, yet LGBT families have indeed expanded definitions of kinship and parenting. Beyond disrupting norms about gender and sexual orientation of family members, many LGBT families use adoption and various methods of assisted reproduction to have children. Some families include two parents, some include one, and others involve co-parenting between more than two people.

• Stephanie Coontz. 1992. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books.
• Joshua Gamson. 2015. Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship. New York: New York University Press.

Despite a range of options for family structures, LGBT families still face legal challenges to parenting. Legal rights pertaining to adoption and parental rights vary significantly across the United States, as do parents’ understandings of and interactions with the law. In fact, parents’ expectations of what family formation means are often shaped by the legal context in which they live. For instance, if adoption is not an option for the second parent, it may become less important to the parents’ perception of how a family should look.

• Amanda K. Baumle and D’Lane R. Compton. 2015. Legalizing LGBT Families: How the Law Shapes Parenthood. New York: New York University Press.

Over the past decade, research on the well-being and success of children with lesbian and gay (LG) parents has intensified. Evidence overwhelmingly indicates that these children do just as well as children raised by different-sex parents in social and cognitive development, academic performance, and avoiding substance abuse and delinquent behavior. Beyond wellbeing, LG parents may be less likely to enforce rigid gender norms on their children, instead offering a variety of gendered options. Studies have also found that children’s activity preferences are less gendered when parental division of labor is more equally shared between both parents, and this egalitarian form of co-parenting appears to be more common among middle class, white lesbians. However, parents from all backgrounds may be less likely to endorse gender nonconformity with their sons than with their daughters.

• Wendy D. Manning, Marshal Neal Fettro, and Esther Lamidi. 2014. “Child Well-Being in Same-Sex Parent families: Review of Research Prepared for American Sociological Association Amicus Brief.” Population Research and Policy Review 33(4): 485-502.
• Emily W. Kane. 2006. “No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!”: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity.” Gender & Society 20(2): 149-176.
• Kate Henley Averett. 2016. “The Gender Buffet: LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity.” Gender & Society 30(2): 189-212.

While the research base on LG parents and family structures has developed rapidly, we know much less about transgender parents and transgender youth. Similarly, the experience of bisexual individuals has often been ignored or collapsed under LG experiences. This lack of research complicates the notion of LGBT as a comprehensive umbrella term in family studies, as social scientists know far less about the BT than the LG, and even less about queer and asexual identities (QA).

• Timothy J. Biblarz and Evren Savci. 2010. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 72(3): 480-497.