gender

As Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, many couples will be deciding — and in some cases, disputing  — how best to celebrate their love and commitment to one another. Because people’s beliefs about marriage and family are shaped by social class conditions early in life, most people marry partners with income, education, and occupation levels similar to their own. While partnering with someone from a similar upbringing cannot prevent all marital strife, it may head off some of the challenges that are confronted by mixed-class couples. Such relationships exemplify the influence of class on experiences and understandings of family.

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu explains how the life-long influences of class background can affect what couples value in terms of money, work, and household chores. Because of these divergent values, partners raised in different social classes may argue about marriage and the family, even if they rarely recognize their upbringing as the source of their contention. For instance, research indicates that partners from middle-class backgrounds heavily emphasize long-term planning and saving while their upwardly mobile partners may have a more “hands off” approach to finances and careers, taking advantage of opportunities when they came along but not proactively seeking them out.

• Pierre Bourdieu. 1984. Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Jessi Streib. 2015. The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages. Oxford University

Practices at the intersection of class and family life reproduce broader social inequalities. Because people who grew up in the same social class tend to be more similar in how they think about and manage family, they often partner with others who share their background. This “assortative mating” results in households with double the middle class advantages, as well as working class and poor households that are doubly disadvantaged. A wealth of scholarship investigates how growing class inequality has shaped patterns of marriage and family formation and describes how these patterns may be more unequal now than in previous decades.

• Robert D. Mare. 1991. “Five Decades of Educational Assortative Mating.” American Sociological Review 15-32.
• Marcia Carlson and Paula England (eds). 2011. Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Frank F. Furstenberg. 2014. “Fifty Years of Family Change: From Consensus to Complexity.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 654(1): 12-30.

People’s social class backgrounds also influence how they raise their children. For example, classic work by Annette Lareau shows how middle class white and African American families use child-rearing strategies that align with institutions like schools, yielding unequal rewards for these children while putting children from lower-class backgrounds at even more of a disadvantage. These families not only have more material resources but are able to impart more immaterial things to their children, like the “rules of the game” of how institutions work. These unspoken rules include everything from how to navigate bureaucratic environments, to how to communicate with authority figures as equals, to the right tone of voice to use in a meeting. Middle class parents engage in these strategies to secure advantages for their children in school and coach their children to do the same.

• Annette Lareau. 2003. Unequal Childhoods. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Jessica McCrory Calarco. 2018. Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School. Oxford University Press.

Whether we remain in the same social class our whole lives or find ourselves immersed in dramatically different financial circumstances, our social upbringing follows us through adulthood. People’s beliefs about what is right or normal are shaped by their upbringing, and such perceptions influence their expectations for marriage and family as adults. In an age of increasing income inequality in the United States, researchers must continue to explore the ways that class differences not only affect interpersonal relationships, but also reproduce broader social class inequalities.

For more information on marrying across class lines, check out this Contexts piece from Jessi Strieb.

In Michelle Obama’s recent book, Becoming, she shares her experiences with infertility — including miscarriages and in vitro fertilization (IVF) — a subject often fraught with secrecy in the United States. She is certainly not alone: according to the Center for Disease Control, over 12% of women in the United States either have trouble conceiving or carrying a fetus in utero, and more than seven million women have reported using infertility services. Social science research helps us understand how women experience barriers to having biological children.

Issues with fertility come with a variety of social and psychological consequences. Many women do not feel supported by family and friends, and they may even feel stigmatized for their infertility. These unsupportive responses can lead to depression and other psychological distress, especially if women do not conceive or give birth later on. However, some research suggests that psychological distress may not be long lasting. 

• Erica J. Mindes, Kathleen M. Ingram, Wendy Kliewer, and Cathy A. James. 2003. “Longitudinal Analyses of the Relationship between Unsupportive Social Interaction and Psychological Adjustment among Women with Fertility Problems.” Social Science & Medicine 56(10): 2165-2180.
• Julia McQuilan, Arthur L. Greil, Lynn White, and Mary Casey Jacob. 2004. “Frustrated Fertility: Infertility and Psychological Distress Among Women.” Journal of Marriage and Family 65(4): 1007-1018.
• Katerina Maximova and Amélie Quesnel-Vallée. 2009. “Mental Health Consequences of Unintended Childlessness and Unplanned Births: Gender Differences and Life Course Dynamics.” Social Science & Medicine 68(5): 850-857.

Women use various methods of coping with stigma. They withdraw from relationships where the feel stigmatized, they use humor, and even throw the stigma back on pregnant women that they view as undeserving mothers. And research shows that family structure and family responses affect how women cope. For example, in cultures that prioritize the nuclear family (biological parents and children) instead of the extended family, women may have a harder time coping with infertility.

• Natalie Anne Jansen and Jarron M. Saint Onge. 2015. “An Internet Forum Analysis of Stigma Power Perceptions among Women Seeking Fertility Treatment in the United States.” Social Science & Medicine 147: 184-189
• Katherine R. Hampshire, Mwenza T. Blell, and Bob Simpson. 2012. “‘Everybody is Moving On’: Infertility, Relationality and the Aesthetics of Family among British-Pakistani Muslims.” Social Science & Medicine 74(7): 1045-1052.

Technological advances in fertility treatments in past decades means there are more options for women who struggle with fertility. However, these treatments — unlike birth control — are often expensive and thus are still inaccessible to women of lower socioeconomic status.

• Leslie King and Madonna Harrington Meyer. 1997. “The Politics Of Reproductive Benefits: U.S. Insurance Coverage of Contraceptive and Infertility Treatments.” Gender & Society 11(1): 8-30.
• Ann V. Bell. 2009. “It’s Way out of my League: Low-Income Women’s Experiences of Medicalized Infertility.” Gender & Society 23(5): 688-709.

Originally posted February 26, 2018.

Justin Timberlake’s recent performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show wasn’t his first. Who can forget the now infamous “wardrobe malfunction,” when Timberlake tore Janet Jackson’s clothing, exposing her breast to millions across the United States? Jackson was subsequently blacklisted from the mainstream entertainment industry, while Timberlake’s career continued to flourish. To illustrate the gendered and racial double standards in this case, Black Twitter created the hashtag #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay. Yet, the music industry is not unique. Despite significant progress since the sexual revolution, research shows that sexual double standards persist between women and girls, and men and boys.

Women and girls experience social stigma for premarital sexual activity, having multiple sexual partners, and even participating in non-physical interactions like sexting. Men and boys, conversely, encounter praise for engaging in similar (hetero)sexual conduct. For example, one study showed peers were less likely to accept adolescent girls with a high number of sexual partners, but more likely to accept boys with several sexual partners. At the same time, boys who failed to engage in multiple sexual ‘conquests’ endure stigma from peers. So, both sexually permissive girls and sexually inactive boys face social consequences for not following heterosexual gender roles.

• Derek A. Kreager and Jeremy Staff. 2009. “The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer Acceptance.” Social Psychology Quarterly 72(2): 143-164.
• Jessica Ringrose, Laura Harvey, Rosalind Gill, and Sonia Livingstone. 2013. “Teen Girls, Sexual Double Standards and ‘Sexting’: Gendered Value in Digital Image Exchange.” Feminist Theory 14(3): 305-323.

Women who engage in casual sexual activity like hookups outside of a committed relationship, are often judged more harshly and called derogatory names like ‘ho’ and ‘slut.’ One study participant noted, “Guys, they can go around and have sex with a number of girls and they’re not called anything” (Hamilton and Armstrong, p. 598). Both women and men, however, may encounter negative attitudes for hooking up. According to one study, almost 50 percent of college-aged respondents indicated that they lost respect for women and men that engage in a lot of casual sex. However, men were still more likely to only stigmatize women for engaging in casual sex.

• Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong. 2009. “Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options.” Gender & Society 23(5): 589-616.
• Rachel Allison and Barbara J. Risman. 2013. “A Double Standard for ‘Hooking Up’: How Far Have We Come Toward Gender Equality?” Social Science Research 42(5): 1191-1206.

Originally posted August 6, 2018.

Teenager Maedeh Hojabri was recently arrested and imprisoned by Iranian authorities for posting Instagram videos of herself dancing in her bedroom. People around the globe were stunned at the news, although such punishment and censorship is sadly a common phenomenon. In Iran, Hojabri’s actions violated conservative legal norms that impose a strict dress code and condemn women for exposing their hair or dancing in public. More than a century of social science research can help shed light on why governments criminalize the violation of expected gender norms.  

Classical sociological theory argues that state actors use legal sanctions to exert control and enforce moral sentiments, in an attempt to garner social solidarity. The criminalization of dancing, for example, enforces and legitimizes the morality of conservative values and strict social control. To protect dominant social values, elites may use the penal system as a tool to persecute and discriminate against social minorities. The dominant group’s repression of subordinate groups derives from hierarchies that operate around patriarchal, racial, religious, class, national, political, or ethnic distinctions. Hojabris’ case illustrates repression based on patriarchal norms.

• Emile Durkheim, 1933. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Macmillan.
• Joseph R. Gusfield. 1967. “Moral passage: The Symbolic Process in Public Designations of Deviance.” Social Problems 15(2): 175-188.
• Michelle Alexander. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.

The state may also use the penal system to demonstrate competence and authority. Penal repression allows the state to demonstrate its sovereign capacity and reassert political authority under threat. The case of criminalizing dancing in Iran thus illustrates how public authorities use penal policy to address a legitimacy crisis. Many scholars link the loss of public confidence in the political system to the rise of punitive populism and the ascendancy of penal severity in and outside the United States.

• David Garland. 2001. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Jonathan Simon. 2007. Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Jesse Wozniak. 2016. “We Are Going To Prove We Are A Civil and Developed Country: The Cultural Performance of Police Legitimacy and Empire in the Iraqi State.” British Journal of Criminology 57(4): 906-923.

The penal state has become a central instrument for the exercise of authority. It can protect conservative values and strengthen the power of political elites, who exploit the penal system to legitimize their political agendas. While criminalizing dancing seems odd in the United States, in Iran it serves to enforce moral rules, extend social control, and demonstrate state power.

Originally posted August 17, 2018.

Since its inception last October, the #MeToo campaign has extended beyond the red carpets of Hollywood and into other public arenas like high schools and universities, religious organizations, and military bases. Sexual harassment, assault, and rape within carceral environments such as jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and immigrant detention facilities, however, have received comparatively little public or media attention. And when such reports are made, they are often met with public indifference or ill humor with jokes like “Don’t drop the soap!” Nevertheless, there is a a small but growing base of social science research that shows how confined persons experience both the threat and the act of sexual violence.

In contrast to the #MeToo movement in the larger society, much of the research on sexual violence against those incarcerated has explicitly focused on men and male facilities. Male facilities have long been marred by reports of sexual violence, in part due to norms of hypermasculinity that encourage violence as a sign of heterosexuality. Men are expected to prove that they are not “fags,” “punks,” or “bitches” to avoid being targeted for rape. Yet, confined men who exhibit a smaller stature and present perceived feminine characteristics face a greater likelihood of experiencing sexual violence during their stay.

• Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London. 2001. Prison Masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Aliraza Javaid. 2018. “Male Rape, Masculinities, and Sexualities.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 52: 199-210.

Women also face staggering rates of sexual violence behind bars. In addition to instances of rape through aggressive physical force, guards sometimes coerce women into sex in exchange for certain benefits such as visits, phone calls, food, and cigarettes. Due to transgender discrimination, trans women are often confined with other male inmates, where they face an even greater risk of harassment, assault, and rape, both by their peers and the guards who control them. Despite increased legislation and advocacy following the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), most detained victims do not report the abuse to authorities. For one, guards themselves are often the perpetrators of sexual violence and wield the authority to dismiss an inmate’s claims. Moreover, victims may not disclose for fear of retaliation, shame, guilt, the loss of benefits, and questions about their (hetero)sexuality.

• Kim Shayo Buchanan. 2007. “Impunity: Sexual Abuse in Women’s Prisons.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 42: 45-87.
• Valerie Jenness and Sarah Fenstermaker. 2016. “Forty Years After Brownmiller: Prisons for Men, Transgender Inmates, and the Rape of the Feminine.” Gender & Society 30(1): 14-29.

While sexual violence no doubt pervades many carceral settings, researchers also study other forms of sexual activity, sexuality, and sexual social control among confined persons. Recent work, for example, shows that LGBQ inmates often develop consensual and caring sexual relationships within confinement. Yet, institutional restrictions on sexual activity through mandates like PREA criminalize these consensual relationships. Scholars suggest that such restrictions are not necessarily rooted in concerns over public safety and consent, but rather decades-long discrimination against same-gender sex.

• Jay W. Borchert. 2016. “Controlling Consensual Sex Among Prisoners.” Law & Social Inquiry 41(3): 595-615.
• Helen Eigenberg. 2000. “Correctional Officers and Their Perceptions of Homosexuality, Rape, and Prostitution in Male Prisons.” Prison Journal 80(4): 415-433.

As we continue to grapple with the social and political reckoning of Me Too, social science researchers can help disrupt the “sociological silence of sexual violence” and draw attention to power differentials across settings in which people are particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Highlighting confined persons’ lived experiences of sex and sexual violence within carceral settings, then, contributes to larger conversations around sexual consent and power, as well as the reform (or abolition) of incarceration.

• Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Miriam Gleckman-Krut, and Lanora Johnson. 2018. “Silence, Power, and Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Sexual Violence.” Annual Review of Sociology 44: 99-122.
• Didier Fassin. 2017. Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

During this year’s midterm elections, six states adopted Marsy’s Law, a measure that aims to amend state constitutions so that they treat victims’ rights as equal to defendants’ rights in the criminal justice system. Observers like the American Civil Liberties Union warn that the law circumvents due process — particularly the presumption of innocence — by allowing victims the right to deny evidence to defendants and their counsel, and in some states, even curtail the amount of time a defendant can appeal a conviction. The law’s popularity and ensuing debates highlight two key lines of research, the power of victim rights movements in the United States and the racial and gender privilege underlying perceptions of victimhood.

Although different segments of the victim rights movement have different origins, scholars typically point to the 1960s as the time when victim rights hit the national scene. Since then, the mainstream movement has led to state statutes to provide victim restitution, and increase funding for victims’ services. Scholars suggest that while the victim rights movement has had some positive impacts, it occurred alongside the “get tough on crime” movement that facilitated the prison boom. For example, the advocacy of predominately white, elite feminist movements on punishments for rape and domestic violence was viewed as a victory in addressing violence against women. However, it also resulted in a form of “carceral feminism” that increased punitive responses in criminal justice policies in lieu of reforms in other areas such as welfare and other social services.

• Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson. 2004. The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America. SAGE Publications.
• Marie Gottschalk. 2006. The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge University Press.
• Nancy Whittier. 2016. “Carceral and Intersectional Feminism in Congress: The Violence Against Women Act, Discourse, and Policy.” Gender & Society 30(5): 791–818.

Other scholars note that the mainstream victim rights movement privileged some victims over others, minimizing and ignoring violence against Black women, Indigenous women, other women of color, and trans women. Research shows that Black women are more likely to experience interpersonal violence but media and even laws often frame “victims” of crimes as white — especially white women. Of the 51 laws named after crime victims in the United States since 1990, only four are named after Black victims, and only three after Hispanic victims. Scholars like Beth Richie show how this dominant political discourse of “preventing crime” not only obfuscates Black women’s experiences with violence but also criminalizes their responses to protect themselves through mandatory arrest and other criminal procedures.

• Teresa C. Kulig and Francis T. Cullen. 2017. “Where Is Latisha’s Law? Black Invisibility in the Social Construction of Victimhood.” Justice Quarterly 34(6): 978–1013.
• Beth Richie. 2012. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. NYU Press.
• Shatema Threadcraft and Lisa L. Miller. 2017. “Black Women, Victimization, and the Limitations of the Liberal State.” Theoretical Criminology, 21(4): 478–93.

Heightened news coverage and social media attention to the Cyntoia Brown case serves as a clear example of this disparity, demonstrating who U.S. society values as victims and survivors of sexual and other forms of violence. Thus, while Marsy’s Law may seem on its surface to bring an equal playing field to victims in the criminal justice process, researchers and policymakers must pay attention to the broader context from which it emerged and how this law may not only diminish due process, but also privilege certain types of victims over others.

Check out this TROT for more on the racialization of victimhood for missing girls.  

For insight into a social movement that centers women of color as survivors of sexual, domestic, and state violence, check out INCITE!

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly referred to his experiences in high school and high school athletics in ways that depicted sports as wholesome and beneficial for youth. While not denying the benefits of sports, sociological research highlights the detrimental impacts of athletic involvement as well. And in contrast to Kavanaugh’s characterizations, this research shows that athletic participation is often associated with substance use and abuse, violence, and risk-taking among boys and young men in the United States.

The connection between athletic involvement and alcohol use is well-established through research, and the connection is especially pronounced for white male athletes at the top of their peer status hierarchy. Ironically, being high-status in high school drives both alcohol use and some of the protective features of sports, like connection to school and higher grades. Nationally representative surveys have also demonstrated that involvement in organized sports is associated with binge drinking in college, and that binge drinking continues after actual athletic participation ends. Recent work on drug use indicates that male athletes are more likely to be prescribed opioids, accidentally overdose, and have used opioids recreationally than non-athletes or female athletes.

• David Eitle, R. Jay Turner, and Tamela McNulty Eitle. 2003. “The Deterrence Hypothesis Reexamined: Sports Participation and Substance Use among Young Adults.” Journal of Drug Issues 33(1): 193–221.
• Matthew Kwan, Sarah Bobko, Guy Faulkner, Peter Donnelly, and John Cairney. 2014. “Sport Participation and Alcohol and Illicit Drug Use in Adolescents and Young Adults: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies.” Addictive Behaviors 39(3): 497-506.
• Kyle Green, Toben Nelson, and Douglas Hartmann. 2014. “Binge Drinking and Sports Participation in College: Patterns among Athletes and Former Athletes.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 49(3–4): 417-34.
• Philip Veliz, Carol Boyd, and Sean Esteban McCabe. 2017. “Nonmedical Use of Prescription Opioids and Heroin Use Among Adolescents Involved in Competitive Sports.” Journal of Adolescent Health 60(3): 346-49.

Classics in the field of sport sociology discuss the “Triad of Violence” that is taught through sports: 1) violence against women, 2) violence against others, and 3) violence against the self. For example, male athletes learn to play through pain and to talk about (heterosexual) sex as a conquest. More recent research continues to find links between sports and violent behavior, especially for contact sports. Since risk-taking is central to both the meaning of sport and the meaning of masculinity, it is not surprising that male athletes are more likely to engage in a variety of “risk-taking” behaviors, from drunk driving to unprotected sex.

• Michael Messner. 2002. Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports. University of Minnesota Press.
• Kevin Beaver, J.C. Barnes, and Brian Boutwell. 2016. “Exploring the Relationship between Violent Behavior and Participation in Football during Adolescence: Findings From a Sample of Sibling Pairs.” Youth & Society 48(6): 786–809.
• Jeffrey Kidder. 2017. Parkour and the City: Risk, Masculinity, and Meaning in a Postmodern Sport. Rutgers University Press.

For other work on how masculinity norms in sport link to sexuality and race, see here!

According to a recent memo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to establish a legal definition of sex and gender based on “a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” However, social and biological scientists agree that — based on their scientific understanding — gender and sex are not solely biological, and sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is a category used to describe a culmination of biological and genetic components, including chromosomes, hormones, and physical anatomy. Gender, on the other hand, may or may not be linked to biological traits. Gender refers to a cultural identity, one that has social weight in the world, with particular meanings attached to it. Gender involves social norms, attitudes, and expressions.

• Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1(2): 125-151.
• Karin Martin. 1998. “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools.” American Sociological Review 63(4): 494–511.
• Judith Lorber. 1993. “Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology.” Gender & Society 7(4): 568-581.

Neither sex nor gender are binaries, meaning there are not just two categories — female or male, women or men — and they are not fixed or static. They can and do change over individuals’ lifetimes. U.S. society is increasingly more likely to accept that gender is more of a spectrum than a binary. We’re hearing more about transgender individuals in the media, but transgender is only one gender identity that challenges a binary view of gender. Others include, but are not limited to, gender nonconforming, gender fluid, and gender queer.

• Judith Lorber. 1996. “Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender.” Sociological Inquiry 66(2): 143-160.
• Laurel Westbrook and Aliya Saperstein. 2015. “New Categories Are Not Enough: Rethinking the Measurement of Sex and Gender in Social Surveys.” Gender & Society 29(4): 534-560.

Just as gender is not a binary, neither is sex. The biological components of sex do not always align solely with “male” or “female.”  An individual may have XY chromosomes and an outward female appearance, including breasts and a vagina. Another might have XX chromosomes and high levels of testosterone. Yet another might have genitalia that appear to be neither male or female (too long to be a clitoris, too short to be a penis). These individuals fall into a category called “intersex.” While it’s hard to know how many individuals are intersex (some don’t even know themselves), a commonly reported statistic is 1 in 1500 to 2000 American births.

• Georgiann Davis. 2015. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. New York University Press.
• Sharon Preeves. 2003. Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self. Rutgers University Press.

Nevertheless, U.S. society remains deeply invested in two categories of sex and gender. In fact, most of society is organized around these ideas. In other words, gender is an institutionalized system. And during our everyday lives we constantly categorize people based on their appearance and behavioral cues — gender is a system of categorization we use to understand our social world. People who challenge gender or sex binaries thus can face serious consequences, including discrimination and violence.

• Cecilia L. Ridgeway and Shelley J. Correll. 2004. “Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations.” Gender & Society 18(4): 510–31.
• R.W. Connell. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford University Press.
• Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook. 2009. “Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: ‘Gender Normals,’ Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality.” Gender & Society 23(4): 440–64.
• Lisa R. Miller and Eric Anthony Grollman. 2015. “The Social Costs of Gender Nonconformity for Transgender Adults: Implications for Discrimination and Health.” Sociological Forum 30(3): 809-831.

No doubt, the recent controversy in the Department of Health and Human Services isn’t the first time we’ve grappled with contested definitions of gender and sex in our political history — and it certainly won’t be the last.

Originally posted November 22, 2016.

For many Americans, this weekend is the time for food, football, and family we don’t see often. Given the heightened tensions surrounding the presidential election, social media is teeming with advice on how to constructively engage with friends and family who have different political views. Avoidance, wine, and crying is one strategy, but thinking about what family meals mean and actually engaging in constructive conversations about political issues may be more fruitful.

We often think of Thanksgiving as a time to have a family meal together and strengthen family bonds. But research shows that family dinner does not actually increase well-being in and of itself – it only works if the meal-time discussion is used to actually engage with those at the table and learn about their day-to-day lives. In other words, “polite” conversation may not be the best way to bring everyone together.

• Kelly Musick and Ann Meier. 2012. “Assessing Causality and Persistence in Associations Between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-Being.” Journal of Marriage and Family 74(3): 476–493.

We know that people avoid talking politics because they want to seem polite and avoid conflict. But this does not necessarily mean they don’t have political views. In fact, being “not political” is a cultural performance that people do with different styles. It takes work to not be political and those strategies can be overcome without necessarily causing conflict. In fact, a recent study found that having a 10-minute canvassing conversation about trans-related issues was associated with reduced prejudice, at least in the short term.

• David Broockman and Joshua Kalla. 2016. “Durably Reducing Transphobia: A Field Experiment on Door-to-door Canvassing.” Science 352(6282): 220-224.
• Nina Eliasoph. 1998. Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press.

For those of us who are academics, it is important to remember that engaging in these discussions does not mean spouting off your best summary of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony or Bonilla-Silva’s take on color-blind racism. We need to do as much, if not more, listening than we do talking, because listening to how others are thinking about and responding to the current political climate can help all of us better understand our shared situation. And if and when we do bring up social science theories and research, we should do it in a way that is approachable, not pedantic. As bell hooks argues, “Any theory that cannot be shared in everyday conversation cannot be used to educate the public.”

• bell hooks. 1991. “Theory as Liberatory Practice.” Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 4(1).
• Janice McCabe. 2013. “Making Theory Relevant: The Gender Attitude and Belief Inventory. Teaching Sociology 41(3): 282-293.

That’s not to say that academics cannot effectively draw on their experiences as teachers. There are many strategies we use in the classroom to teach things like race, gender, and class that can be useful outside of the classroom. Relying on personal examples and discussions about family histories instead of facts and figures is one example of how to do this. Focusing on experiences that you or your loved ones have had with racial discrimination, generational mobility, or gender role conflict can help them connect the social construction of race, class, and gender to concrete events and stories from their own lives.

• Katrina C. Hoop. 2009. “Students’ Lived Experiences as Text in Teaching the Sociological Imagination.” Teaching Sociology 37(1): 47-60.
• Jennifer C. Mueller. 2013. “Tracing Family, Teaching Race: Critical Race Pedagogy in the Millennial Sociology Classroom.” Teaching Sociology 41(2):172–87.
• Tre Wentling et al. 2008. “Teaching Transgender.” Teaching Sociology (36)1: 49-57.
• Shelly Tochluk. 2010. Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.

After years of debate, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — which sets minimum requirements for caseworkers handling state child custody proceedings involving Native children — was recently ruled unconstitutional by a Texas federal judge. The judge argued that ICWA violates constitutional rights to Equal Protection because it “elevates a child’s race over their best interest” — despite the fact that Native children are actually citizens of federally recognized tribes. Social science research helps us understand the historical context necessitating ICWA’s creation, with respect to the problematic history of child removal from Native communities as shaped by racialized, gendered, and cultural ideas.

The ICWA was enacted in 1978, a time when Native children were being removed from their homes and placed in foster care at staggering numbers under the guise of protecting children. At that time, 25-35% of Native children were removed from their homes by state child welfare or by private adoption companies. And the majority (about 85%) of these children were placed outside of their families and communities, even when relatives were willing to take them. Today, despite the minimal protections offered by the ICWA, Minnesota places more Native children in foster care than any other state, making up 20% of children in the system.

• Lila J. George. 1997. “Why the Need for the Indian Child Welfare Act?” Journal of Multicultural Social Work 5(3): 165-175.
• Margaret D. Jacobs. 2014. A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World. University of Nebraska Press.

The ICWA’s creation and implementation has not only been a response to child-removal through adoption, however. Even earlier, Native children were sent to government or Christian-run boarding schools where teachers forced children to abandon their distinct tribal cultures — they cut Native children’s hair, did not allow them to speak their native languages or participate in cultural practices, and enforced strict discipline through corporal punishment. The boarding school era prevented generations of Native people from learning (and passing on) parenting tools. This separation of families, along with the disruption to Native cultural and spiritual practices, has been linked to symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, increased exposure to physical violence, and substance abuse in Native communities.

• Brenda J. Child. Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940. University of Nebraska Press.
• Catherine Burnette. 2015. “Historical Oppression and Intimate Partner Violence Experienced by Indigenous Women in the United States: Understanding Connections.” Social Service Review 89(3): 531-563.

The removal of Native children is also couched in deep-set racialized, gendered, and cultural notions of family, specifically the white middle class ideal of the nuclear family, characterized by two married parents and children. Conversely, non-Native supporters of these adoption practices often relied on stereotypes of Native women as sexualized, unmarried, and thus unfit, which pathologized Native families as neglectful. They have also argued that each child’s best interests should be considered on an individual basis, rathering than acknowledging what tribes see as the importance of culture and identity, tribal rights, and belonging. In other words, supporters of Native adoption saw “disadvantaged” Native children that needed to be “rescued” by individual acts of goodwill (from white, middle class Americans).

• Margaret D. Jacobs. 2013. “Remembering the ‘Forgotten Child’: The American Indian Child Welfare Crisis.” American Indian Quarterly
• Dwanna Robertson. 2015. “Invisibility in the Color-Blind Era: Examining Legitimized Racism Against Indigenous Peoples.” American Indian Quarterly 39(2): 113-153.
• Kathryn A. Sweeney and Rachel L. Pollack. 2017. “Colorblind Individualism, Color Consciousness, and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Representations of Adoptee Best Interest in Newspaper Coverage of the Baby Veronica Case.” The Sociological Quarterly 58(4): 701-720.

So what will legal reconsideration of the Indian Child Welfare Act bring? Many tribes fear that the Texas ruling sets a dangerous precedent that could dismantle the federal laws put in place to correct historical injustices like the boarding school system. Other tribal leaders see the ruling as an attempt to destroy their right to political and cultural survival through their children, while simultaneously compromising efforts to heal from the wrongdoings inflicted upon tribal communities. In the context of the current political division over the treatment of immigrant children separated from their parents at the U.S. border, such concerns warrant serious attention.