The Society Pages

Where “Good” Work-Family Policies Go Wrong

Jordyn Wald at Discoveries — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:31:21 +0000

Jennifer L. Hook and Meiying Li, “National Work-Family Policies and Gender Earnings Inequality in 26 OCED Countries, 1999 to 2019,” Socius, 2025

Two women with young children sit at a table and speak into microphones. “Paid Parental Leave Committee Vote” by Seattle City Council is marked with CC0 1.0.

When women have children, they often earn less than women without kids. This is called the motherhood penalty, and it happens for many reasons. Mothers may step out of work for a time, cut back on hours, or pass up promotions to care for children. Employers may also assume that mothers are less committed to their jobs. In any event, the result is that mothers earn less than fathers and less than women without children, even when they have the same skills and education.

A new study by Jennifer Hook and Meiying Li asks whether family-friendly government policies can shrink this earnings gap. They looked at nearly 3 million workers in 26 mostly high-income democracies over a twenty-year period. Their focus was on two kinds of support: childcare spending and paid parental leave. The logic behind the emphasis on these two policies is straightforward – if parents have access to affordable childcare and paid leave, mothers can more effectively balance work and family responsibilities which should help narrow the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers as well as between men and women.

But the results are mixed. On the one hand, short paid leaves (six months or less) and public childcare policies that apply to both mothers and fathers seem to help mothers stay in the workforce without widening the pay gap. Mothers benefit because they can recover from childbirth, care for infants alongside their partners, and then return to work with support systems in place. Childcare spending also makes it easier for both parents to remain employed, rather than forcing women to choose between work and family.

On the other hand, when paid leave extends beyond six months, the story changes. Hook and Li find that in countries with long leave, the gender earnings gap widens – not only for mothers but for all women. Employers may start to see hiring or promoting women of childbearing age as risky, assuming the women will eventually take extended leave. As a result, women may be passed over for promotions, training, or equal pay, regardless of whether they have children. Long-leave policies also affect men: when leave is mostly taken by women, men may face stigma or financial penalties for taking time off, reinforcing the idea that caregiving is women’s work. This limits fathers’ involvement at home and deepens gender inequality both at work and in families.

These findings show that not all family policies work the same way – and that even the most well-meaning policies can have unintended and even negative impacts. Short leave and childcare help women participate in the labor force without penalty. Very long leave, while designed to help families, can unintentionally hurt women’s pay overall by reinforcing stereotypes about who will leave work and who will stay.

The bigger picture is that the motherhood penalty is not just about individual choices, but about how workplaces and policies treat women. Policies that encourage shared caregiving and quick re-entry into the workforce can help close the gap. But if policies signal that only women will step away from work for long stretches of time, they may deepen the very inequality they are meant to solve.

Some Updates from TSP | December 12th, 2025

Sara Kadoura at The Editors' Desk — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 18:22:50 +0000

Semester Roundup & Behind the Scenes

We’ve had a great fall semester at TSP, welcoming five new board members who share our mission to publish high-quality public sociology.

Back in October, a small but mighty crew got into the Halloween spirit for our Friday meeting.
Last weekend, we showed off our bowling skills (some more than others) with friends and family at our TSP winter party.
While we look ahead to the next semester, we also say farewell and thank you to our long-time managing editor Jake Otis. Read more about Jake, including some of his TSP highlights, in Best of Jake Otis.

A Look Ahead

As TSP board members finish up finals and wind down for winter break, here’s what you can expect from us:
- A new installment of our flagship “Discoveries” series every other week
- “Best of TSP” spotlights, featuring the board’s favorite articles we published this year
- A slower weekly roundup schedule, keeping you up to date on fresh content from TSP, our partners, and community pages
Friday board meetings will reconvene in late January, and with them our regularly scheduled programming.

From Minneapolis, the TSP board wishes you a happy and restful holiday season.

Best of Jake Otis

Anastasia Dulle and the TSP Board at TSP Specials — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 16:09:15 +0000

Photo of Jacob Otis smiling in front of a bookshelf.

Our intrepid graduate editor and longtime board member Jacob Otis will be signing off from TSP this winter after several years of outstanding leadership and service. Jake’s vision, enthusiasm, and care for his work and for the project of public sociology has been a driving force in the TSP board throughout these years.

In his public work for our site, Jake has covered topics like restorative justice, intimate partner violence, and social welfare. Behind the scenes, Jake has been faithfully managing all things organizational at TSP – scheduling, editing articles, finding photos, making videos, posting features, organizing holiday parties, leading weekly board meetings, and more. He is also the founding editor of TSP’s own American Journal of Unfinished Sociology =).

Outside of TSP, Jake has published articles in places like Social Work, Qualitative Social Work, and Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. He is also the Director of Restorative Programming at St. Croix Valley Restorative Services, a Research Associate and Trainer at the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking, a Sr. UX Researcher at gotoresearch, and a father to four young children.

Jake has successfully defended his PhD dissertation in the School of Social Work and will begin the new year as Dr. Otis. We will miss him here at TSP, but are excited for his next steps!

Check out some highlights from Jake’s tenure with us at TSP – the “best of” Jake Otis – below!

Social Expectations of Forgiveness (World Suffering, 2025)
Social Isolation and “Loneliness” of Young Adults (TROT, 2025)
What Do We Know About Child Tax Credits? (TROT, 2022, 2023, 2025)
Just a Few Bad Apples? Social Science Research on Police Complaints (TROT, 2022)
Surging Strikes (TROT, 2022)
Domestic Violence and the Pandemic Lockdown (Discoveries, 2021)
Mental Health Co-Response Teams (TROT, 2021)

Anastasia Dulle is a second year PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests revolve around contemporary intersections of religion, culture, and politics. She has been a member of The Society Pages‘ student board since 2024.

How siblings support transgender youth’s gender identity and change family gender norms

Katherine Alexander at Council on Contemporary Families — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Untitled by mcconnmama licensed by Pixaby

Discussions of trans youth and their families typically focus on relationships with parents: how parents allow, promote, or discourage particular gender identities and expressions. But a family is often more than parents, and relationships with other family members, such as siblings, can be especially important for young people. Correcting an over-emphasis on parents in existing research, my colleagues and I wanted to hear from trans youth about the role their siblings played in shaping their family experience. We interviewed 52 trans youth and asked them what their siblings did and did not do about their gender identities.

Our new study discovered trans youth often identify their siblings as supportive family members. In our interviews, we found that siblings affirm the identities of trans youth by being “chill” when they come out, using correct names and pronouns, and standing up to people who misgender their trans siblings. In turn, we highlight the roles siblings play in challenging cisnormativity—social norms that ignore or harm trans people.

“Chill” responses to coming out

Disclosing a transgender identity to family members is often distressing for youth, and fears of family rejection contribute to anxieties around coming out. Many of our interviewees particularly expected and experienced rejection or stigmatization from parents when they came out as transgender or nonbinary. But Leaf (18, Asian American, trans man, he/him) recalled that his oldest sister was “completely chill” since he told her he is a man. (All names here are pseudonyms participants chose for themselves.) Unlike when he came out to his parents, when Leaf came out to his sister, it was “like telling her, ‘Oh yeah, I dye my hair this color.’ ‘Okay.’”

Leaf is not the only one we talked with who has a “chill” sibling. As Lorren (18, Chicana, nonbinary, they/he/she) explained, “[my sister] knows who I am and she doesn’t care…As long as I’m me, it’s fine.” Leaf, Lorreen, and others we interviewed agree: they felt safe to be themselves around their siblings, because their siblings thought it was no big deal.

Navigating cisnormativity

For many of our participants, siblings also actively affirmed the gender identity of trans youth. For instance, siblings would call trans youth by their chosen name and pronouns. In doing so, they challenged cisnormativity within their family.

Siblings also stood up to parents when they tried to control how trans youth expressed their gender. When parents would criticize how their trans youth expressed themselves through hair styles, makeup, and clothing, siblings sometimes got involved. They discouraged parents from being too controlling and instead encouraged parents to respect the authority of trans youth themselves.

But in some families, outright challenges to cisnormativity did not feel safe to participants. Clay (16, Hispanic/White, trans man, he/him), who has a transphobic dad, explained that he asked his siblings and mom to deadname (use his name assigned at birth) and misgender him around their dad. And yet Clay’s siblings also use his chosen name and gender-affirming pronouns when their dad is not around, which Clay liked because “they know the truth” about his gender.

Trans youth and their siblings strategically navigate gender recognition to promote the safety of trans youth within their family of origin. Safety was an important concern for our participants, who all had negative or mixed relationships with their parents, because of the high rates of homelessness and housing instability for trans youth. But even when it is not safe to be completely out in a family, trans youth found partners in their siblings to feel less alone.

Standing up to others

The support trans youth reported receiving from their siblings also extended beyond the family. Siblings encouraged other people to resist cisnormativity by correcting individuals who deadname or misgender trans youth. For example, Devon (18, Hispanic, nonbinary, they/them) explained that it can be hard for people to use they/them pronouns, but their sisters “are very adamant about correcting people on my behalf.” Even though Devon doesn’t like correcting people because they are shy, their sisters would tell people “It’s they. They’re nonbinary. It’s they.” By correcting how other people refer to trans youth, siblings challenge the assumption that gender is binary and that everyone is cisgender.

What makes siblings important?

The family has been described by some gender scholars as a “gender factory” because of the important role parents play in how their children perform gender, either by reinforcing traditional forms of masculinity and femininity for children assigned male or female at birth, or by encouraging and embracing children’s nonconforming gender expressions or trans identities. The findings in our study highlight the part siblings might play in this “gender factory.” Because of the research design and sample selection in this study, nearly all participants had parents who were unsupportive or ambivalent (a mix of supportive and unsupportive) toward their transgender, nonbinary, or gender diverse identities. However, about 81% of our participants had at least one supportive sibling.

Our study encourages more attention to children and youth as agents of change in families. Understanding how gender norms shift requires looking beyond parents and recognizing the important role of siblings. Even though children and youth are often seen as disempowered within families, our findings show that siblings challenge cisnormativity and encourage others to resist oppressive gender norms.

Katherine Alexander (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Rice University. Her research focuses on gender, health and medicine, and family. In particular, Katherine’s research examines the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in navigating and resisting cisnormativity and heteronormativity in areas like family and medicine using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her research has been published in the Journal of Homosexuality, Social Science and Medicine, and Gender & Society. Follow her on Substack @ksalexander.

TSP Friday Roundup | December 5th, 2025

Sara Kadoura at The Editors' Desk — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 19:23:13 +0000

New & Noteworthy

Disability and (In)Accessibility in American Churches by Anastasia Dulle presents social science research on the legal and theological justifications for ableism in Christian churches. {3 min read}
Who’s to Blame for Climate Change? by S. Ericson details a new survey study that reveals how media framing can shape perceptions of climate change. {3 min read}
Check out our Media Report by Mallory Harrington for recent news featuring social science experts. Last week, Scott Schieman on the state of AI attitudes in the workforce; Musa al-Gharbi on higher education’s “awokening”; and Murat Haner, Justin Pickett, and Melissa Sloan on the shifting target of political violence. Plus, reflections on the life and career of medical sociologist Alice Wong. {4 min read}

From the Archives

The president’s xenophobic remarks this week renewed political attacks on Somali-Americans. The population is also a target of increased ICE actions in the Twin Cities. This piece – #BlackMuslimsResist: Minnesota Somalis Fight Back – from our partners at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies places this moment in historical context, reminding us how the president’s 2017 “Muslim ban” caused pain and inspired resistance in the Twin Cities. {3 min read}
Another TSP article from 2023 highlights how immigration arrests affect the children who witness them, shaping their future relationship with law enforcement. {3 min read}

Disability and (In)Accessibility in American Churches

Anastasia Dulle at There's Research on That — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 22:52:47 +0000

A gothic style church door, with stone steps leading inside. Gothic Church Entrance with Ornate Wooden Doors by Zak H is licensed under CC BY 2.0 in pexels.

Religious institutions such as churches, mosques, religious schools, and religious organizations are not required to follow Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Recently, reports have suggested this poses a barrier to voting for many disabled Americans, since churches make up 20% of polling places nationally. While inaccessibility is certainly not unique to religious institutions, these barriers evoke important questions regarding the experiences of disabled Americans in religious spaces.

ADA National Network. 2018. Religious Entities Under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Amos Yong. 2011. “Disability from the Margins to the Center: Hospitality and Inclusion in the Church.” Journal of Religion, Disability, and Health 15(4), p. 339-350.
Suzanne Perea Burns, Rochelle J. Mendonca, and Roger O. Smith. 2024. “Accessibility of Public Buildings in the United States: A Cross-Sectional Survey.” Disability and Society, 39(11), p. 2988-3003.

How Accessible are Religious Congregations?

The state of accessibility varies widely among religious congregations around the country. (Notably, most research on congregational accessibility in the U.S. focuses on Christian churches and does not include other faith communities). Even though religious institutions are not required to follow ADA accessibility standards, many congregations have become more accessible in the decades since the ADA was signed into law. Larger churches typically have more accessibility features (like ramps into buildings or up to altars, accessible toilets, sign language interpreters, or large print materials) than smaller congregations. Additionally, churches whose leaders received some kind of training about supporting people with disabilities tend to be significantly more accessible. While the popularity of livestreaming services online, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, has made many churches’ teachings more widely available, congregations that lack other forms of accommodation continue to be physically inaccessible to many.

Jared H. Stewart-Ginsburg, et al. 2024. “A Preliminary National Survey of Accessible Features of Churches in the United States.” Review of Religious Research 66(4), p. 631-648.
Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson. 2022. At the Gates: Disability, Justice, and the Churches. Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd.

Other Barriers to Participation and Inclusion

Many people with disabilities also experience significant social barriers to inclusion in religious communities. The prejudice against people with disabilities that exists throughout society influences norms and interactions in congregations as well, often in forms of paternalism or exclusion. Additionally, illness and disability are often treated as sinful. This is visible in unsolicited prayers for the supernatural healing of disabled people, teachings that people would be cured of their disabilities if they had more faith, and worship songs that celebrate ideas such as there being “no lame” in heaven. The degree to which religious congregations accept and include people with disabilities profoundly impacts disabled people’s experiences and perceptions of the community, their place within it, and even the religion more broadly.

Richard Hobbs et al. 2016. “Individuals with Disabilities: Critical Factors that Facilitate Integration in Christian Religious Communities.” Journal of Rehabilitation 88(1), p. 36-46.
Melinda Jones Ault, Belva C. Collins, and Erik W. Carter. 2013. “Factors Associated with Participation in Faith Communities for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities and Their Families.” Journal of Religion, Disability, and Health 17(2), p. 184-211.
Whitehead, Andrew. 2025. “Christian Nationalism and Ableism in the United States.” Social Problems, pp. 1-19.

Efforts toward Inclusion and Reform

Individuals and congregations who have advocated for inclusion and justice for people with disabilities have emphasized the need for religious communities to take on new understandings and theologies of disability. These efforts often draw on resources from their faith traditions about the inherent value of people with disabilities and the need for their inclusion and care. Such advocacy typically portrays disability as a social issue rather than an individual issue, which compels people to view disability in terms of social justice rather than charity or pity.

Nancy L. Eisland. 1994. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability. Abingdon Press.
Amy Kenny. 2022. My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church. Brazos Press.

Getting a Degree in a System not Built for Them: Few Student Parents get Help from their Parents when Paying for College

Renee Ryberg and Arielle Kuperberg at Council on Contemporary Families — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Report

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Renee Ryberg, Child Trends, and Arielle Kuperberg, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

April 2, 2025

One in five students at community and four-year colleges in the United States are raising children while trying to earn their degrees—and this number may grow as access to abortion becomes more limited. Many student parents find themselves in precarious economic positions, and are often on their own to pay for college. As we found in a new study of students at two public four-year universities, fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) student parents got financial help from their own parents to pay for college tuition or living expenses. By contrast, nearly two-thirds (64%) of childless students received financial help from their parents.

The higher education landscape continues to evolve, serving a more diverse student body. The average college student today is no longer the carefree, wealthy 18–22-year-old highlighted in American movies. Although higher education—and the economic benefits that come with it—are available to more people, there is a fundamental mismatch between how colleges were designed and the realities of many of today’s students. Higher education was designed for students to depend on their families, with students’ parents largely footing the bill.

But, as our new study in The Journal of Higher Education finds, that is often not the reality students with children face. Although student parents tend to be older than students without children, differences in age or background (race, parents’ education, region, gender, grew up in US) don’t explain all of the gap in help from their parents. When examining students of the same age and background, we found that the odds that a student parent received help from their parents to pay for college was one-third of that of a student without children.

This disparity puts barriers to graduation in front of the 3.1 million undergraduate student parents pursuing higher education to better the lives of themselves and their children. Instead of getting help from their parents, student parents must draw on a unique and complex set of resources to pay for tuition and living expenses while navigating a college system that was not designed for them.

Examining how Student Parents Pay for College

To examine how student parents pay for college, we analyzed unique survey data collected in 2017 from 2,830 students at two regional public universities. Of those who completed the survey, 338, or 12 percent, identified as parents—a rate comparable to the national rate of student parents at public four-year colleges and universities.

More than half of the student parents that we surveyed used student loans, Pell grants, or money earned from a job to pay for college—the same resources that many of their fellow students without children rely on. But, parents and nonparents rely on these resources to different degrees. And, student parents can’t count on their families to pay for higher education in the same way that childless students do—and the way the system was designed.

Why don’t students with children get support from their parents when paying for college? After all, they have additional expenses and responsibilities compared to students without children.

One reason is that students who have children are more likely to be considered “adults,” so their families may believe that they should be more financially independent. Or, their families may want to support them through college – but may not be able to do so. Student parents tend to come from families with fewer resources, so their parents may not have extra cash on hand to help them with rent or tuition.

So how do student parents pay for college, if they aren’t getting help from their parents?

Instead of Relying on Support from their Parents, Student Parents Rely on Support from Romantic Partners and the Government

Many student parents rely on support from romantic partners, including spouses: in our survey we found that 43 percent of student parents used a partner’s money to pay for educational and living expenses, compared with less than 10 percent of students without children.

The support that student parents received from their partners didn’t necessarily make up for not getting financial support from their parents, though. The proportion of student parents who received support from either their parents or partnerswas less than the percent of students without children who received support from their parents.

Student parents also turn to Pell Grants—a federal grant program for students with low incomes or who have parents with low incomes. Two-thirds (66%) of student parents in our study used Pell Grants to pay for college. Once background characteristics are taken into account, the odds that a student parent used Pell Grants was more than three times that of students without children.

Policy Pitfalls for Student Parents

As student parents pursue higher education, they navigate a funding environment at odds with the realities of their lives.

Pell grants do not typically cover the full cost of tuition, much less living expenses. Perhaps because of the relatively low value of Pell grants, and because students with children could not rely on their parents’ financial support, we found student parents took out higher amounts of student loans. They were also more likely to work while in college.

Juggling a job, child care, and college while also navigating a complex financial situation makes it harder to complete a degree. Indeed, research shows that although student parents have GPAs as high as students without children, they are more likely to leave college without a degree.

But completing a college degree can really pay off for student parents—and their children. One study focused on single mothers found that those who completed a four-year degree were one-third as likely as those who had a high school degree to live below the poverty line, and earned an additional $625,000 across their lifetime. Single mothers who completed a college degree were also less likely to use public assistance programs and contributed more tax revenue.

So what can we do to facilitate success for student parents?

Within the financial aid system, it is critical that financial aid officers are trained to best support students with children. Child care expenses can be factored into loan and grant packages, but many financial aid officers do not communicate this information to students. Pell grants can also be expanded to cover a larger share of tuition and living expenses.

Beyond the financial aid system, many student parents are eligible for federal anti-poverty programs aimed at families with children, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and tax credits including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the Child Tax Credit (CTC), and the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC). Navigation services on campus can help student parents access this disparate patchwork of supports.

Although many student parents turn to these programs to make ends meet, they are often penalized for being in school. Many of these programs are structured in ways that prevent student parents from receiving full benefits. Work requirements in some states do not fully count going to school. And, other programs, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, provide lower benefits to workers who earn the least money.

Schools can also help lower costs for student parents by expanding affordable child care offerings to their students, and building affordable family housing on campus, as most colleges do not allow students with children to move into campus housing or have on-campus child care for students.

Training financial aid officers on the needs of student parents, expanding Pell funding, reforming anti-poverty programs to value the long-term investment of pursuing higher education, and building infrastructure on campus that supports parents could help support student parents to complete their degrees—increasing their long-term economic stability and self-sufficiency—which will benefit their children as well.

Acknowledgements

The study discussed in this briefing paper is published in The Journal of Higher Education. We would like to thank JR Moller and Stephanie Pruitt for their research assistance. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. 1947603, and a University of North Carolina at Greensboro Advancing Research Summer Award Grant and Faculty Research Grant, as administered by the Office of Sponsored Programs.

Links

Brief report: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2025/04/02/student-parents-brief-report/
Full study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00221546.2025.2480024/

For more information, please contact:

Renee Ryberg, Senior Research Scientist, Child Trends
rryberg@chidltrends.org

Website: https://www.childtrends.org/staff/renee-ryberg
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-ryberg-8b2a1a2b/

Who’s to Blame for Climate Change?

S Ericson at Discoveries — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:17:01 +0000

Spaiser, Viktoria, Kris Dunn, Penelope Milner, and Joseph Moore, “The Effects of Communicating Climate Change Threat: Mobilizing Anger and Authoritarian Affect Displacement,” Environmental Sociology, 2024

A dense crowd of people hold signs protesting for climate action. “School Strike 4 Climate protest in Sydney (47329994842)” by School Strike is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Does climate change make you angry? In a recent study, researchers from the University of Leeds in England used a survey experiment to examine how people react when informed about the threat that climate change poses. They wanted to know whether people would react differently if presented with emotionally neutral information versus information designed to make them feel threatened.

All participants in the study lived in the UK. One group watched a relatively unemotional video about climate change produced by a scientific institute. This video explained atmospheric phenomena using diagrams. The other group watched a video about Welsh villages that could become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. The second video was produced by an environmental activist group and emphasized the human toll of climate change. The study’s authors asked participants to write how they felt about climate change. The participants who saw the second video were more likely to indicate that they felt threatened.

Participants were asked to rate their level of anger about climate change on a scale of 0 to 100. The paper’s authors also asked people whether they would be willing to do various things in order to fight climate change, such as advocating for policy change, buying an electric car, or eating less meat.

The group who watched the second video, about villages that could be destroyed, were significantly angrier than the group who watched the first video, which was more abstract. The second group was also more likely to say they were willing to do something to fight climate change. Previous studies had found similar results.

The researchers also wanted to know if and how people’s attitudes about authoritarianism would affect their anger levels and willingness to act. To measure authoritarian attitudes, the authors used a scale that asked people to rate their level of agreement with a long list of statements, including “it is important … to maintain traditional values and ways of thinking,” and “strong force is necessary against threatening groups.” Overall, people with more authoritarian attitudes were less angry and less willing to act. When exposed to the threatening video, in fact, these people instead showed an increase in authoritarian attitudes rather than increasing their anger or willingness to act. The authors hypothesize that when exposed to threatening information about climate change, people with authoritarian attitudes become angrier at “non-conforming groups” rather than people in positions of power. For example, the more authoritarian respondents were more likely to support harsher penalties for criminals.

This research shows that people’s pre-existing attitudes can have a big impact – not only on how they interpret new information, but also on what they might choose to do in response.

Who Cares and Caring for Whom? Unpaid Caregiving by Gender and Sexual Identity

Zhe (Meredith) Zhang at Council on Contemporary Families — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 19:28:52 +0000

Reprinted from the Council on Contemporary Families Brief Reports

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Zhe (Meredith) Zhang, California State University, Los Angeles

Many people have the experience of providing care to family and friends with serious health conditions or limitations. Most people will provide such unpaid care to their loved ones at some point in their lives. In 2020, about 53 million U.S. adults or 21.3% of the population provided unpaid care such as preparing meals, providing transportation, managing medications, dressing, or bathing a loved one with health limitations or disabilities in the past year. This number of caregivers will continue to rise with the aging American population as most of those receiving such care are older adults.

In a class of mine, I asked the students who would come to their minds when they thought about unpaid caregivers. Most of them mentioned a wife, daughter, sister, or mother. Their observations are consistent with the established research, which has found that in general, women are more likely to be providing care than men.

However, one limitation of this prior research is that it seldom considers sexual orientation. A burgeoning literature suggests that sexual minorities may provide more care than heterosexuals, but many questions remain unanswered. Does it mean that gay and bisexual men are more likely to provide care than heterosexual men? Are women’s higher caregiving rates only prominent among heterosexuals? Do sexual minority men have similar caregiving rates as sexual minority women?

We need to consider sexual orientation in a study of caregiving for several reasons. First, the number of Americans identifying as a sexual minority (e.g., gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer) has continued to increase for the past decade (Jones 2022). Second, gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults have lower partnership and childbearing rates than heterosexuals, which may lead to different caregiving networks and demands (Croghan et al. 2014; Ismail et al. 2020). For instance, sexual minorities’ lower partnership rate relative to heterosexuals may mean that they have fewer demands of providing care to an aging partner.

In a paper recently published in Demography (Zhang et al. 2024), my coauthors and I examined how unpaid caregiving is associated with both gender and sexual identity. One of the main findings in our paper is that not all men have lower caregiving rates relative to women. It is only among heterosexuals that we see a lower caregiving rate among men than women. Gay and bisexual men have similar caregiving rates as lesbian and bisexual women. Heterosexual men’s caregiving rate is much lower than that of bisexual men. This low caregiving rate for heterosexual men may reflect their stricter adherence to gender norms around division of labor (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005), which emphasize that men are responsible for paid work and women are responsible for domestic work such as caregiving. On the other hand, gay and bisexual men in the U.S. tend to hold less conservative views on gender (Denise 2019), which may help explain their higher caregiving rates.

Next, we examined whether the association between unpaid caregiving, gender, and sexual identity varied by partnership status (i.e., whether one is married/in a relationship). We found that unpartnered bisexual men were more likely to provide care than unpartnered heterosexual men, unpartnered gay men, and partnered bisexual men. Bisexual people generally report less social support from family, friends, and LGBT+ communities than heterosexuals and gay/lesbian adults (Dodge et al. 2012; Gorman et al. 2015). Additionally, bisexual men may experience unique stressors related to the perceptions that bisexual men are either not fully “out” as gay men or are unfairly tied to straight privilege (Anderson and McCormack 2016). Feeling even more isolated, unpartnered bisexual men may be particularly incentivized to provide care to a loved one to facilitate more social connection.

To further understand the experiences of these caregivers, we also examined caregivers’ relationship to the care recipient. Among the caregivers, we found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual caregivers generally reported less spouse/partner caregiving than heterosexual men and women, likely because they are less likely to have a partner than heterosexuals. The absence of a partner probably makes sexual minorities more available to care for other loved ones, such as grandparents. We found that sexual minority caregivers were more likely to provide care to a grandparent relative to their heterosexual peers. We also found that heterosexual, gay, lesbian, and bisexual caregivers had similar rates of parental caregiving. This echoes prior work, which showed that sexual minority adult children continued to provide care for older parents even when parents disapproved of their sexuality (Cronin et al. 2011; Reczek and Umberson 2016).

Additionally, we find higher rates of friend caregiving among sexual minority caregivers, particularly among lesbian women. Among the caregivers, nearly a quarter of lesbian women were caring for a friend compared to 14% of heterosexual women. In additional analysis that considers partnership status, we also found that gay men without a partner had higher rates of caring for friends (33%) than unpartnered heterosexual (21%) and bisexual men (15%). In general, prior work has shown that sexual minorities, many of whom are alienated from families of origin, have long built families of choice with whom they share no biological or legal relationship (Lavender-Stott and Allen 2023; MetLife 2010). Research has shown that sexual minorities often provide care to friends that are part of these chosen families. During the HIV/AIDS epidemic, most people infected with HIV identified a gay friend as both their primary caregiver and family (Fredriksen-Goldsen 2007). Taken together, our results suggest that caregiving for a friend may be particularly common among lesbian women and unpartnered gay men.

Overall, our study provides a comprehensive overview of caregiving rates by gender, sexual identity, and partnership status among American adults. We find that women’s higher caregiving rate relative to men’s is only prominent among heterosexuals. Caregiving rates do not differ by sexuality among women, but bisexual men (especially those without a partner) have a much higher caregiving rate than heterosexual men. We also find that among the caregivers, adults of varying gender and sexual identity groups may provide care to different social ties (e.g., parents, partners, or friends). Altogether, our findings help advance understanding of caregiving and changing family ties in an era of population aging and increasing diversity in sexual identities.

For More Information, Please Contact:

Zhe (Meredith) Zhang
Assistant Professor of Sociology
California State University, Los Angeles
mzhang19@calstatela.edu

Links

Brief report: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2024/05/23/unpaid-caregiving-brief-report/
Press release: https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporaryfamilies/2024/05/23/unpaid-caregiving-press-release/

About CCF

The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions For more information, contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, coontzs@msn.com.

References

Anderson, E., & McCormack, M. (2016). The changing dynamics of bisexual men’s lives: Social research perspectives. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature.

Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society, 19, 829–859.

Croghan, C. F., Moone, R. P., & Olson, A. M. (2014). Friends, family, and caregiving among midlife and older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults. Journal of Homosexuality, 61, 79–102.

Cronin, A., Ward, R., Pugh, S., King, A., & Price, E. (2011). Categories and their consequences: Understanding and supporting the caring relationships of older lesbian, gay and bisexual people. International Social Work, 54, 421–435.

Denise, E. J. (2019). Americans’ gender attitudes at the intersection of sexual orientation and gender. Journal of Homosexuality, 66, 141–172.

Dodge, B., Schnarrs, P. W., Reece, M., Goncalves, G., Martinez, O., Nix, R., . . . Fortenberry, J. D. (2012). Community involvement among behaviourally bisexual men in the midwestern USA: Experiences and perceptions across communities. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 14, 1095–1110.

Fredriksen-Goldsen, K. I. (2007). HIV/AIDS caregiving: Predictors of well-being and distress. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 18(3–4), 53–73.

Gorman, B. K., Denney, J. T., Dowdy, H., & Medeiros, R. A. (2015). A new piece of the puzzle: Sexual orientation, gender, and physical health status. Demography, 52, 1357–1382.

Ismail, M., Hammond, N. G., Wilson, K., & Stinchcombe, A. (2020). Canadians who care: Social networks and informal caregiving among lesbian, gay, and bisexual older adults in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 91, 299–316.

Jones, J. M. (2022, February 17). LGBT Identification in U.S. Ticks Up to 7.1%. Gallup News. Retrieved from https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx

Lavender‐Stott, E. S., & Allen, K. R. (2023). Not alone: Family experiences across the life course of single, baby boom sexual‐minority women. Family Relations, 72, 140–158.

MetLife Mature Market Institute. (2010). Out and aging: The MetLife study of lesbian and gay baby boomers. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 6, 40–57.

Reczek, C., & Umberson, D. (2016). Greedy spouse, needy parent: The marital dynamics of gay, lesbian, and heterosexual intergenerational caregivers. Journal of Marriage and Family, 78, 957–974.

Zhang, Z., Smith-Johnson, M. & Gorman, B. K. (2024). Who cares? unpaid caregiving by sexual identity, gender, and partnership status among U.S. adults.” Demography, DOI 10.1215/00703370-11145841.

Clippings | November 24th, 2025 | TSP Media Report

Mallory Harrington at Clippings — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 21:49:20 +0000

Alice Wong–writer, disability rights advocate, and 2024 MacArthur Genius–recently passed away at the age of 51. Wong earned a master’s degree in medical sociology from UC-San Francisco in 2004 and is known for her prolific writing on her own experiences of discrimination growing up in Indiana with muscular dystrophy, life-long work amplifying the stories of others, and policy advocacy against laws that overlooked the needs of people with disabilities. In 2014, she founded the Disability Visibility Project, which collected hundreds of oral histories about the lives of disabled Americans. This story was covered by the New York Times, Teen Vogue, and LGBTQ Nation.

Alice Wong

Scott Schieman (Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto) and Alexander Wilson (Sociology PhD Student at the University of Toronto) wrote an article for The Conversation on whether Canadian workers think AI will displace them. They found mixed opinions. Among Canadians who thought job loss was likely, they found concern over corporate greed and loss of dignity and respect for workers. Others felt more confident that the market would adapt and adjust roles to fit new technologies. “Understanding worker attitudes toward automation is a crucial part of studying AI’s broader impact on work and society,” Schieman and Wilson wrote. “If large segments of the workforce feel threatened or left behind by AI, we risk not just economic disruption but a loss of trust in institutions and technological progress.”

Scott Schieman and Alexander Wilson

Musa al-Gharbi (Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University) spoke at a Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education event at Tufts University on how liberal elites have gained “a lot more influence over society and culture, but the consequences of that are not what we might have hoped or have expected.” Al-Gharbi described that elites focus on “symbolic change more than substantive change” and that the ways they engage in political action can be off-putting: “During these periods of Awokening, we become much more militant about mocking, demonizing, and censoring people who disagree with us, even for views that we adopted five minutes ago,” he said. This story was covered by TuftsNow.

Musa al-Gharbi

Murat Haner (Assistant Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University), Justin Pickett (Professor of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany), and Melissa Sloan (Professor of Sociology & Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, University of South Florida) wrote an article for The Conversation on U.S. political violence. In the 1970s, the bulk of political violence was aimed at property, now the targets are specific people. In a survey study, the authors found that belief in white nationalism was the strongest predictor for support of political violence and argued that “white nationalism poses substantial danger to U.S. political stability.”

Murat Haner, Justin Pickett & Melissa Sloan

TSP Friday Roundup | November 21st, 2025

Sara Kadoura at The Editors' Desk — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:04:07 +0000

New & Noteworthy

In Violence and Detained Immigrants’ Access to Justice, Anastasia Dulle presents new research from Mirian G. Martinez-Aranda detailing the unique barriers to justice faced by detained immigrants marked for deportation in America. {3 min read}
Check out our Media Report by Mallory Harrington for recent news featuring social science experts. This week, Francesco Duina on why we tolerate inequality; Stephen Whitehead on a masculinity non-crisis; Bailey Brown on parental stress caused by school choice decisions; Willy Pedersen on the link between alcohol consumption and earning potential; and Victor Onyilor Achem on the violent consequences of a cattle-grazing ban in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. {4 min read}

From the Archives

Trump has signed a bill to release the Epstein files after months of controversy and legal fighting. Our article from 2019 looks at how laws and legal proceedings shape cultural understanding of what constitutes sexual assault or harassment. {3 min read}
Wicked: For Good hits theatres today. Stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are on a press tour to publicize the sequel to last year’s blockbuster Wicked. This 2015 piece from our partners at Sociological Images discusses how big publicity might inflate the movie’s long-term success in theatres. {5 min read}

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

Contexts published an essay by Laurel R. Davis-Delano and Stephanie A. Fryberg responding to the publication’s summer 2025 cover design. The authors write that the cover image – a tipi – and accompanying title – “Erasures and Defiance” – contribute to the “elimination, erasure, and dehumanization” of Native Americans. Contexts has issued an apology for the cover. {9 min read}

Council on Contemporary Families

Alicia M. Walker talked to Christina J. Cross about her new book, Inherited Inequality: Why Opportunity Gaps Persist between Black and White Youth Raised in Two-Parent Families for CCF’s “3Qs” series. {5 min read}

Letter from the Editors: Big Endings, New Beginnings

Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn at Contexts — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 15:48:56 +0000

There is beauty in an ending, the serene light at dusk. This issue is the last of our editorship, the last print edition of Contexts, and in that sense, a crescendo of conversations spanning 25 years.

For us, print offers a kind of tactile intimacy. We encourage you to slide your fingers across the words as you enjoy the social worlds you encounter. Starting with the next issue, Contexts will move to a fully digital format. The transition will change how we gather, but not why we do it. The spirit of the magazine—curiosity and courage to champion a sociology for the public—will thrive in new ways.

Along for the ride are some stylish writers. Owen Whooley draws attention to a “warrior mentality” and “masculine police culture” to explain why officers think that mental health work is not “real” police work. Even if we send officers to mental health school, the curriculum is corrupted by stereotypes and jokes that “dilute the lessons of crisis intervention training.”

Religion also goes back to school. In public education, “one side speaks of God, morality, liberty, and the restoration of American values, the other of democracy, pluralism, church-state separation, and value erosion.” Where will this tug-of-war between “Christian nation” and “pluralist America” take us?

For Caroline Hanley, the answer might be to a conflict resolution center that uses restorative justice to heal divisions. Hanley zooms in on public sector work in New York to examine “democratic institutions under attack” (sad fact: fewer than a quarter of Americans trust their government).

When school and class let out, it’s time to get a job. Nicole Christine Muffit wonders, “If someone offered you a job where you could be your own boss, work from home, set your own hours, and make as much money as you want, wouldn’t you take it?” Sounds tempting, but in the multi-level marketing company she studied, the promise proves “ultimately false.”

After work, dim the lights and turn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wonder Woman, The Matrix, or Fifty Shades of Gray. Whatever your pleasure, these have something unexpected in common: They expose viewers to bondage, discipline/domination, submission/sadism, and masochism (BDSM) practices that involve power exchange and control. Enjoyed by at least five million people in Canada and the United States, BDSM is not about “discovering something entirely new” but recognizing a part of yourself that has “always been there.”

If you know Contexts, then you can appreciate that our signature “4 Rs”—work that is rigorous, relevant, readable, and rad—animate every page of the magazine. Our writers will also take you to No Kings protests in Ohio, gay bars in Kansas City, and a “colorblind” Brazil. Essayists expose police interactions with trans and gender nonconforming people, global public opinion about abortion, pain in sexual encounters, elder food insecurity, and emerging facets of the future of academic publishing. You’ll read conversations with past editors Fabio Rojas and Rashawn Ray—and with us! Anchoring it all is a thought piece by Daniel F. Chambliss on seeking out top-tier peers.

As we turn the page from print to digital, our editorial team dedicates this issue to every contributor who trusted us with your words. To every reader who found something here that moved you. And most of all, to the indefatigable belief that ideas about and for the public matter.

Endings are never just endings; they are an invitation for what comes next. We are not closing a door so much as walking through it into the light of a new day.

–Amin Ghaziani, University of California-Santa Barbara, and Seth Abrutyn, University of British Columbia

The outgoing team: co-editor Amin Ghaziani, managing editor Letta Page, and co-editor Seth Abrutyn with mascot Baby Yoda.

Christopher R. Matthews on methods, theory, Simone Weil, and more

Kyle Green at Give Theory A Chance — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:55:27 +0000

In this episode we are joined once again by Dr. Christopher R. Matthews from the School of Science and Technology at Nottingham Trent University. In this wide-ranging conversation Christopher discusses the co-production of knowledge, radical honesty in the methods section, finding inspiration in the work of Simone Weil , and conceiving of research as sacred.

Legal Violence and Detained Immigrants’ Access to Justice

Anastasia Dulle at Discoveries — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:07:18 +0000

Mirian G Martinez-Aranda, “Precarious Legal Patchworking: Detained Immigrants' Access to Justice,” Social Problems, 2025

Mirian G Martinez-Aranda, “Precarious Legal Patchworking: Detained Immigrants’ Access to Justice,” Social Problems, 2025

A wall of secure fencing surrounds a detention center. “Detention Center Fencing” by D-Stanley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

With U.S. immigration raids and detentions on the rise, more people are navigating a complex and hostile immigration court system. In a new study, Mirian Martinez-Aranda interviewed 55 formerly detained immigrants in southern California to understand how detainees navigate this system and seek justice. Her interviews, conducted with immigrants detained just before the latest wave of enforcement (2015-2018), are as revealing as they are disconcerting.

Detained immigrants in the United States face systemic barriers to justice. For example, U.S. immigration law does not guarantee the right to legal counsel or representation in immigration court. Most immigrants cannot afford legal counsel, and the resources that are available are overburdened and often unreliable. The paperwork and legal jargon bound up in the immigration court system are also complicated, which puts immigrants who do not speak English at an extreme disadvantage. As one interviewee described,

“We did not have the knowledge to fill out paperwork … Even requests to make a doctor’s appointment had to be in English. They [ICE staff] have dictionaries but won’t lend them. A few of us have dictionaries, so we work together to try to translate phrases to ask for what was needed. But it was very difficult.”

These barriers can delay and deny justice while undermining due process protections. Martinez-Aranda interviewed one man whose time in detention was extended by a year because of the time it took to find an interpreter, since he was unable to communicate his case for asylum without one.

Martinez-Aranda found that to cope with these barriers, detained immigrants cobbled together resources from whatever sources they could find. Some received support from relatives, advocacy groups, and other detainees who had gained more familiarity with the legal system. Some sought assistance from lawyers, although they were difficult to contact and would sometimes cheat or abandon their clients. As one interviewee stated, “I was detained a long time, and I saw many people get taken advantage [of] by attorneys that took the money and never came back.” Still other detainees were forced to represent themselves, which is usually unsuccessful. Together, these strategies invariably complicated or delayed cases.

The U.S. immigration court system systematically obstructs immigrants in a way that Martinez-Aranda describes as “legal violence.” These barriers to justice are heightened for those who are already the most marginalized: people with low education, low incomes, little knowledge of English, and little community support. The recent crackdowns on immigration enforcement further overburden the court system, increasing the number of people who are detained and face deportation with no guarantee of justice.

Clippings | November 18th, 2025 | TSP Media Report

Mallory Harrington at Clippings — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 02:32:58 +0000

Bates News interviewed Francesco Duina (Professor of Sociology at Bates College) about his upcoming book, The Social Acceptance of Inequality: On the Logics of a More Unequal World–a collection co-edited with Luca Storti (Associate Professor Economic Sociology at the University of Torino). The book examines why we accept inequality in our social world. “We were very eager to understand that acceptance — it is, after all, a major factor that sustains those inequalities and something that we may want to grasp if we in fact want to do something about those inequalities,” Duina commented. Duina described four main justifications for inequality: (1) market/economic logics – thinking of inequality as a byproduct of a functioning economic system; (2) moral logics – thinking in terms of fairness, justice, and deservingness; (3) group logics – the idea that a certain group is entitled to more; and (4) cultural logics – cultural ideas (like the “American Dream”) that help us tolerate inequality.

Francesco Duina

Sociologist Stephen Whitehead wrote an opinion piece for NationalWorld arguing against the idea that “masculinity is in crisis.” Whitehead first notes that “masculinity is not singular but multiple. There are countless ways of men performing maleness, manhood, masculinity.” Some men are in crisis, “struggling to find a place in the world that values them as men” and facing depression and isolation. Whitehead names this “collapsed masculinity.” Whitehead also notes that, while there is widespread concern about “toxic masculinity,” he would not describe these men as “in crisis.” Male fundamentalists–those who embrace an “unapologetic, explicitly anti-female, misogynistic position”–are convinced of their superiority and do not trend towards depression or social isolation. Whitehead says that, while this group is dangerous, they are not in crisis.

Stephen Whitehead

Bailey Brown (Assistant Professor of Sociology at Spelman College) wrote an article for The Conversation describing how “school choice” – the expanding range of school options for young children – is a source of anxiety for parents. Parents “felt pressure trying to select a school for their elementary school-age children” and “some parents experience this pressure a bit more acutely than others,” Brown writes. “Women often see their choice of school as a reflection of whether they are good moms, my interviews show. Parents of color feel pressure to find a racially inclusive school. Other parents worry about finding niche schools that offer dual-language programs, for example, or other specialties.”

Bailey Brown

Willy Pedersen’s (Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo) new book The Beauty and Pain of Drugs reveals an eye-catching correlation: Norwegians who drank heavily in their late teens and early twenties reported higher income and education levels later in life, as compared to their sober or light-drinking peers. “The most likely explanation is that all alcohol is a kind of marker of sociality, and that habit comes with some types of benefits,” Perdersen explained. That is, drinkers forged bonds and social skills that paid off later in life. This story was covered by The Times (London), Vice, and the New York Post.

Willy Pedersen

Victor Onyilor Achem (Researcher in Sociology at the University of Ibadan) wrote an article for The Conversation on how Nigeria’s Benue State Anti‑Open Grazing Law (which “banned the open grazing of livestock and required herders to establish ranches instead”) impacted the dynamics between farming and herding communities. Achem describes how the law–intending to reduce conflict–faltered in both design (as “it expected herders – many of them nomadic, landless and low-capital – to invest in ranches with minimal support”) and enforcement. This left herders feeling “criminalized” and farmers feeling “abandoned.” The law also became a symbol of power, land-based identity, and religious tension: “Both farmers and herders saw it as a struggle for survival, one group fighting to defend ancestral land, the other to preserve livelihood and identity,” Achem writes. “It became a law about belonging, rights, who gets to claim the land, and whose identity is recognised.”

Victor Onyilor Achem