CCF News
CCF Chair’s New Book Reveals What Your Underwear Drawer Can Say About You
Michelle Janning’s recent release, The Stuff of Family Life, offers a timely look at how modern society and technology shapes our relationships and our lives. Like an archaeologist studying ancient civilizations through the things they left behind, Janning excavates contemporary life through our houses and possessions, from childhood stuffed animals and security blankets to retirement homes and senior living centers.
What does where you store old love letters say about their significance? Why do adults feel out of place in their childhood bedrooms? Janning takes readers through the stages of life – from dating and marriage to parenting and aging – that are usually kept behind closed doors. From online valentines to the growing popularity of “man caves,” The Stuff of Family Life looks not only at what large demographic studies say about family dynamics but also what our lives—and the stuff in them—say about how we relate to each other.
THE STUFF OF FAMILY LIFE
By Michelle Janning
Rowman & Littlefield
May 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4422-5479-4
CCF ADVISORY: Debra Umberson reports on African-Americans’ much greater exposure to the early death of close family members
AUSTIN, Texas — Black Americans are more likely than whites to experience the loss of a parent during childhood and to be exposed to multiple close family member deaths by mid-life, according to a study at the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. These losses are likely to be damaging to the health of African-Americans in the long run, given the well-documented effects of bereavement on health.
Racial disparities in life expectancy and mortality risk in the United States suggest that blacks are exposed to more family member deaths earlier and throughout their life than whites. In a study published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” UT Austin researchers examined racial disparities in exposure and timing of family member deaths to uncover an underappreciated layer of racial inequality resulting from reoccurring bereavement that may lead to the intergenerational transmission of black health disadvantages, researchers said.
“The potentially substantial damage to surviving family members is a largely overlooked area of racial disadvantage,” said the University’s Population Research Center director and sociology professor Debra Umberson. “By calling attention to this heightened vulnerability of black Americans, our findings underscore the need to address the potential impact of more frequent and earlier exposure to family member deaths in the process of cumulative disadvantage.”
Using nationally representative datasets over 42,000 people, Umberson and her colleagues compared nonHispanic black and nonHispanic white Americans on their exposure to death of biological parents, siblings, children and spouses, as well as the total number of deaths experienced at different ages.
Umberson emphasizes that bereavement following the death of even one close family member has lasting adverse consequences for health, and premature losses are especially devastating. She said, “If losing a family member is a disadvantage in the present in ways that disrupt the future, racial disparities in these losses over the life course is a tangible manifestation of racial inequality that needs to be systematically documented.”
The study showed that blacks experienced more family member deaths overall than whites, and were twice as likely to experience the death of two or more family members by age 30 and 90 percent more likely to experience four or more deaths by age 65. In stark contrast, whites were 50 percent more likely to never experience a family member death by age 65.
The researchers found overall that blacks were at greater risk of losing a mother from early childhood through young adulthood, a father through their mid-teens, a sibling in their teens and a child by the age of 30. The race-gap diminishes only slightly at ages 70 and beyond when whites begin to experience more loss, the researchers said. Some specific findings include:
- In a cohort born in the 1980s,
- Blacks were three times more likely to lose a mother, more than twice as likely to lose a father and 20 percent more likely to lose a sibling by age 10.
- Blacks were two and a half times more likely to lose a child by age 30
- Among several older cohorts born in the 1900s to the 1960s,
- Blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to lose a spouse by age 60.
- Blacks were 50 percent more likely to lose a sibling between the ages of 50 and 70.
- Between the ages of 50 and 70 Blacks were three times more likely than whites to lose a child.
“This is the first population-based documentation of earlier and repeated bereavement experiences for Black Americans,” Umberson said. “Death of family members is highly likely to disrupt and strain other family relationships as well as the formation, duration and quality of relationships across the life course, further contributing to a broad range of adverse life outcomes including poor health and lower life expectancy.”
Below is the link to Umberson’s full report:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/17/1605599114.full
CCF ADVISORY: Research is in on sexual satisfaction for today’s marrieds
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology
vrutter@gmail.com / 206 375 4139
Sharing is Sexy: The research is in on gender and sexual satisfaction for today’s marrieds, and shared tasks rather than different ones deepen desire
AUSTIN TX, June 20, 2016–Remember that 2014 New York Times Magazine cover story on the equal but sexless marriage? It reported on a 2013 study claiming that couples who shared housework equally were less satisfied with their sexual and romantic lives and had less sex than couples who adhered to a more “traditional” household division of labor. “Difference equals desire” read one headline on the web. “Nothing erotic about equal marriages” was the lead for one radio show.
Turns out, the “rules” that govern sexual and marital satisfaction have been changing rapidly-and, like many generalizations about modern marriage, the 2013 study was based on outdated data. As Cornell University Professor Sharon Sassler shows in her new paper, “A Reversal in Predictors of Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction in Marriage,” presented today to the Council on Contemporary Families, when couples share similar tasks rather than different, gender-stereotyped ones, this seems to deepen desire.
Sassler reports, “Contemporary couples who adhere to a more egalitarian division of labor are the only couples who have experienced an increase in sexual frequency compared to their counterparts of the past. Other groups – including those where the woman does the bulk of the housework – have experienced declines in sexual frequency. This finding is particularly notable given reports indicating that sexual frequency has generally declined worldwide over the past few decades.”
The predictors of marital success have changed profoundly in the past 50 years, argues historian Stephanie Coontz, because our ideals of heterosexual love have changed. “Love used to be seen as the attraction of opposites, and each partner in a marriage specialized in a unique set of skills, resources, and emotions that, it was believed, the other gender lacked. Today, love is based on shared interests, activities, and emotions. Where difference was once the basis of desire, equality is increasingly becoming erotic.”
“Sassler reports on other work that adds to the significance of her study,” notes Coontz. “Her study–and others–reflect more equalized power between men and women. In marriages of the 1950s and 1960s, wives often reported having sex more often than they wanted because they were dependent on their husbands. Now that women feel free to say no, they are more likely to say yes when they feel the relationship is fair.”
Sassler’s brief is based largely on a longer study by Sassler and her colleagues Daniel Carlson, Amanda Miller, and Sarah Hanson that will be published this summer.
-more information-
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
Sharon Sassler, Professor, Department of Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University, Sharon.Sassler@Cornell.Edu.
LINKS:
CCF BRIEF: A Reversal in Predictors of Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction in Marriage
(https://contemporaryfamilies.org/sex-equalmarriages/)
CCF ADVISORY: Sharing is Sexy: The research is in on gender and sexual satisfaction
(https://contemporaryfamilies.org/sex-equalmarriages-advisory/)
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.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
Follow us! @CCF_Families and https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryfamilies
Read our blog Families as They Really Are – https://thesocietypages.org/families/
June 20, 2016
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CCF BRIEF – A Reversal in Predictors of Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction in Marriage
A Reversal in Predictors of Sexual Frequency and Satisfaction in Marriage
A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Sharon Sassler, Professor, Department of Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University
June 20, 2016
In the 1940s and 1950s, the consensus of the emerging profession of marital counseling was that marital happiness and sexual satisfaction depended upon a couple’s adherence to traditional gender roles, with the husband doing the bulk of the breadwinning and the wife doing most of the housework. Influential economists such as Gary Becker (A Treatise on the Family, 1981) argued that following such a conventional division of labor by gender would lead to the greatest marital intimacy and sexual attraction between husband and wife.
Indeed, as recently as 2013, an article in the American Sociological Review found that couples who divided housework more equally had lower marital and sexual satisfaction and less frequent sex than couples where the woman did the bulk of the household labor.[i] The authors concluded that conventional masculine and feminine behaviors at home served as sexual “turn-ons” for men and women, while nontraditional behaviors, consciously or unconsciously, turned people off.
But these studies relied on data from the 1980s and early 1990s, and thus represented marriages formed before the recent surge in dual-earner families and social approval of egalitarian gender roles. My co-authors and I compared findings based on data collected 22 to 24 years ago, in the second wave of the National Survey on Families and Households, with data from the 2006 Marital and Relationship Survey. As we describe in a forthcoming study in The Journal of Marriage and Family, the association between a non-traditional division of labor at home and couples’ sexual satisfaction and frequency has changed dramatically over the past two decades. By 2006, couples who reported sharing housework fairly equally, with the man doing more than a third and up to 65 percent of the housework, reported having sex significantly more often than did couples where the woman (or the man) did 65 percent or more of the housework.
In fact, contemporary couples who adhere to this more egalitarian division of labor are the only couples who have experienced an increase in sexual frequency compared to their counterparts of the past, whereas other groups – including those where the woman does the bulk of the housework – have experienced declines in sexual frequency. This finding is particularly notable given reports indicating that sexual frequency has generally declined worldwide over the past few decades.[ii]
What’s going on here? Couples report having more and higher quality sex when they are satisfied with their relationships. In today’s social climate, relationship quality and stability are generally highest when couples divide up the household labor in a way they see as equitable or fair. And the evidence shows that when men do a greater share of housework, women’s perceptions of relationship fairness and satisfaction are greater. In fact, how housework was arranged mattered more for couples surveyed in 2006 than it did among those interviewed in the late 1980s. It is therefore not surprising that couples with more egalitarian divisions of routine housework report being more satisfied with sexual intimacy today than they did 20 years ago. Sharing housework is now perceived as a sexual turn-on.
In our study, the reported sexual satisfaction of couples with egalitarian housework arrangements was about the same as that of more traditional couples, even though sexual frequency was higher. A different analysis of the same data–which compared the sexual satisfaction of couples who shared childcare equally, couples where the woman did most of the childcare, and couples where men did most of the childcare–found that the egalitarian child-raising couples not only reported more frequent sex but also higher sexual satisfaction than couples where the woman did most of the childcare. Today’s sexual scripts clearly have been realigned to value sharing the housework load over role specialization.
As June brides and grooms settle in for the long haul after coming back from the honeymoon and writing their thank-you notes, they might want to make sure their “to do” lists include a fair division of the dishes and laundry.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
Sharon Sassler, Professor, Department of Policy Analysis & Management, Cornell University, Sharon.Sassler@Cornell.Edu.
[i] Kornrich, S., Brines, J., & Leupp, K. (2013). Egalitarianism, housework, and sexual frequency in marriage. American Sociological Review, 78, 26–50. doi:10.1177/0003122412472340.
[ii] Mercer, C. A., Tanton, C., Prah, P., Erens, B., Sonnenberg, P, Clifton, S., … Johnson, A. M. (2013). Changes in sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain through the life course and over time: Findings from the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. The Lancet, 382, 1781–1794. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62035-8.
CCF ADVISORY: Parents’ Happiness Deficit: Must Parents Sacrifice Happiness for Meaning?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology
vrutter@gmail.com / 206 375 4139
Parents’ Happiness Deficit: Must Parents Sacrifice Happiness for Meaning?
AUSTIN TX, June 16, 2016—Over the past decade, numerous studies have found that parents, especially in the United States, report lower levels of happiness than nonparents, despite the fact that they find parenthood meaningful or rewarding in the long run. Parents consistently report lower happiness, mental well-being, and marital satisfaction than do childless couples and individuals.
Is this just the price parents must pay for the long-term rewards of having children? In a remarkable study of 22 countries presented today to the Council on Contemporary Families, researchers find that the parental “happiness penalty” is not universal or unavoidable, and they identify simple strategies that wipe out or even reverse the happiness differential between parents and non-parents.
Happiness penalties vary across 22 countries. “Social Policies, Parenthood, and Happiness in 22 Countries,” a briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Jennifer Glass, University of Texas; Robin Simon, Wake Forest University; and Matthew Andersson, Baylor University, used two well-respected surveys, the International Social Surveys of 2007 and 2008 and the European Social Surveys of 2006 and 2008, and found that the “happiness penalty” varies substantially from country to country, and is not an inevitable accompaniment of contemporary family life. In some countries, such as Norway and Hungary, parents are actually happier than non-parents.
The U.S. has the largest gap. The bad news is that of the 22 countries in the study, the U.S. has the largest happiness shortfall among parents compared to nonparents, significantly larger than the gap found in Great Britain and Australia.
Policies make the difference. The researchers investigated possible explanations for the happiness gap, including variations in family size and in the extent of unplanned births. Such differences between countries were not significant in explaining variations in the happiness of parents compared to non-parents.
“What we found was astonishing,” reported Glass, Simon and Andersson. “The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy ‘packages’ had no happiness gap between parents and nonparents.”
Helping parents helps childless individuals as well. More specifically,
*The positive effects of good family support policies for parents were not achieved at the expense of non-parents. The policies most helpful to parents also improved the happiness of everyone in that country, whether they had children or not.
*Policies such as guaranteed minimum paid sick and vacation days make everyone happier, but they had an extra happiness bonus for parents of minor children.
*Countries with cheaper out-of-pocket costs for child care had happier nonparents as well as parents.
*Another striking finding was that giving money to parents in the form of child allowances or monthly payments had less effect on parental happiness than giving them the tools to combine employment with parenting.
*Gender made little difference: Fathers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to money policies (child care costs, specifically), and mothers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to time policies (especially paid sick and vacation days). But these differences were minor.
The new study, according to CCF’s research director Stephanie Coontz, leaves little doubt about the benefits of policies to support working families: “We have reams of research showing that investing in children’s well-being benefits all members of society down the road, in lower crime rates and more productive employees. This study highlights that, even when it comes to personal happiness, supporting working parents is not a zero-sum game.”
-further information-
A longer version of this peer-reviewed study will be published in the American Journal of Sociology in September 2016.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
Jennifer Glass
Barbara Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts
Executive Director, Council on Contemporary Families
Department of Sociology & Population Research Center
University of Texas – Austin
319-621-6304
Robin Simon
Professor of Sociology
Wake Forest University
robinwsimon54@gmail.com
Matthew Andersson
Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course
Yale University.
*Starting this summer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Baylor University
matthew.andersson@yale.edu
LINKS:
CCF BRIEF: Social Policies, Parenting, and Happiness-A 22 Countries
( https://contemporaryfamilies.org/brief-parenting-happiness/)
CCF ADVISORY: Parents’ Happiness Deficit: Must Parents Sacrifice Happiness for Meaning?
( https://contemporaryfamilies.org/advisory-parents-happiness-deficit/)
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.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
Follow us! @CCF_Families and https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryfamilies
Read our blog Families as They Really Are – https://thesocietypages.org/families/
June 16, 2016
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