Misery Has Company: The Shared Emotional Consequences of Everwork Among Women and Men

Everwork—defined as a combination of overwork, face time, constant availability, and unpredictability—is becoming an increasingly common form of work, especially among highly skilled service workers. While such an environment would seem to disadvantage mothers in particular, I find that employees of all genders and parental statuses suffer in such intensive work environments. Through 50 in‐depth interviews with management consultants, I examine how employees reconcile their personal lives with the realities of everwork. I characterize young childless men and women as “quit intenders,” mothers as “tightrope walkers,” and fathers as “reluctant sacrificers.” This article offers new insight into the tensions employees face between their parenthood ideals and everwork expectations, the strategies they engage in to manage those tensions, and the emotional impacts they experience as a result. Because employees use career–life strategies that accommodate rather than challenge the fundamental nature of everwork, everwork environments may persist despite the negative consequences.     

Characteristics of rumors and rumor victims in early adolescence: Rumor content and social impact

Despite the prominence of rumor spreading in early adolescence, little research has examined the features of rumors during this developmental period. To address this gap in the literature, we analyzed rumor reports in a longitudinal study from fifth to seventh grades to identify subtypes of rumor content and to investigate gender and grade differences, the social impact of rumors, and victims’ social status across rumor content. In seventh grade, a higher proportion of girls were victims of sexual activity rumors whereas a higher proportion of boys were victims of sexual orientation rumors. There were significantly more sexual activity rumors in seventh grade than fifth and sixth grade. In sixth and seventh grade, sexual activity rumors had higher social impact compared to all other rumors. Higher social status was found for victims of romantic rumors in fifth grade, for victims of personal/physical characteristics rumors in sixth grade, and for victims of sexual activity rumors in seventh grade. These findings provide critical insight into rumors across early adolescence and add to growing evidence that victims of aggressive behavior may have high social status. The importance of incorporating multiple methods for assessing victimization and implications for awareness of rumor spreading are discussed.     

中德土壤污染治理责任主体比较研究

20世纪80年代,德国在法学理论和司法实务中对土壤污染责任主体的认定,突破了以往侵权责任主体认定的范畴,引入“状态责任”,细化责任主体范围,明确责任内容划分,厘清多重责任主体竞合。我国土壤污染管理起步较晚,在理论研究和司法实务中对主体责任认定标准和责任限度的理解存在分歧,其争议焦点在于各主体在案件中的地位。通过对中德土壤污染治理责任主体的比较,认为我国应在坚持现有规则的前提下借鉴吸收德国在责任内容划分和多重责任主体竞合处理等方面的经验,切实有效地保护土地功能。     

Women’s Decision to Divorce in Light of Failure in Marital Status and Dignity

In Iranian society, divorce, as an instability index of family, has been on the increase over the last decade. In particular, this separation is fraught with considerable difficulties for wives with children. The overall aim of this study is to investigate the nature of the process of deciding to separate by the divorced women despite having children. Resting on the grounded theory method, this study was conducted among 20 divorced women with children in the city of Tehran. The findings show that having a child is not a determining factor for the women to remain married; rather, what determines the separation of women with children is experiencing a status loss within their marital life, an experience that originates from losing her status after a woman has gotten married. Of course, women’s agency within the domain of family disintegration happens when they have the ability to overcome social fears and also have economic support. Through this course of events, although children are of enormous importance for the mothers, they are temporarily neglected while the mothers, for a short period, think primarily of saving themselves. Making their final decision to get separated leads to reactivating the role of their children; then, the mothers proceed to make the optimal decision.     

The lifestyle paradox: adverse effects of Internet use on self-rated health status

How individuals subjectively rate their health status stands in close relationship with both actual health status and mortality. Previous research has shown that Internet use in general, and online health information seeking in particular, increases self-rated health status. However, this relationship may not always hold true: Albrecht and Devlieger’s [(1999). The disability paradox: high quality of life against all odds. Social Science & Medicine, 48(8), 977–988] disability paradox captures that those with severe health conditions may still perceive their health as very good. This paper introduces the lifestyle paradox as another exception to the generally positive relationship: those without health conditions may still perceive their health as inferior based on general and health-related Internet use. This paper corroborates the lifestyle paradox empirically using quantitative data from the Oxford Internet Surveys connected to the national census through spatial microsimulation, and 43 qualitative interviews conducted with a subsample of the participants from the quantitative strand. A theoretical explanation for this phenomenon is provided based on the concepts of agenda setting and reference groups: the online realm may make lifestyle topics more salient, and provides a variety of opportunities for comparing oneself to others, thereby influencing how people evaluate their own health. Through describing, verifying and explaining the lifestyle paradox, this paper contributes theoretical and empirical insights into the relationship between Internet use and self-rated health status, and thereby adds to the scientific debate around tangible outcomes of Internet use.     

Occupational Sex Composition and Marriage: The Romantic Cost of Gender-Atypical Jobs

The author considers the mechanisms by which occupational sex composition (the proportion of women and men in an occupation) might be associated with romantic transitions in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to 2014, the author estimates the odds of marriage during a period of 35 years as a function of occupational and personal characteristics. Men's odds of marriage are decreased by working in predominately female occupations (75%–100% female) when compared with working in predominately male occupations (0%–25% female) or integrated (26%–74% female) occupations. Also, working in a predominately female occupation increases the odds that men have never married by ages 30 and 40. Women's odds of marriage are unrelated to occupational sex composition. Although the author focuses on marriage, the results are robust to including cohabitation as a competing risk. The author uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health 1994 to 2008 to replicate these findings in a more recent cohort with additional control variables. The romantic penalty for men's occupational gender atypicality demonstrates the continued devaluation of female activities and attributes and the resulting rigidity of expectations for men's gendered behavior, which may reinforce occupational segregation.     

The way bullying works: How new ties facilitate the mutual reinforcement of status and bullying in elementary schools

This study addresses the puzzle how high-status bullies in elementary school are able to maintain high status among their classmates despite bullying (some of) them. The dynamic interplay between bullying and status was studied, focusing on how relational bullying affects the creation, dissolution, and maintenance of status attributions, and vice versa. Longitudinal round-robin peer nomination data were obtained from 82 school classes in 15 Dutch elementary schools (2055 students; 50% boys) followed over three yearly measurements, starting out in grades 2–5 when students were aged 8-11. An age-dependent effect of bullying on the creation of new status attributions was found. Whereas the youngest group punished bullying by a refusal to attribute status to the bully, this turned into a reward of bullying in the oldest groups. Unexpectedly, high-status bullies seemed to avoid continual bullying of the same victims, pointing to explanations of why their status can persist.     

Social Status and Decent Work: Test of a Moderated Mediation Model

On the basis of the psychology of working theory (PWT; Duffy, Blustein, et al., 2016), we tested a moderated mediation model with subjective social status, work volition, proactive personality, and decent work as variables. Data were collected from 225 South Korean employees (115 women, 110 men). Results indicated that work volition mediated the relation between low subjective social status and decent work. In addition, proactive personality moderated the link between low subjective social status and work volition. Further analysis revealed that the indirect effect of social status on decent work via work volition was conditional upon proactive personality; that is, the indirect effect was weaker for individuals with a higher level of proactive personality. These results provide an application of the PWT-based model in a South Korean context. Future research could include samples from marginalized populations and additional constructs (e.g., career adaptability, human need satisfaction) of PWT.     

Children's immigrant generational status and delinquency: The mediating effects of friendship networks

A mounting body of empirical studies demonstrates that first-generation immigrant children have a lower level of delinquency and crime but second and third-plus generations report a precipitous increase in these behaviors. Adopting a social network approach, we analyzed the behavioral and structural characteristics of children’s friendship networks across the first, second, and third-plus immigrant generations, and investigated the mediating role of these friendship traits in explaining generational disparity. Our results reveal that children’s friendship networks differ in structural (e.g., popularity) and behavioral features (e.g., network deviance) across immigrant generations. These friendship features, particularly network peer deviance, the percentage of second-generation friends, and children’s popularity mediate the association between immigrant generational status and children’s delinquency. Extending previous research, our study highlights the importance of applying the social network approach to understand delinquency disparity across immigrant generations and suggests that the composition of friendship networks play an important role in immigrant children’s delinquency involvement.     

How do parents’ educational fields affect the choice of educational field?

This study examines the links between parental education and students’ choice of field of study in Norwegian higher education. In our interpretation of the results, we suggest a status group perspective that integrates risk aversion models, micro‐class theory, and cultural reproduction schemes. Complete Norwegian register data for all individuals born from 1955 to 1980 allow for a fine‐grained examination of diverse fields of study not attempted in earlier studies. The findings reveal that intergenerational reproduction of educational fields is widespread, but its extent varies across fields of study. The tendency is most pronounced among children of professional, educated parents with masters and higher‐level degrees. Moreover, the analysis shows that students who do not choose the same field as their parents nonetheless tend to choose educational fields close to those of their parents.