Which social contacts with natives matter? Attitudes towards gender roles of Muslim immigrants and their children in Western Europe

Social contacts with mainstream individuals play a central role in acculturation. Yet, research has paid little attention to examining whether social contact with natives is linked to egalitarian gender role attitudes among Muslim immigrants and their children. Using a unique data set including 4584 Muslim immigrants and the second generation in six western European countries (EURISLAM), the study investigates whether public- and private-sphere social contacts with natives are associated with attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles. The findings show that immigrants and their children who report stronger private-sphere social ties, that is native friends and family members, hold more egalitarian attitudes towards women's employment and men's domestic roles. However, public-sphere social contacts (at the workplace and in the neighbourhood) are not associated with these attitudes. These results support theories stating that private-sphere social contact with natives is important in gender role ideology acculturation among Muslim families.     

Synthesising Gellner,Smith, and Barth: building a preliminary analytical framework for exploring the relationships between ethnic groups,nations, and nationalism

This review article synthesises Gellner's, Smith's, and Barth's ideas about ethnic groups and nations. It redefines the concepts of the ethnic group, nation, and nationalism. An ethnic group can be defined as a group of people who are self-differentiated from other groups. A nation can be defined as an ethnic group or groups politically mobilised by elite-made nationalism. Furthermore, nationalism can be defined as an ideology which demands that an ethnic group or groups should have their own state. In effect, a conceptual framework is formulated, although how useful the framework can be is subject to further empirical research.     

Collateral Damage: The Lived Experiences of Divorced Mothers Without Custody

This qualitative study utilizing narrative analysis and grounded theory examines the history and experiences of 14 Canadian women who have lost custody of their children within a legal divorce process. Each woman's storied experience focused on themes of attachment and loss associated with involuntary child absence, legal abuse within the adversarial system, and judgment based on nonconformity to a motherhood ideal; physical violence and emotional abuse in the family system; access denial and parental alienation; stigma and lack of support services; and serious financial losses. Women's perceptions of their children's needs in the divorce process, mothers' responsibilities in relation to those needs, and the responsibility of social institutions to support mothers as parents were also examined. The study sought mothers' views about needed changes to the legal framework of child custody determination and other priorities. Implications for socio-legal policy are discussed, including a consideration of a rebuttable legal shared parental responsibility presumption as facilitating the most salutary postdivorce outcomes for women and children, as are guidelines for direct service provision.     

Does Parenthood Change Implicit Gender‐Role Stereotypes and Behaviors?

This study examined whether parenthood changes gender‐role behavior and implicit gender‐role stereotypes as assessed with an Implicit Association Test in Dutch parents. In a cross‐sectional sample, parents were found to have more traditional gender‐role stereotypes than nonparents with a wish to have a child and nonparents without the wish to have a child. This suggests that gender‐role stereotypes increase after the transition into parenthood. In a longitudinal sample, parents were followed for 4 years after the first birthday of their youngest child. The authors found that implicit gender‐role stereotypes and behavior became increasingly traditional over time in most parents, except for the following two groups: (a) Fathers with highly traditional gender‐role stereotypes did not show change over time and (b) older, highly educated mothers who worked relatively many hours outside the home and who had an egalitarian task division at home, remained egalitarian in their gender‐role stereotypes over time.     

Sources of Status and Influence in All Female and Mixed Sex Groups*

Hollander's (1958) theory on conformity, status, and idiosyncrasy credits was tested using female rather than male groups. Each group contained either one male or one female confederate who broke procedual norms early, in the middle, late, or never during the 15 trials of an experimental game task. For some groups the task was described as a quasi-mathematical task; for others it was described as a common game. The quasi-mathematical definition of the task and male sex of the confederate resulted in greater conformity to the confederate's choice. Contrary to Hollander's theory, previous conformity was not related to influence. The results were interpreted in terms of traditional sex role expectations and in terms of the perceptual marker function that nonconformity plays in small groups. The marker function was related to perception in Hollander's original theoretical formulation.     

Labor Force Participation of Immigrant Women in the Netherlands: Do Traditional Partners Hold Them Back?

Female labor force participation (FLFP) rates often vary across ethnic groups. This study examined the role of the partner's labor market resources and gender role attitudes for FLFP in different ethnic groups. Cross‐sectional data of women in partnerships from the four biggest immigrant groups in the Netherlands and from a native Dutch control group were analyzed. Traditional gender role attitudes of partners were negatively related to FLFP and partly explained ethnic differences therein. Moreover, across all groups, the relation between partners’ labor market resources and FLFP was more negative for traditional women and rather absent for egalitarian women.     

Gender,work and childbearing: couple analysis of work adjustments after the transition to parenthood

This study focuses on Swedish couples' work adjustments following the transition to parenthood. Specifically, we ask whether couples' gender role attitudes influence whether they make adjustments to their work situations after the end of the parental leave. Using couple data from the Young Adult Panel Study, we find that both partners are more likely to make work adjustments when both partners hold egalitarian attitudes. It is also more likely that only the male partner will make work changes when both partners are egalitarian. When one partner holds more egalitarian attitudes than the other partner, it tends to have a stronger impact on the work adjustments of the more egalitarian partner. For example, couples with egalitarian male partners are more than three times as likely to have the male partner change his work situation as couples in which neither partner holds egalitarian attitudes. While less consistent, there is some evidence that female egalitarian attitudes increase the likelihood of female work changes.     

Do Traditional Fathers Always Work More? Gender Ideology,Race, and Parenthood

Research has shown that men who express traditional gender ideologies spend more time in paid work when they become fathers, whereas men who express egalitarian ideologies spend less time in paid work. This study extends previous research by examining racial differences among men. We drew on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 23,261) and found that fatherhood was associated with an increase in married White men's time spent in paid work. The increase was more than twice as strong for traditional White men than for egalitarian White men. In contrast, both egalitarian and traditional African American men did not work more when they became fathers. These findings suggest that African American men may express gender traditionalism but adopt more egalitarian work–family arrangements. This study also presents evidence of an interaction among race, class, and gender ideology that shapes fathers' time spent in paid work.     

Material conditions and ideas in global history

Since the rise of a “scientific” historiography in the nineteenth century, the role of ideas in history versus that of material forces has been a key philosophical problem. Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology (2019), read as a work of global history, offers a provocative rehearsal of this question. On the one hand, the book is an attempt to provide a narrative historical frame for the hard data of the World Inequality Database. On the other, paradoxically, it offers a defiant conclusion that ideology is, or at least could be, the key driver in social and institutional change towards universal progress. St Simon, Comte and Spencer have found their twenty‐first century heir. How can we historicize Piketty's impetus, both understanding its provenance and making sense of its limitations? One key issue is its roots in the traditions of National Accounts, which leads to an approach to the global which is stresses comparison over connection, and to an uncritical reproduction of the portrait of an egalitarian non‐capitalist Twentieth century painted by Kuznets during the Cold War. Another is its presentism, with the historical argument driven by an attempt to understand the c.1980–2020 conjuncture and its alternatives, and a connected overdependence on the support of a few historians. A third, a consequence in part of the inequalities between the quality of data we have for different parts of the world, and of Piketty's provenance and imagined audience, is a Eurocentric, even Gallocentric approach. A fourth is a very French republican refusal to address how class is complicated by identities of race and nation so that neither egalitarian policies nor ideologies provide remedies for the populist politics of right. None of these criticisms are in contradiction with our view that Capital and Ideology is a work of social theory of world historical importance.     

Women,Work and Elder Care:

First introduced in 1984, Family and Medical Leave (FML) legislation would provide some measure of job protection to those who interrupt their employment to provide care for ill or dependent relatives. The original proposals were for 'parental' leave but, as bills and laws evolved, leave to care for an elderly relative began to be included. Opponents of FML object to further regulation of employee benefits and, partly because the groups promoting FML have not found a common and persuasive voice, have been relatively successful in preventing passage or in watering down FML's impact. Comparison of the messages to constituents of two advocacy groups for the elderly, the Older Women's League and the American Association for Retired Persons, illustrates the contradictions and points to the need to come to terms with the conflicts inherent in the ideology of caring.     

Parental Discipline and Abuse Potential Affects on Child Depression,Anxiety, and Attributions

The current study investigated differences in children's emotional functioning as a product of their parents' reported disciplinary practices and child abuse potential. Families with no known history of abuse were recruited to ascertain whether depressogenic attributional style and depressive or anxious symptomatology was evident in children of parents who used harsher physical punishment and who had higher abuse potential. Forty‐two New Zealand children ages 8–12 participated with their parents. Child‐report measures of depression, anxiety, and attributional style were compared with parents' responses on physical discipline scenarios and child abuse potential. Children's anxiety symptoms were higher in those children whose parents obtained higher abuse potential scores and had harsher discipline practices. Children's depressive symptoms and some components of maladaptive attributional style were also found in families with higher abuse potential. Results suggest emotional difficulties similar to those of maltreated children even without identifiable abuse.     

Testing news trustworthiness in an online public sphere: a case study of The Economist's news report covering the riots in Xinjiang,China

This paper explores the news trustworthiness and media credibility of The Economist's news report on 9 July 2009, and the communicative roles of 846 readers' responses. Theoretically guided by news translation and cultural resistance and the online public sphere, we applied online field observation and discourse analysis and achieved two main findings: First, although the news report covered the Xinjiang riots with comprehensive and attractive details, it violated the core journalism value of media credibility and journalistic objectivity by providing misleading pictures and significant unreliable and biased coverage. Second, the major communicative roles of the online readers' responses generally match Dahlberg's six conditions of an ideal online public sphere, which is still challenging but promising to realize.     

Do Female Colleagues and Supervisors Influence Family Role Attitudes? A Three‐Level Test of Exposure Explanations Among Employed Men and Women in 27 European Countries

This study examines the relationship between various aspects of female labor participation and people's family role attitudes. Following exposure theory, we expect that individuals may adopt more egalitarian family roles as they are more often exposed to employed women because it dispels negative ideas about women's capabilities and brings them into contact with nontraditional networks. This study provides an elaborate test by examining the role of exposure to female colleagues and supervisors in three contexts: workplaces, occupational sectors, and countries. We found that the number of female colleagues at work and in occupational sectors was positively related to egalitarian family roles of employed men. Our study further showed that this positive relationship between exposure to female colleagues at work and men's egalitarian family roles was weaker in female‐dominated sectors. Remarkably, exposure to national female labor participation was not significantly related to the family roles of employed women.     

Race,sex, and alternate lifestyle choices

This article is a criticism of recent work on alternative life styles both because of its lack of attention to structural constraints on the ability of individuals to pursue personal growth as an important goal in their lives and for its young, affluent, white male bias in the choice of alternatives being researched. Using a sample of first year students at a large urban university, we examined a range of lifestyle choices by race and sex. Differences in the students' background included larger families, lower levels of education, and more frequent contacts with the extended family for Black students as compared to their white counterparts. We were not surprised to find that, of the four groups, white male students most approved the types of alternatives usually discussed by alternative lifestyles researchers; specifically, those concerning sexual freedom, since this is an area traditionally more open to white males. On other alternatives, they were the most conservative. The other three groups were more likely to want egalitarian marriages and to be willing to raise an out of wedlock child. More blacks than whites supported extended family networks and radical political action. Women were more in favor of egalitarian marriages than men.     

Perceptions of gendered-challenges in academia: How women academics see gender hierarchies as barriers to achievement

Despite the egalitarian and collegial philosophy in its ideals, academic market is segregated and gendered where women receive fewer rewards than their male counterparts, are under-represented, segregated and excluded from participation in the formal and informal academic structures in academia. The country contexts, the gendered academic organizational settings as well as everyday interactions all play a major role not only in women's participation within academia, but also how they perceive their future in academic institutions. This research note, through an original survey with over 200 academics, attempts to study the latter assumption by looking at women academics' perceptions of their work life, their challenges, as well as aspirations. Our results show that those perceiving strong hierarchy in the realm of work are significantly more likely to believe that being woman in academia harms their job prospects. We also show that, not only were they pessimistic about the challenges facing them at the moment, but they were also more skeptical about women's potential in overcoming such challenges in the future.     

Dating after late-life spousal loss: Does it compromise relationships with adult children?

In Widowhood in an American City (1973), Helena Lopata observed that widows struggle with new romantic relationships because their children often are resentful toward these new partners. Since the publication of Lopata's classic work, however, few studies have explored empirically the ways that widow(er)'s dating affects their relationships with children. We use prospective data from the Changing Lives of Older Couples study (CLOC) to explore: (1) the impact of bereaved spouses' dating on positive and negative aspects of parent–child relationships six and 18 months postloss; (2) the extent to which these associations are explained by preloss characteristics; and (3) the factors that moderate the association between widow(er) dating and parent–child relations. Multivariate analyses show that widowers who are interested in dating six months postloss report low levels of support and high levels of conflict with their children, yet widows report enhanced relationship quality. This pattern reflects the fact that men who are interested in dating do form new relationships, whereas women's interests are not translated into actual dating. Widowers' dating six months postloss compromises parent–child closeness among those with a history of strained parent–child relations, yet enhances closeness among those with historically good relationships. Dating takes a harsher toll on parent–daughter compared to parent–son relationships. Overall, dating threatens parent–child relationships in specific cases, yet it may also strengthen widow(er) s' parent–child bonds. We discuss the implications for the well-being of older widow(er)s and adult children.     

Which men become involved fathers? The impact of men's own attitudes on paternal involvement in the Netherlands

Using data from the first two waves of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study, I examine to what extent men's own attitudes explain their paternal involvement after the transition into parenthood. This study moves beyond previous work by incorporating multiple dimensions of paternal involvement, by unravelling issues of causality regarding the measurements of attitudes and behaviour and by taking important father, mother, and child characteristics into account. In line with my expectations, the results show that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience are more (relatively) more involved in childcare tasks. However, results vary depending on the outcome measure studied. First, my finding reveal that men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and higher scores on parenthood status salience spend more time (in absolute terms) on playing with their child, but the strength of this association depends on the age of the child. Furthermore, only men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes are relatively more involved in physical and logistic tasks. Both men with more egalitarian gender role attitudes and men with higher scores on parenthood status salience are relatively more involved in child care tasks labelled as ‘responsibility’     

Heterosexual Masculinities,Anti‐homophobias,and Shifts in Hegemonic Masculinity: The Identity Practices of Black and White Heterosexual Men

In this study, I use in‐depth interview data with black and white heterosexual men to explore shifts in the role of homophobia in the social construction of heterosexual masculinities. A continuum is introduced to map a range of interactional practices through which these men enact heterosexual masculinities. Heterosexual men who, on one end of the continuum, construct their heterosexual masculinities through homophobic practices establish strong boundaries of social distance from gays. The other end documents heterosexual men's anti‐homophobias, moving from men who establish weak boundaries to those who blur them. These heterosexual men's anti‐homophobic stances trade on the prestige of being tolerant of gays, with black men's anti‐homophobias drawing on their experiences with racism.     

Establishing a Group to Encourage Writing for Publication among Doctoral Students

Abstract

Research Notes, a new feature of the Journal, presents short reports of current research in social work education. Each report presents a synopsis of the purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions of the study.

The authors describe the establishment of a group that encourages doctoral students to write for publication while focusing on the quality of their written work. They detail the steps taken in starting the group, describe the group's internal review process, share results of an evaluation of the group's first year, and discuss implications for other social work programs wishing to nurture publication productivity.     

Does Religious Attendance Moderate the Connection Between Pornography Consumption and Attitudes Toward Women?

Feminist theory and religious doctrines alike often suggest that pornography alters the attitudes of those who consume it, particularly with respect to how consumers view women. Many would assume that pornography would universally encourage sexism and female objectification, but recent evidence has linked pornography use with more gender egalitarian views. Using data from a large-scale, nationally representative survey, we argue that cognitive dissonance among pornography consumers could alter egalitarian attitudes. We found that those who reported consuming pornography had more egalitarian attitudes than those who did not, but this difference was stronger among those who attended religious services more regularly—those who would be likely to experience dissonance when consuming pornography. This pattern was consistent across the three egalitarian attitudes we examined: attitudes toward women in power, women in the workplace, and abortion. Our results suggest that pornography might foster progressive attitudes among those most likely to hold conservative beliefs.