What Explains the Decline in First Marriage in the United States? Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1969 to 2013

Rates of entry into first marriage have declined sharply in the United States during the past half century, and there is evidence of broad gaps in marriage entry by race and education. Although a large literature explores the influences on marriage for single cohorts, there is little research that tests explanations for this decline across multiple cohorts. The authors use individual and contextual measures of employment and incarceration to predict transitions to first marriage in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1969–2013). They test two prominent theories of why marriage rates have declined: the decreased availability of “marriageable” men and the increased economic standing of women. They find that men's reduced economic prospects and increased risk of incarceration contributed to the decline in first marriage rates during the past 45 years in the United States, although these basic measures of economic and carceral conditions cannot explain the entire decline.     

More‐than‐human families: Pets,people, and practices in multispecies households

Although humans have coexisted with dogs and cats for thousands of years, that coexistence has taken on various meanings over time. Only recently have people openly included their pets as members of the family. Yet, because of the cultural ambivalence toward animals, what it means for a pet to “be” a family member remains unsettled. Drawing from research on family practices including kinship, household routines, childhood socialization, and domestic violence, this paper considers how pets participate in “doing” family and what their presence means for this social arrangement long considered quintessentially human. Today's more‐than‐human families represent a hybrid of relations, human and animal and social and natural, rather than an entirely new kind of family. Becoming family has always been contingent on a cast of nonhuman characters, and recognition of the “more‐than‐human” can enhance sociological understanding, not only of the family but also of other aspects of social life.     

农村青年婚姻市场层级化的社会学分析

当前农村青年婚姻市场上,以"家庭地理位置"和"家庭经济条件"为分层标准,农村男青年被划分为不同的层级。不同层级的男青年在婚姻市场上有着不同的处境:较高层级的男青年拥有较大的择偶主动权,中层的男青年也基本能够进入婚姻,较低层级的男青年择偶困难,成为大龄未婚男青年的风险较大。因此,形成不同层级的原因是性别比失衡使得农民经济上的分化在婚姻市场上凸显出来,市场经济冲击下的农民择偶观念理性化,打工潮加剧了农村婚龄人口性别比的失衡。     

Radical “Boyhood” Futures for the Twenty-First Century,or, Pinocchio (Finally) Gets His Phallus

This article considers radical “boyhood” futures for the twenty-first century and the ways transmasculine subjects are creating exuberant, phallic subjectivities through working the gap between body and psyche. In Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam asked, “What happens when boy rebellion is located not in the testosterone-induced pout of the hooligan but in the sneer of the tomboy?” Recent transgender movements compel a revision of this question, for what if boy rebellion is located precisely in this “testosterone-induced pout” but in the body of a child or adult assigned female at birth? Availability and advances in medical technologies allow boyhood to occur at any stage of life, in effect queering the life cycle, while new cultural production and community support systems offer unprecedented opportunities for change. Some of these developments suggest how Pinocchio and other childhood stories become important touchstones used by transmasculine subjects to construct their own boyhoods. The 2016 documentary Real Boy tells the story of a young musician who transitions from female to male despite his family’s rejection. “Camp Lost Boys” offers transmasculine folks the experience of summer camp, a place to reflect on what it means to be masculine. Responding to the problem of White transnormativity, the 2012 documentary The Aggressives by Daniel Peddle brings to a larger audience the struggles that trans* subjects of color assigned female at birth experience endure due to economic precarity, violence, and the prison industrial complex (PIC). “Brown Boi Project” helps trans* folks to ask what it can mean to be a man or a boy in communities of color. Testifying to their power, nonnormative boyhoods augment existing anxiety and resentment among White, cisgendered men, helping to perpetuate the self-created “state of emergency” over POCs (people of color), women, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) persons “infiltrating” (in their minds), the heteronormative, cisgendered “mainstream.” The violent reactions of White supremacist men’s groups suggest how the transmasculine tampers with the sanctity of boyhood, disturbing what Homi K. Bhabha calls the “manifest destiny” of masculinity.     

“I Try Not to Depend on Anyone but Me”: Welfare‐Reliant Women's Perspectives on Self‐Sufficiency,Work, and Marriage*

Welfare reformers sought to reduce “dependency,” or reliance on state‐supported cash benefits and deployed a discourse of “self‐sufficiency” to promote the legitimacy of efforts to remove welfare recipients from publicly funded cash assistance through either wage labor or marriage. We use longitudinal, qualitative interview data collected from 38 initially welfare‐reliant women to examine what self‐sufficiency means to them and their perspectives on how work and marriage affect their ability to be self‐sufficient. Grounded theory analysis revealed that for these women, self‐sufficiency means formal independence from both the state (i.e., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF]) and men (i.e., marriage). Although they value marriage as an institution and would ideally marry, they do not consider marriage to be a likely route to self‐sufficiency given the pool of men available to them. Rather, they embrace their own market‐based wage labor as the means by which they can attain some measure of independence. Taking our lead from the women in this study, we challenge the emphasis on marriage in current welfare policy. We argue that employment training that results in better jobs for women and men and work supports that make low‐wage work pay are clearly the appropriate direction for policy aimed at the welfare‐reliant and working poor.     

Rethinking Families and Community: The Color,Class, and Centrality of Extended Kin Ties1

Although a focus on marriage and the nuclear family characterizes much sociological research and social commentary, this article suggests that this focus ignores the familial experiences of many Americans, particularly those on the lower end of the economic spectrum for whom extended kin are central. African Americans and Latinos/as are more involved with kin than whites, but class trumps race in this regard: African Americans, Latinos/as, and whites with fewer economic resources rely more on extended kin than do those more affluent. The emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family may actually promulgate a vision of family life that dismisses the very social resources and community ties that are critical to the survival strategies of those in need. In contrast to those who have argued that marriage is the foundation of the community or even, in that overused phrase, the “basic unit of society,” this article suggests that marriage actually detracts from social ties to broader communities just as an emphasis on marriage and the nuclear family, to the exclusion of the extended family, distorts and reduces the power and reach of social policy.     

Unions and unequal pay: The establishment of the “family wage”

Equal pay laws in many OECD countries establish the right of men and women to equal pay for work of equal value. Nevertheless, during the first half of the 20th century, before the enactment of equal pay laws, employers and unions in several countries promoted unequal pay through “family wage” arrangements. This article seeks to improve understanding of the historical and sociological origins of “family wage” arrangements through both comparative research and in‐depth historical archival research on family wage arrangements in Israel. It shows that unions played a complex role in promoting family wage arrangements. While their action refected their patriarchal understanding of society, they were also guided by socialist principles.     

Abstracts

Fiumara, N. J. Transmission of gonorrhea by artificial insemination. Foley, V. D., & Dyer, W. W. “Timing” in family therapy: the “when,”“how,” and “why” of intervention. Gass, G. Z. Equitable marriage. Gillis, J. S. Social influence therapy: the therapist as manipulator. Mozdzierz, G. J.,& Lottman, T. J. Games married couples play: Adlerian view. Reiner, B. S., & Edwards, R. L. Adolescent marriage—social or therapeutic problem? Reppuci, N. D., & Saunders, J. T. Social psychology of behavior modification: problems of implementation in natural settings. Roberto, E. L. Marital and family planning expectancies of men regarding vasectomy. Goldsmith, A., & Goldberg, R. J. Psychological aspects of vasectomy in Latin America. Rogers, C. R. In retrospect forty six years. Story, N. L. Sexual dysfunction resulting from drug side effects. Whiteley, J. M. (Editor) Gestalt therapy.     

Genomics: the clinical encounter and parallels across complementary and personalized medicine

Genomics is progressing from “bench to bedside,” especially in cancer care. Referred to as precision and personalized medicine, this article casts sociological scholarship on genomic medicine into three interconnected realms: laboratory, family, and clinic. Thought to be solely and objectively discovered in the laboratory, sociological research illustrates the messiness of genetic research. The self in (late) modern times is popularly conceptualized as unique and discrete; precision medicine highlights boundedness and the molecular material shared across families. Within the clinic, sociological research has focused on the geneticization debate over the extent to which genetic ways of understanding disease have subsumed other approaches to conceptualizing and treating illness and the impact of genomics on medicine's dominance. How else is genomic medicine affecting the clinical encounter? We ask if personalized medicine unexpectedly reflects practices found in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), raising questions about what this means for modern medicine and the patient‐consumer.     

A special kind of married man: notions of marriage and married men in the Swedish gay press, 1954–1986

There has long been ambivalence in the LGBT movement and related research as to the meaning of gay identity in relation to marriage. The article explores changing homonormative discourses of marriage and married men within the Swedish gay press from the mid 1950s to the mid 1980s. Expressions of the changes are a shift in language and in views of extramarital relationships, openness, and gay male identity. As a result of the shift, “married men,” including both “married homosexuals” and “bisexuals,” came to be distinguished from “gays.”     

Mapping the literature on child marriage: A critical engagement

U.S. “child marriage”—marriage including at least one person under the age of 18—is legal and practiced in 44 states. In this article, I map the existing literature on child marriage and offer insights on how child marriage can expand our sociological understandings of marriage, gender inequality, and youth sexualities. Social scientists have almost exclusively focused on child marriage in the Global South at the expense of understanding child marriage in the Global North, which I argue reinforces racist and xenophobic narratives that cast child marriage as a non-Western social problem. The research on U.S. child marriage that does exist focuses on the consequences, rather than the causes, of child marriage, which may shift focus away from a structural understanding of how intersecting inequalities shape girls' likelihood of getting married as minors. I position a sociology of U.S. child marriage at the intersection of sociological understandings of marriage and gender inequality and critical research on youth sexualities. I conclude by calling for intersectional research on U.S. child marriage that builds on these literatures, examining how girls' sexualities are racialized, gendered, and classed within the institution of marriage.     

The Spirit of Blumer's Method as a Guide to Sociological Discovery

Herbert Blumer did not offer textbook-style instructions for how to do research. What he offered, in his classic 1969 essay “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism,” is a broad account of what research must entail to accord with symbolic interactionist premises that human social life depends on meanings, interpretation, and interaction. Blumer's essay also voices a spirit of research that is ardently empirical, sociological, and creative. It is this spirit, I argue, that holds great value for guiding sociological research toward fresh discoveries. I make this argument by reviewing what Blumer meant by exploration and inspection, and then drawing out five Blumerian principles of inquiry. By embracing these principles we can avoid the problems of inadvertent theorizing, unreflective mesearch, analytic foreclosure, excessive subjectivism, and aprocessuality. I also suggest how we can enhance the sociological value of Blumer's method by paying more attention to power, inequality, and our own institutional biases. Embracing the spirit of Blumer's method, I conclude, can help a new generation of symbolic interactionists do more imaginative and insightful work.     

Trend-Soziologismen

An excursive contentanalysis of the media suggests evidence of a strong and widespread public interest concerning sociological issues: the quest for social positioning, cultural and economic change or practical “tools” for management and marketing. But this public need for sociological explanation and consulting is only to a minot degree satisfied by professional sociologists. The majority of the media-released results are distributed by representatives of a profession named “trend-“ or “future-research”. A closer look at the work and publication-strategies of these consultants indicated that the most active protagonists like Matthias Horx not only claim to be “sociologists”, but undertake strong attacks against professional and academic sociology and social scientists. The claim to conduct authentic sociological research and using techniques of “social research” helps to legitimate the publication of the superficial results of this sociologistic research in newspapers, magazines, and media-websites. Thus for professional sociology the question arises what to fo and how to react. One strategy could repeat the practice of the so called “Third Culture” of the international science-community’s members who have started a widely renowned public discourse to meet public demands of being scientifically informed.     

On the Modalities of the Domestic

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on experiences of the domestic—of houses, of intimacy and privacy—and what relation these bear to the kinds of sentiments about life which are given expression as fragile, endangered or fleeting. We think of singularity as lying in the potential for multiple domesticities that emerge at different times and are neither coterminous with family nor indeed with household. Based on fieldwork with African-American and Caribbean families in Miami, Florida and Baltimore, MD, the article tracks how intimacy and alienation marks the constant moves from, to, and through households. This oscillation engenders an itinerant domesticity and life lived in the interstices of the house, the clinic, the prison, and the street. These spaces and places come to bear on what comes to be marked as so-called “African-American kinship.” Given the disproportionate incarceration of African-American men in US prisons, the article contemplates the permeable relation between carceral institutions and the home, as well as the constitution of kinship as “criminal.”

All names used in this text are pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of respondents.     

Why do married men earn more: productivity or marriage selection?

Using data from the Current Population Survey March Supplement 1999, this study examines why married men earn more than men who have never married. We find that the marriage wage premium cannot be attributed to the unobservable higher earnings capability of married men. Instead, wage gains from marriage are explained by the degree of specialization within the household. Our findings cast doubt on the argument that the selection of high-ability men into marriage is the cause of the marriage wage premium.     

Paternal incarceration and the family: Fifteen years in review

Since the turn of the 21st Century, research has highlighted the use of the American criminal justice system as a forager of young, low‐income, low‐educated, men of color, but less is known about how these men exist within such realities and construct meaningful relationships in their families. Research in the early 2000s has focused on how paternal incarceration affects these men, their partners, and their children. However, there is limited research about how these men understand fatherhood and the mechanisms for how paternal incarceration disrupts relationships and exacerbates inequality in the larger family system. Highlighting the consequences to family and child well‐being, the incarceration literature is beginning to focus on the variational and complicated experiences that families cope with when a father is incarcerated. This paper reviews the literature since the early 2000s, tracing what is known about incarcerated fathers and consequences for their children and families. In doing so, this paper discusses both the evolution of the literature and how more research about family processes is needed to understand the dynamic experiences of families and caregivers who manage periods of confinement during the age of mass incarceration in America.     

Incarceration and the Formation and Stability of Marital Unions

Rising imprisonment rates and declining marriage rates among low‐education African Americans motivate an analysis of the effects of incarceration on marriage. An event history analysis of 2,041 unmarried men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth suggests that men are unlikely to marry in the years they serve in prison. A separate analysis of 2,762 married men shows that incarceration during marriage significantly increases the risk of divorce or separation. We simulate aggregate marriage rates using estimates from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and find that the prevalence of marriage would change little if incarceration rates were reduced.     

The Redeemed Old Head: Articulating a Sense of Public Self and Social Purpose

The notion of the “old head” has emerged as a formidable social type in studies of African American, low‐income, urban communities. The term refers to men who have had stable work histories and who reflect “mainstream” values concerning work ethic and social conduct. This analysis broadens the category of old head by exploring the views of men whose life courses have taken different turns than have traditional old heads. Through an analysis of the view of two African American men on their life experiences and efforts to serve as mentors to younger people in their lives, this article delivers an argument about the redeemed old head. This figure is defined in partial contrast to sociological depictions of traditional old heads in that the redeemed old head has led a life of profligate activity as a youth, but now has on his mind the interests and prospects of younger people, some of whom are involved in such profligate activity themselves. Elements of symbolic interactionist theory are employed to make sense of how the redeemed old head conceives of his public self and argues for the limits and possibilities for service as a mentor.     

The Sociological Insight of W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois discussed key aspects of the new field of sociology in his early writings. This article presents Du Bois’ conception of the developing field and his sociological perspective based on nine of his key original sociological writings. Rather than generating theoretical formulations and studying abstract concepts, Du Bois insisted that sociology be an empirical science adhering to the methods utilized by the physical sciences. Sociology's major objectives are to study the “deeds of men” and to provide a science of human action. Sociological research seeks the discovery of “truth” which can form the basis of social policy. Noting that the regularity of human behavior is evidence of laws and acknowledging that human behavior is also subject to chance factors, sociology must seek to determine the limits of each. Du Bois’ research methods, based on methodological triangulation, were formulated to provide the “truths” which he eagerly sought. Du Bois was convinced that these truths were worth knowing and that sociology had the promise of becoming one of the “greatest sciences.” Attention directed toward Du Bois’ key sociological writings within sociology curricula will introduce current and future readers to the groundbreaking sociological work of the pioneer sociologist.