“Being Raised by White People”: Navigating Racial Difference Among Adopted Multiracial Adults

There are increasing numbers of multiracial families created through marriage, adoption, birth, and a growing population of multiracial persons. Multiracials are a hidden but dominant group of transracially adopted children in both the United Kingdom and the United States. This paper introduces findings from an interpretive study of 25 transracially adopted multiracials regarding a set of experiences participants called “being raised by White people.” Three aspects of this experience are explored: (1) the centrality yet absence of racial resemblance, (2) navigating discordant parent‐child racial experiences, and (3) managing societal perceptions of transracial adoption. Whereas research suggests some parents believe race is less salient for multiracial children than for Black children, this study finds participants experienced highly racialized worlds into adulthood.     

Single Mothers “Do” Family

This paper explores how single mothers both incorporate others into family life (e.g., when they ask others to care for their children) and simultaneously “do families” in a manner that holds out a vision of a “traditional” family structure. Drawing on research with White, rural single mothers, the author explores the manner in which these women both endorse their children’s attachment to other caregivers and maintain boundaries around issues of discipline and attachment vis‐à‐vis these others. The author demonstrates that single mothers are willing to share this protected realm of family life with a new man (a fiancé or cohabiting boyfriend) as they pursue the goal of what has been called the “Standard North American Family.”     

“Swapping” Families: Serial Parenting and Economic Support for Children

The claim that fathers “swap” families when they form new ones—that is, they shift allegiances from nonresident children to new residential children (e.g., Furstenberg, 1995 )—has not been directly evaluated empirically. Drawing on data from the two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households, we test Furstenberg's argument in terms of child‐support transfers to nonresidential children, and we also test an elaboration of his approach that distinguishes between resident biological children and stepchildren. Using static‐score models, our findings indicate that fathers do swap families but only when the trade‐off is between new biological children living inside fathers' households and existing biological children living outside fathers' households. Even though our analytic sample is small, our findings have important implications for child well‐being, child‐support policy, and the meaning of fatherhood.     

“I'll Be There for You”: Teen Parents' Coparenting Relationships

Marriage promotion policy agendas have focused research attention on coparenting relationships, but little is known about coparenting among teen parents. Using qualitative interviews with 76 teen mothers and fathers supplemented with site observations at a school and clinic, the authors investigated coparenting relationships and those relationships' embeddedness in extended families and social institutions. They identified prevalent coparenting trajectories and analyzed individual‐, interaction‐, and institutional‐level influences on coparenting. Coparenting trajectories diverged depending on whether the couple stayed together and assumed traditionally gendered parenting roles. Participants perceived that coparenting relationships strongly shaped their current and future socioeconomic, emotional, and practical circumstances and their success at “being there” for their child. Extended families, institutions, and social programs often pushed teen parents apart, although many participants felt they needed a functional relationship with the other parent. Coparenting relationships, considered jointly with extended families and social institutions, are fundamental for understanding teen parenthood and shaping effective social policies.     

Between “Families in Trouble” and “Children at Risk”: Historicising “Troubled Family” Policy in England since 1945

The launch of the Troubled Families Programme in 2011 has thrown into sharp relief how governments develop policies and practices to intervene in the lives of so‐called ‘troubled families’. Commentators were quick to make comparisons with historic efforts to rehabilitate ‘problem families’ in the post‐war period. However, beyond discursive similarities, there are also marked continuities in how family policies have been developed and implemented. This review narrates the rise, fall and rise of concern about ‘problem’ and ‘troubled’ families in England in the context of anxieties about child and family welfare, and the appropriate response of the state.     

“I'll Give You the World”: Socioeconomic Differences in Parental Support of Adult Children

Research has shown that parents with higher socioeconomic status provide more resources to their children during childhood and adolescence. The authors asked whether similar effects associated with parental socioeconomic position are extended to adult children. Middle‐aged parents (N = 633) from the Family Exchanges Study reported support they provided to their grown children and coresidence with grown children (N = 1,384). Parents with higher income provided more emotional and material support to the average children. Grown children of parents with less education were more likely to coreside with them. Parental resources (e.g., being married) and demands (e.g., family size) explained these patterns. Of interest is that lower income parents provided more total support to all children (except total financial support). Lower income families may experience a double jeopardy; each grown child receives less support on average, but parents exert greater efforts providing more total support to all their children.     

Getting “Bi” in the Family: Bisexual People's Disclosure Experiences

There are many similarities in gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals' coming out experiences, but bisexual people face unique challenges. Despite this, an explicit focus on bisexual people is missing from family research. Using family systems and cultural sociological perspectives, the authors analyzed how social and cultural factors shape disclosure processes for bisexuals as they come out to multiple family members. After analyzing qualitative data from a diverse group of 45 individuals, they found that bisexual people navigate monosexist and heterosexist expectations in their family relationships. Cultural constructions of bisexuality shape the ways that bisexual people disclose their identities, including how they use language to influence family members' responses in desirable ways. Relationship status also influences bisexual people's disclosure strategies, as a romantic partner's gender is meaningful to family members' understandings of their sexual orientation. The findings highlight the importance of addressing cultural and social contexts in understanding sexual minority people's coming out processes.     

“Behind Every Great Man…”: The Male Marriage Wage Premium Examined Qualitatively

Studies across diverse national contexts reliably show that married men earn more than unmarried men, but the mechanisms responsible for this are still disputed. This article explores the male marriage wage premium from a new perspective, using longitudinal qualitative data from Russia (N = 94). Qualitative research is particularly suited to identifying underlying processes and, by analyzing men's accounts of the influence of their marital trajectories on their work, the authors were able to reexamine existing hypotheses and develop new ones. They propose 4 mechanisms that they hypothesize can influence men's work motivation and performance: premarital planning, 2 distinct “breadwinner” effects using expectancy and self determination theory, and monitoring by wives. They integrate these mechanisms within gender theory, arguing that the treatment aspect of the male marriage wage premium is an outcome of the “coproduction” of masculinity within marriage. Their recontextualization of existing theory also enables them to reveal weaknesses in the specialization hypothesis.     

The Threat of the “Other”: Ethnic Competition and Racial Interest

Racial conflict has been at the center of US society since its inception. Various theories have tried to explain why racial conflict arises and what the motivating factors are. The aim of this article is to examine one of these theories––ethnic competition––by reviewing the sociological literature from the 1970s to present that focuses on racial interest, ethnic competition, and racial threat.     

“His” and “her” marriage expectations: Determinants and consequences

This article uses couple‐level data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N= 2,263) to investigate factors associated with unmarried parents’ expectations about marriage and the association between their expectations and subsequent union transitions. In most couples, both partners expect to marry, and their shared expectations are the strongest predictor of marriage and separation following their child's birth. Although men's expectations are somewhat more consequential for union transitions, marriage and relationship stability are more likely when at least one parent expects to marry. Factors such as children from previous relationships, distrust, conflict, and shared activities are also associated with union transitions. Findings about how expectations and other factors relate to marriage and separation may inform new marriage promotion initiatives.     

“Whistleblower” or “Renegade”: Definitional Contests in an Official Inquiry

This paper addresses the interpretive dynamics of official inquiries. Beginning with an ideal-typical sketch of congressional investigations, the discussion traces a portrayal of public problems by a committee of the House of Representatives. This leads to the analysis of a hearing in which committee factions struggled to define an Air Force administrator as a “whistleblower” or a “renegade.” The hearing is understood as a “certification ceremony” that rhetorically transformed staff discoveries into allegedly definitive evidence. It is concluded that the paper's conceptual approach can be applied to diverse inquiries that combine documentary research with interrogation of witnesses to generate authoritative findings.     

White Universal Identity as a “Sense of Group Position”

This article seeks to expand upon Blumer's “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” I argue that Blumer's group position model invites us to critically consider the role that dominant group identity and “threats” to identity play in reproducing racial inequalities. Identities seat both material and ideal concerns, and white identities, in particular, may provide “ontological security” that whites will defensively protect. I draw on ethnographic research conducted in 1994–96 in two demographically distinct high schools. Young whites in both schools expressed identities that positioned them as “universal,” and they responded reactively, even prejudicially, when their universal group position was threatened.     

Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work”

Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary‐work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.     

The Turn from “What” to “How”: Garfinkel's Reach Beyond Description

John Heritage described Harold Garfinkel's central question as “how do social actors come to know, and know in common what they are doing and the circumstances in which they are doing it.” The case of Agnes illuminates the methods by which members produce intelligible actions and recognizable—even “natural”—gender orderliness. With this central interest as a starting point, this article offers some observations about transgender women in prison and their creative adaptation to life behind bars.     

“It's Only Sport”—The Symbolic Neutralization of “Violence”

Within the commodified world of professional ice hockey, athletes sell their bodily performances in return for a salary. A central feature of this transaction is the very real risk of physical injury—a risk inherent within most contact sports, but particularly so within those that feature seemingly “violent” confrontations between competitors, as ice hockey is widely reputed to do. Yet, within the spectacle of sport, where physicality can be constructed as playful and unserious, it is possible for the consequences of such action to be concealed behind a symbolic, ludic veneer. Within this article, we explore this process with a particular focus on ice hockey spectators, for whom notions of sport violence as in some important way “mimetic” of the “real” enabled their propensity to both enjoy, and find moral validation through, potentially deleterious behaviors among athletes.     

“Revenge” and “Rescue”: Workplace Deviance in the Taxicab Industry*

This study explores taxicab drivers’ acts of “revenge” and “rescue,” some of which are expressive acts, while others are more instrumental. This article builds on earlier theories of workplace deviance, demonstrating how deviance can serve different purposes and expanding the concept of “deviance admiration” ( Heckert and Heckert 2004 ). It examines deviance in a circumstance—the taxicab industry—which introduces a tension between mandated conformity and necessary deviance: employees must conform to the employers’ rules and yet, to accomplish their jobs well, they need to abandon those rules occasionally. In addition to its theoretical contributions, this work has important practical applications for managers.