Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe components of sexual orientation, including but not limited to sexual desires, attractions, behaviors, and identities, are generally assumed to align in predictable ways. However, ample research from sociology and other social and behavioral science disciplines shows that for many people, these components do not align as expected. In this article, we focus on individuals who identify as heterosexual and experience same‐sex sexual desires, attractions, and/or behaviors. First, we briefly review the available quantitative data on the prevalence of such experiences and use data from one high‐quality national survey—the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG)—to show that self‐identified heterosexuals account for as much as one‐half of the same‐sex sexuality that is reported. Then, we turn to recent qualitative literature and draw attention to the contexts within which heterosexually identified men and women experience same‐sex sexuality, how they make sense of these experiences, and the interpretive strategies they use to reconcile their same‐sex sexuality with their heterosexual identities and their gendered presentations of self. Finally, we conclude by discussing the significance of this research and pointing to several paths forward for sociologists and other researchers.

As this issue of the Future of Children makes clear, we have much yet to learn about military children and their families. A big part of the reason, write Anita Chandra and Andrew London, is that we lack sufficiently robust sources of data. Until we collect more and better data about military families, Chandra and London say, we will not be able to study the breadth of their experiences and sources of resilience, distinguish among subgroups within the diverse military community, or compare military children with their civilian counterparts.

After surveying the available sources of data and explaining what they are lacking and why, Chandra and London make several recommendations. First, they say, major longitudinal national surveys, as well as administrative data systems (for example, in health care and in schools), should routinely ask about children's connections to the military, so that military families can be flagged in statistical analyses. Second, questions on national surveys and psychological assessments should be formulated and calibrated for military children to be certain that they resonate with military culture. Third, researchers who study military children should consider adopting a life-course perspective, examining children from birth to adulthood as they and their families move through the transitions of military life and into or out of the civilian world.

We explore racial differences in multigenerational living arrangements in 1910, focusing on trigenerational kin structures. Coresidence across generations represents a public function of the family, and we observe this across different ages or life-course stages through which adults came to be at risk for providing simultaneous household support for multiple generations of kin dependents. Using data from the 1.4 percent 1910 Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, our comparisons adjust for marital turnover, including widow(er)hood/divorce and remarriage, as rates are known to be historically higher among African Americans in this period. Across subgroups defined by age and sex, we find that African Americans are virtually always as likely as or more likely than European Americans (of both native and foreign parentage) to live as grandparents in trigenerational households. Widow(er)hood/divorce generally increased the likelihood of trigenerational coresidence, while remarriage sometimes increased, sometimes decreased, and sometimes had no association with this living arrangement. Also, we find that the life-course staging of household kin support in 1910 differed across race/generation partly due to different economic and demographic circumstances, suggesting more complexity in kin support than previously considered. We discuss these findings in relation to the histories of African American and European American families as well as their implications for future research.

AbstractThe 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) encouraged states to reduce welfare caseloads. Caseload reduction can be accomplished by promoting exit for work, marriage, or other private means of support and by diverting new applicants. Most research on caseload decline has focused on welfare‐to‐work outcomes; less is known about processes of diversion. This study employs administrative records and ethnographic data to examine diversion in West County, New York, from 1999 to 2003. Findings demonstrate a high level of diversion and suggest that application is an ongoing and at times remedial process rather than an event. Diversion occurs at all points of the expanded TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) intake process and is associated with one‐time lump sum payments as well as the hassle factor engendered by new eligibility requirements. The encumbered lives of applicants and TANF staff discretion are also implicated as factors contributing to diversion. We conclude with an analysis of the implications of TANF diversion for access to benefits.

Many scholars have noted the theoretical importance of remarriage in twentieth-century American life (Burch 1995; Cherlin 1998; Furstenberg 1980; Glick 1980; Thornton 1977; Uhlenberg and Chew 1986), yet few historical studies have examined remarriage in the United States empirically. This gap in the literature is noteworthy for two reasons. First, the turn of the twentieth century seems to have marked a crossover in the remarriage transition of the United States, reflecting changes in the pool of persons eligible to remarry. This transition was characterized by decreases in remarriage resulting from declines in mortality and the probability of widow(er)hood, followed by increases in remarriage resulting from higher divorce rates. The crossover in the transition was likely to have occurred when the pool of eligibles was at or near its nadir. Second, there is ongoing debate about the implications of remarriage for families and individuals (Booth and Dunn 1994), and about the impacts of remarriage on family functions (Cherlin 1978; Cherlin and Furstenberg 1994). In the light of these considerations, we believe it is important to examine remarriage and its consequences in the United States at the turn of the century so that we may better understand the ways that remarriage influences family life and shapes the life course of persons within families (see London and Elman 2001).

1. Life-course perspectives on military service : an introduction / Janet M. Wilmoth and Andrew S. London -- 2. The military as a transforming influence : integration into or isolation from normal adult roles? / Ryan Kelty and David R. Segal -- 3. Women's lives in wartime : the American Civil War and World War II / D'ann Campbell -- 4. Race-ethnicity and immigration status in the U.S. military / Amy C. Lutz -- 5. Military service and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender lives / Maria T. Brown -- 6. Military service as a pathway to early socioeconomic achievement for disadvantaged groups / Pamela R. Bennett and Katrina Bell Mcdonald -- 7. Labor market outcomes among veterans and military spouses / Meredith Kleykamp -- 8. The best years of our lives : military service and family relationships : a life-course perspective / Daniel Burland and Jennifer Hickes Lundquist -- 9. Military employment and spatial mobility across the life course / Amy Kate Bailey -- 10. A matter of life and death : military service and health / Alair Maclean -- 11. Military service, social policy, and later-life financial and health security / Debra Street and Jessica Hoffman -- 12. United States military services' sponsorship of life-course research : past, present, and future / Paul A. Gade and Brandis Ruise -- 13. Methodological problems in determining the consequences of military service / Douglas A. Wolf, Coady Wing, and Leonard M. Lopoo -- 14. Setting an agenda for future research on military service and the life course / Jay D. Teachman.

"Provides a comprehensive and critical review of what we know about military service and the life course: what we don't know, and what we need to do to better understand the role of military service in shaping people's lives. It demonstrates that the military, like colleges and prisons, is a key social institution that engages individuals in early adulthood and shapes processes of cumulative (dis)advantage over the life course."--Provided by publisher.

Prior research has shown consistently that religiosity, as indexed by self‐reported frequency of prayer, is associated positively with "niceness," measured by interviewers'ratings of respondents'cooperativeness. We used data pooled from the 1983, 1988, and 1993 General Social Surveys to further examine the association between religiosity and niceness, and to raise questions about the adequacy of this currently preferred operationalization of niceness. We used three different measures of religiosity and directly examined racial differences in perceived cooperativeness. Our results indicate that each self‐reported indicator of religiosity was associated positively with perceived cooperativeness (in separate models), while race was associated negatively. We found no evidence of mediating or moderating relationships. Overall, our results provide additional evidence that persons who are more religious are perceived by others to be more cooperative and that this effect operates net of more readily observable characteristics that might influence interview dynamics and interviewers'evaluations of respondents'cooperativeness. However, our results also suggest that new, more specific measures of niceness are needed to improve our ability to fully measure this sociologically important concept and to refine our understanding of the relationship between religiosity and niceness.

This research examines concentration and similarity in the first name distributions of African Americans and whites resident in Mississippi in 1910. Data are drawn from the Public Use Sample of the 1910 Census, with names added from microfilm copies of original Census manuscripts. We find little difference in the degree of concentration of the name distributions and only modest dissimilarity in name choice. Multivariate analysis using age as a proxy for period of name assignment (birth cohort) indicates that racial differentiation in name choice increased over the period 1870 to 1910 primarily as a result of changes in the name choices of whites. We discuss these results in conjunction with the recent work of Lieberson and Bell (1992) on contemporary racial differences in naming patterns. Lieberson and Bell (1992) argue that African Americans in the contemporary period emphasize group differences by choosing "African" or "African sounding" names. In Mississippi in the period between the abolition of slavery and 1910, we argue that whites distanced themselves from African Americans by choosing increasingly the "whitest" names (e.g., those disproportionately chosen by whites). Changing naming patterns are not orchestrated group responses. Instead, they reflect emergent cultural responses to fundamental social change.