Sociology
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Item THE WORST OF TIMES? AGING WITH LIMITED FAMILY TIES IN THE UNITED STATES(2024) Liu, Jingwen; Caudillo, Mónica L.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The drastic demographic and family transitions since the 1970s have raised ongoing discussions about whether older adults fare well socially and psychologically when they are increasingly likely to age alone in the U.S. Based on the social convoy model, the three studies of this dissertation answer this question by extending the focus from the proximal kinship ties to nonkin networks and broader social participation. Particular attention is paid to gender and racial/ethnic differences as demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly by different social groups. The first study examines how family instability and the deviation from “normative” family trajectories are associated with older adults’ mental health. It found different levels of importance of the structure and instability of family for men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Moving beyond family and households, the second study explores the substitution effect of extended family, friends, and neighborhoods in the absence of proximal relations. It reveals the “double plight” of Black and Hispanic older adults who may suffer from both a disproportionate exposure to the declining marriage and a lack of supportive distant relations serving as buffer zones in the absence of core kinship ties. The third study disentangles the population-level age and cohort trends of social connectedness, a more comprehensive indicator of individuals’ social wellbeing. It finds distinct intercohort changes in both the overall level of social connectedness and intracohort gender and racial/ethnic disparities. These trends can be partially explained by cohort differences in socioeconomic resources and health. However, societal changes that emphasize the significance of intergenerational solidarity, friendship ties, digital communication, non-religious social participation, and volunteering may play a more significant role. Taken together, this dissertation depicts a mixed picture of different populations who demonstrate varying levels of vulnerability and resilience against the quickly developing society. Therefore, it calls for both the enhancement of social welfare regimes and more positive narratives about unique resilience and strengths for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults.Item Gender-Specific Significance of Family Transitions on Well-being and Work Attitudes(2022) Hara, Yuko; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Marriage and parenthood are major life events for many individuals. Marriage is linked with improved health partly through spousal influence on health-related behaviors including diet. Previous theoretical and qualitative research suggests a link between family transitions and meal patterns. Yet empirical research using a nationally representative sample to examine the association is scarce. And the issues of whether spousal influence on health-related behaviors can be extended to other types of romantic relationships, such as cohabitation, as well as whether the transition to parenthood is linked with changes in meal patterns, have not been adequately researched. Additionally, research examining whether the health benefits that marriage brings can be universally found for both genders across countries is limited. Family life events carry other consequences, too. Prior research also suggests that family life often has a negative impact on attitudes toward paid work, particularly for women. Past research, however, primarily relied on small sample interview data or cross-sectional data, leaving unclear how work attitudes change during adulthood. This dissertation examines the impact of different family life events such as marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood on changes in subjective well-being, health-related behavior (meal patterns), and attitudes towards work by gender. I focus on adults in their prime work and family life stages in the U.S. and Japan. By using fixed effects models and panel data, I aimed to estimate the average effect of family life events within individuals over time. I found that entering a romantic union reduces meal skipping, but the type of union matters differently for men and women. I also found that the transition to parenthood discourages women’s regular meal patterns, suggesting family ties do not necessarily facilitate healthy behaviors. In the highly gendered social context of Japan, contrary to previous findings from Western industrialized countries, I found no evidence indicating that marriage is associated with self-rated health for women. Additionally, I found that the transition to parenthood is negatively linked with men’s self-rated health. In terms of work attitudes, even when controlling for various job characteristics, I found that both marriage and parenthood are negatively associated with enthusiasm toward work achievement, only for women in Japan. These findings highlight the importance of country context and reveal that entry into marriage triggers shifts in women’s work attitudes even before having children.Item GROWING UP IN RURAL MALAWI: GENDERED ASPIRATIONS, TIME USE, AND SOCIALIZATION(2019) Zahra, Fatima; Madhavan, Sangeetha; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation focuses on three understudied dimensions of challenges among youth in Malawi, and is structured as three separate papers. The first is, the relationship between aspired and actual timing of transitions out of school, and the extent of the gender gap in this relationship. The second dimension is gender disparity in acquired skills and learning outcomes in primary school, and how demands for labor at the household level help explain differences in dropout and student performance on Math and Chichewa tests. The third dimension focuses on girls’ relationship power, and the gender socialization experiences at school and individual characteristics that are correlated with it. Using the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study (MSAS), I find that 1) a higher desired age for marriage is associated with a lower likelihood of school dropout, and marriage related school dropout, with this association significant mainly among girls, 2) a high work burden is associated with a greater likelihood of school dropout in the subsequent year, but is not associated with performance on Math and Chichewa reading comprehension tests, and there is no significant gender difference in these relationships, 3) attitudes form an important dimension of the measurement of girls’ relationship power, and earlier experiences of physical violence in school, and individual characteristics including self-esteem and attitudes against spousal violent predict power in relationships in later adolescence and early adulthood. Together, the three papers in this dissertation provide critical insights into individual mechanisms that allow adolescents to stay in school longer, structural constraints like household labor allocation that limit their educational attainment, and the contribution of early socialization experiences to girls’ power in later relationships.Item Health Associations with Interracial and Inter-ethnic Marital, Cohabiting, and Dating Relationships in the United States(2017) Lykke, Lucia Christine; Rendall, Michael S; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research consistently finds that health is stratified by race, ethnicity, and gender, and that romantic relationships, particularly marriage, are protective of health. Despite increasing prevalence of interracial and inter-ethnic relationships, few studies have investigated the association between partnership exogamy and health. In this dissertation, I examine whether and how heterosexual exogamy is associated with self-rated health, being overweight and obese, and depression. I additionally examine evidence for health selection into exogamous versus endogamous relationships and the evidence for health change over time in relationships. First, I use data from four panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, representing the adult population aged 18-59 in the US, to investigate partnership exogamy and self-rated health among Whites and nonwhites. I find that having a White partner is associated with better self-rated health for nonwhites, and that having a nonwhite partner is associated with worse health for White women. I find evidence that people in better health select into partnerships with Whites, and that having a White partner is associated with better self-rated health over time. Second, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, representing young adults who came of age in the 1990s, to look at associations of partner race and ethnicity with being overweight and obese, and with depression. I find that overweight and obese White women select into new relationships with Black men, and also that having a Black partner is associated with weight gain over time for White women. Finally, I find that White young men and women who are more depressed are more likely to partner with nonwhite partners, and this effect is particularly strong for White women who have Black dating partners. I find evidence for depression increase over time among White women with Black partners, though the findings suggest a weaker causal impact of interracial relationships on depression than suggested by prior studies. To interpret the results throughout, I draw on gendered theories of interracial relationship formation including status exchange theory, and gendered theories of relationships and health that focus on stress and social status.Item IMPROVING SURVEY MEASUREMENT QUESTIONS FOR SEXUAL MINORITIES AND THE TRANS POPULATION: TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED NATURE OF THE TRANS LIFE COURSE(2013) Ryan, John Michael; Milkie, Melissa; Moghadam, Linda; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Sexual minorities are a hidden population who are difficult for social researchers to analyze well. One specific group of sexual minorities, the transgender population, and how they understand their sometimes changing identities, may be especially complex to study. Not only is this sometimes a hidden population, but they may only identify as transgender at certain points in the life course, preferring other identity categories at different life stages and in different circumstances. I use the shortened term "trans" to refer to all members of what the hegemonic gendered order would consider gender non-conforming. Using the overarching sociological concepts of social constructionism and classification and drawing on a life course perspective, this dissertation explores how the self-identity of members of the trans community might shift across the life course. The goal then is to better understand trans identity awareness and developments across the life course in order to make better sense of existing survey data as well as to improve future questions related to trans identity. Analysis for this dissertation drew upon data collected from 139 in-depth cognitive interviews in both English and Spanish from a project related to testing a new sexual identity question for the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Questionnaire Design Research Laboratory at the National Center for Health Statistics to explore how survey wording affects what researchers know, or think they know, about sexual identity distribution, particularly as it relates to trans identity. It also drew upon data collected from 10 in-depth qualitative interviews done with members of the trans community in order to explore how an understanding of the trans life course enables us to make better sense of the ways in which this group identifies on official surveys. A sociological approach, one particularly embedded in social constructionism, was used to address the improvement of a survey research question.Item Do Lesbians in the Military Pass as Heterosexual?(2010) Bonner, Kimberly Bridget; Segal, David R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This exploratory multiple-case case study investigates if lesbians in the military, past and present, manage to "pass" as heterosexual. This project is designed with the aim of enabling new questions about old problems regarding gender and sexuality within American military culture. Data come from two sources comprised of seventy-three interviews with military lesbians from three previously published works and five face-to-face interviews with active duty lesbians conducted by the author between 2007 and 2008. Lesbians in the military are centralized here in this multiple-case case study because they are both "women" and "homosexuals" participating in an institution that has had historically tense relationships with members of both of these social groups. This project pays specific attention to non-gender conforming lesbians in the military and argues that this group in particular potentially stands to shed light on how both gender and sexual norms operate within both American society and military culture.Item SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY AMONG ELDERLY MEN AND WOMEN IN TAIWAN(2009) Sa, Zhihong; Kahn, Joan R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although an obesity epidemic has spread to people of all age groups, empirical knowledge about elderly obesity remains largely scant, particularly in non-Western societies. This dissertation addresses that gap by examining the social determinants of overweight and obesity and weight gain among men and women, using 1999 and 2003 waves of the longitudinal Survey of Health and Living Status of the Near Elderly and Elderly in Taiwan. Existing literature shows that the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on body weight shifts from positive to negative as the level of development of a society progresses from low to high, and social gradients in obesity appear first among women. A gender-specific pattern of social disparities in overweight and obesity is expected to have emerged in Taiwan. The analysis captures a gendered pattern in the transition of the SES-obesity relationship in Taiwan. Similar to less-developed countries, men and women with more material resources (i.e. income and wealth) have an elevated risk of overweight and obesity, indicating the importance of material resources in getting access to food through most of the lifetime of this elderly population. However, household wealth is inversely associated with short-term weight gain among women, suggesting that wealth may become a protective factor against overweight and obesity. The education effect has shifted to the pattern of Western societies, particularly among women. While education has strong negative impacts on cumulative body weight among women, it is inversely associated with short-term weight gain for both men and women. The protective effect of education emerges earlier among women than among men, probably as a result of educated women adopting the Western ideal of thinness. Also, the negative effect of childhood SES on body weight among women is transmitted through education. Hence, social disparities in overweight and obesity among older women is mainly produced by differential weight gains in adulthood for individuals of different SES. Finally, the relationship between social participation and excess body weight is explored. Men and women with active social participation have a reduced risk for greater weight gain, suggesting that social participation may have some buffering effects on unhealthy weight outcomes of the disadvantaged groups, especially among women.Item Gender, Kinscripts and the Work of Transnational Kinship among Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Families: An Exploratory Analysis(2007-08-23) Forsythe-Brown, Ivy; Thornton Dill, Bonnie; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using an integrated, quantitative and qualitative, research design this study explores the type, frequency, duration and circumstances of transnational kinship ties among Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the U.S. Focus is on how immigrants maintain kinship connections across international boundaries, the delegation of kin work tasks among family members, and the impact of gender and/or kin designated roles on these activities. Qualitative data is from in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple members of four English-speaking Afro-Caribbean families, key informants and two group interviews among immigrants with transnational kinship ties (n=41). Quantitative data from a sub-set of the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) re-interview, an integrated, hierarchical national probability sample, is utilized to examine the statistical significance of factors that impact transnational kinship contact (n=101). The notion of kinscripts posited by Stack and Burton (1993) is with combined theoretical perspectives on doing and performing gender, the household division of labor, and literature on Caribbean families and migration to create a lens through which the activities and behaviors of study participants are analyzed. Findings indicate that gender, social class, family size and gender composition, parents residing in the Caribbean, and length of stay in the host nation impact the frequency, extent, and direction of kin contact among NSAL respondents and study participants with transnational kinship ties. Men were found to engage in kin work in the absence of available women in the family to perform kin work tasks. Additionally, the study finds that who executes the majority of kin work in immigrant families tends to be voluntary and closely linked to individual skill and personality.Item Indian Muslim Women's Education and Employment in the Context of Modernization, Religious Discrimination and Disadvantage, and the Rise of Hindu Fundamentalism and Muslim Identity Politics(2007-04-30) Rastogi, Sonya; Desai, Sonalde; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research on Muslim women in India has increased in recent years, but remains sparse. The few existing studies rarely examine the interplay of religion and gender on Muslim women, nor do they investigate the historical influences shaping Muslim women's lives. Using the National Sample Survey (NSS), this dissertation seeks to make a unique contribution to the literature by examining Muslim women's educational enrollment and wage employment in the context of three historical forces: modernization, religious discrimination and disadvantage, and the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and Muslim identity politics. We find that modernization has played an important role in increasing school enrollment for children ages 12 to 15. Modernizing forces have also influenced employment in India, modestly increasing wage employment. While Muslims have benefited from modernizing forces, they continue to face discrimination and disadvantage in the educational system and labor market; therefore they have lower levels of school enrollment and slightly lower engagement in wage employment compared to non-scheduled caste Hindus. There is also evidence that the rise of Hindu fundamentalism has had a negative impact on Muslim enrollment and wage employment over time, however these effects appear greater for Muslim enrollment compared to Muslim wage employment. Evidence suggests that enrollment for Muslims above the poverty line may have been more affected by Hindu fundamentalism relative to poorer Muslims from 1983 to 1987; however, wealthier and poorer Muslims appear similarly affected by Hindu fundamentalism after 1987. Contrary to expectations, results suggest that poorer Muslim's wage employment is more affected by the rise of Hindu fundamentalism relative to wealthier Muslims. As expected, the interplay of religion and gender has affected Muslim women's enrollment and wage employment. Specifically, they experience lower levels of enrollment and wage employment compared to Muslim men and Hindu men and women. Muslim women have been further affected by the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and Muslim identity politics in both enrollment and wage employment. However, it appears that these factors have been relatively more detrimental to Muslim women's wage employment compared to their enrollment.