Sociology
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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 The Politics of Teenage Sexualities: Social Regulation, Citizenship and the U.S. State(2010) Mann, Emily S.; Kestnbaum, Meyer; Mamo, Laura; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the emergence of a now-hegemonic discourse of teenage sexuality, which constructs teenagers' engagement in "sexual activity" as a social problem with and about girls in general and low-income girls of color in particular, and explores how the U.S. state and the community health centers that contract with it regulate the sexual practices, relationships, and identities of teenagers in relation to these and related understandings. My analysis draws on feminist and queer theories of sexuality, gender, the state, social regulation, and sexual citizenship and emphasizes how intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age are explicitly and implicitly articulated through dynamics of regulation prior to state intervention at the federal level; the federal policymaking process; and the discourses and practices of service providers working in two community health centers that provide health care and social services to a predominantly low-income Latina/o clientele in Washington, DC. I argue that the U.S. state and community health centers comprise important sites through which inequalities of gender, race, class, sexuality, and age are articulated and teenage sexual citizenship is produced. As such, this study is located at the intersection of political sociology and gender and sexuality studies, and makes contributions to the sociological and interdisciplinary literatures on intersectionality, welfare states, social regulation, sexual citizenship, and the social construction of adolescence.Item What Makes a Good Dad? Contexts, Measures and Covariates of Paternal Care(2008-06-04) Wang, Rong; Bianchi, Suzanne M.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)American fathers devote significantly less time than mothers to rearing their children. Using new time diary data from the 2003-2005 American Time Use Survey, this dissertation documents the variation of father involvement in different family contexts, develops more comprehensive measures of paternal care, and provides an in-depth examination of the major covariates contributing to fathers' time allocation to childrearing. Compared to married resident fathers, single fathers - specifically, "sole" single fathers who are the only adult in the family - spend significantly more time providing all types of childcare except playing with children. Sole single fathers spend similar amounts of time with their children as married fathers, although their passive care time is less. Cohabiting fathers and married fathers demonstrate similar parenting time patterns. Lacking daily interaction with their children, non-resident fathers provide less than one-third of direct childcare and spend much less overall time with their children than resident fathers do. When non-resident fathers are with their children, their time is mostly spent on playing with children and performing necessary managerial responsibilities (e.g., attending children's events and school meetings, picking up/dropping off children). However, non-resident fathers' time "minding" children - a measure that gauges passive care of children not requiring physical presence - is almost 85 percent of what resident fathers report. Further, divorced non-resident fathers spend more time providing childcare than (re)married non-resident fathers, especially in physical and recreational activities. Father care in two-parent families is associated with a number of covariates that reflect demands on fathers and their capacity to provide care. First, fathers' direct care time and time with children, but not their minding time, decreases as their children age. Second, fathers tend to do more childcare when they have boys rather than girls in the family. Third, although fathers appear to do more childcare when their spouses are employed, this happens only among those whose spouses are least educated or best educated. Finally, despite the common assumption that better educated fathers are more "involved," the childcare time differences are mainly between fathers with high school (or below) education and everyone else.