Despite the high prevalence of mental health issues in adulthood, scholars have yet to fully explain the social conditions that contribute to poor mental health outcomes. One important gap in the existing literature is the impact of multigenerational caregiving on the mental well‐being of adults whose parents are part of the sandwich generation. Using seven waves of linked mother–child data from the National Longitudinal Surveys (2008–2020) and growth curve models, I examined (1) the relationship between mothers' caregiving for both older and younger generations and depressive symptoms in their adult children, and (2) whether this association varies by adult children's age. Findings suggest that maternal sandwich caregiving does not significantly predict adult children's depressive symptoms overall. However, the association differs by age: maternal sandwich caregiving is particularly detrimental to the mental health of older adult children compared with their younger counterparts. These results highlight the need for continued research on the collateral consequences of sandwich caregiving, especially as this caregiving arrangement becomes a reality for millions of American families.
Helping people learn about racism as systemic rather than as solely or even primarily as an individual and interpersonal phenomenon is important. In this study, we examined how two different courses may have affected the racial attitudes and understandings of our students. We found that students in both an introductory and an upper‐level course showed significant increases in the understanding of racism as systemic, using both quantitative and qualitative measures. Further, those in the upper‐level course experienced the largest change in understanding. In documenting these shifts, we found that emotion played an important and surprising role. We discuss our findings in the context of both the prior literature and the current political climate. Finally, we offer suggestions for next steps as well as for teaching.
Development interventions, specifically rural financial services, seek to bring positive changes in traditional rural agrarian contexts. However, short‐sighted interventions can cause long‐term societal, environmental, and economic challenges. Drawing insights from long‐term ethnographic research on the social and economic implications of rural financial services in rural Bangladesh, this study cautions that sometimes development interventions by local non‐government organizations (NGOs) contribute to the creation of long‐term debt and dependency cycles on NGO services among their beneficiaries. While creating dependency or a debt trap is not usually the intentions of NGO services, mechanisms can strengthen the bonds between the NGOs and their beneficiaries who enter a complex relationship. This study argues that a lack of any locally feasible exit plans or sustainability roadmaps can contribute to strong bonds between NGOs and recipients, akin to world system models of dependency, rather than empowerment.
The unethical pro-organizational behavior in corporate low-carbon emission context (low-carbon UPB) and its social interacting mechanism were overlooked by previous studies. The present study addressed this gap by surveying a representative Chinese working population (n = 583). Results showed that employee's organizational identity is negatively correlated with low-carbon UPB, which is mediated by their concern for the organization's long-term interests. Additionally, both high-quality leader-member exchange relationships and perceived high inter-organizational competition strengthen this negative relationship. The findings contribute valuable insights for promoting sustainable practices in organizations and reducing unethical behavior in corporate environmental reporting. This study underscores the importance of fostering strong organizational identity and long-term sustainability goals to mitigate unethical pro-organizational behavior in corporate low-carbon UPB and promote ethical behaviors in corporate settings.
Chronic stress is a global issue with detrimental effects on health and productivity, often leading individuals to adopt health-related coping strategies. This study uses an adapted Job Demands-Resources model to examine how various job demands and resources impact perceived stress and, consequently, the use of legal, prescription, and illegal drugs for enhancement purposes. Utilizing multiple waves from a nationwide sample of the working population in Germany (N = 7,705), structural equation models reveal that certain job demands increase perceived stress, while several resources mitigate it. Stress mediates the relationship between these factors and the use of legal and prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement. Illegal drug use was only directly impacted by selected job demands and resources. Thereby, this study expands the Job Demands-Resources model's applicability to include health-related behaviors like drug use. Practically, it calls for multidimensional strategies to prevent potentially health-endangering drug use, including structural improvements and individual interventions.
The ways in which public officials, citizens, and social institutions are held accountable for social problems, including police-involved killings in the United States, reflect changing attributions of responsibility. Although news reports now rely less on official police narratives and less often stereotype police as heroes and victims as villains, there has been little research on how opinion columns, featuring the views of community leaders, frame these deadly encounters. Through a public arenas approach employing frame analysis, this study examined 165 opinion columns about two victims of police violence, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, published in their respective local newspapers (the Courier Journal and the Star Tribune) during 2020. Although some columns deflected responsibility away from the police, the majority used pro-accountability frames. Writers in these columns functioned as "accountability entrepreneurs," identifying decontextualized injustices ("colorblind injustice" or "social injustice") or employing understandings of systemically based (organizational and structural) racism. This typology may be applied more broadly, as public opinion continues to change, to how accountability is deflected or centered in accounts of other social problems.
While existing research offers mixed evidence on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected adults' division of housework, adolescents have remained largely overlooked in this regard. Using nationally representative data from the 2019-2021 American Time Use Survey and Current Population Survey, this study examines changes in adolescents' unpaid labor before and during the pandemic using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses. Results indicate that boys' domestic labor time remained stable, whereas girls' time decreased during the pandemic, when schools were closed and youth unemployment was high. Individual-level time availability was associated with modest reductions in domestic labor time, but its explanatory power was limited relative to gender. Despite these changes, a substantial gender gap in total unpaid labor persisted. Girls consistently performed more routine housework than boys, while gender differences were not significant for discretionary chores. The findings provide partial support for time availability theory while underscoring the continued salience of gender in shaping adolescents' domestic labor. By centering youth, the study extends existing scholarship and raises concerns that these patterns may have reinforced gendered expectations about unpaid work.
Thrift shopping, or “thrifting,” has gained widespread popularity over the past 15+ years. Sociological inquiry into thrifting has linked the phenomenon to a wide-ranging blend of conditions and factors that principally include economic necessity, resistance to economic, environmental, and labor injustices, and hedonism. Yet, how thrift shoppers come to engage thrifting as an agentic, identity-forming process remains relatively neglected in the relevant literatures. This article introduces a new theoretical perspective to this body of research that centers on a reciprocal dynamic between human and material agency that spurs and sustains thrifting as a form of reflexive consumption and identity work. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 37 undergraduate student thrift shoppers at an American public research university. I articulate three core elements that characterize thrifting as a form of reflexive consumption and identity work: (1) initial thrifting experiences, (2) reflexivity and self-formation, and (3) agentic reciprocation. The study empirically shows how thrifting can be an agentic act underpinned by a reciprocal dynamic that turns on materiality, reflexivity, and ongoing identity work.
Black and Brown students report feeling isolated and out of place in U.S. universities, especially in predominately white institutions (PWIs), and there are a host of reasons for this. Because they are the numerical minority, Black and Brown students are highly visible others whose presence and behaviors stand out. As numerical minorities, Black and Brown students at PWIs often feel that they are made to be representatives of their race and that their behaviors may be taken as evidence to support racialized stereotypes that threaten their academic and social success. This study uses the counter-narratives of 31 self-identified Black and Brown students, collected during nine focus group meetings in 2014, at a white university in the Southeast United States. Findings are interpreted through the lens of Impression Management Theory, which posits that individuals make goal-directed attempts to influence how others perceive them. Participants describe feeling forced to devise strategies to present themselves in ways that negate or avoid fulfilling racialized and intersectional stereotypes, as well as make whites more comfortable. They learn to use impression management techniques that must shift with the setting and audience. In particular, participant strategies of impression management sought to avoid cultural assumptions of academic inferiority, criminality, and hostility and aggressiveness. Taken together, the experiences of students who participated in this study reveal how microaggressions help (re)construct academic spaces as white spaces and academic belonging as an intrinsically white characteristic. Specifically, we argue that microaggressions serve as a mechanism that not only serves to protect the whiteness of PWIs and white public space, but also to help define the appropriateness of expression of racial identity within these spaces. We conclude with a discussion that explores the emotional and cognitive effects of participating in impression management, as well as the overall academic and social implications for the extra, often invisible, burdens of being Black or Brown in a white institution.
As degree attainment remains one of the more accepted pathways toward upward social mobility, first‐generation students are pursuing post‐secondary degrees despite being uniquely vulnerable to obstacles that undermine their higher educational enrollment, retention, and later attainment. Universities have introduced scholarship programs as targeted intervention strategies to reduce some common educational obstacles; however, little is known about how first‐generation students utilize university‐sponsored scholarships and whether these scholarships are enabling relative to student success or reproduce existing stratification mechanisms within higher education. Drawing from longitudinal qualitative data with 61 first‐generation students at a large public university, I elaborate in this article on the types of inequalities first‐generation students encounter during their college years and whether or how institutional intervention strategies matter. Findings suggest that first‐generation students struggle to balance both their educational aspirations and the vulnerability risks (i.e., academic, social, and financial barriers) to remain enrolled. This suggests, relative to existing literature, a complicated relationship between first‐generation student vulnerability, decision making, and university‐sponsored scholarships. These results contribute to broader sociological concerns of inequality by speaking to the current limitations of institutional support mechanisms and their impact on first‐generation student socialization, integration, and later educational attainment.
This study draws on interviews with 50 sociology and business professors across two private and five public American universities, and proposes a novel “Merit‐Fit‐Diversit” framework to show how narratives of merit, fit, and diversity emerge at different evaluation stages of tenure‐track job candidates. The evaluation produces inequality because: merit may penalize candidates with fewer resources due to structural constraints; fit potentially perpetuates social closure and impedes diversity; diversity lacks guidance for implementation and is seldom followed up by inclusion efforts. This study innovatively pinpoints disciplinary and institutional differences in evaluation: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at public universities are driven by bottom‐up needs from minority students, who demand faculty that embodies their identity. At private universities, diversity hiring comes from top‐down demands to signal commitment to DEI. Sociology professors are more sensitive to cumulative (dis)advantages that result in different qualifications among candidates than business professors.
This article explores the interplay between the nation‐state, gender, and security by exploring embodied experiences of Israeli women gun owners. Growing skepticism toward Israel's historically state‐centric security model has driven a significant increase in women's personal handgun ownership, disrupting and reconfiguring traditional gender identities. As the state's monopoly on public security erodes, armed women increasingly take on the role of protectors for themselves and their families. This shift broadens the spectrum of gendered practices tied to firearms, security, and Israeli citizenship. Based on 17 in‐depth qualitative interviews, we demonstrate how armed women draw on and transform elements of traditional feminine expression by melding notions of feminine dress, motherhood, and firearms equality. This study contributes to theoretical discourse on gender performativity and firearms by demonstrating how private gun ownership does not wholly subvert dominant masculine forms of Israeli militarization, but rather functions to construct a new grammar and vocabulary of feminine performances around both firearms ownership and Israeli gendered citizenship.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant problem globally. It is especially problematic in sub‐Saharan Africa, including Ghana. Some evidence suggests women living with HIV/AIDS (WLHIV) are more severely affected than others. A possible reason for their increased vulnerability is food insecurity. Food insecurity occurs when nutritionally adequate and safe foods are not available or inaccessible and is disproportionately high among WLHIV. The study examined the effects of food insecurity over the life course on IPV among WLHIV in Ghana. It used data from about 1,007 ever‐married Ghanaian WLHIV attending routine check‐ups in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Binary logit models examined the effects of food insecurity over the life course on physical, sexual, emotional, economic, and spiritual IPV. Both childhood and adulthood food insecurity were significantly associated with IPV. Women who experienced food insecurity in childhood and adulthood were significantly more likely to report all five types of IPV than those who did not. The largest association occurs when childhood food insecurity continues into adulthood. Our findings demonstrate the cumulative and intergenerational relationship between food insecurity and IPV among WLHIV in Ghana, thus calling for interventions to target children at risk.
Despite recent improvements in women's empowerment and educational attainment, and modest economic gains, Tanzania continues to experience notable under‐five mortality rates within Sub‐Saharan Africa. Drawing on Mosley and Chen's child survival framework and the Socio‐ecological Model, this study examines how maternal empowerment and decision‐making capabilities shape child mortality outcomes. Analysis of the 2022 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey data for 6599 mothers reveals complex relationships between women's autonomy and child survival. Logistic regression models were used to assess three autonomy dimensions: access to economic resources, attitudes toward domestic violence, and decision‐making power. Increased access to economic resources (OR: 1.28, 95% CI: 1.18–1.39) and greater decision‐making power among partnered women (OR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.02–1.17) were associated with higher odds of under‐five mortality, while attitudes toward domestic violence showed no significant link. These findings suggest that advancing women's agency alone does not automatically improve child health; effective policy must embed women's empowerment within a broader institutional agenda that expands public care services, promotes shared caregiving responsibilities, builds community support networks, and shifts the gender norms that shape family health.
The growing prevalence of internet use and evidence indicating both harmful and beneficial consequences of “being on‐line” suggest the importance of understanding risk and protective factors that may prevent use from becoming “excessive.” While research has explored the psychological factors precipitating excessive use, few analyses have focused simultaneously on the impact of individual traits and social attachments. Drawing on Walter Reckless' arguments in containment theory, we investigate how internal and external “containments” may influence excessive internet use. Using data from a 2017 online survey of adolescents and young adults ( n = 785) recruited from a demographically balanced sample of Americans, we also explore how the effect of these factors may change or remain constant for individuals at different stages in the life course. Overall, results indicate that both internal and external containments influence the likelihood of engaging in excessive internet use, though the importance of each varies across age groups. Our findings point to a compelling life course story, suggesting an intersection between internet use and the changing circumstances and priorities that come with increasing age.
This article interrogates gender transitioning by centering nonbinary experiences, which challenge the binary‐driven narratives that dominate both medical and sociological frameworks of transition. Drawing on seven focus groups with 48 nonbinary participants across multiple countries, this study explores three interrelated forms of transition: social, medical, and flexible aesthetic transitioning. Participants articulated transition as an ongoing, fluid process rather than a linear movement toward a fixed gendered endpoint. Their experiences challenge the assumption that transition must always align with transnormative narratives of dysphoria, permanence, or binary gender embodiment. Instead, participants engaged in practices that “undo” gender in ways that reject rigid classification while still considering safety, recognition, and legibility. This study builds on and critiques theories of doing, redoing, and undoing gender by demonstrating how nonbinary transitioning disrupts dominant models of gender accountability, recognition, and self‐determination. Ultimately, this work expands sociological understandings of gender transition by foregrounding nonlinearity, fluidity, and the role of social, institutional, and embodied constraints in shaping nonbinary identity formation.
Calls to limit immigration are fueled by the belief immigration threatens individual and collective welfare, yet studies on support for restrictionism remain equivocal on this relationship. We explore this relationship and contribute to existing research by measuring group threat as a latent construct based on Blumer's (1958:3) definition of it as an underlying sense of threat to a group's position in a social hierarchy. Additionally, we examine the mediating effects of threat to group position on the relationship between several measures of economic vulnerability and support for restrictionism. Using 2014 GSS data and structural equation modeling we find that group threat predicts restrictionist attitudes and mediates the effects of measures of economic vulnerability on policy support. We further observe cases of competitive mediation and posit these results may explain why measures of economic vulnerability are often found unrelated to support for restrictionism in studies that exclude group threat in their analyses.
Crisis is predominantly characterized in terms of its detrimental consequences. Drawing on in‐depth semi‐structured interviews in Melbourne and Taipei, the article provides a critical and distinctive understanding of crisis. Crisis is conceptualized here as a disruptive prefiguring of new possibilities, both agentic and structural. In crisis, a situation of adversity is combined with a positive prospect of possibility previously unnoticed or unavailable that is exposed or generated by the disruption. Against the traditional or established tendency to define crisis as a moment or a turning point, the article argues that crisis is best understood as an unfolding dynamic process of change or courses of generative development. In explicating crisis, a counter‐transformation approach is developed. Drawing on empirical data, the article expands the sociological understanding of crisis.
