Being in the company of other people is a key determinant of emotional well-being, including positive affect. Many spaces where older adults spend time alone are also social spaces, but less is known about whether simply being in the vicinity of other people matters for positive affect. The authors distinguish between two social states: being with others (purposeful social company) and being around others (sharing space with people who are not focal social companions). In a series of multilevel models, the authors examined whether being with others and being around others have independent and interactive associations with positive affect. The authors used data from 12,860 ecological momentary assessments collected from 352 older adults living in Chicago in 2018 and 2019. Both being with others and being around others were independently associated with greater positive affect. Being alone, but around others, was associated with greater positive affect than being alone with no others around. Positive affect was highest when older adults were simultaneously with and around others. These findings suggest that both direct companionship and the broader social environment contribute to older adults’ emotional well-being. Interventions and policies that create opportunities for older adults to spend time in social spaces, even without a companion, may support emotional well-being.
The authors examine the relationship between the birth-order pairings of spouses and marital success using a sample of some 239,000 couples from Swedish population registers. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first large-sample study of birth order and divorce that uses the couple, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis. The relevance of birth order in romantic relationships has long fascinated the lay public and has given rise to a marital advice literature that purports to explain marital success in terms of birth-order pairings. The present article is divided into two sections. In the first, the authors investigate claims about birth order and marital success prevalent in the popular literature and show that they have little validity. In the second, the authors undertake an analysis of birth order and divorce risk, which reveals two major birth-order impacts: a pronounced only-child effect, in that couples in which either spouse is an only child have a notably higher divorce rate than couples in which neither is an only child, and for men, a protective effect against divorce from marriage to a first-born woman with siblings, an outcome that does not have a counterpart for women in their own pairing choices.
Since 2022, quiet quitting has captured widespread public and scholarly attention, yet its causes remain poorly understood. This article advances the literature by identifying and empirically testing three explanations. Regression analyses using the 2014, 2018, and 2022 waves of the General Social Survey show that quiet quitting is more common among workers who enjoy better work environments and higher job satisfaction—contradicting the mainstream management explanation that portrays unhealthy environments and job dissatisfaction as the chief culprits. We also find that workers in more advantageous labor market positions and those permitted to work remotely are more likely to practice quiet quitting, supporting the a rational response explanation that conceptualizes workers as opportunistic actors with an inherent tendency to minimize effort. Consistent with the cultural shift explanation, workers who view work as an economic means rather than an intrinsically valuable activity are more likely to quietly quit, and the phenomenon has grown more prevalent in the postpandemic era. Together, these findings suggest that quiet quitting is not a new label for old problems addressable through managerial interventions but an emerging trend shaped by broader socioeconomic contexts. We conclude by discussing sociology’s crucial role in understanding quiet quitting and the underlying shifts in how individuals approach work in advanced capitalism.
Sociologists increasingly recognize the significance of social ties with nonhuman entities, including the dead. Nearly one half of Americans report having direct contact with a deceased relative in the past year alone. Yet we lack knowledge of the size and contours of this shadow population that, for some, features significant social actors. The authors generated a population pyramid of deceased relative ties of the currently living population, focusing specifically on close family members, defined as deceased grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, and/or children, using demographic microsimulations of kinship networks and population structures for Black and white Americans. The resulting figure demonstrates the need for further sociological efforts to study the significance of this large and distinctly structured population of deceased relatives who are still among us in the minds and the memories of the living.
Family background is strongly correlated with educational attainment, and this correlation can stem from genetics, family environments, or their interplay. Using data from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study linked to the Medical Birth Registry of Norway and administrative records, the author shows that social and genetic origins display broadly similar levels of stratification. Among those who obtain a master’s or PhD degree, 51 percent have parents from the highest education quartile, and 42 percent have a polygenic index from the highest quartile. Both sources likely drive intergenerational correlations. But the two origins are not independent. Roughly half of the polygenic index’s association with education comes from family environments, not direct genetic effects. Part of the resemblance is therefore the index remeasuring social origin, not genes and environment arriving at the same place.
