Penn Sociology
As one of the oldest departments of sociology in the country, Penn Sociology continues its tradition of excellence with twenty-plus award-winning, distinguished faculty recognized for their scholarly achievements and leadership in the field. With University support, our top-ranked Department has been able to recruit some of the best graduate students in the country, and to do our part in maintaining the University of Pennsylvania's highly-regarded undergraduate program.
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Publication Privileged Dependence, Precarious Autonomy: Parental Support Through the Lens of COVID-19(2022-11-16) van Stee, Elena G.Objective: This article identifies how undergraduates’ responses to educational disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were shaped by social class differences in their relationships with parents. Background: The mechanisms through which parents transmit class advantages to children are often hidden from view and therefore remain imperfectly understood. This study leverages the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how young adults from different social class backgrounds expect, negotiate, and attach meaning to parental support in a time of crisis. Method: This study draws from in-depth interviews with a convenience sample of 48 Black and White upper-middle and working-class undergraduates from a single elite university, along with 10 of their mothers. Results: Facing pandemic-related disruptions, upper-middle-class students typically sought substantial direction and material assistance from parents. In contrast, working-class students typically assumed more responsibility for their own—and sometimes other family members’—well-being. These classed patterns of “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy” were shaped by students’ understandings of family members’ authority, needs, and responsibilities. Conclusion: Upper-middle-class students’ expectations for extended dependence on parents functioned as a protective force, enabling them to benefit financially and academically from parents’ material and cultural resources. These protections—which were not available to their working-class peers—may yield cumulative advantages as students progress through higher education and enter the labor market.Publication Évolution du bien-être des enfants et transformations de la famille américaine (Evolution of the Well-Being of Children and Transformations of the American Family)(1994-11-01) Furstenberg, Frank F; Condran, Gretchen ACondran (Gretchen A.), Furstenberg (Frank F.) . - Trends in child welfare and transformations in the American family Is there any detectable synchronism between trends in the number of working mothers and divorce rates or numbers of births out of wedlock and trends in the number of teenagers gaining secondary school qualifications or going into higher education, drug or alcohol consumption, committing suicide or murder and having children out of wedlock? The first factors are indicators of the changes in American families over the last thirty years, while the other factors concern the behaviour of young people which could reflect the harmful effects on generations increasingly affected by these family transformations. On the one hand, changes in the family are not regressing, marking the decline in the traditional pattern of two parents and one breadwinner. On the other hand, there has been a wide variety of changes in the behaviour of young people. Some indicators show more or less continuous improvement in the welfare of young people (proportion with secondary school qualifications) while others show a deterioration now curbed (access to higher education, alcohol and drug consumption, etc.) while yet others are a sign of continuous deterioration (murder, suicide, illegitimate births). The latter are thus the only ones that could demonstrate a correlation with family transformations. But one should be careful even in such cases since women are less affected than men and the situation of blacks and whites sometimes moves in opposite directions. Overall, the general idea of the harmful effects of changes in the family on the welfare of children should be treated with the strongest reservations.Publication On a New Schedule: Transitions to Adulthood and Family Change(2010-04-01) Furstenberg, Frank FSummary Frank Furstenberg examines how the newly extended timetable for entering adulthood is affecting, and being affected by, the institution of the Western, particularly the American, family. He reviews a growing body of research on the family life of young adults and their parents and draws out important policy implications of the new schedule for the passage to adulthood. Today, says Furstenberg, home-leaving, marriage, and the onset of childbearing take place much later in the life span than they did during the period after World War II. After the disappearance of America s well-paying unskilled and semi-skilled manufacturing jobs during the 1960s, youth from all economic strata began remaining in school longer and marrying and starting their own families later. Increasing numbers of lower-income women did not marry at all but chose, instead, non-marital parenthood?often turning to their natal families for economic and social support, rather than to their partners. As the period of young adults' dependence on their families grew longer, the financial and emotional burden of parenthood grew heavier. Today, regardless of their income level, U.S. parents provide roughly the same proportion of their earnings to support their young adult children. Unlike many nations in Europe, the United States, with its relatively underdeveloped welfare system, does not invest heavily in education, health care, and job benefits for young adults. It relies, instead, on families' investments in their own adult children. But as the transition to adulthood becomes more protracted, the increasing family burden may prove costly to society as a whole. Young adults themselves may begin to regard childbearing as more onerous and less rewarding. The need to provide greater support for children for longer periods may discourage couples from having additional children or having children at all. Such decisions could lead to lower total fertility, ultimately reduce the workforce, and further aggravate the problem of providing both for increasing numbers of the elderly and for the young. U.S. policy makers must realize the importance of reinforcing the family nest and helping reduce the large and competing demands that are being placed on today's parents.Publication Introducing the Issue(2010-04-01) Berlin, Gordon; Furstenberg, Frank F; Waters, Mary CPublication History and Current Status of Divorce in the United States(1994-04-01) Furstenberg, Frank FThis article explores the remarkable shift in marriage and divorce practices that has occurred in the last third of this century in the United States. Initially, information is presented on trends in divorce and remarriage; commonalities and differences between family patterns in the United States and in other industrialized nations are discussed. The author then identifies some of the factors that have transformed marriage practices in the United States and describes how changes in these practices have altered the family experiences of children. Finally, the author suggests trends in family patterns that might occur in the near future and discusses various policy initiatives and how they may influence the future of the family.Publication Fewer and Better Children: Race, Class, Religion, and Birth Control Reform in America(2014-05-01) Wilde, Melissa J; Danielsen, SabrinaIn the early 20th century, contraceptives were illegal and, for many, especially religious groups, taboo. But, in the span of just two years, between 1929 and 1931, many of the United States’ most prominent religious groups pronounced contraceptives to be moral and began advocating for the laws restricting them to be repealed. Met with everything from support, to silence, to outright condemnation by other religious groups, these pronouncements and the debates they caused divided the American religious field by an issue of sex and gender for the first time. This article explains why America’s religious groups took the positions they did at this crucial moment in history. In doing so, it demonstrates that the politics of sex and gender that divide American religion today is deeply rooted in century-old inequalities of race and class.Publication The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States(2001-09-01) Hout, Michael; Greeley, Andrew; Wilde, Melissa JU.S. Protestants are less likely to belong to “mainline” denominations and more likely to belong to “conservative” ones than used to be the case. Evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that higher fertility and earlier childbearing among women from conservative denominations explains 76% of the observed trend for cohorts born between 1903 and 1973: conservative denominations have grown their own. Mainline decline would have slowed in recent cohorts, but a drop‐off in conversions from conservative to mainline denominations prolonged the decline. A recent rise in apostasy added a few percentage points to mainline decline. Conversions from mainline to conservative denominations have not changed, so they played no role in the restructuring.Publication American Bishops and Religious Freedom: Legacy and Limits(2016-11-01) Wilde, Melissa JThis paper explores continuity and change in the American Catholic hierarchy’s promotion of and later reliance on religious freedom. With an analysis spanning more than 50 years, it first traces the pressures for reform that created the Declaration more than 50 years ago, demonstrating that American bishops were crucial actors in the Declaration’s existence and passage, and that this was the case because of the strong legitimacy pressures they were under as Roman Catholic leaders in a predominantly Protestant country. The paper then turns to a summary of how the Birth Control Mandate of the Affordable Care Act once again created pressures for legitimacy for the American Catholic hierarchy, pressures which were again articulated in terms of critiques of hypocrisy. It demonstrates that although the specific critique changed, accusations of hypocrisy remain central in discussions of the Catholic Church’s stance on the Birth Control Mandate in the Affordable Care Act.Publication From Eugenicists to Family Planners: America's Religious Promoters of Contraception(2018-01-01) Wilde, Melissa J; Hopkins, KaJaiyaiuEarly proponents of contraception among American religious groups were staunch eugenicists who promoted birth control in the hopes of curtailing the "runaway fertility" of poor Catholic and Jewish immigrants. By the early 1930s, their campaign to legalize contraception was largely successful, but eugenicists would soon go from being a sign of progressive politics and enlightened scientific understanding to a dirty word associated with Hitler. By examining the statements of all of the early liberalizers on contraception from 1920 to 1965, this paper demonstrates that although these groups purged their statements on contraception of the word eugenics by the end of WWII, the fertility of "poor others" remained their focus for the next few decades. Talk of "race suicide" changed to talk of "responsible parenthood" as their focus moved away from the whitening Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants to the poor in the Third World and Americans in the inner cities.Publication Editorial: "Complex Religion: Intersections of Religion and Inequality"(2018-01-01) Wilde, Melissa JWhat is complex religion and how does it relate to social inclusion? Complex religion is a theory which posits that religion intersects with inequality, especially class, race, ethnicity and gender. The nine articles in this volume examine a wide array of ways that religion intersects with inequality, and how, as a result, it can create barriers to social inclusion. The issue begins with three articles that examine the role of religion and its intersection with race and racialization processes. It then moves to three articles that examine religion’s intersection with socioeconomic inequality. The issue closes with three studies of how religion’s relationship with the state creates and maintains various status hierarchies, even as some religious movements seek to combat inequality. Together, these articles enrichen our understanding of the complex task before anyone seeking to think about the role of religion in social inclusion.