Letter to graduate students: Broaden yourself

Here is my (first) annual letter to graduate students, just published in Imagine, the Maryland sociology department newsletter.

In the Graduate Director’s office I see a little bit of everything. Fortunately, it is more good than bad: students winning awards, publishing their work, getting grants and fellowships, and finishing their degrees. Of course, I also see some of the downsides, such as students having a hard time with their coursework or funding, or struggling to attain a foothold in the long climb that is a dissertation.

In the process of receiving all of this news and making the small decisions of the day, I look for opportunities to give advice on more general topics as well. (Stop by and let me bore you with some today!) Here’s one piece of advice I have felt the need to deliver lately: broaden yourself.From the first classical theory course and survey methods seminar to the completion of a dissertation, graduate school seems like a journey into extreme specialization. And there is something to that. Developing an expertise sufficient to make a unique scholarly contribution does require concentration in a particular area of the field, always to the exclusion of other things. But this is not a linear trend. In fact, our program is designed to encourage broad exploration as well, requiring three courses in each of two specialty areas before the comprehensive exams.

It seems obvious, but bears repeating, that the best specialists are those who see their specialization as part of the bigger picture. The very act of identifying a narrow interest, and placing it in the proper context – if it is to be successful, and useful – requires broad understanding of the social context surrounding the substantive subject of the work. So breadth itself is an important value.

Beyond breadth, knowledge diversity is vital as well. That is, it is valuable not just to know about your own subject and the surrounding research, but also to dive deeply into other more narrow areas as well. To choose an analogy, athletes who specialize in tennis benefit from broadly conditioning their entire bodies. But they may also benefit – in tennis and in their other pursuits – from developing a high level of skill in a specific other sport, such as swimming or ping-pong. The insights from gaining deep understanding in an area removed from one’s own primary research are not easy to identify in advance, but when such understanding is pursued with an open mind they are inevitable.

So, yes, I am suggesting that you do more work, beyond what is required for today’s project, this year’s comprehensive exam, or even your dissertation. Easier said than done! But that doesn’t mean it’s not good advice. I hope it will serve you well.

Best wishes to all of our students for an enjoyable and productive summer.

Video segment on Regnerus and divorce studies

Over the summer Karen Sternheimer and I sat for an interview, and Norton Sociology has released a segment of the video, in which she asks about the Regnerus study on parents’ same-sex relationship history and child outcomes. I don’t have the references for my comments, but I think/hope they’re mostly true.

Click on the picture to go to the Youtube video:

Strat theorists, ngram waves

As followup to today’s stratification syllabus, here’s how our leading theorists (at least the ones in my class) have fared in American English book references since the 1860s.

Two things. First is the waves. Marx, Weber and Parsons have their peaks in the early 1970s; Durkheim and MacKinnon peaked in the 1990s; Bourdieu may not have peaked yet as of 2008 (why doesn’t Google update this thing?).

Second is something about generational ripples, with within-theorist peaks repeating at intervals, such as Weber, Durkheim and (to a lesser degree) Parsons in 1970s and 1990s. The 70s and 90s might just be peaks in sociology publishing.

Anyway, the generational wave theory bodes well for a MacKinnon rebound.

You can play with this here.

Regnerus study controversy guide

As the American Sociological Association convenes in Denver this week, there will be some formal discussions about a possible response by the association to Mark Regnerus’s paper, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” published this spring in the journal Social Science Research. The request for an association response emerged when it became clear that the study was being used to support the legal case against homogamous (same-sex) marriage, which is at issue in several federal court actions that will likely include the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future.

To bring folks up to speed if they haven’t been following, or as a reference for those involved in discussions, here are some key facts and links.

Proposals

A number of sections of the ASA, including the Family Section, which I serve as a council member, will consider resolutions asking the association to respond. The Family Section will start its discussion with the following proposal:

We request that the ASA Council intervene via legal briefs in the federal court cases regarding the Defense Of Marriage Act. In particular, we are concerned about the misuse of a published study by Mark Regenerus in the journal Social Science Research, which has been cited in amicus briefs as providing evidence for the harm caused to children raised by gay and lesbian couples. This has been cited in the case of Golinski currently before a Federal appeals court, which may end up before the US Supreme Court. It may well be used in other cases making their way through the courts. Exactly in what form the ASA should respond should be determined after more thorough legal investigation. However, it could range from a simple clarification that the Regenerus study does not support the conclusions offered, to a full-blown analysis of the situation for children raised by gay and lesbian couples (along the lines of that published by the American Psychological Association). The ASA also could decide to join in briefs with other groups. We leave that for the Council to decide. This section offers its membership as a pool of potential experts to consult or assist the ASA in this process.

I don’t know the specific wording or other issues that may emerge in these discussions. I assume that if and when the ASA Council takes up the issue, they will bring their own perspective to the decision. I think it’s an important issue, and also re-elevates the issue of how and when ASA should act as an association.

Events so far (source)

• August 19, 2011: Data collection start date
• February 1, 2012: Paper received by Social Science Research
• February 21, 2012: Data collection end date
• February 24, 2012: Data file delivered to University of Texas “containing the collected data”
• February 29, 2012: Revised paper received by Social Science Research
• March 12, 2012: Paper accepted by Social Science Research
• June 10, 2012: Paper published online
• June 11, 2012: American College of Pediatricians references the paper in its amicus brief filed in the case of Golinski v. United States Office of Personnel Management. See the American Psychological Association and others’ response here (relevant passages of the briefs quoted by me, here).
• June 29, 2012: 200 researchers sign a letter, organized by Gary Gates, to the editor and advisory board of the journal, to “raise serious concerns” about the article.
• August 8, 2012: U.S. District Judge Alan Kay cites Regnerus study in denying suit against Hawaii marriage ban. His summary of the study: “(finding that children raised by married biological parents fared better than children raised in same-sex households in a range of significant outcomes).”

Press accounts

• Controversial Gay-Parenting Study Is Severely Flawed, Journal’s Audit Finds, by Tom Bartlett in the Chronicle of Higher Education
• Is the Research All Right?, by Steve Kolowich on Inside Higher Ed.
• Back in the Gay: Does a new study indict gay parenthood or make a case for gay marriage?, by William Saletan in Slate.
• Do Children of Same-Sex Parents Really Fare Worse?, by Belinda Luscombe in Time Healthland.
• Study Questioning Same-Sex Parenting Draws Fire, by Stephanie Pappas in LiveScience.

Regnerus statements

• Elsevier press release: “The most significant story in this study is arguably that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day.”
• His self-directed Q & A on the study, declaring, “an assessment of causation is not possible here,” discounting political implications or intent.
• His publicity piece in Slate: Queers as Folk: Does it really make no difference if your parents are straight or gay?. The study “may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.”
• The study’s unadjusted findings in simplistic graphic display are here.

Sociologists’ critical commentary

• Debra Umberson, Shannon Cavanagh, Jennifer Glass, and Kelly Raley on Huffington Post
• Andrew Perrin on Scatterplot
• Megan Carroll, D’Lane Compton & C.J. Pascoe on Social (In)Queery
• Fabio Rojas on OrgTheory
• 200 Researchers Respond to Regnerus Paper, letter drafted by Gary Gates
• My comment: Bad science on top of stigma for lesbian and gay parents,

Defenses of the study and against ‘witch hunts’

• A Social Scientific Response to the Regnerus Controversy, by a group of religion scholars
• In Appreciation of Mark Regnerus, by Bradley Wright
• An Academic Auto-da-Fé: A sociologist whose data find fault with same-sex relationships is savaged by the progressive orthodoxy, by Christian Smith
• The Gay Parenting Witch Hunt, by Robert VerBruggen in National Review
• Revenge of the Sociologists: The perils of politically incorrect academic research, by Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard

200 researchers respond to Regnerus paper

This is a letter signed by 200 researchers, including me. The effort was organized by Gary Gates, a scholar (acting in an individual, not institutional capacity) at the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute.

Letter to the editors and advisory editors of Social Science Research

As researchers and scholars, many of whom with extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research in family structures and child outcomes, we write to raise serious concerns about the most recent issue of Social Science Research and the set of papers focused on parenting by lesbians and gay men. In this regard, we have particular concern about Mark Regnerus’ paper entitled “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”

LGBT parenting is a highly politicized topic. While the presence of a vibrant and controversial public debate should in no way censor scholarship, it should compel the academy to hold scholarship around that topic to our most rigorous standards. We are very concerned that these standards were not upheld in this issue or with this paper, given the apparently expedited process of publication and the decision to publish commentaries on the paper by scholars who were directly involved with the study and have limited experience in LGBT parenting research. We also have serious concerns about the scholarly merit of this paper

In this letter, we detail the specific concerns that lead us to request that you publicly disclose the reasons for both the expedited peer review process of this clearly controversial paper and the choice of commentators invited to submit critiques. We further request that you invite scholars with specific expertise in LGBT parenting issues to submit a detailed critique of the paper and accompanying commentaries for publication in the next issue of the journal.

We question the process by which this paper was submitted, reviewed, and accepted for publication. The paper was received by the journal on February 1, 2012. A revision was received on February 29, and the paper was accepted on March 12. This suggests that the peer review process and substantive revisions occurred within a period of just five weeks. According to the peer review policy of the Social Science Research website hosted by Elsevier, the first step of the review process is an initial manuscript evaluation by the editor. Once deemed to meet minimum criteria, at least 2 experts are secured for a peer review. The website states that, “Typically manuscripts are reviewed within 2-3 months of submission but substantially longer review times are not uncommon” and that “Revised manuscripts are usually returned to the initial referees upon receipt.” Clearly, Dr. Regnerus’ paper was returned to him very quickly, because he had time to revise the manuscript and get it back to the journal by February 29th. Further, it appears that a second substantive peer review may not have occurred as the paper was accepted just two weeks after the revision was submitted.

The five-week submission to acceptance length was much shorter than all of the other articles published in the July 2012 issue. The average period of review for papers published in this issue was more than a year and the median review time was more than ten months. As we note below, there are substantial concerns about the merits of this paper, and these concerns should have been identified through a thorough and rigorous peer review process.

We further question the selection of commenters for the Regnerus paper. While Cynthia Osborne and Paul Amato are certainly well-respected scholars, they are also both active participants in the Regnerus study. According to her curriculum vitae, Dr. Osborne is a Co-Principal Investigator of the New Family Structure Survey. Dr. Amato served as a paid consultant on the advisory group convened to provide insights into study design and methods. Perhaps more importantly, neither Osborne nor Amato have ever published work that considers LGBT family or parenting issues. A cursory examination of this body of literature would reveal a wide range of scholars who are much more qualified to evaluate the merits of this study and were neither directly involved in the study design nor compensated for that involvement.

We have substantial concerns about the merits of this paper and question whether it actually uses methods and instruments that answer the research questions posed in the paper. The author claims that the purpose of the analysis is to begin to address the question, “Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts?” (p. 755). He creates several categories of “family type”, including “lesbian mother” and “gay father” as well as “divorced late,” “stepfamily,” and “single-parent.” But, as the author notes, for those respondents who indicated that a parent had a “same-sex relationship,” these categories were collapsed to boost sample size:

That is, a small minority of respondents might fit more than one group. I have, however, forced their mutual exclusivity here for analytic purposes. For example, a respondent whose mother had a same-sex relationship might also qualify in Group 5 or Group 7, but in this case my analytical interest is in maximizing the sample size of Groups 2 and 3 so the respondent would be placed in Group 2 (LMs). Since Group 3 (GFs) is the smallest and most difficult to locate randomly in the population, its composition trumped that of others, even LMs. (There were 12 cases of respondents who reported both a mother and a father having a same-sex relationship; all are analyzed here as GFs, after ancillary analyses revealed comparable exposure to both their mother and father).

By doing this, the author is unable to distinguish between the impact of having a parent who has had a continuous same-sex relationship from the impact of having same-sex parents who broke-up from the impact of living in a same-sex stepfamily from the impact of living with a single parent who may have dated a same-sex partner; each of these groups are included in a single “lesbian mother” or “gay father” group depending on the gender of the parent who had a same-sex relationship. Specifically, this paper fails to distinguish family structure and family instability. Thus, it fails to distinguish, for children whose parents ever had a same-sex relationship experience, the associations due to family structure from the associations due to family stability. However, he does attempt to distinguish family structure from family instability for the children of different-sex parents by identifying children who lived in an intact biological family. To make a group equivalent to the group he labels as having “lesbian” or “gay” parents, the author should have grouped all other respondents together and included those who lived in an intact biological family with those who ever experienced divorce, or whose parents ever had a different-sex romantic relationship. That seems absurd to family structure researchers, yet that type of grouping is exactly what he did with his “lesbian mother” and “gay father” groups.

It should be noted that the analyses also fail to distinguish family structure from family stability for single mothers; this group included both continuously single mothers and those single mothers who had previously experienced a divorce.

The paper employs an unusual method to measure the sexual orientation of the respondents’ parents. Even if the analyses had distinguished family stability from family structure, this paper and its accompanying study could not actually directly examine the impact of having a gay or lesbian parent on child outcomes because the interpretation of the measurement of parental sexual orientation is unclear. The author acknowledges as much when he states:

It is, however, very possible that the same-sex romantic relationships about which the respondents report were not framed by those respondents as indicating their own (or their parent’s own) understanding of their parent as gay or lesbian or bisexual in sexual orientation. Indeed, this is more a study of the children of parents who have had (and in some cases, are still in) same-sex relationships than it is one of children whose parents have self-identified or are ‘‘out’’ as gay or lesbian or bisexual.

Respondents were asked whether their parents had ever had a same-sex relationship. The author then identifies mothers and fathers as “lesbian” or “gay” without any substantiation of parental sexual orientation either by respondents or their parents. Given the author’s stated caveats, it is both inappropriate and factually incorrect for him to refer to these parents as “gay” or “lesbian” throughout the paper.

We are very concerned about the academic integrity of the peer review process for this paper as well as its intellectual merit. We question the decision of Social Science Research to publish the paper, and particularly, to publish it without an extensive, rigorous peer review process and commentary from scholars with explicit expertise on LGBT family research. The methodologies used in this paper and the interpretation of the findings are inappropriate. The publication of this paper and the accompanying commentary calls the editorial process at Social Science Research, a well-regarded, highly cited social science journal (ranking in the top 15% of Sociology journals by ISI), into serious question. We urge you to publicly disclose the reasons for both the expedited peer review process of this clearly controversial paper and the choice of commentators invited to submit critiques. We further request that you invite scholars with specific expertise in LGBT parenting issues to submit a detailed critique of the paper and accompanying commentaries for publication in the next issue of the journal.

Signatories

Sociology and family studies: Silke Aisenbrey, Katherine R. Allen, Eric Anderson, Nielan Barnes, Amanda K. Baumle, Debbie Becher, Mary Bernstein, Natalie Boero, H.M.W Bos, Lisa D Brush, Neal Caren, Mary Ann Clawson, Dan Clawson, Philip N. Cohen, D’Lane Compton, Shelley J. Correll, David H. Demo, Catherine Donovan, Sinikka Elliott, Louis Edgar Esparza, Laurie Essig, Myra Marx Ferree, Tina Fetner, Jessica Fields, Melissa M. Forbis, Gary J. Gates, Naomi Gerstel, Katherine Giuffre, Gloria González-López, Theodore Greenstein, Jessica Halliday Hardie, Mark D. Hayward, Melanie Heath, Amie Hess, Melanie M. Hughes, Shamus Rahman Khan, Michael Kimmel, Sherryl Kleinman, Charles Q. Lau, Jennifer Lee, Jean Lynch, Gill McCann, Tey Meadow, Sarah O. Meadows, Eleanor M. Miller, Debra Minkoff, Beth Mintz, Dawne Moon, Mignon R. Moore, Chandra Muller, Nancy A. Naples, Peter M. Nardi, Alondra Nelson, Jodi O’Brien, Katherine O’Donnell, Ramona Faith Oswald, Joseph M. Palacios, C.J. Pascoe, Dudley L. Poston Jr., Nicole C. Raeburn, Kimberly Richman, Barbara J. Risman, Sharmila Rudrappa, Stephen T. Russel, Virginia Rutter, Natalia Sarkisian, Saskia Sassen, Liana C. Sayer, Michael Schwalbe, Michael Schwartz, Christine R. Schwartz, Pepper Schwartz, Denise Benoit Scott, Richard Sennett, Eve Shapiro, Eran Shor, Wendy Simonds, Sarah Sobieraj, Judith Stacey, Arlene Stein, Verta Taylor, Debra J Umberson, Suzanna Danuta Walters, Jacqueline S. Weinstock, Amy C. Wilkins, Cai Wilkinson, Kristi Williams, Kerry Woodward. Psychology: Nancy Lynn Baker, Meg Barker, Joel Becker, Steven Botticelli, Petra M Boynton, Mark Brennan-Ing, Alice S. Carter, Carol A. Carver, Armand R. Cerbone, Kirstyn Y.S. Chun, Victoria Clarke, Gilbert W. Cole, M. Lynne Cooper, Howard H. Covitz, Dennis Debiak, Rachel H. Farr, Herb Gingold, Abbie E. Goldberg, Carla Golden, Robert-Jay Green, Beverly Greene, Harold D. Grotevant, Sarah A. Hayes-Skelton, Stacy S. Horn, Sharon G. Horne, Harm J. Hospers, Steven E. James, Darren Langdridge, Chet Lesniak, Heidi Levitt, William D. Lubart, Carien Lubbe-De Beer, Tasim Martin-Berg, James P. Maurino, Ximena E. Mejia, Roger Mills-Koonce, Lin S. Myers, Jo Oppenheimer, Susan M. Orsillo, David Pantalone, Jeffrey T. Parsons, Maureen Perry-Jenkins, Madelyn Petrow-Cohen, Todd R. Poch, Scott D. Pytluk, Damien W. Riggs, Lizabeth Roemer, Ritch C. Savin-Williams, J. Greg Serpa, Louise Bordeaux Silverstein, Bonnie R. Strickland, Karen Suyemoto, Lance P. Swenson, Fiona Tasker, Marcus C. Tye, Richard G. Wight. Other scholars: Paula Amato, Ellen Ann Andersen, Mary Barber, Judith Bradford, Robert P Cabaj, Ryan M. Combs, Christopher Conti, Russel W. Dalton, John D’Emilio, Anne Douglass, Jack Drescher, Oliva M. Espin, Nanette Gartrell, Patti Geier, Alan Gilbert, Ann P. Haas, Ellen Haller, Nicole Heilbron, Tonda Hughes, Daniel Hurewitz, Jesse Joad, Debra Kaysen, Sang Hea Kil, Martha Kirkpatrick, Holning Lau, Arlene Istar Lev, Lisa W. Loutzenheiser, Michael F. Lovenheim, Catherine A. Lugg, Gerald P. Mallon, Laura Mamo, Sean G. Massey, Kenneth J. Meier, Stephen O. Murray, Douglas NeJaime, Henry Ng, Julie Novkov, Loren A. Olson, Donald L. Opitz, Katherine Parkin, Jessica Peet, Victoria Pollock, Jesus Ramirez-Valles, Nancy J. Ramsay, Paul J. Rinaldi, Barbara Rothberg, Esther Rothblum, Ralph Roughton, Leila J. Rupp, Shawn Schulenberg, Ken Sherrill, Vincent M. B. Silenzio, Stephen V. Sprinkle, William J. Spurlin, Carole S. Vance, Angelia R. Wilson.

Bad science on top of stigma for lesbian and gay parents

In the category of op-ed pieces The Man chose not to publish, here’s what I wrote about Mark Regnerus’s Social Science Research article ”How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.” Blog readers get a special edition with links sprinkled in.

Collage from the top page of a “happy gay parents” Google image search.

By Philip N. Cohen

What do you get when you combine bad science with ideological motives? A disingenuous attempt to stigmatize families that distracts from the serious problems many of them face.

Conservative activists last week leaped to embrace a paper purporting to show that the adult children of gay and lesbian parents fare poorly compared to those raised by stably married heterosexual couples. Although many social scientists – myself included – believe the study is seriously flawed, it immediately became a weapon in the political arsenal against marriage and parental rights for gays and lesbians.

The researcher, sociologist Mark Regnerus, analyzed survey responses from young adults who described their family structure growing up. He compared those who lived their whole childhoods with two married, biological parents, to those who reported that one of their parents had ever had a same-sex romantic relationship. The finding: those in the latter category were more likely to report having a variety of economic and emotional problems.

There are two design problems that render the study unfit for drawing meaningful conclusions. First, the parents who ever had a same-sex relationship are a widely diverse group that share not only sexual orientation, but, more importantly, a history of family instability. Although they include a tiny number of couples who raised their children as long-term, committed partners, the vast majority were single or divorced parents. Any difference that might be the result of parents’ sexual orientation is confounded with the differences between those in long-term stable marriages versus disrupted families.

Second, the study did not take into account many background factors known to have dramatic effects on child wellbeing. For example, it is a sad fact that those from wealthy backgrounds are (on average) more likely to get and stay married (to each other), and more likely to have children who grow up to be rich and successful. Totally apart from sexual orientation, any study of how family background affects adult outcomes needs to take such material factors into account. The Regnerus study falls far short of the depth and quality necessary to draw even basic conclusions.

The research was derailed by its obsessive focus on sexual orientation – over more tangible factors that do affect children’s wellbeing. That is why the researcher lumped all gay and lesbian parents together, rather than differentiating families based on parenting practices, family stability or access to resources. That emphasis is not surprising, however, because Regnerus has a published track record as a social conservative advocate for “traditional” marriage, what he calls “the gold standard of a married mom and dad.” And the study was the product of funding by the arch conservative Witherspoon Institute and Bradley Foundation.

In the article itself, Regnerus wisely included some disclaiming language, cautioning against a causal interpretation of the role of parents’ sexual orientation. He wrote, “I have not and will not speculate here on causality, in part because the data are not optimally designed to do so.” Without that caveat, the paper never would have passed muster for a peer-reviewed publication.

However, Regnerus has since sacrificed that scientific pretense for his political convictions. “The most significant story in this study,” he declared, “is arguably that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father.” As he knows, however, his stably married-couple families had many opportunities and advantages over the other parents that the study could not account for.

For children to grow up happy and successful, loved and secure, parenting does matter – a parent or parents who love, care for, and develop a positive relationship with their children. Also vitally important are access to financial resources, community support, good schooling, housing, healthcare and basic security. When families have these assets, they are very likely to have positive outcomes regardless of the gender of their parents.

This is what researchers and child welfare organizations mean when they say the sexual orientation of parents should not be a determining factor in children’s adoption, placement or support. In fact, the major American medical academies and associations – pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers – all support the adoption and parenting rights of gay and lesbian couples.

Too many children in this country have serious problems that need attention – in their families, schools, housing, healthcare and nutrition – for us to devote our energies to self-serving ideological crusades that do more to stigmatize families than help them to succeed. It would be especially harmful – and shameful – if such a study were used to justify denying foster and adopted children the right to live in the loving families of gay and lesbian parents who are prepared to care for them.

 I previously posted on the rushed timeline of the article, with some more links.

Harriet Presser

Harriet Presser has died. In this post I include the death notice from the Washington Post, as well as some remarks I prepared for the award ceremony at which the Family Section of the American Sociological Association honored her with the Distinguished Career award in 2009. And then a few personal comments.

Harriet Presser in a 2004 photo from the Harvard University Gazette, as she delivered a lecture there.

This death notice appeared in the Washington Post on May 6.

On May 1, 2012, Harriet B. Presser passed away with her daughter, Sheryl, and Harriet’s partner of 32 years, Phil Corfman, by her side. Harriet was a distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work helped transform the field of demography by bringing a gender perspective to bear on the study of fertility and family processes. She was elected President of the Population Association of America for 1989. The Association named an award in her honor in 2008, to be given to recognize career contributions to the study of gender in demography. In 2010 she was awarded the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award for work that “enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society”. At Maryland, she had founded the Center for Population, Gender and Social Inequality, and was awarded the Dean’s Medal for meritorious service to the college. A service was held in New York on Friday, May 4, 2012 at the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel. In early summer, Sheryl and Phil will hold a service in celebration of Harriet’s life in Rockville. In lieu of flowers, you may donate to the graduate student Fellowship Fund that Harriet had established. Checks should be made out to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation with Harriet B. Presser Fellowship Fund, Account #: 21-40452 in the memo line, and sent to: University of Maryland College Park Foundation Inc., Office of Gift Acceptance Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center, College Park, MD 20742

In my 2009 remarks, I focused on Harriet’s contributions to family sociology. This is what I prepared, with some links added:

On behalf of my colleagues on the Family Section’s Distinguished Career Award Committee – Bill Marsiglio, Karin Brewster, Michelle Budig, and Michael Rosenfeld – it is my distinct privilege and high honor to announce that Harriet Presser is the winner of the 2009 Distinguished Career Award from the Family Section of the American Sociological Association.

Harriet Presser is one of the preeminent researchers in the area of sociology now known as Gender, Work and Family. But it was in fact her work that helped to define that area, to shape that research agenda from the 1970s to the present day. As David Maume wrote in Contemporary Sociology, she “examined the poor fit between work and family obligations long before the idea of work-family conflict entered academic and public discourse.”

Harriet received a Masters degree from UNC Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. from Berkeley. Her first faculty appointment was in Public Health at Columbia, and her early work concerned fertility and family planning, birth control and sterilization, which was the subject of her dissertation on Puerto Rico. A review of her many published articles shows a path from teen motherhood and pregnancy to work and family, focusing on welfare, work and family formation. She also studied child care challenges for working women and families. Her institutional contributions include an instrumental role in the early Census Bureau data collection on child care, in the 1977 Current Population Survey – and in the Census Bureau’s decision to drop the concept of “head of household” from its surveys (which is itself a great story of life at the intersection of feminism, bureaucracy and demography in the 1970s).

In 1983 she had the rare distinction among sociologists of publishing an article in the journal Science – on the issue of shift work among dual-earner couples. The high rates of shift work among spouses with children had gone largely unnoticed as women’s labor force participation increased. The nurses, waitresses, sales workers and telephone operators of the 1970s and 80s were on the leading edge of the nascent 24-hour economy that would reshape modern family life. For example, these were the first families in which large proportions of men were the primary caretakers for their young children. In fact, viewing career trajectories and strategies from a couple perspective was one of the many research innovations for which we have, in part, Harriet to thank. With a clearness of thought and a prescient view of social trends, with which her work is riddled, at the end of that article in Science she sketched out a research agenda that read in part, “what are the motivations for shift work among couples with children? What is the quality of child care in shift work households? … what are the quality and stability of marriages among shiftwork couples compared with others? What is the distinctive effect of shift work on the division of labor within the home and nonmarital power? Is the effect of female shiftwork on family life different from the effect of male shiftwork?” In fact, each of these questions has become the subject of important research as we attempt to come to terms with the simultaneous effects of the growing service economy, dual earner couple employment, cultural trends in parenting and, always, struggles for gender equality at work and at home.

The subject matter of Harriet’s research was influenced by her own experience going to college at night while trading off child-care shifts with her then husband, in the 1950s. Her feminist orientation drew from her experience as well, including a run-in with my own department, which was not uniformly supportive – shall we say – of a divorced young mother’s academic ambitions.

In the subsequent years Harriet built a career for herself at the University of Maryland, serving as the founding director of its Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality in 1988, now the Maryland Population Research Center. She became a Distinguished University Professor. She was the 7^th woman out of 53 presidents of the Population Association of America, in 1989, and was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Last year, an award was established in her name by the PAA, to honor scholars with distinguished careers in research on gender and demographic issues.

This is a small sampling of her many research activities, leaving aside her countless contributions to the universities, professional associations, advisory boards, study panels and journals that make possible so much of our work. And the students whom she has advised along the way. In recognition of the use contributions and achievements, we are delighted to name Harriet the winner of the Distinguished Career Award.

[Some of the information here comes from a 1989 interview conducted by Jean van der Tak, then historian of the Population Association of America, available as part of an archive at San Diego State University.]

* * *

Yesterday I led the last meeting in the Gender, Work and Family course at Maryland, a seminar that I took with her in 1996, when I was a graduate student in sociology here. Looking back over the papers I kept from that year, I remember how supportive of my efforts in that seminar she was. My paper for her led to the publication of an article in Gender & Society which has become my most cited sole-authored piece. (She didn’t believe the article should be published because it pushed the data too far — so I was lucky to have her as a teacher instead of a reviewer. In fact it is more influential for the issues it raises than for the answers it provides, which is a testament to what I learned in the seminar.)

Anyway, I came across this snippet, which reminded me of her, and her influence on me: I don’t want to write phrases that would draw an “ugh!” from her even now.

Instead, I wish I could have one more of these:

Addendum: There is now a page for Harriet on Wikipedia.

At crunch time, what do students tweet?

Here are the more interesting words from about 250 tweets with the words ["soc" + "paper"] in them from the last day or two. I removed some boring common words (such as research, test, done, due, page, writing):

Here are the emoticons from those tweets, scaled according to frequency:

I was also surprised to see a steady stream (a few per day) of students discussing various forms of cheating and plagiarism. Do they know this stuff is public? For these I covered the names, so the guilty wouldn’t come after me. Also, to show this isn’t just a sociology student phenomenon, I included a few from a ["psych" + "paper"] search:

Black is not a color

When I saw this magazine cover, I did a double-take:

At a glance I didn’t think that was Black Hair. Seems like a good time to bring up the old schoolyard debate point: Black is not a color.

In many quarters, such as the those administered under the rules of the Chicago Manual of Style, black is a color, which means it’s not capitalized:

8.39 Color. Common designations of ethnic groups by color are usually lowercased unless a particular publisher or author prefers otherwise… (black people; blacks; people of color; white people; whites)

That rule, from the 16th edition, is progress from the 15th, which said “capitalization may be appropriate if the writer strongly prefers it” (8.43, emphasis added). Under that older provision in 1996, the journal Signs required that I add a footnote in my first journal publication, which read, “I … capitalize Black to signify its reference to a people rather than a color or a ‘race.’”

Most media do not capitalize Black or White. The Associated Press Stylebook reads:

black Acceptable for a person of the black race. African-American is acceptable for an American black person of African descent. (Use Negro only in names of organizations or in quotations.) Do not use colored as a synonym.

So, for example:

Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a crime watch volunteer in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., in February 2012. The death of the unarmed black teenager and the decision of the local police not to bring charges against the volunteer, George Zimmerman, 28, set off a national outcry…

Sociology journals are inconsistent. For example, the American Sociological Review goes both ways (e.g., this 2010 presidential address used uncapitalized black, while our 2007 article’s capitalization sailed through without objection). On the other hand, some sociology journals follow the more progressive APA Style, in which Black is capitalized (as is White).

In the wider American world – at least as measured by Google Books ngrams – the uncapitalized version is leading by about 3-to-1.

(Black by itself wouldn’t work, so I added “people.” The pattern is the same if you use “community” instead.)

The Census Bureau capitalizes, as in this report on the 2010 Census:

“Black or African American” refers to a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicated their race(s) as “Black, African Am., or Negro” or reported entries such as African American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.

That usage differs from the Office of Management and Budget directive, from which that language is drawn: “…any of the black racial groups of Africa,” without capitalization. That Census practice of capitalizing seems to have started between 1990 and 1995. (Others, like the Department of Education, have their own rules, which specify that racial designations should be capitalized.)

Finally, African American is not going to get us out of this. It is not appropriate when the subject really is race rather than ethnicity. I feel for this poor research subject in a Census cognitive interview:

She is an immigrant to the US from Africa. However, roughly six generations ago her ancestors were from India. She lived in an Indian community in Africa prior to immigrating to the United States. She answered “no” to … “Black or African American” because she was from an African country, but of Indian origin. She answered “yes” to the Asian question and “yes” to Asian Indian. She also reported ‘some other race’ by saying “African, not African American, African from Africa, Asian African.”

Anyway, Black and White are racial terms. They are a social construction and not a biological classification. We use them socially. Whether or not that’s OK, I think it’s better to capitalize them at least.

P.S. If your organization or publication has its own way – or I’ve misrepresented a practice you know better than I do – please let us know.

Should every sociologist blog?

I recently heard someone (Nathan Jurgenson) advise first-year sociology graduate students that they should all blog and tweet.

I blog to read the sound of my own sociological voice, to contribute to the community of social scientists thinking about the questions that move me, to provide information and ideas to the public and hear their responses, and to organize my own thoughts on research and writing. This project may have reduced my peer-reviewed scholarly output in the last several years. But it has enriched my sociological thinking, enhanced my intellectual environment, improved my writing, and made my job more fun.

But every sociologist blogging might seem like overkill. Who is going to read all those blogs, and how would we have time for anything else if we all wrote and read blogs all day? The wired cacophony we endure already competes with academic reading and writing, as we struggle to wade through a growing stream of random chit-chat (or, as Andy Borowitz put it, “Twitter would be a great way of telling people what we’re doing if we were doing something instead of being on Twitter”).

And yet we all know there is no better general advice for young intellectuals than to read and write a lot. Setting aside tweeting, which I’m too old to call writing, blogging can be an important part of your process – even before you become another tenured blowhard.

The file

Like many sociologists of my generation, I came to see myself practicing a craft when I read the appendix to C. Wright Mills’s 1959 book The Sociological Imagination, titled, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship.” Applying some of his ideas has made me a more productive and satisfied sociologist, and my blog is a big part of that – playing the role of “the file” in his model.

“By keeping an adequate file and thus developing self-reflective habits,” he wrote, “you learn how to keep your inner world awake.”

Whenever you feel strongly about events or ideas you must try not to let them pass from your mind, but instead to formulate them for your files and in so doing draw out their implications, show yourself either how foolish these feelings or ideas are, or how they might be articulated into productive shape. The file also helps you build up the habit of writing. You cannot ‘keep your hand in’ if you do not write something at least every week. In developing the file, you can experiment as a writer and thus, as they say, develop your powers of expression.

In Mills’s practice, the file was a set of topical folders, the organization of which was itself an intellectual exploration (“the topics, of course, change, sometimes quite frequently”) – these are the blog topic tags. As the file develops, the list of potential projects and research ideas outruns one’s ability to pursue them, providing the impetus to review and prioritize. If that review is part of a “widespread, informal interchange of such reviews … among working social scientists,” the result is collaborative agenda-setting.

Doing it with a blog

Writing a blog – as well as reading and contributing to the blogs of others – seems the most practical and engaging means of achieving the intellectual ideal that Mills described, which requires “surrounding oneself by a circle of people who will listen and talk.” Today’s blog platform is ideal for that.

There is a difference between Mills’s idea of “the file” – which is written and curated in private, punctuated by episodic exchange with select social scientists – and blogging a stream of notes and commentary, broadcast to anyone who will read it. The result is noisier than what he had in mind, but I think it’s an improvement, especially because it encourages one of the other practices he thought so important: developing a jargon-free intellectual voice and readable writing style.*

There are other ways that a blog can achieve, and improve on, the craftspersonship model Mills proposed, some of which are dear to me. For example, making many visual representations of data:

Charts, tables and diagrams of a qualitative sort are not only ways to display work already done; they are very often genuine tools of production. … Most of them flop, in which case you have learned something. When they work, they help you to think more clearly and to write more explicitly.

This process surely is only enhanced when such work-product is shared with the community of readers which the blog permits. For me, the cost of moderating the few less constructive comments is outweighed by the benefit of receiving feedback from the many more constructive.

Objections

There are reasonable objections to the suggestion that all sociologists blog – from the time they begin their careers in graduate school.

Some people are not intellectual extroverts. Not everyone wants to shout their every idea into the Internet tube. That’s fine. But although academia may be kinder to introverts than some other professions, developing a public voice is an important part of being a successful sociologist. Like speaking up in a graduate seminar, the only way to grow more comfortable is to do it. In fact, what’s good advice for seminars works here as well – speak up every time, early in the discussion, to break your ice and get it over with. For blogging, remember there is no need to write everything. You can post selectively your reading lists, discussion questions, minor observations, and annotated links to the writing of others. Save the political declarations, scathing takedowns of your department chair, and obscenity-laced poetry for after you have tenure.

Having few readers will be discouraging. It shouldn’t be. A few friendly readers – such as fellow students or people in the same subfield – might be all you need to motivate your writing habit. No need for a massive following to achieve your goals. Consider getting together with a few others and each posting to a group blog once per week. (Departments or graduate student associations would do well to facilitate this.)

Bad ideas or immature writing today is a job opportunity blown six years from now. If your potential future department Googles you and hates your blog, maybe they won’t hire you. But that risk has to be weighed against the benefit of having richer ideas and more mature writing later as a result of all that practice. Plus, anticipating the possible negative consequences of your writing is an important skill to develop. And you can always delete (if not completely expunge) those posts you later regret.

Personal history addendum

I came to sociology with an identity as a writer. And some of the best training I had was in my writing jobs. I wrote for daily radio news (arrive at work at 5 AM, call the police and fire departments, write up accidents and DWIs, on the air by 5:30); for the Ithaca Times (find a band worth reviewing every weekend, review due Tuesday morning); and for the Michigan Daily (editorial board decided positions, editorials due within a day or two).

Each job required writing whether I felt like it or not, on a quick deadline. So a big part of my blogging advice is because it’s a straightforward way to get yourself writing. If you have others, that’s great, too.

Photo by Harvey Ferdschneider, circa 1988.

* That doesn’t mean all scientific writing must be comprehensible to everyone. Mills admired the clear writing of Paul Lazarsfeld, even though it was sometimes highly mathematical: “When I cannot understand his mathematics, I know it is because I am too ignorant; when I disagree with what he writes in non-mathematical language, I know it is because he is mistaken.”