Sociology Copyright (c) 2013 Syracuse University All rights reserved. http://surface.syr.edu/soc Recent documents in Sociology en-us Mon, 28 Jan 2013 01:15:16 PST 3600 Beyond the Schoolyard: The Contributions of Parenting Logics, Financial Resources, and Social Institutions to the Social Class Gap in Structured Activity Participation http://surface.syr.edu/soc/4 http://surface.syr.edu/soc/4 Mon, 08 Aug 2011 06:00:56 PDT We investigate cultural and structural sources of class differences in youth activity participation with interview, survey, and archival data. We find working

and middle‐class parents overlap in parenting logics about participation, though differ in one respect: middle‐class parents are concerned with customizing children’s involvement in activities, while working‐class parents are concerned with achieving safety and social mobility for children through participation. Second, because of financial constraints, working‐class families rely on social institutions for participation opportunities, but few are available. Schools act as an equalizing institution by offering low‐cost activities, allowing working‐class children to resemble middle‐class youth in school activities, but they remain disadvantaged in out‐of‐school activities. School influences are complex, however, as they also contribute to class differences by offering different activities to working‐ and middle‐class youth. Findings raise questions about the extent to which differences in participation reflect class culture rather than the objective realities parents face.

]]> Pamela R. Bennett et al. Who Joins the Military?: A Look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status http://surface.syr.edu/soc/3 http://surface.syr.edu/soc/3 Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:38:28 PST This article discusses the history of participation of the three largest racial–ethnic groups in the military: whites, blacks, and Latinos. It empirically exa-mines the likelihood of ever having served in the military across a variety of criteria including race–ethnicity, immigrant generation, and socioeconomic status, concluding that significant disparities exist only by socioeconomic status. Finally, the article offers an in-depth look at Latinos in the military, a group whose levels of participation in the armed services have not been thoroughly investigated heretofore. The findings reveal that, among Latinos, those who identify as “Other Hispanic” are more likely to have served in the military than Mexicans, while Puerto Ricans are not significantly different from Mexicans in their service. An important finding of this study is that a large percentage of Latinos who have served in the armed forces are children of immigrants. Thus, even among Latinos, immigrants are not significantly less likely to have served in the military than those with two U.S.-born parents.

]]> Amy Lutz Negotiating Home Language: Spanish Maintenance and Loss in Latino Families http://surface.syr.edu/soc/2 http://surface.syr.edu/soc/2 Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:34:58 PST Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork in and around Dallas, Texas, this paper explores the ways in which Latino parents and their children negotiate home language and offers a theoretical framework for understanding language maintenance and loss in the home. The parents in this study overwhelmingly view bilingualism as the ideal, yet many parents, especially those who are English-dominant or bilingual, find it difficult to maintain Spanish at home because of outside pressures that prioritize English and concerns about their children's English-language acquisition. The family, as the environment in which children first begin to learn language, and family dynamics regarding language are important aspects of the linguistic proficiencies of Latino children. Alba et al. (2002) argue that home language is "decisive for maintaining the mother tongue," yet little sociological research has investigated how parents and children think about and negotiate the language of home (469). Much of the previous research focuses on the ways in which different social, demographic, and individual characteristics are associated with differential language proficiencies among parents and children. However, this study explores how elements of the parents' and children's linguistic context at the micro level within the family relate to the processes of Spanish maintenance and loss.

]]> Amy Lutz Supporting the Employment of Mothers: Policy Variation Across Fourteen Welfare States http://surface.syr.edu/soc/1 http://surface.syr.edu/soc/1 Mon, 11 Oct 2010 10:28:42 PDT Despite their broadly similar political and economic systems, the rates and patterns of mothers' employment vary considerably across industrialized countries. This variation raises questions about the role played by government policies in enabling mothers to choose employment and, in turn, in shaping both gender equality and family economic well-being. This paper compares fourteen OECD countries, as of the middle-to-late 1980s, with respect to their provision of policies that support mothers' employment: parental leave, child care, and the scheduling of public education. Newly gathered data on eighteen policy indicators are presented; these indicators were chosen to capture support for maternal employment, regardless of national intent. The indicators are then standardized, weighted, and summed into indices. By differentiating policies that affect maternal employment from family policies more generally, while simultaneously aggregating individual policies and policy features into policy "packages", these indices reveal dramatic cross-national differences in policy provisions. The empirical results reveal loose clusters of countries that correspond only partially to prevailing welfare state typologies. For mothers with preschool-aged children, only five of the fourteen countries provided reasonably complete and continuous benefits that supported their options for combining paid work with family responsibilities. In the remaining countries, government provisions were much more limited or discontinuous. The pattern of cross-national policy variation changed notably when policies affecting mothers with older children were examined. The links between these findings and three sets of outcomes are considered. The indices provide an improved measure of public support for maternal employment and are expected to help explain cross-national differences in the level and continuity of women's labor market attachment. Prior findings on women's labor supply provide initial support for this conclusion. These indices are also useful for contrasting family benefits that are provided through direct cash transfers with those that take the form of support for mothers' employment. Cross-national variation in combinations of transfers with employment supports is found to correspond to differences in child poverty rates. Finally, these policy findings contribute to the body of scholarship that seeks to integrate gender issues more explicitly into research on welfare state regimes. This study suggests that the country clusters identified in the dominant regime model fail to cohere with respect to the subset of family policies that specifically help women to combine paid work with parenting.

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