“He Changed the Name!”

How Couples Think Baby Name Decisions Should Be Made . . . And What Actually Happens

By Christina A. Sue, Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, and Adriana C Núñez

“I guess her name is Cleopatra,” remarked actress Christina Ricci after her husband, Mark Hampton, announced the name of their daughter on Instagram when Christina was recovering from childbirth. As Christina was being prepared for a cesarian section, she and Mark were discussing names but did not arrive at a decision. Christina made clear her intention to continue the conversation, saying, “We’ll figure this out later.” But there was no “later” before Mark’s public announcement. In a televised interview, Christina appears to cover for her husband’s disregard for her wishes to arrive at a joint decision. She refers to Mark’s “excitement” as the reason he preemptively posted the name without consulting her and legitimized the name by referring to it as “a queen’s name.” In doing so, Christina simultaneously shores up the relationship publicly and minimizes her husband’s gendered power play.

Christina Ricci’s baby-naming story features major themes we pursued in this study: how couples who believe women and men should have an equal say in major decisions attempt to choose a baby’s first name together. Successful or not, they then tell stories to themselves, family members, friends, co-workers, and even strangers, about how they named the baby in a way that portrays the naming process and decision as collaborative. This helps themselves and others think of the couple as modern and egalitarian. In the Ricci–Hampton pair, we witness the couple’s attempts at collaboration but also see traditional forms of patriarchy surface, including what we refer to as “hijacking” (men taking away women’s power in crucial moments) and the often ensuing efforts to repair the relationship and restore the couple’s image as egalitarian.

We found similar attempts at collaboration, as well examples of men taking control over what was supposed to be a joint naming decision, among our U.S. sample of 46 predominately middle-class Mexican-origin heterosexual respondents. In one case, the first author had been invited over to a couple’s house for an interview and was greeted at the door by Lucero who welcomed her in. After only a few steps inside, Lucero’s wife, Mercedes, exclaimed from behind the kitchen counter: “He changed the name!” pointing to Lucero. Interviewing the couple, it became clear that Mercedes and Lucero did not have equal naming rights, despite their initial attempts at egalitarianism. Among their four children, Lucero chose the first child’s name and while Mercedes chose the second child’s legal name, Lucero then called her by the name he had preferred after she was born. The couple agreed Mercedes could choose the third child’s name, which she did. However, after they left the hospital, Lucero officially changed the name to one he alone preferred. For their fourth child, Lucero tried to make amends for breaking prior agreements and let Mercedes choose the name, but she ended up selecting a name she knew her husband really wanted – Lucero, Jr. This arrangement–women offering a name they already know men want–surfaced in other interviews. It avoided potential conflict and allowed the couple to distance itself from an image of strict patriarchy. In the aftermath of unfulfilled desires, loss of power, and hijacking, women were left to deal with the negative ramifications, whether or not they confronted their partners. In this case, despite Lucero’s attempts to remedy the situation, Mercedes had a hard time shaking the memory of prior hijackings. She summarized her thinking about men: “You’re never going to win, never.”

Instead of being a “special” and happy couple event, resentment around baby naming decisions sometimes lingered for many years after the birth of a child when things went awry. Our interview with Victoria began with her lamenting, “This is something we’ve been debating for so many years.” The ensuing conversation was filled with feelings of loss, sadness, and tension. Victoria had hoped for a collaborative process and shared naming rights. Ultimately, however, her husband, Octavio’s, will prevailed, even though he had agreed to an equal-odds arrangement, with Victoria naming any daughters and he, any sons. Victoria honored their agreement for their first two sons. Their third child was a girl and Victoria intended to name her after her grandmother who helped raise her. Octavio breeched their accord by assigning a different name in the hospital when Victoria was recovering from the birth. Like Christina Ricci, Victoria tried to smooth over the hijacking incident, saying, “I’m happy now. I think it sounds okay.” However, her demeanor and tone of lingering sadness belied her words.  

Of course, not all our respondents engaged in or experienced hijacking. Nevertheless, gender also mattered for these parents in ways that tilted the naming process and decisions in men’s favor. We found that, in striving for collaboration and a name that both parents agreed upon, women would often identify, anticipate, and take on men’s tastes, searching for and bringing a list of names to discuss that already conformed to their partner’s naming preferences. They would also go to great lengths to draw men into the naming process, initiating conversations about potential names and encouraging men to look through baby names books/online naming sites with them, hoping and expecting that the process and decision would be done together. However, these measures that women took, coupled with men’s inaction, ultimately ended in women doing more labor, including the research of potential names, creating a name choice set, and ushering the couple through a collaborative process. Women also performed more “emotion work,” which included being agreeable and avoiding conflict to ensure the process and name choice felt good to both parents. Submerging these gender inequities, both men and women oftentimes portrayed the process as collaborative and naming decision as equal by telling naming stories that used “we,” to signal shared labor and decision-making power. We refer to this as “couple identity work,” or the work involved in creating and projecting a desired impression of a relationship for multiple audiences. As a publicly visible and highly symbolic family milestone, the study of baby naming is valuable for understanding how, even among couples that aspire to equality, men hold more influence and power in couple decision making. Socialization from multiple sources encourages women to invest in family, setting up family as priority for women by cultural decree. In contrast, being a man is largely defined through autonomy and financial provision. Consequently, women often invest in family labor with higher levels of energy, meaning, and emotion as it is tied to their moral worth and identities as wives and mothers, in a way it is not tied to men. Women’s identities and labor are also more closely tied to their relationships. They often attend to their relationship’s needs and men’s needs, at the expense of their own. These social pressures can result in sustaining patriarchal practices such as patrilineal surnaming and, as we found in this study, male privilege that infiltrates first naming practices. Ultimately, we show how gendered behaviors and portrayals of the couple as a single unit–a “we”–can obscure gendered power and inequality, and how this can occur even in the least suspecting of places, and a symbolism of the union itself: a child’s name.

For more information, please see the full article “Couple Identity Work: Collaborative Couplehood, Gender Inequalities, and Power in Naming” on the SAGE website for Gender & Society.

Christina A. Sue is Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Jessica Vasquez-Tokosis Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon.

Adriana Núñez is a Reference Specialist at Isaacson,Miller, an executive search firm.

LOOSENING THE GRIp

Delegation of Financial Decision Making to Spouse in Old Age

By Dr. Anup Basu

You can find Professor Basu on Twitter/X @anupkbasu !

Image generated by AI

Aging can bring about a decline in cognitive abilities, thereby affecting our financial decision-making capacity. Although in many married households, one spouse is primarily responsible for managing household finances, discharging this responsibility can become challenging with age and it may become necessary to share it with the other spouse. Recognizing when and how to share or delegate financial decisions to the spouse is crucial to prevent the risk of financial mismanagement and hardship in old age.

Our study explores this often unspoken transition of financial decision-making power within older couples. We conducted an experiment with Australian heterosexual couples over 60 in which both spouses were given a series of financial tasks that became progressively more difficult. Participants could complete the tasks themselves or delegate all or some of them to their partner. The results showed a startling gender imbalance in delegation: women were 25 times more likely than men to share financial decision-making responsibilities with their spouses. In fact, less than 5% of men delegated a single task to their partner.

The gender difference in delegation behaviour persisted even after accounting for differences in the financial competence, education, age, or cognitive status of the spouses, which suggests that gender identity and expectations play a pivotal role in the handing over of financial decision-making responsibilities to the spouse. If financial decision-making is seen as primarily ‘men’s work’, there may be reluctance among men to give up these responsibilities due to the fear of losing their identity. Overconfidence, more prevalent among men, may also have had a role to play.

The implications of these findings are profound, especially when considering that women often outlive their partners and could be left unprepared to manage finances in the absence or incapacity of their husbands. Therefore, any adverse consequence of poor financial decisions in old age would disproportionately fall upon women. As society continues to evolve, there is an increasing need to address this disparity and foster an environment in which both men and women are equally empowered to make financial decisions that will secure their future well-being.

Delegation is never easy as human beings find it difficult to give up control. Moreover, perceived level of autonomy or control over one’s own affairs is found to be an important marker of life satisfaction in old age. One of the aims of our study was to explore whether the level of control one has over the delegation process is related to their willingness to delegate. To examine this, we randomly assigned the research participants to two groups. Participants in the first group had the option to delegate to their spouse whichever task(s) they wanted to. However, in the second group, once a participant chose to delegate a task, all subsequent tasks also got automatically transferred to their spouse. We found that those in the first group delegated more often than those in the second, which suggests that having greater control over how delegation takes place can make individuals more willing to give up control when necessary. This finding has important practical implications related to substituted decision-making mechanisms, such as Power of Attorney, among the elderly population. A better understanding of provisions such as the authority to revoke a Power of Attorney or using a “springing” Power of Attorney (which becomes effective only upon the occurrence of specific events) may encourage older people to put in place such arrangements in a timely manner.

This study is a stepping stone towards understanding and developing systems that support gender equitable financial planning and decision-making in old age. It invites us to look at our close relationships and consider how we can build resilience into our financial lives, preparing for a future where both partners are informed, involved, and ready to take the helm when required.

Please find the full Open Access article by the authors on the Gender & Society SAGE website at LOOSENING THE GRIP: Delegation of Financial Decision-Making to Spouse in Old Age.

The Intersectionality of Parenting Rights

How Racist and Anti-Trans Stereotypes Work Together in Adoption and Custody Disputes

By Derek Siegel

Anti-trans legislation is at an all-time high. In 2023, 49 U.S. states proposed almost 600 anti-trans bills that would restrict access to gender-affirming care, ban mentions of LGBTQ people from K-12 schools, and ban trans women and girls from joining women’s sports teams. Bans have been proposed even in places where no trans athletes have knowingly participated, let alone “dominated” the sport. But what does this have to do with parenting and reproductive justice?

I’ve written elsewhere about anti-LGBTQ stereotypes that create barriers to parenting and about

the joys of trans motherhood. After all, it’s important to highlight the families and communities that trans women build for themselves despite racial, class, and gender inequalities.  

In my recently published article for Gender & Society, I discuss how particular stereotypes about trans women (i.e., that they are dangerous, deceptive, and not “real women”) shape their ability to secure and maintain parenting rights. More specifically, I interviewed 54 trans women across race and class backgrounds—both current and prospective parents—and asked them about their experiences of adoption and custody. I consider the role that judges, case workers, and everyday people play in limiting or expanding trans people’s access to parenting rights. I also argue that the policing of transgender mothers heightens discrimination against anyone who is perceived to violate mainstream norms of gender, motherhood, and femininity.

The concepts of “parental fitness” and “best interest of the child” (which are the legal standards used to grant or deny parenting rights) are notoriously subjective. In 1993, for example, Northwestern University hosted a convening of experts to discuss what constitutes the “best interest of the child.” “Professionals agreed in fewer than 50% of cases,” and even when they did agree, they cited different explanations for their decisions.

In other words, discrimination can occur even in states that have legal protections for trans people. For context, only 28 states explicitly bar discrimination based on gender identity, while 13 states have “religious freedom” clauses that permit legal discrimination.

Some of the women I interviewed experienced open hostility in the courtroom. Maggie, for example, is a white trans woman in her 50s, who had been the sole provider for her two children when their other mother, with whom they didn’t have a relationship, demanded full custody and outed Maggie to the judge. (Maggie is a pseudonym, not her actual name).

She recalls the judge’s immediate prejudice against her as a trans woman, “When we went to court, it didn’t matter what crazy loony shit she did, I was always the bad person, not her…” The judge believed that the children were better off away from Maggie, mandating that they visit a therapist who specializes in gay conversation therapy. She eventually moved across state lines to avoid continued judicial harassment (to a jurisdiction where her kids could choose who they live with regardless of legal parenthood).

Maggie’s experience is awful, but not terribly surprising. We know that the state’s responsibility to promote the “best interest of the child” has been used to target low-income families and families of color. I argue that the increased portrayal of trans women as a threat will inspire judges to become even bolder in using their power to investigate and potentially separate marginalized families. In fact, I think we’re already seeing this. In February 2022, Texas Attorney general Ken Paxton instructed welfare agencies to investigate parents of trans children for child abuse if they help their kids access gender affirming care.

Another participant, Jane, confronts both anti-trans and anti-Black stereotypes in the adoption process: “People judge you because they consider us confused or mentally ill. So they think you’ll not be a [good] parent to the child. It’s been so hard…three years trying to adopt.”

She continues: “I’m a person of color and unemployed, on top of being trans. Being a Black woman who is not working, trying to adopt kids, they’ll ask you how you will raise this child and whether you do drugs … because I’m sorry to say that we’re associated with drugs and crime.”

Judges and case workers, tasked with representing the best interest of the child, might ask these sorts of questions to people of all racial and class backgrounds. To Jane, however, these questions reflect—and I would argue, reinforce—the cultural hysteria surrounding low-income Black mothers in this country. The welfare queen is one of many stereotypes about Black womanhood, including the angry Sapphire and the promiscuous Jezebel.

This portrayal of low-income women of color as “bad mothers” (who fail to meet the standard of white, middle-class womanhood) has dangerous consequences, from sterilization to pushing long-acting birth control methods that are difficult to reverse.

Ultimately, I argue, racist and anti-trans discrimination reinforce one another. Every time a trans woman is policed for not doing womanhood or motherhood in the correct way, it implies there is indeed a “right way” to be a woman or a mother. This matters in the courtroom, where “parental fitness” is conflated with being white, middle-class, and cisgender. It also matters outside the courtroom. For example, trans sports bans disproportionately subject Black and brown cisgender women to “suspicion-based tests” for being “insufficiently feminine.”

By looking at how gender and racial inequalities work together, I have several goals: 1) centering the experiences of trans women of color (who are often left out of research on parenting), and 2) showing that the movements for trans liberation and racial justice are deeply connected, and that we cannot talk about one in isolation from the other.

Derek P. Siegel (they/them) is a PhD Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work addresses race, class, and gender inequalities with a focus on reproduction, parenting, and family, and transgender people’s experiences in other institutional contexts (i.e., healthcare and the law).

Reconciling normative expectations with stigmatized desires

Straight men and women in Hong Kong’s sex parties

By: Pamela Tsui

How do straight people reconcile their aspirations to conform to normative expectations with their desires for stigmatized sexual exploration? My 29-month ethnographic study investigates this tension between normative aspirations and nonnormative desires among heterosexual, cisgender participants in a sex party club in Hong Kong. These participants, typically embracing their roles as dutiful wives, husbands, daughters, and sons in daily life, discreetly explore their deviant sexual desires within sex parties, which are tightly regulated to ensure confidentiality and safety.

At the core of this study is “bounded nonnormativity,” a concept I coined to capture the tension between normative and nonnormative practices. Bounded nonnormativity manifests in a carved-out space and time where participants can simultaneously maintain respectability in their daily lives while experiencing liberation in their covert activities. Within the confines of sex parties, conventional gender norms and monogamous expectations are temporarily set aside, offering a place for the exploration of a diverse array of sexual desires and practices. Despite diverging from mainstream norms, the bounded practices paradoxically neither challenge nor disrupt the existing social order. Instead, they serve as a coping mechanism, compartmentalizing participants’ normative daily lives and their nonnormative intimate pursuits.

My study highlights distinct gender-based experiences in managing normative pressures. Men find these sex parties a refuge from the burdens of maintaining a respectable masculine facade, enjoying a space for truthful sexual expressions and the fulfillment of being desired. Women, conversely, perceive these parties as safer and more satisfying alternatives to their usual sexual encounters in long-term relationships or casual sex, often tainted by threats of sexual violence and a lack of gratification. In these parties, women feel empowered to assert and explore their sexual desires with less fear or judgment.

Set against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s social context, my study also examines the impact of familial expectations and parental control on adult sexuality. Participants of all ages and genders struggle with the pressure to conform to the regulatory norms of chastity, monogamy, and heterosexuality. This pressure is particularly acute among young women, who express a palpable fear of their foray into sex parties being uncovered by their parents.

Bounded nonnormativity primarily serves as an escape from the regime of normalcy, yet it also harbors the potential to transform heteronormative sexual boundaries. A notable example is the “King’s Game,” a recurring activity at the parties, which sheds light on how straight men navigate and reinterpret same-sex encounters. In this game, men are sometimes tasked to perform oral sex on another man. The implications of the King’s Game are double-edged. On one hand, it reflects underlying homophobia within the parties, as the act’s perceived challenge to straight masculinity is what gives it a sensational aspect. On the other hand, through repeated playful enactments, the participants’ attitudes towards queer sexuality evolve.

A participant, pseudonymously named Richard, exemplifies this shift. Initially, he steered clear of homoerotic encounters, finding his first same-sex fellatio experience in King’s Game deeply uncomfortable. However, after two years of participation in the parties, his attitude shifted to a more playful acceptance in subsequent King’s Games, showing that he no longer perceived the homoerotic act as transgressive of his personal boundaries. Richard’s transformation, although far from subversive, is significant. As he recounted, “When I first joined the club, I’d definitely avoid anal sex or men [as sexual partners]. But if you ask me now, I think it depends on who that person is. There is no particular act but only particular persons that I am averse to.” This shift demonstrates how prolonged engagement in nonnormative sexual activities can blur one’s sexual boundaries and challenge established norms.

Aurora’s story is another example of transformation, suggesting the queering potential of bounded nonnormativity. Initially conforming to heteronormative expectations, Aurora was primarily attracted to men, an orientation influenced by her peers during her school years. Her involvement with the sex party club, however, provided a more inclusive environment that encouraged her to explore and experiment with her sexuality. As she expressed, “It was only after joining the club that I began having sex with women, as I became courageous to be more open about myself . . . I talked to the club’s organizer about it because I didn’t know any friends to talk to about these issues . . . After talking to him, I felt more liberated and embraced the idea of pursuing further [intimate] relationships with women.” Aurora’s journey through the club led her to a queering process, where she felt empowered to explore relationships with women, a significant shift from her previous orientation​​.

This study offers valuable insights into the regime of normalcy, revealing the varied ways in which men and women navigate and contend with the pressures of institutionalized heterosexuality and compulsory monogamy. In the context of Hong Kong’s evolving socio-political environment, the potential of bounded nonnormativity emerges as a critical focus. As formal, democratic channels for feminist and queer advocacy constrict, the latent potential within these nonnormative spaces in grassroot organizations may offer subtle yet precious opportunities for change in an increasingly repressive society.

Pamela P. Tsui is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto.

Gender Segregation in Civic Life – Women’s and Men’s Involvement in Voluntary Associations

By Kasimir Dederichs and Nan Dirk de Graaf 

Many social settings are gender-segregated: At the workplace, in higher education, and in friendship cliques, women and men typically encounter peers of their own gender. This separation slows down efforts toward gender equality because women and men get access to different resources through their social networks and engage in gender-typed behaviors and activities. But much less is known about gender segregation in civic life. Voluntary associations, such as sports clubs, community associations, or leisure groups, are often viewed as places that bring communities together and equalize access to social resources. However, previous research suggests – often based on highly simplified figures – that voluntary associations are segregated along gendered lines as well: Women and men are usually involved in different types of associations and perform different voluntary work, often matching broader gender stereotypes and extending traditional patterns of labor division to community life. For example, while women pull together in school- or care-related organizations, men more often meet each other in sports clubs and local political parties. 

But how exactly does gender segregation in civic life unfold and how does it come about? In our study (link to study), we address these questions by analyzing German survey data from the National Educational Panel Survey. A special feature of this survey data is that it contains respondents’ own descriptions of the type of associations they are involved in at two points in time (in 2012/13 and 2016/17). This enables us not only to summarize respondents’ involvement in very detailed types of associations but also to determine involvement trajectories (i.e., whether someone joins or quits an association).  

Our results show how gender segregation unfolds across types of associations. Women are overrepresented in parents’, social care, and religious associations. By contrast, men are disproportionally involved in political, employment, hobby, and technical associations. This division indicates an extension of gendered responsibilities in civic life. While men are also overrepresented in most sports associations offering team- or racket sports, women more often participate in gymnastics-, aerobic-, horse-riding-, and dancing clubs – again matching gendered stereotypes. Most types of community and social associations have overall rather even gender distributions (neighborhood-, sociability/carnival-, and youth associations).  

We also demonstrate that there is segregation within types of associations – on top of the segregation across them. Focusing on the seven most popular types of associations in Germany, we find substantive gender segregation within five of them (religious- and neighborhood organizations, soccer- and other sports, and choirs). In these types of associations, women and men systematically get in contact more often with co-participants of their own gender than we would expect based on the association types’ gender compositions. Potential reasons for such segregation within association types include the existence of designated gender-specific organizations of subunits (e.g., men’s choir, or women’s football team) and gender-stereotypical activities and task assignments in organizations (e.g., women sell cake and men repair the organizations’ facilities). Only in two types of associations (parents’ and political associations), women and men display no further sorting tendencies – potentially because these types of associations less often differentiate subunits or tasks by gender. 

Finally, we show that most of the gender segregation in civic life comes about because women and men join associations in which they then get exposed to people of their own gender. This tendency is to a large extent driven by the sex composition of people’s friendship networks. Because women more often have other women as friends, they are more likely to be asked to join women-dominated associations. Furthermore, we find that men endorsing traditional gender norms are more reluctant to join women-dominated associations than their peers supporting egalitarian values.  

In sum, our results highlight that there is gender segregation across and within types of associations. The gendered sorting into associations results – in part – from the gendered structure of friendship networks and traditional gender norms. 

What are the takeaways? Gender segregation in civic life can further solidify the importance of gender in society. By disproportionately connecting men with men and women with women, voluntary associations might perpetuate gender differences in access to other opportunities. Moreover, stereotypical gender ideologies can be internalized as children observe women in school-related organizations and men in the voluntary fire brigade from an early age. Those interested in advancing gender equality should thus carefully think about potential ways to facilitate contact between women and men in voluntary organizations.  

Kasimir Dederichs is a Ph.D. candidate at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. His research focuses on social integration and inequalities in voluntary involvement and has appeared in the European Sociological Review, Social Networks, and the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. 

Nan Dirk de Graaf is an Official Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. His research interests include social stratification, sociology of religion, pro-social behavior, and political sociology. With Dingeman Wiertz, he published the social science textbook Societal Problems as Public Bads (Routledge 2019); and with Klarita Gërxhani and Werner Raub, he edited the open-access Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology (Edward Elgar 2022). 

DOES MONEY SHAPE COUPLES’ LABOR DIVISION AFTER THE BIRTH OF THEIR FIRST CHILD?

By Regula Zimmerman

After the birth of their first child, different sex couples often opt for a gendered labor division, with mothers assuming more of the primary responsibility for childcare, which often leads to a reduction in their salaried working hours, while fathers continue full-time employment. In my research, I analyzed the role financial aspects play when new parents negotiate their labor division. What role do childcare costs play when parents decide whether to work outside the home or take care of their children by themselves? Are mothers more likely to reduce their paid working hours and take on more unpaid work than fathers, because, on average, they earn less?

To answer these questions, I traced the financial decisions of 54 parents (27 couples) living in Switzerland. While most of the couples belonged to the middle-class, their income configurations varied: before childbirth, the man earned more than the woman did in 12 couples.  In 9 couples, both parents earned the same.  In 6 couples, the woman earned more than the man did. Each parent was interviewed once before and once or twice in the first two years after the birth of their first child. This longitudinal data with more than 130 in-depth interviews provided a detailed picture of how the couples navigated their financial decisions.

In Switzerland, parents of young children receive little state support. Paid parental leave is short (14 weeks for mothers, 2 weeks for fathers), and professional childcare is poorly subsidized, expensive, and hard to find. Consequently, parents must bear most of the costs of child raising. Surprisingly, despite the financial strain, my study revealed that the parents choose their labor division without fully considering the resulting costs. For instance, one father, after enrolling his child in childcare, admitted, “I haven’t checked the rates, I don’t even know how it can affect the budget either.” Similarly, another father said: “I have no idea how much having a child costs”. When asked if he was worried about not knowing these costs, he answered, “I have a pretty good salary … if we couldn’t manage to raise a child there would be many people who can’t either.”  For this father, a comparison with other families replaced a more exact calculation.

Parents’ lack of information regarding the cost of their labor division was not solely due to a lack of effort, but also stemmed from the limited availability of necessary information. The childcare market is a complex mixture of public and private professional and non-professional services. Because spots were scarce, parents often enrolled their child in multiple institutions without knowing where they would finally get a spot and whether that spot would be subsidized or not.

However, parents who said outright that they did not know how much their labor division cost were the exception. Instead, most settled for a rough estimation of costs, factoring in some expenses while neglecting others. The selective calculation became evident when parents estimated the cost of childcare. When parents relied on non-family care (which accounted for 5–20% of their joint income), they considered childcare to be expensive. “Paying as much for childcare …  it’s clear that this creates troubles in the budget” stated one father, for example.

When parents chose not to rely on non-family care, and instead reduced their working hours to care for their child themselves, the financial cost was reduced wages. For families with one child, the salary they gave was clearly more than childcare fees. When a father reduced his working hours to take care of the child, the parents took into account the cost of childcare and calculated whether a reduction was financially feasible. Many fathers concluded that a reduction would be too expensive and opted for full-time employment. When a mother reduced her working hours, the calculation was different: Parents usually disregarded her loss of income and instead calculated how much the mother earned. A mother who worked two days a week, for example, said she did so “to earn money” and “get out of the house a bit”.

In sum, parents considered childcare costly when they relied on non-family care or when the father took care of the child, but when the mother did it, they considered it to be free. Parents’ perception of childcare costs depended less on real costs than on who was taking care of the child.

In addition, in line with the prevailing social norm that childcare is the mother’s responsibility, many mothers deducted childcare costs from their own income rather than from the couple’s joint income. Consequently, mothers sometimes questioned whether their paid work was financially worthwhile if childcare costs had to be paid. But none of the mothers reduced her paid work hours because of childcare costs. If they found childcare to be too expensive, they opted for a more affordable solution. Some switched from professional care to less costly non-professional care, while others sought assistance from family members, typically relying on grandmothers, who often provided childcare for free.

Hence, expensive childcare led to an increase in informal care solutions and not to a decrease in parents’ working hours. This finding does not mean that childcare costs can be completely disregarded when parents choose their salaried working hours. Studies show that childcare costs play a role, especially for mothers with fewer resources and those without relatives.

In addition to childcare expenses, another significant cost factor for the family was the reduction of parents’ working hours. Due to the relatively high working hours in Switzerland (usually 42h/week), dual full-time employment is unusual. In the sample, for one couple, both parents continued working full-time, whereas among the others at least one parent reduced her or his working hours in order to take on caregiving responsibilities. It is evident that reduced working hours put less strain on the family budget if the parent with the lower income chooses to work part-time. But regardless of whether the mother or the father earned more, in the majority of couples it was the mother who reduced her paid work hours. This finding was not unexpected, as previous research conducted in different countries has presented similar results (e.g., United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium), showing that when mothers earn the same or more than their partners, they still mostly assume a greater share of unpaid work and reduce their paid work hours more than fathers following the birth of a child.

Interestingly, the parents who opted for a gendered division of labor despite having the same income, explained their choices based on their relative resources rather than gender. As an example, consider one couple where, before childbirth, the mother earned more because she had higher working hours. After childbirth, the father opted for full-time work while the mother wanted to reduce her working hours, but could not find a  part-time job and therefore stayed at home. When the parents were asked 6 months after childbirth how they had negotiated their labor division, the father said, “It was not quite planned that way.” He added that he did not like working full-time and remarked “Ideally, I would be the first to reduce my working hours a little if my wife would earn [money].” This father’s reasoning was very common. Parents who initially had equal incomes first opted for an unequal division of labor, with the mother earning less but spending more time at home. Subsequently, they interpreted the inequality they had created by their own previous decisions as the cause of their labor division. They said the mother did more unpaid work because she earned less and because she had more time. By framing the situation this way, parents rationalized their unequal division of labor and downplayed the influence of gender norms, which they believed did not affect their decisions.

In some couples, the mothers continued to earn more after childbirth. For these mothers, it was evident that the family relied on her income, leading her to maintain long working hours. However, this did not lead to a more equal labor division, because most fathers who earned less did not increase their contribution to family work. On the contrary, they chose to pursue better-paying employment opportunities, engage in further education or to start a new business. Fathers who earned less ended up working even longer hours in paid employment compared to fathers who earned more, as among the latter some also slightly reduced their paid work to take on family work.

Overall, the study revealed that within a couple, not all dollars were perceived as equal. Parents attributed less financial value to mothers’ financial contribution to the family than to fathers’. The analysis highlighted that achieving greater gender equality at home requires not only gender wage parity, workplace policies allowing the combination of paid work and family responsibilities and easier access to childcare, but also a more equal valuation of mothers’ and fathers’ financial contributions within the family.

Regula Zimmermann is a PhD candidate at the University of Basel. She explores the reasons for parents’ unequal division of labor and its long-term consequences.

A Note From The Incoming Editorial Team

Dear friends and colleagues,

We’re thrilled to step into the co-editorship of Gender & Society. We began our editorial work with new submissions on May 1, 2023. Our first full issue, as the new editorial team, will be out in February 2024.

Given the long history of critical feminist scholarship and leadership by former editors, the SWS Publications Committee, and the SWS community at large, we recognize the responsibilities on us to continue this legacy. We are confident that we will rise to the occasion over the next four years with our team of deputy editors, Professors Erika Busse-Cárdenas (Macalester College), Ben Carrington (University of Southern California), Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University), Ghassan Moussawi (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) and stef shuster (Michigan State University). The deputy editors reflect what is best in our discipline’s trans/gender/ racial foci. They inflect their sociologies with transnational sensibilities, and with both qualitative and quantitative methodological skills. In addition we have an outstanding team of student managing editors, namely Erin Carpenter and Jasmine Underwood from the University of Georgia and Alexander Holt from the University of Texas at Austin.

We take up our editorship at a particularly troubling time for scholars of gender, in the midst of a concerted backlash against feminism in general and against critical research on gender, race, and sexuality. It seems that global predicaments increase exponentially every year. The list could go on, but here are a few: climate refugees, racial violence, food insecurity, evisceration of reproductive and transgender justice. While troubled by the socio-economic and political zeitgeist, the seven of us recognize that the discipline of sociology is in the throes of a renaissance informed by a wealth of theoretical approaches, methodological innovations, and political orientations. We hope to bring some of that excitement apparent in the discipline to the pages of Gender & Society and that you will consider sending your manuscripts to us.

Under Barbara Risman’s editorial team’s guidance Gender & Society has grown by leaps and bounds. We are grateful for her leadership with the journal. We are also grateful for the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) team that helped us transition into our new roles almost seamlessly.

As the incoming editorial team, we take seriously our responsibilities to both understand and respect the founding principles of this journal and also to move the journal forward, to ensure it remains relevant to the debates and issues of the second decade of the twenty-first century. We welcome submissions from all scholars studying gender and sexuality whose approaches are sociologically informed, even if they are not, formally, sociologists or working within departments of sociology. We encourage all colleagues to submit to us, regardless of geographical location, rank, experience, or time in the academy. We look forward to reading your work, working with you, and seeing you in print in Gender & Society.

Thanks all.

Patricia Richards (University of Georgia) and Sharmila Rudrappa (University of Texas at Austin

Gay Sexual Positioning and Black Hypermasculinity

By Terrell J.A. Winder

How do Black gay men police the boundaries of masculinity? I did not originally set out to answer this question, but during my time spent in a community organization in Los Angeles that served a predominantly Black gay male clientele, I came to be fascinated by how gender boundaries were policed among a group of men whose masculinities were constantly challenged because they were gay. I spent over 4 years going to weekly community organization meetings and interviewing Black gay men between 2012 and 2017. I observed conversations between these young men. They revealed the complex ways in which masculinities and femininities are organizing and confounding elements of social life in their gay communities.

As I illustrate in my recent Gender & Society article, perceptions of masculinity are often contested across racial groups. The young Black men that I encountered believed that the pressures for Black men to be hypermasculine both confined their abilities to see masculinity in non-Black men and simultaneously forced them to meet extremely stringent standards to be seen as masculine Black men.

The men I interviewed and observed had to navigate the social expectations that they felt to be hypermasculine, both from other Black men and men of other races. But their strategies were shaming others for being “bottoms” or the receptive partner in anal sex. This was meant to emasculate them, as if being the receptive partner somehow made them more feminine and less masculine. This behavior is not new and follows along a long history of gay men’s disdain for things relegated as too “feminine.” However, I illustrate how Black men are under unique pressures to navigate unrealistic masculinity expectations in order to maintain their racial identities; while they simultaneously struggle to create relationships with other gay men who may overemphasize sexual positioning as gendered.

Is masculinity a reliable predictor of sexual positioning in gay relationships? On one occasion, the young men engaged in a game that the facilitator called “the politics of sexuality” where they were challenged to use outward gender expressions as a way to guess another person’s sexual positioning identity. Through this interactional labeling exercise, it became apparent that not only did these young Black gay men believe they were more masculine than men of other races, but also that sexual positioning information was central to gay interactions even if they did not want it to be. Black men in this study struggled with the fact that sexual positioning, that is whether someone is a top, bottom, or versatile in sexual interactions, was central to their abilities to build relationships within the larger gay community. On one hand, they expressed a need to know this information so they could classify the relationships as either a friendship or a potential romantic relationship. On the other hand, they felt that the constant focus on what sexual acts people do, rather than on emotional or non-sexual intimacy, served as a source of frustration.

In interviews, young men confided in me the difficulties of navigating social relationships when sex and sexual positioning are so prioritized that it eclipses other forms of intimacy. The need to fit into social labels within the gay community was a major source of stress for the young men as they sought to find a sense of belonging within the Black gay community.

My ethnographic observations and interviews underscore two key ideas. First, Black gay men use the constant stereotype pressures of hypermasculinity to assert their own masculinities against other racial and ethnic groups like white, Latinx, and Asian men. Second, Black gay men use public “bottom-shaming” against one another to shore up their own sense of masculinity. My work demonstrates how racialized notions of masculinity come to bear on the everyday lives of Black gay men and how they themselves reinforce unattainable masculinity that stereotypes cast upon them.

Terrell J. A. Winder is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include race and ethnicity, sexuality and sexual health, qualitative and quantitative research methods, and education. His current book project is a multi-method examination of anti-gay stigma response among young Black gay men in Los Angeles.

Farewell From the 2019-2023 Editorial Team

Barbara J Risman, Editor
University of Illinois at Chicago
Irma Mooi-Reci, Deputy Editor
University of Melbourne
Kristen Myers, Deputy Editor
East Carolina University
Sheryl Skaggs, Deputy Editor
University of Texas at Dallas
Smitha Radhakrishnan, Deputy Editor
Wellesley College
Travers, Deputy Editor
Simon Fraser University

With Volume 37 Issue 6, to be published December of 2023, we pass on the editorial baton to Patricia Richards and Sharmila Rudrappa. We are thrilled that they and their team will be following our term of service, and we know they will continue to improve our feminist collective project, Gender & Society. 

We inherited a strong and thriving journal. During our tenure, we have striven to increase the quality, visibility, and social scientific standing of the journal. Academic journals exist on a dimension from humanities at one pole to sciences at the other. Our vision has been to ensure that we remain toward the scientific pole of that dimension, always ensuring that our authors have enough empirical evidence to support their argument as they increase our understanding of gender theory from an intersectional perspective. 

We faced unexpected challenges, as did everyone else, during the pandemic. As we all went into quarantine, and day care and schools went online, academics had far less time to write or to review. Our submissions collapsed, as did the availability of our wonderful reviewers. While we had usually asked seven people to find three reviewers pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, we often had to ask more than twenty reviewers to find three that had the time and energy to review. After some brainstorming, our team decided to do a special issue on Gender & Covid (co-edited by Risman and Mooi-Reci). In addition, we responded to the summer of George Floyd’s murder with a symposium on Say Her Name (co-edited by Risman and Travers). Both the special issue and the symposium were our collective response to the crises in publishing that accompanied the crises in the rest of the world during the pandemic. Both have been widely cited and we are quite pleased at having managed to keep Gender & Society thriving during those troubled years. We have learned that working collectively with a strong feminist commitment to each other and the discipline can help us meet whatever challenges come our way.     

Despite some controversy, we have stayed the course, and the latest journal rankings have highlighted our success. The journal was ranked #21 (of 149) in sociology when we took the reins, and we are now ranked #7. We were ranked #3 in Women and Gender Studies, and now we are #2 (of 44).  This is due to the hard work of the entire team, including every Editorial Board Member, the Managing Editors, and those colleagues who have served as guest editors. And while we are pleased with our success, it is our authors who will benefit the most, as the increased rankings will help in job searches, as well as tenure and promotion decisions.

It is about time that feminist research is pushing its way into the mainstream of the discipline of sociology. We are thrilled that we had the opportunity to do just that. And we look forward to where the next editorial team will take the journal.

We want to end by thanking our contributors, our Editorial Board, our reviewers, and our readers for taking this journey with us. We hope we have earned the trust you placed in us as the editorial team for the last four years.  

‘Maternity’ Services Need to be Inclusive of Trans and Non-Binary People Who Give BIrth

By Sally Pezaro, Gemma Pearce, and Adam Jowett – Coventry University, United Kingdom.

‘Maternity’ services are one of the most gendered domains in health care and ‘midwifery’ is typically ‘woman-centred’ care. The very word ‘maternity’ is derived from the Latin for motherhood. Similarly, ‘midwifery’ (a health profession that focuses on pregnancy and childbirth) is derived from Old English, translated as ‘with woman’. Yet an increasing number of people using these services include childbearing trans men and nonbinary people. New attention is being given to how such services might be made inclusive for those with diverse gender identities.

We know from existing research that childbearing trans and non-binary people experience a variety of challenges throughout their childbearing journeys. Some may experience worsening of gender dysphoria, poor care, increased vulnerability as well as a profound sense of physical, social, and emotional isolation. We argue this is due to a model of care in which it is presumed only cisgender women will be or want to be pregnant as well as that pregnancy only occurs among heterosexual women.

Little is known about health care provider experiences of providing care for childbearing trans and non-binary people. Nor is much known about the educational needs for providers to adequately address the needs of trans and non-binary people. Findings published in our recent article in Gender & Society provide insight into professionals’ perspectives on providing care to the childbearing trans and nonbinary communities in the United Kingdom. We asked professionals working in perinatal services (e.g., midwives, maternity/birth support workers, a neonatal nurse, a lactation consultant etc) about their experiences and educational needs in this context. Most professionals who took part in our research were supportive of trans patients and wanted to provide inclusive care for the trans and non-binary communities they serve. Most understood that ‘maternity’ professionals have a duty to care for all in a respectful manner.  

The biggest personal barrier our respondents mentioned was a lack of confidence in providing care for childbearing trans and non-binary people. They particularly were apprehensive around language usage and causing unintentional offence. They perceived lack of training and resources for staff to support them in providing inclusive care, resulting in low levels of awareness. Although a minority did express concerns about inclusive language erasing (cisgender) women, most professionals were generally keen to understand how to work with childbearing trans and non-binary people and use language in a respectful and inclusive manner.

We did identify some issues that face trans and nonbinary people in this health care context. In some cases, inaccurate assumptions that only women give birth was evidenced among ‘maternity’ professionals. For instance, some expressed that they struggle to understand why someone ‘living as a man’ would want to give birth as they saw this as a fundamentally ‘female act’. Meanwhile, another midwife failed to acknowledge the need for awareness of diversity as they “treat everyone the same”. The minority who suggested that inclusive language erases (cisgender) women also failed to acknowledge the marginalization of gender-diverse people and (by comparison) the privileges associated with being a cisgender woman in the perinatal health care context. The suggestion that some childbearing cisgender women may find sharing a ward with trans men “disconcerting” presented trans men as the problem, rather than the systems in which they are marginalized and left without accommodation. We worried more about the explicit transphobia that some professionals witnessed among colleagues such as mocking trans and non-binary service users or refusing to use their personal pronouns (e.g., he/him or they/them). 

We also identify barriers that embedded in the health care system itself. Digital records that could only process ‘female’ data, forms that assume that people birthing are ‘mothers’ and forms that do not provide space for documenting gender or pronouns. The presumption that only heterosexual women give birth is often evidenced in the attitudes and administrative procedures, of ‘maternity’ services.

Challenging gender binaries is beneficial to all as it advances equality, diversity, and inclusion.

We hope that our findings may act as a catalyst for more education and training for professionals on these issues, and we thank Equality Network for being our learned partners in this work. Guidance on trans inclusivity should not be viewed as imposing gender-neutral language on professionals or erasing ‘women’, but rather creating greater awareness and enabling professionals to confidently work with childbearing trans and non-binary people in an inclusive and respectful way. As one student midwife who took part in our research put it “one can be a feminist and also provide understanding, accepting care to transgender people”.

We also hope our findings will lead to a consideration of legal and systemic change in healthcare. The laws concerning registering birth and medical records are a barrier to fully acknowledging gender identity in this context. We could start by considering the terminology we use for this domain of health care. For instance, throughout our article we refer to ‘perinatal’ or ‘reproductive’ services to describe care related to pregnancy and childbirth because it is inclusive of cisgender women and gender-diverse birthing people alike. 

In a context where inequalities exist, trans men and non-binary people who give birth need individualised perinatal care as do cisgender women. ‘Maternity’ and mid’wife’ry services require a reimagining.

Sally Pezaro is a registered midwife, an adjunct associate professor at the university of Notre Dame in Australia, an assistant professor within the Centre for Healthcare Research at Coventry University in the United Kingdom, a fellow of the Royal College of Midwives, and an editorial board member of Evidence Based Midwifery, MIDIRS, and the International Journal of Childbirth. She is also a panelist on the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s fitness to practice Investigating Committee and a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy. In 2021, she won a “Midwives Award” from the Iolanthe Midwifery Trust and a “Partnership Working” award from the Royal College of Midwives. In 2019, she was honored with a first prize award from the Royal Society of Medicine in “Leading and inspiring excellence in maternity care” and was also the first runner-up for the British Journal of Midwifery’s “Midwife of the Year” 2019.

Gemma Pearce is an associate professor across the Centre for Healthcare Research and the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences at Coventry University, UK. She is a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society and senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her research specializes in women’s health, health care services, and cocreation methods, with a cocreation framework embedded across research and practice internationally, including National Health Service (NHS) England. She was part of the previous research project on hypermobile Ehlers–Danlos syndrome and pregnancy, where through public involvement, the need to develop research in this field of perinatal care for trans and nonbinary people arose. She received an award in 2018 by Emerald Publishing for impactful research making a difference to patients, public, and health care professionals.

Adam Jowett is associate head of the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences at Coventry University. His research interests include LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other) health and anti-LGBT+ prejudice and stigma. He is Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Sexualities Section, which promotes psychological work relevant to LGBT+ issues.