scholarly journals Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction in Diverse Newlywed Couples

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 597-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah C. Williamson ◽  
Justin A. Lavner
Keyword(s):  
Marital Satisfaction ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Marital Stability ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Sociodemographic Risk

Couples’ marital satisfaction is thought to decline over the newlywed years, but recent research indicates that the majority of spouses have high, stable trajectories during this period, and significant declines occur only among initially dissatisfied spouses. These findings are drawn from predominantly White, middle-class samples, however, which may overestimate marital stability compared to samples with higher levels of sociodemographic risk. Accordingly, the current study tested the generalizability of newlyweds’ marital stability by examining satisfaction trajectories among 431 ethnically diverse newlywed couples living in low-income neighborhoods. Consistent with previous work, most spouses had high levels of satisfaction, substantial declines were limited to spouses with lower initial levels of satisfaction, and divorce significantly differed between groups. Wives with higher levels of sociodemographic risk started marriage less satisfied and declined more in satisfaction. Overall, these findings reveal risky and resilient relationships among disadvantaged couples, with considerable stability during the newlywed years.

scholarly journals Why Is There Learning Disabilities? A Critical Analysis of the Birth of the Field in Its Social Context

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Sleeter
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Low Achievers ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Minority Children ◽  
Degree Of Protection ◽  
White Middle Class

This chapter presents an interpretation of why the category of learning disabilities emerged, that differs from interpretations that currently prevail. It argues that the category was created in response to social conditions during the late 1950s and early 1960s which brought about changes in schools that were detrimental to children whose achievement was relatively low. The category was created by white middle class parents in an effort to differentiate their children from low-achieving low-income and minority children. The category offered their children a degree of protection from probable consequences of low achievement because it upheld their intellectual normalcy and the normalcy of their home backgrounds, and it suggested hope for a cure and for their ability eventually to attain higher status occupations than other low achievers.

Understanding the development of low-income marriages : investigating the antecedents and outcomes of marital functioning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jeremy B. Kanter
Keyword(s):  
Marital Satisfaction ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Psychological Functioning ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Relationship Functioning ◽  
Marital Functioning ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
White Middle Class

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Change in marital satisfaction is a salient research topic for social scientists, especially given the association between marital functioning and adult and child well-being. Scholars have begun to recognize a decline in marital satisfaction is avoidable for the majority of couples, and recent work has demonstrated the antecedents and outcomes associated with different marital experiences. However, most work has used White, middle-class couples. Thus, it is unclear if these patterns replicate for socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, what resources are associated with different relational pathways, and if relationship functioning is associated with psychological functioning. Using three waves of data from a sample of low-income newlywed couples in the Supporting Healthy Marriages project, I identified three classes of couples. The majority of spouses reported stable, high relationship functioning during the early years of marriage. Gender differences emerged, with husbands reporting more stable marital functioning than wives. Guided by the Vulnerability-Stress-Adaptation model, I also found individual (family-of-origin experiences), dyadic (e.g., perceptions of support), and structural (e.g., neighborhood safety) factors were associated with different marital experiences. Last, I found that change in marital satisfaction was influential to change in psychological distress. These results advance scholarship on the inequalities and resilience factors prevalent in low-income populations.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Bilingual Education in the United States: From Basements and Pride to Boutiques and Profit

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Flores ◽  
Ofelia García
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Middle Class Families

ABSTRACTIn this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

“‘No Tough Guys Here?’: Hybrid Masculinity in a Boxing Gym”

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162098558
Author(s):  
Watoii Rabii
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
White Collar ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
It Employees

In this article, I explore manifest and latent discourses about masculinity in a predominantly white, middle class boxing gym. In this gym, the owner and coaches promote a discourse that emphasizes love, bridgework, and sparring with care. This discourse is part of the gym’s white-collar boxing culture. A key part of this discourse is distancing themselves from other gyms, claiming they promote a violent masculinity. While on the surface the gym criticizes certain ideals and practices associated with American hegemonic masculinity, it still reproduces discourses, norms, and practices associated with it. Employees use a latent discourse that constructs a hybrid masculinity. I argue that employees and members construct a hybrid masculinity by perpetuating ideals and practices associated with American hegemonic masculinity.

scholarly journals Dismantling Persistent Deficit Narratives About the Language and Literacy of Culturally and Linguistically Minoritized Children and Youth: Counter-Possibilities

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su-hua Wang ◽  
Nora Lang ◽  
George C. Bunch ◽  
Samantha Basch ◽  
Sam R. McHugh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Word Gap

Despite decades of efforts, deficit narratives regarding language development and use by children and students from historically marginalized backgrounds remain persistent in the United States. Examining selective literature, we discuss the ideologies that undergird two deficit narratives: the notion that some children have a “word gap” when compared to their White middle-class peers, and students must develop “academic language” to engage in rigorous content learning. The “word gap” concept came from a study wherein a group of young children in low-income families heard fewer words than those in middle-class families. It assumes that language can only be acquired in one way—vocabulary exchange from one parent to one child—and ignores decades of research on diverse pathways for language development. We highlight an alternative perspective that language development builds on children’s experience with cultural practices and the harm on minoritized children by privileging a specific form of vocabulary acquisition. The second deficit narrative concerns “academic language,” a concept championed by scholars aiming to address educational inequity. The construct runs the risk of undervaluing the potential of students from historically marginalized backgrounds to engage in learning using language that is “informal,” nonconventional, or “non-native like.” It also is sometimes used as a rationale to relegate students to special programs isolated from more rigorous academic discourse, thus ironically removing them from opportunities to develop the academic registers they are deemed to be missing. We explore alternative frameworks that shift the focus from linguistic features of academic talk and texts as prerequisites for academic work to the broad range of linguistic resources that students employ for academic purposes in the classroom. Finally, we turn to a positive approach to youths’ language development and use: translanguaging by multilingual learners and their teachers. Translanguaging demonstrates the power of a resource-oriented perspective that values students’ rich communicative repertoires and actively seeks to disrupt language hierarchies. We argue that this approach, however, must be considered in relation to the broader social context to meet its transformative aims. Together, our analysis suggests counter-possibilities to dismantle deficit-oriented narratives and points to promising directions for research and practices to reduce inequity in education.

CULTIVATING A PROFESSIONAL POSE:

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (02) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Brandon A. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Black Men ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
White Institution ◽  
Success Group ◽  
Group Members ◽  
And Behaviors

AbstractIn this article I investigate how a group of Black men in college worked together to learn and practice the professional pose—professional styles and behaviors meant to navigate professional settings. I argue that these behaviors were adopted to preempt any potential discriminatory acts and would ideally disassociate them from the negative labels associated with Black men. Specifically, I examine how leaders of the group Uplift and Progress (UP) prepared other members and recruits by teaching them how to present themselves as professional Black men who were familiar with White middle-class practices. To further encourage their success, group members sought out opportunities to practice these styles in public. By cultivating this professional pose, they were able to claim their place at a White institution and distance themselves from the unfavorable stereotypes of Black men. This strategy also bolstered their reputation on campus and would ideally prepare them for the predominantly White workplace.

Assessing a Measure of Femininity Ideology for Low-Income, Latina Adolescent Girls

Affilia ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Williford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Intervention Strategies ◽  
Diverse Populations ◽  
Latina Adolescents ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Measurement Tools ◽  
Minority Girls

The purpose of the study presented here was to examine whether a measure of femininity ideology, normed on largely white, middle-class samples of adolescent girls, could be verified among a sample of low-income Latina adolescents. The results revealed that the previously identified factor structure could not be confirmed for this sample, which brings the scales’ validity for use with low-income, Latina samples into question. These findings suggest that minority girls may interpret femininity ideologies differently than do white, middle-class girls and underscore the importance of examining the validity of measurement tools for use with diverse populations. They emphasize that improving measurement for diverse populations is needed to develop culturally responsive and relevant intervention strategies.

Doing Identity Work and Risky Endeavors? A Qualitative Research Synthesis of Predominantly White, Middle-Class Parents’ Decision Making in the Context of Urban School Choice

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Ellison ◽  
Ariel M. Aloe
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Urban Schools ◽  
Research Synthesis ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
White Middle Class

The inversion hypothesis popularized by Ehrenhalt posits that recent urban migration trends in the United States constitute a reversal of the late 20th-century model of middle-class White flight to the suburbs and an urban core inhabited by a mostly working-class, minority population. The hypothesized blurring of the urban–suburban divide has led to calls that policymakers must seize the opportunity to foster racially and economically diverse urban schools before the inversion process is complete with the assumption that doing so will lead to more equitable educational opportunities. The aim of this study is to gain insight into the possibility of fostering racially and economically integrated urban schools in the context of school choice through a qualitative research synthesis of the decision making processes of predominantly White, middle-class families in the urban core as they make school choices. Findings from this research indicate that the decision making of parents in the studies sampled for this synthesis are bound up with their identity work as “city people”; that parents who go “against the grain” in choosing an urban public school perceive that choice to be a risky decision; and that those risks are mitigated by their access to cultural, social, and economic capital.

Planning ‘Suburban Bliss’ in Joe Slovo Park, Cape Town

Africa ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Robins
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Housing Development ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The Everyday

AbstractJoe Slovo Park, a housing development in a white middle-class suburb of Cape Town, was designed to replace the shack settlement of Marconi Beam with an orderly working-class suburb. This article focuses on the vicissitudes of post-apartheid housing development schemes, and raises troubling questions about the failure of planners, policy makers and developers to take into account the complexities of the everyday lives they sought to transform. Had they done so they might have anticipated the ‘re-informalisation’ of the newly formalised suburb. The article explores the disjunctures between the planners' model of ‘suburban bliss’ and the reality. The messy, improvised character of low-income housing development in South Africa is contrasted with their Utopian and technocratic vision. This is not to deny that dreams embodied in blueprints may often be shared by the intended ‘beneficiaries’, only that for a variety of social, economic and cultural reasons poor communities are generally unable to realise such ideal visions of modern urban living.

scholarly journals Oh…So close! Children’s close counterfactual reasoning and emotion inferences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Doan ◽  
Ori Friedman ◽  
Stephanie Denison
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Counterfactual Reasoning ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Alternative Outcome ◽  
Children's Emotion

How we feel about an outcome often depends on how close an alternative outcome was to occurring. In four experiments, we investigated whether predominantly White, middle-class, Canadian children (N = 425, Experiments 1-3) and American adults (N = 227, Experiment 4) consider close counterfactual alternatives when inferring other people’s emotions. In Experiment 1, 6-year-olds (but not 4- and 5-year-olds) inferred that an agent would feel sadder about winning a mediocre prize if she later found out that a more attractive one could have easily been won. However, children of all ages failed to judge whether the better outcome could have easily happened. In Experiment 2, when 5- and 6-year-olds knew the locations of the prizes beforehand, they inferred that an agent would be equally happy about winning a mediocre prize regardless if she almost won a better prize or not. Again, they did not recognize when the better outcome was a close counterfactual possibility. In Experiment 3, we included extra cues to the closeness of the alternative and both 5- and 6-year-olds inferred that she would feel sadder about winning a mediocre prize, and 6-year-olds acknowledged that the attractive prize was a close counterfactual alternative. In Experiment 4, adults considered close counterfactuals when inferring emotions. Our findings suggest that close counterfactuals influence children’s emotion inferences before they become able to acknowledge their closeness.

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