Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
-
Objective: This article identifies how social class differences in undergraduates’ relationships with their parents shaped their responses to educational disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: The mechanisms through which parents transmit class advantages to children are often hidden from view and therefore remain imperfectly understood. This study uses the case of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine how young adults from different social class backgrounds expect, negotiate, and attach meaning to parental support.
Method: This study draws from in-depth interviews with 48 Black and White upper-middle and working-class undergraduates from a single elite university, along with 10 of their mothers.
Results: Facing pandemic-related disruptions, upper-middle-class students typically sought substantial direction and material assistance from parents. In contrast, working-class students typically assumed more responsibility for their own—and sometimes other family members’—well-being. These classed patterns of “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy” were shaped by students’ understandings of family members’ authority, needs, and responsibilities.
Conclusion: Upper-middle-class students’ greater dependence on parents functioned as a protective force, enabling them to benefit from parents’ material and academic support during the transition to remote instruction. These short-term protections may yield long-term payoffs denied their working-class peers. Beyond the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concepts of “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy” offer scholars a set of theoretical tools for understanding class inequality in other young adult contexts.
Find it here.
See also:
Contexts author Q&A
Contexts interview with Michèle Lamont, Shira Zilberstein & Mari Sanchez
Contexts feature essay
Contexts blog post
Penn Omnia Magazine feature article
Opinion article for The Conversation.
Blog post for Work In Progress
Blog post for the Council on Contemporary Families
-
Demonstrating how race is socially constructed has been a core sociological objective, yet many individuals continue to hold essentialist and other concepts of what races are and how to account for group differences. These conceptualizations have crucial consequences for intergroup attitudes, support for social policies, and structures of inequality, all of which are key sociological concerns; yet much of the research in this area has emerged outside of sociology. Our review of this interdisciplinary scholarship describes the range of views people hold, the attitudes and behaviors associated with them, and what factors contribute to these views. We focus primarily on essentialism and constructivism, although we describe the greater variety of beliefs beyond this dichotomy, as well as fluidity in how people use these concepts. We conclude by presenting research on strategies for reducing essentialist belief systems and identifying key areas for future research.
Find it here.
-
Peer reviewed feature essay
From privileged dependence to precarious autonomy, students from different class backgrounds understood and experienced parental support differently amid COVID-19 campus closures.
Find it here.
-
Research on parental involvement has traditionally focused on social class differences in parenting behavior throughout early childhood and K-12 schooling. Yet there is mounting evidence that similar class divides persist as children exit high school and progress through young adulthood. This review examines parents' roles in young adults' lives, focusing on class differences in non-financial forms of involvement. These processes are often hidden from public view and have received less attention in prior reviews. Beginning with the transition out of high school, I discuss current research on parents' roles in relation to five traditional young adult milestones: finishing school, finding a job, leaving the family home, getting married, and becoming a parent (Furstenberg, 2010). The findings underscore that understanding the transition to adulthood requires understanding young adults' relationships with parents.
Find it here.
-
This article examines institutional approaches to multifaith chaplaincy across private institutions of higher education. Based on a pilot study of eight nonreligious colleges and universities, the authors identify a continuum of models for multifaith chaplaincy. At one end of this continuum, universities facilitate access for chaplaincy affiliates they do not pay; at the other end, universities employ staff chaplains. The authors find that smaller institutions and those historically affiliated with a religious group tend to employ more staff chaplains. Chaplaincy models affect how deeply chaplains and affiliates are involved on campus and the possibilities for interfaith engagement.
Find it here.
-
This article examines student engagement with chaplaincy services through a pilot survey administered at a private liberal arts college (n = 1043). Almost half of the respondents reported engagement with campus chaplains, which varied by religious tradition and race. Respondents who had engaged with chaplains were more likely to report integrating spirituality into daily life, feeling supported in wrestling with life’s big questions, and experiencing spiritual growth. They were not more likely to feel they were resilient or could manage stress. The authors encourage researchers to build on the model and findings presented here to identify empirically how chaplaincy services affect students.
Find it here.
-
In the changing religious landscape of American higher education, campus chaplains offer vital resources to student affairs professionals. Drawing from interviews with 16 religiously diverse chaplains, this article presents the respondents’ perspectives on the challenges facing students, as well as their own contributions to campus life. Chaplains described three central roles: bridge-building, community-building, and tending to the soul of the university. These findings indicate that chaplains, particularly those from non-Christian traditions, contribute to campus life in ways not yet indicated in the higher education literature. In light of these findings, the authors encourage collaboration among chaplains of all faiths and student affairs professionals.
Find it here.
Book chapter
-
The current political milieu in the United States has heightened questions around immigrants and refugees, particularly those with Muslim backgrounds. In June 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States narrowly decided in favor of the hotly-contested travel ban on migrants from several Muslim countries the Trump administration pursued since its inauguration in 2016. Over the years, many communities have responded as advocates for these populations by offering sanctuary and/or material support (e.g., Hondagneu Sotelo 2008; Yukich 2013). They seek to stand in solidarity with people of other religions and countries of origin, but often efforts are organized around political action and social services, neglecting the lens of faith.
As we survey interfaith activity in the United States, particularly between Muslims and Christians, there is no shortage of goodwill and attempts at strengthening the relationship between faiths. However, people still struggle to find the means to build bridges between their communities. This project introduces a new strategy in interfaith encounters, one that opens the possibility for anyone to give voice to their experiences in ways that engage their broader community. Specifically, we explore the extent to which a participatory action research technique called photovoice may be used in interfaith dialogue as a means to strengthen relationships, bridge cultural divides, encourage mutual advocacy, engage communities, and pursue social justice goals around questions of faith, diversity, and immigration. Likewise, we highlight the potential of photovoice as a research technique.
Public Writing
Academic Book Reviews
Under Review & In Progress
-
Why did some undergraduates return to a parent’s home amid COVID-19 campus closures while others did not? We use survey data from undergraduates attending two public universities to describe and understand students’ pandemic housing transitions, focusing on co-residence with parents (N=1,179). Students were more likely to move home if they lived on campus or, if living off campus, experienced employment disruptions. This indicates students’ material needs motivated returns home. Previous financial dependence on parents for living expenses also increased the likelihood of returning home, suggesting the availability of parental resources and expectations for material reliance on parents encouraged the use of this safety net. In contrast, older age and living with a romantic partner reduced the likelihood of returning home, illustrating change over the life course. Beyond deepening our understanding of this specific historical event, the findings offer broader insight to research on kin tie activation, co-residence, and young adulthood.
-
The Censuses of Religious Bodies contain detailed information about early 20th century American religious groups. However, these data have not been used to their full potential—likely because until recently, large quantities of data in these volumes had not been digitized. We undertook a large data entry initiative to make these extraordinary data available to contemporary researchers. This article draws on the newly-digitized 1916 volume to present the first detailed description of organization-level religious inequality a century ago. Examining inequality by religious tradition, we find vast disparities that map onto other lines of social inequality: race, urbanicity, region, and immigration. For example, Mainline Protestants possessed approximately three times as much property per capita as Black Protestants. We hope the data and analyses presented below offer sociologists of religion an empirical and theoretical foundation to further examine how religious organizations and traditions have acted as sites of social reproduction.
-
Why did an ostensibly race-neutral COVID-19 campus behavioral policy have racially unequal consequences? Drawing insight from Ray’s theory of racialized organizations and Bonilla Silva’s theory of colorblind racism, we explain how The Pact—a restrictive behavioral policy implemented at rural liberal arts college during the 2020-2021 academic year—exacerbated racial inequalities embedded in this institution. The disparities manifested in four main ways: (1) unequal social costs of following The Pact, (2) unequal access to “safe” ways of violating The Pact, (3) unequal visibility and surveillance under The Pact, and (4) unequal stakes of breaking The Pact. We argue these disparities occurred precisely because this policy was colorblind: it did not account for racism, neither in its design nor implementation. By working primarily to increase diversity on campus through admissions, but not creating race-conscious policies across other campus domains, universities reinforce systemic inequalities.
-
Abstract available by request.
-
An extensive sociological literature demonstrates how parenting approaches differ across social class and influence children’s help-seeking behavior (e.g., Lareau 2011; Calarco 2018). However, less is known about how these class-based socialization processes shape help-seeking in the transition to adulthood. Specifically, we know little about how young adults understand or negotiate support from their parents. The COVID-19 pandemic upended U.S. higher education, providing a novel opportunity to observe how college students from different class backgrounds responded to COVID-19 educational disruptions. This chapter examines undergraduates’ strategies for navigating COVID-19 campus closures, focusing on help sought and received from parents. It draws on the author’s interviews with undergraduates and mothers to illustrate classed patterns of “privileged dependence” and “precarious autonomy” (van Stee 2023). Students from privileged backgrounds typically turned to their parents for guidance and assistance, while those from less advantaged families demonstrated greater autonomy and responsibility. Students’ help-seeking strategies reflected underlying class differences in their expectations for their parents’ roles at this stage of their lives. The chapter concludes by discussing the broader implications for sociological and psychological research on social class, help-seeking, and emerging adulthood.
-
Read more about my dissertation research here.