The majority of young married Americans lived with their spouses before the wedding, and many cohabited with partners they did not wed. Yet little is known about how cohabitating relationships progress or the role gender norms play in this process. This article explores how cohabiting partners negotiate relationship progression, focusing on…

Family rituals provide a rich context in which to study the relation between ideology and action. Guided by the gender perspective, this article analyzes the experiences of 21 newly married heterosexual couples who described how they planned their weddings. The interplay among gender ideology, gender display, and gender assessment differed across…

This article provides the rationale for doing research on childlessness and parenthood in late life. Childless older adults have been rendered invisible in the social scientific literature. A central goal of this issue is to make them visible and to expose unstated assumptions about normal adult life. Parenthood emerges as a key organizer of the…

The analysis examines the direct and indirect influences of early gender socialization on the allocation of routine housework later in the life course. The study articulates hypotheses suggesting that the relationship between gender socialization early in adulthood and housework allocation later in adulthood is moderated by gender and union type…

Integrating thought from critical feminist and disability theorists via a strategic social constructionist perspective, the authors analyzed 10 in-depth qualitative interviews to begin to understand the dialogue between (a) how nondisabled sisters understand themselves and their siblings with developmental disabilities and (b) wider systems of…

Family members do work to meet people's emotional needs, improve their well-being, and maintain harmony. When emotional work is shared equally, both men and women have access to emotional resources in the family. However, like housework and child care, the distribution of emotional work is gendered. This study examines the psychological health…

The present research investigated the influence of gender and tenure status in academicians' experiences of balancing parenthood and an academic career. Men (n = 85) and women (n = 179) employed full-time in tenure-track academic positions with at least one child younger than the age of 16 responded via the Internet to a 36-item questionnaire…