Natasha Quadlin’s research while affiliated with University of California, Los Angeles and other places

Social scientists increasingly are using experiments to examine causal processes and mechanisms in their research. Yet, experiments work much better for some research aims than others. Some goals that are of great interest to family scholars, such as testing theoretical arguments, are well‐suited to experimental approaches; other goals, such as documenting real‐world experiences, may be best served by another research design. Our aim in this article is to discuss the power and limits of experimental methods for the study of family, with an emphasis on describing the types of topics and approaches that work best in an experimental framework. We begin by briefly reviewing the current state of the literature and the types of experiments that are commonly used to study families and intimate relationships. We discuss recent examples and “best practices” to illustrate the potential strengths of experiments for the study of family. After walking through an in‐depth example of an experimental research design, we describe some unresolved theoretical puzzles in the family literature from the previous mid‐decade review that seem ripe for experimental study. In doing so, we demonstrate that experiments, when used appropriately, can provide powerful evidence of causal mechanisms that resonate with scholarly audiences and the public.

This article assesses how the economic context of higher education expansion since the mid-20th century has shaped families’ financial lives—in terms of income and wealth/debt—as well as how these trends have differed for Black and White women and men. We use data from the NLSY-79 (comprising trailing-edge Baby Boomers) and NLSY-97 (comprising early Millennials) to show how academically similar students in these two cohorts fared in terms of educational attainment, household income, household wealth, and total student debt accrued by age 35. While we discuss findings across race-gender groups, our results call attention to the education-related economic disadvantages faced by Black women that have accelerated across cohorts. Over time, Black women’s educational attainment has increased substantially, and high-achieving Black women, in particular, have become uniquely likely to progress beyond the BA. But while high-achieving Black women have made many advances in higher education, they also have become more likely than similarly high-achieving White men, White women, and Black men to have zero or negative wealth at the household level, and to accrue student debt for themselves and for their children. Our findings demonstrate that the costs of expanded access to credit for higher education have not been borne equally across race, gender, and achievement, and that these patterns have multigenerational financial consequences for college attendees and their families.

Over the past 60 years, we have witnessed a relocation of gender wage inequality. Whereas the largest wage gaps were once concentrated among lower-paid, lower-educated workers, today these wage gaps sit among the highest-paid, highly-educated workers. Given this reordering of gender wage inequality and the centrality of college graduates to total inequality trends, in this article, we assess the contribution of higher education mechanisms to top-end gender inequality. Specifically, we use Census and ACS data along with unique decomposition models to assess the extent to which two mechanisms rooted in higher education-bachelor's-level fields of study and the attainment of advanced degrees-can account for the gender wage gap across the wage distribution. Results from these decomposition models show that while these explanatory mechanisms fare well among bottom and middle wages, their explanatory power breaks down among the highest-paid college workers. We conclude that women's attainment of "different" education (via fields of study) or "more" education (via advanced degrees) would do little to close the gender wage gaps that are contributing most to contemporary wage inequality trends. We suggest some directions for future research, and we also take seriously the role of discriminatory pay-setting at the top of the wage distribution.

Research on shadow education—i.e., one-on-one or group learning intended to supplement children’s experiences in school—has documented persistent social class and racial/ethnic inequalities. Yet, as with many things during the Covid-19 pandemic, the nature of shadow education changed dramatically. Much supplemental education shifted online, potentially increasing accessibility; many universities became testoptional, potentially reducing the demand for the shadow education industry; and a new form of shadow education—learning pods—emerged to take pandemic schooling from a more individual to a more collective experience. In this article, we use data from a sample of U.S. parents of K-12 students stratified by race/ethnicity (N = 1,911) to assess social class and racial/ethnic inequalities in shadow education in 2020-21, the first full academic year of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are also the first scholars, to our knowledge, to assess high-quality data on the use of learning pods. We find that during the pandemic, African American and South Asian students were more likely than White student to use test preparation services and online supplemental education, and that African Americans, East Asians and Latinx were more likely to utilize private tutoring. We find few disparities by family income, however, thus supporting the idea that some forms of shadow education have become more accessible than they once were. Regarding learning pods, we find that pods were most common among African American families and families with parents who were less educated and worked fulltime. Thus, most learning pods were not a means of “opportunity hoarding,” as some scholars originally feared, but instead provided sorely needed childcare and support during a time of social turbulence.

Several polls have documented Americans’ general attitudes toward transgender people, yet we know little about Americans’ willingness to grant broader rights and privileges to this growing population. Using data from a nationally representative survey experiment, we distinguish between formal rights—rights that are legally conveyed—and informal privileges—those that are not as consistently tied to the law, but nonetheless can have wide-ranging implications for people’s lives. We consider (1) how respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics are associated with attitudes toward rights and privileges; and (2) how a transgender person’s characteristics affect people’s willingness to grant these rights and privileges. Overall, we find that respondents are much more likely to grant formal rights (i.e., employment protections, right to service) than informal privileges (i.e., bathroom access) to transgender people. This pattern implies that even if people are willing to offer legal protections to transgender people, more subtle forms of prejudice may persist. These beliefs are patterned along demographic lines such as respondent sex, respondent age, and respondent sexual orientation. Moreover, respondents are less willing to grant both formal rights and informal privileges to transgender people who are described as gender non-conforming. Implications for demographic research on transgender populations are discussed.KeywordsTransgenderFormal rightsInformal privilegesAttitudesExperiment

Racialized names carry both penalties and premiums in social life. Prior research on implicit associations shows that racialized names tend to activate feelings of racial bias, such that people are more positively inclined toward White-sounding names than they are toward Black- and Hispanic-sounding names. But to what extent do racialized names continue to matter when they do not belong to people? In this article, we use an original data set collected over six months at a high-volume shelter where dogs are frequently given racialized names (N = 1,636). We also conducted a survey with a crowdsourced sample to gauge the racial perceptions of each dog’s name. We combine these data sets to examine how racial perceptions of names are associated with time to adoption, a meaningful outcome that captures people’s willingness to welcome a dog into their family. We find that as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as White, people adopt them faster. Conversely, as dogs’ names are increasingly perceived as nonhuman (e.g., Fluffy), people adopt them slower. Perceptions of Black names are likewise tied to slower times to adoption, with this effect being concentrated among pit bulls, a breed that is stereotyped as dangerous and racialized as Black. These findings demonstrate the remarkable durability of racialized names. These names shape people’s behavior and their impressions of others even when they are attached to animals—not just humans.

Objective This study examines how the public perceives of five types of “atypical” parents in the United States—single mothers, single fathers, lesbian couples, gay couples, and adoptive parents—including, critically, the factors that contribute to these perceptions. Background Although a handful of studies have considered attitudes toward atypical parents, virtually no studies have considered why people hold the attitudes they do. In addition, few studies have compared multiple types of parents simultaneously, to understand the direction and magnitude of people's perceptions of alternative families. Method The authors designed and conducted a national phone survey (N = 827). Respondents were randomly assigned to an experimental condition corresponding to one of these five types of parents. Then, respondents were asked how well the parent(s) can: bring up a child (i.e., an overall perception item), provide for children's basic needs, have a warm relationship, and teach important values, compared to their normative counterparts. Results Respondents are by far the most receptive toward adoptive parents across all four of these items. Perceptions of single parents are most strongly shaped by beliefs about economic resources. Perceptions of same‐sex parents are most strongly shaped by beliefs about morality. We also find key gendered perceptions within these parent groups. For example, emotional considerations shape perceptions of gay couples, but not lesbian couples. Conclusion Adoptive parents are broadly accepted in the United States, but much resistance toward single parents (on mostly economic grounds) and same‐sex parents (on mostly moral grounds) remains.