Papers by Stefanie Mollborn
SSM - Qualitative Research in Health, Dec 1, 2022
This study examined the role of class privilege in parents' understandings of children's health a... more This study examined the role of class privilege in parents' understandings of children's health and their navigation of the work of supporting "healthy" children. Cultural and institutional discourses tend to frame class-advantaged parents as making choices for their children that maximize health, but this is not always the case. Analyses drew on 45 interviews with predominantly white, class-advantaged parents of elementary-aged children and associated observational data. Parents were navigating intensive childrearing expectations that were impossible to fully meet. Class-privileged parents' narratives constructed very broad understandings of children's health and wellbeing that encompassed social connections and academic, extracurricular, and athletic achievement, as well as physical and psychological health. Although this broad definition made it irreconcilable for them to meet expectations for children's health on all fronts, it allowed class-privileged parents to de-emphasize specific health behaviors for the sake of social or achievement concerns instead, while still framing these priorities as safeguarding the child's health. Thus, participants were able to justify to themselves and others that their parenting practices that tend to maintain privilege were health-focused. Findings demonstrate how broad definitions of health can support advantaged parenting, potentially redirecting scrutiny toward disadvantaged parents.
Journal of Marriage and Family, Jan 10, 2020
Objective:To explore sexual orientation disparities in unwanted pregnancy by race/ethnicity.Backg... more Objective:To explore sexual orientation disparities in unwanted pregnancy by race/ethnicity.Background:Previous research has documented that sexual-minority women (SMW) are more likely to report unplanned pregnancy than heterosexual women, and that Black and Latina women are more likely to report unplanned pregnancy than White women. No research has examined how pregnancy intention varies at the intersection of these two identities.Method:Data come from the pregnancy roster data in Waves IV and Wave V subsample in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We used pregnancy as the unit of analysis (n=10,845) and multilevel logistic regression models to account for clustering of pregnancies within women. Per pregnancy, women were asked if they “wanted” to be pregnant at the time of pregnancy. We conducted models stratified by race/ethnicity, as well as models stratified by sexual identity.Results:Among White women, sexual-minority women were more likely to describe their pregnancy as unwanted than were their heterosexual counterparts. Conversely, among Black and Latina women, sexual-minority women were less likely to describe their pregnancy as unwanted than were their heterosexual counterparts. Results stratified by sexual identity underscore these contrasting patterns: Among heterosexual women, White women were less likely to describe their pregnancies as unwanted compared to Black and Latina women; among sexual-minority women, White women were more likely to describe their pregnancy as unwanted than were Black and Latina women.Conclusion:Traditional race/ethnicity trends in pregnancy intention (i.e., greater unwanted pregnancy among Black/Latina than White women) are reversed among sexual-minority women.
SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks, 2018
SAGE Publications, Inc. eBooks, 2018
ABSTRACT In the U.S., young people are having less sex than the generations that came before, whi... more ABSTRACT In the U.S., young people are having less sex than the generations that came before, while the advice they get from peers, teachers, and parents becomes ever more scattered.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
SSM-Population Health, Jun 1, 2022
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sep 1, 2021
The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to inte... more The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to integrated bundles of behaviors undergirded by group-based identities and norms. Health lifestyles research merges structure with agency, individual- with group-level processes, and multifaceted behaviors with norms and identities, shedding light on why health behaviors persist or change and on the reproduction of health disparities and other social inequalities. Recent contributions have applied new methods and life course perspectives, articulating health lifestyles’ dynamic relationships to social contexts and demonstrating their implications for health and development. Culturally focused work has shown how health lifestyles function as signals for status and identity and perpetuate inequalities. We synthesize literature to articulate recent advances and challenges and demonstrate how health lifestyles research can strengthen health policies and inform scholarship on inequalities. Future work emphasizing health lifestyles’ collective nature and attending to upstream social structures will further elucidate complex social processes.
Social Science & Medicine, Nov 1, 2020
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Teaching Sociology, 2010
Because lecture-based teaching limits student learning, many instructors are interested in pedago... more Because lecture-based teaching limits student learning, many instructors are interested in pedagogical strategies that support critical thinking, student participation, and group discussion in large classrooms. Audience response systems, or ''clickers,'' are an emerging tool for addressing this problem, but predominant pedagogical models for clicker use developed in the natural sciences often do not encourage the ''inquiry-guided learning'' that is useful in sociology. This article introduces readers to clicker technology and outlines a new pedagogical model for clicker use designed to address sociological learning goals, including critical thinking, applications of concepts to real-life experiences, and critiques of sociological methods. The authors discuss the effects of clickers for classroom interaction and students' experiences in three undergraduate sociology courses, using quantitative and qualitative data about students' perceptions of the effects of this pedagogical model on learning. The results suggest that the model positively affects participation, critical thinking, and classroom interaction dynamics. The authors conclude with practical suggestions for instructors considering implementing clickers in sociology courses.
Sociological Perspectives, Apr 2, 2021
Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic requires people to engage in new health behaviors ... more Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic requires people to engage in new health behaviors that are public, monitored, and often contested. Parents are typically considered responsible for controlling their children’s behavior and instilling norms. We investigated how parents and teens managed teenagers’ social distancing behaviors. Analyzing 100 longitudinal (2015–2020), dyadic qualitative interviews with teenagers and their parents in 20 families from two middle-class communities in which social distancing was normative, we found that preexisting health lifestyles were used to link social distancing behaviors to specific identities, norms, and understandings of health. The pandemic presented challenges resulting from contradictory threats to health, differing preferences, and conflicting social judgments. Parents responded to challenges by adhering to community norms and enforcing teens’ social distancing behaviors. They drew on preexisting, individualized health lifestyles as cultural tools to justify social distancing messages, emphasizing group distinctions, morality, and worth in ways that perpetuated inequalities.
Child Indicators Research, Oct 13, 2011
Past research has documented compromised development for teenage mothers' children compared to ot... more Past research has documented compromised development for teenage mothers' children compared to others, but less is known about predictors of school readiness among these children or among teenage fathers' children. Our multidimensional measures of high and low school readiness incorporated math, reading, and behavior scores and parent-reported health. Using parent interviews and direct assessments from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, we predicted high and low school readiness shortly before kindergarten among children born to a teenage mother and/or father (N≈800). Factors from five structural and interpersonal domains based on the School Transition Model were measured at two time points, including change between those time points, to capture the dynamic nature of early childhood. Four domains (socioeconomic resources, maternal characteristics, parenting, and exposure to adults) predicted high or low school readiness, but often not both. Promising factors associated with both high and low readiness among teen parents' children came from four domains: maternal education and gains in education (socioeconomic), maternal age of at least 18 and fewer depressive symptoms (maternal characteristics), socioemotional parenting quality and home environment improvements (parenting), and living with fewer children and receiving nonparental child care in infancy (exposure to adults). The findings preliminarily suggest policies that might improve school readiness: encouraging maternal education while supplying child care, focusing teen pregnancy prevention efforts on school-age girls, basic socioeconomic supports, and investments in mental health and high-quality home environments and parenting.
Taking advantage of recent data that permit an assessment of the importance of extended household... more Taking advantage of recent data that permit an assessment of the importance of extended household members in operationalizing the relationship between family structure and children's early development, this study incorporated coresident grandparents, other kin, and nonkin to investigate the associations between extended household structure and U.S. children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes at age 2. Analyses assessed whether these relationships differed for Latino, African American, and White children and tested four potential explanations for such differences. Nationally representative data came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort of 2001 (N ≈ 8,450). Extended household structures were much more prevalent in households of young African American and Latino children than among Whites. Nuclear households were beneficial for White children, but living with a grandparent was associated with the highest cognitive scores for African American children. Nuclear, vertically extended, and laterally extended households had similar associations with Latino children's cognitive and behavior scores. Results suggest that expanded indicators of household structure that include grandparents, other kin, and nonkin are useful for understanding children's early development.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
Oxford University Press eBooks, Mar 30, 2017
social responsibility campaigns and the distance between their intentions and impacts; the roles ... more social responsibility campaigns and the distance between their intentions and impacts; the roles of imperialism, (neo)colonialism, and racialized capitalism in generating the contemporary topography of philanthropy; and the daily and complex negotiations of both overlapping and competing interests among NGO and state and corporate actors. In particular, Moeller's text is a welcome reminder that scholars and citizens should remain deeply suspicious of corporate philanthropic campaigns, as they may ultimately serve to entrench inequitable power relations, extend historic relations of global stratification, and obscure the practices of racialized capitalism that would otherwise remain under public scrutiny and accountability (especially relevant in the moment of Colin Kaepernick's partnership with Nike). Moeller ultimately claims that in the future of partnerships between NGOs and corporations, it remains unclear whose interests will be favored-corporations, justice-oriented NGOs, or the actual targets of such philanthropy. Moeller tracks a path and leaves the door open for future researchers to take up these important, fruitful questions.
Uploads
Papers by Stefanie Mollborn