Many social science studies are based on coded in-depth semistructured interview transcripts. But researchers rarely report or discuss coding reliability in this work. Nor is there much literature on the subject for this type of data. This article presents a procedure for developing coding schemes for such data. It involves standardizing the units of text on which coders work and then improving the coding scheme’s discriminant capability (i.e., reducing coding errors) to an acceptable point as indicated by measures of either intercoder reliability or intercoder agreement. This approach is especially useful for situations where a single knowledgeable coder will code all the transcripts once the coding scheme has been established. This approach can also be used with other types of qualitative data and in other circumstances.

Coding In-depth Semistructured Interviews Problems of Unitization and Intercoder Reliability and Agreement

This article argues that marriage has undergone a process of deinstitutionalization—a weakening of the social norms that define partners’ behavior—over the past few decades. Examples are presented involving the increasing number and complexity of cohabiting unions and the emergence of same-sex marriage. Two transitions in the meaning of marriage that occurred in the United States during the 20th century have created the social context for deinstitutionalization. The first transition, noted by Ernest Burgess, was from the institutional marriage to the companionate marriage. The second transition was to the individualized marriage in which the emphasis on personal choice and self-development expanded. Although the practical importance of marriage has declined, its symbolic significance has remained high and may even have increased. It has become a marker of prestige and personal achievement. Examples of its symbolic significance are presented. The implications for the current state of marriage and its future direction are discussed. A quarter century ago, in an article entitled ‘‘Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution’’ (Cherlin, 1978), I argued that American society lacked norms about the way that members of stepfamilies should act toward each other. Parents and children in first marriages, in contrast, could rely on well-established norms, such as when it is appropriate to discipline a child. I predicted that, over time, as remarriage after divorce became common, norms would begin to emerge concerning proper behavior in stepfamilies—for example, what kind of relationship a stepfather should have with his stepchildren. In other words, I expected that remarriage would become institutionalized, that it would become more like first marriage. But just the opposite has happened. Remarriage has not become more like first marriage; rather, first marriage has become more like remarriage. Instead of the institutionalization of remarriage,

https://soc.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2012/02/Cherlin_JMFmarriagepaper.pdf

The deinstitutionalization of American marriage

This article reveals the grounds on which individuals form perceptions of disorder. Integrating ideas about implicit bias and statistical discrimination with a theoretical framework on neighborhood racial stigma, our empirical test brings together personal interviews, census data, police records, and systematic social observations situated within some 500 block groups in Chicago. Observed disorder predicts perceived disorder, but racial and economic context matter more. As the concentration of minority groups and poverty increases, residents of all races perceive heightened disorder even after we account for an extensive array of personal characteristics and independently observed neighborhood conditions. Seeing disorder appears to be imbued with social meanings that go well beyond what essentialist theories imply, generating self-reinforcing processes that may help account for the perpetuation of urban racial inequality.

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Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of Broken Windows

In this article, the author describes sweeping changes in the gender system and offers explanations for why change has been uneven. Because the devaluation of activities done by women has changed little, women have had strong incentive to enter male jobs, but men have had little incentive to take on female activities or jobs. The gender egalitarianism that gained traction was the notion that women should have access to upward mobility and to all areas of schooling and jobs. But persistent gender essentialism means that most people follow gender-typical paths except when upward mobility is impossible otherwise. Middle-class women entered managerial and professional jobs more than working-class women integrated blue-collar jobs because the latter were able to move up while choosing a “female” occupation; many mothers of middle-class women were already in the highest-status female occupations. The author also notes a number of gender-egalitarian trends that have stalled.

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The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled

In this article we ask what it means for sociologists to practice intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to inequality. What are the implications for choices of subject matter and style of work? We distinguish three styles of understanding intersectionality in practice: group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered. The first, emphasizes placing multiply-marginalized groups and their perspectives at the center of the research. The second, intersectionality as a process, highlights power as relational, seeing the interactions among variables as multiplying oppressions at various points of intersection, and drawing attention to unmarked groups. Finally, seeing intersectionality as shaping the entire social system pushes analysis away from associating specific inequalities with unique institutions, instead looking for processes that are fully interactive, historically co-determining, and complex. Using several examples of recent, highly regarded qualitative studies, we draw attention to the comparative, contextual, and complex dimensions of sociological analysis that can be missing even when race, class, and gender are explicitly brought together.

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Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities*

Preface to the 2011 Edition Introduction 1. "Before We Had a Baby ..." 2. "When I Got Pregnant ..." 3. How Does the Dream Die? 4. What Marriage Means 5. Labor of Love 6. How Motherhood Changed My Life Conclusion: Making Sense of Single Motherhood Acknowledgements Appendix A: City, Neighborhood, and Family Characteristics and Research Methods Appendix B: Interview Guide Notes References Index

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

My mother and father grew up on North Dakota farms in first-generation and second-generation immigrant families, respectively. Between their families, there were 18 children, 14 of whom stayed in the state to seek their fortunes and raise their own families. I grew up in one of those families in Bismarck, N.D., along with my eight brothers and sisters, only one of whom now lives in the state. The rest of us are scattered from coast to coast, with one overseas. So, from one generation to the next, the stay-at-home rate went from 78 percent in my parents’ families to 11 percent in the family they created. Multiply that one little anecdote by many thousands, and you have the demographic story of the Great Plains, as well as other rural areas in the United States, as people have moved from the farm to nearby cities and to points across the country and around the world, all within a couple of generations. If you were one of the authors of Hollowing Out the Middle, you would view this as a big problem for those rural areas and a call for action. But if you were the author of The Wealth and Poverty of Regions, you would view this as so much economic destiny, an unsurprising trend that has occurred throughout the world as technological efficiencies have shifted labor from the land to the city. That these two books would have such distinct reactions to this demographic phenomenon is suggested by the backgrounds of the authors. Hollowing Out the Middle is written by two sociologists who traveled to a small (unnamed) town in Iowa to survey its citizens and to come to a better understanding of why so many young people choose to leave. During their stay, the authors turned their focus from “is” statements (what is happening) to “ought” statements (what ought to be done). In other words, they saw some facts and wanted to change them. The Wealth and Poverty of Regions is written by an economic geographer interested in why differences in wealth exist among different communities and regions within nations. In his case, he saw some facts and wanted to explain them. These issues are important, not only for rural areas that are struggling with what to do, if anything, about dwindling populations, but also for successful small cities and large metro areas that want to keep their competitive edge. A lot of money is spent every year by government offices at all levels to revive this region or that town or another city. Some succeed, many fail and most keep trying. The Region

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

Key Words: cohabitation, disadvantage, family formation, marriage, meaning, norms. Marriage is down, cohabitation is up, and the divorce rate remains high in the United States. Further, in 1950, only 1 in 20 births was to an unmarried woman, whereas today, more than a third of American children are born outside marriage. The number of gay and lesbian couples raising children together is also on the rise. These important demographic changes are evident in Canada, the United Kingdom, and in much of Western Europe as well. Each author in this print symposium documents the extent of these massive transformations in family life and speculates about what they mean for the future of marriage. The virtues of the articles in this issue far outweigh their shortcomings. Each demonstrates a commanding knowledge of the data on the magnitude of family changes and how they are arrayed across societies-and, in some cases, for various subgroups within societies. We see three ways in which scholars could build on these articles to expand our scientific understanding of these important trends. First, documenting changes in cohabitation and marriage for whole societies, though vital, often masks the substantial variations within societies by race/ethnicity and immigration status, social class, or other factors such as region or sexual orientation. Two articles in this volume focus on large and important variations in cohabitation and marriage by subgroups within the United States and Canada, and are a vivid testimony to the importance of studying subgroup differences. We advocate for more work in this vein, especially in the neglected area of social class. Differences by socioeconomic status in childbearing, cohabitation, and marriage behavior are often large, even controlling for characteristics such as race/ethnicity (Ellwood & Jencks, 2001). Second, researchers should pay more attention to parental status and how it affects attitudes and behaviors with regard to cohabitation and marriage. Third, following Max Weber (1949), we believe that human behavior cannot be fully understood unless social scientists understand the meanings that humans ascribe to their actions. Following Oropesa and Landale (2004), we advocate for qualitative research that allows us to "peek inside the 'black box'" in order to "identify the content of culture" (p. 914). The purpose of our article is fourfold. First, we want to explore the meanings of childbearing, cohabitation, and marriage for a specific subgroup in U.S. society-low-income residents of large cities-and to speculate about the role that these meanings may play in influencing the behaviors we observe. Second, we focus on unmarried parents who share children, and we look at how parental status plays a unique role in shaping views and actions with regard to cohabitation and marriage. Third, we aim to show, by example, how vital it is to understand the meanings that these men and women ascribe to their actions. Finally, as do the other authors in this volume, we speculate about what our findings may mean for the future of marriage. BACKGROUND Though nonmarital childbearing, nonmarriage, cohabitation, and divorce have increased in nearly all segments of American society, all are still most common in the low-income population and among members of some disadvantaged minority groups. In Huston and Melz's (2004) words, "among these groups, it would appear that the strings that pull people into marriage and bind them together have lost much of their fiber" (p. 947). In fact, among America's least advantaged citizens, nonmarital childbearing has become the rule (Ventura & Bachrach, 2000), and marriage just might eventually become the exception (Lichter & Graefe, 2001). This fact has led some to charge that America's poorest and most disadvantaged citizens have abandoned the institution of marriage altogether. Recently, though, a new longitudinal survey of nonmarital births has provided evidence that seems to counter these claims. …

A peek inside the black box: What marriage means for poor unmarried parents

Chicago's Southwest Side is one of the last remaining footholds for the city's white working class, a little-studied and little-understood segment of the American population. This book paints a nuanced and complex portrait of the firefighters, police officers, stay-at-home mothers, and office workers living in the stable working-class community known as Beltway. Building on the classic Chicago School of urban studies and incorporating new perspectives from cultural geography and sociology, Maria Kefalas considers the significance of home, community, and nation for Beltway residents.

Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood

In the often polarized discussions over immigration, the point is sometimes missed that immigration often brings immediate and tangible benefits. Nowhere is this truer than in the hollowing-out parts of America. Many nonmetropolitan counties in America have seen net out-migration for decades. While young people have always left small towns, the loss of this group comes at a time when opportunities for those who stay have been severely reduced. One trend that runs counter to the decline of many nonmetro areas is the influx of immigrants, the majority of Hispanic origin, during the 1990s and 2000s. The authors argue that if immigration is “done right,” it can provide a lifeline to many places that are hollowing out. In this article, the authors outline the complex nature of immigration in rural America and offer two case studies of small towns, one where immigration became a lightning rod for controversy and division and one where the process has occurred with little divisiveness and a great deal of success...

Maria Kefalas

Papers

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America

A peek inside the black box: What marriage means for poor unmarried parents

Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood

Can Immigration Save Small-Town America? Hispanic Boomtowns and the Uneasy Path to Renewal