Browsing by Author "Burton, Linda M"

Research on the military has historically focused on the potentially de-stratifying effects of service, including reductions of racial inequality and social mobility. Taking a life course approach, this prior research tends to claim that the military is a positive turning point in the lives of disadvantaged men. Scholars point to the educational benefits of the GI Bill, racial integration, and health care to claim that military service, especially during peacetime, is largely beneficial to service members. While it is certainly the case that the military has provided some historical benefits to marginalized groups, recent research has given us strong reasons to question how beneficial military service is to stigmatized groups. Significant racial and gender inequalities remain, and in some cases, are deepening. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews with veterans this dissertation examines how the organizational habitus of the military, despite organizational proclamations of meritocracy, may contribute to inequality. Focusing on the unintended consequences of military polices surrounding mental health problems, discrimination, and family relations, I create a synthesis of organizational and critical race theories to show how military policies may compound problems for soldiers and veterans. Focusing on the contradictions between stated organizational policies and actual practice, I show how the organizational arrangements of the military normalize overt expressions of racial and gender based discrimination, creating a sometimes-hostile environment for women and minorities and leaving them little recourse for recrimination. When policies protecting the stigmatized undermine the power and prerogatives of commanders or conflict with the militaries mission, it is not the powerful that suffer. Further, I show how military policies promoting family, such as extra pay for married soldiers, are at odds with the multiple deployments and high mental health incidences of this generations wars. Although the military relies on women on the "home front," as a basis of support, the exigencies of service undermine relationship stability.

I argue that traditional findings on the de-stratifying effects of service are partially a product of an analytical frame that neglects internal organizational dynamics.

Though families come in all shapes and sizes, many people recognize the birth of their first child as the start of their new family. The transition to parenthood that expectant parents experience has important implications for their future health and the health of their children. This dissertation investigates the experiences of new and expectant parents as they develop their new roles. The findings draw on publicly-available conversations from parenting forums. Investigative phenomenology, descriptive phenomenology, and quantitative analysis are used to explore three research questions: 1) How do people experience perinatal loss? 2) What are parents’ experiences of working with nurses when their infant is in a neonatal critical care unit? 3) What emotions do men experience on their journey to fatherhood? The findings of this dissertation indicate that the transition to parenthood is a time of ambiguity, stress, and potentially, great joy for new parents. During this transition, people take on new identities, perform new roles, experience a broad range of emotions, and develop new relationships. The impacts of this transition are lifelong, so support is vital to promoting the formation of healthy, well-adjusted families. For healthcare providers and researchers, there is a great deal that can be done to help new and expectant parents feel supported and respected. A few of the many potential tools providers and researchers can use include mindfulness, non-judgement, and therapeutic communication.

The current study examined the relationships among the neighborhood environment, levels of self-efficacy, health behaviors, and health outcomes among adults in the United States. The goals of the research were as follows: 1. To examine the role that health behaviors play in the relationship between neighborhood and health; 2. To determine whether health-related self-efficacy mediates or moderates the relationship between neighborhood and health behaviors; 3. To investigate potential gender, education, and race differences in the relationships among the constructs.

The study included 5,600 whites and 321 blacks who participated in the first wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the Unites States (MIDUS I). The age range of the sample was 20-75 (mean= 47.14 years) and roughly half of the participants were male (47.4%). Data on the neighborhood (including safety, physical conditions, social cohesion, and homeplace), health-related self-efficacy, health behaviors, and the health outcomes of self-rated health, obesity, and cardiovascular disease were collected through telephone interviews and self-report questionnaires.

Structural equation modeling was employed to address the research goals. The results showed that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between neighborhood and physical activity and that health behaviors mediated the path between neighborhood and physical activity. However, self-efficacy did not serve as a moderator in the association between neighborhood and physical activity. Demographic differences were found according to age, gender, race, and education. Specifically, the model was particularly salient for late midlife and older adults, females, and those with some college education. Furthermore, the impact of neighborhood factors on self-efficacy was greater for blacks than whites.

The present findings contribute to the literature by elucidating the interrelations among neighborhood and the individual-level factors of self-efficacy and physical activity in predicting health outcomes. Furthermore, the direct effect of physical activity on health outcomes suggests that physical activity engagement should be a particular area of intervention focus, especially among older adults and women. Future research should include objective measures of neighborhood, physical activity, and health, additional contexts such as the workplace, individuals above the age of 75, and greater representation of minority groups.

In the United States, poverty has been historically higher and disproportionately concentrated in the American South. Despite this fact, much of the conventional poverty literature in the United States has focused on urban poverty in cities, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. Relatively less American poverty research has focused on the enduring economic distress in the South, which Wimberley (2008:899) calls “a neglected regional crisis of historic and contemporary urgency.” Accordingly, this dissertation contributes to the inequality literature by focusing much needed attention on poverty in the South.

Each empirical chapter focuses on a different aspect of poverty in the South. Chapter 2 examines why poverty is higher in the South relative to the Non-South. Chapter 3 focuses on poverty predictors within the South and whether there are differences in the sub-regions of the Deep South and Peripheral South. These two chapters compare the roles of family demography, economic structure, racial/ethnic composition and heterogeneity, and power resources in shaping poverty. Chapter 4 examines whether poverty in the South has been shaped by historical racial regimes.

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) United States datasets (2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2013) (derived from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement) provide all the individual-level data for this study. The LIS sample of 745,135 individuals is nested in rich economic, political, and racial state-level data compiled from multiple sources (e.g. U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Agriculture, University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, etc.). Analyses involve a combination of techniques including linear probability regression models to predict poverty and binary decomposition of poverty differences.

Chapter 2 results suggest that power resources, followed by economic structure, are most important in explaining the higher poverty in the South. This underscores the salience of political and economic contexts in shaping poverty across place. Chapter 3 results indicate that individual-level economic factors are the largest predictors of poverty within the South, and even more so in the Deep South. Moreover, divergent results between the South, Deep South, and Peripheral South illustrate how the impact of poverty predictors can vary in different contexts. Chapter 4 results show significant bivariate associations between historical race regimes and poverty among Southern states, although regression models fail to yield significant effects. Conversely, historical race regimes do have a small, but significant effect in explaining the Black-White poverty gap. Results also suggest that employment and education are key to understanding poverty among Blacks and the Black-White poverty gap. Collectively, these chapters underscore why place is so important for understanding poverty and inequality. They also illustrate the salience of micro and macro characteristics of place for helping create, maintain, and reproduce systems of inequality across place.

My dissertation investigates twin financial interventions—urban development and emergency management—in a single small town. Once a thriving city drawing blacks as blue-collar workers during the Great Migration, Benton Harbor, Michigan has suffered from waves of out-migration, debt, and alleged poor management. Benton Harbor’s emphasis on high-end economic development to attract white-collar workers and tourism, amidst the poverty, unemployment, and disenfranchisement of black residents, highlights an extreme case of American urban inequality. At the same time, many bystanders and representative observers argue that this urban redevelopment scheme and the city’s takeover by the state represent Benton Harbor residents’ only hope for a better life. I interviewed 44 key players and observers in local politics and development, attended 20 public meetings, conducted three months of observations, and collected extensive archival data. Examining Benton Harbor’s time under emergency management and its luxury golf course development as two exemplars of a larger relationship, I find that the top-down processes allegedly intended to alleviate Benton Harbor’s inequality actually reproduce and deepen the city’s problems. I propose that the beneficiaries of both plans constitute a white urban regime active in Benton Harbor. I show how the white urban regime serves its interests by operating an extraction machine in the city, which serves to reproduce local poverty and wealth by directing resources toward the white urban regime and away from the city.

Research on romantic partnering has traditionally focused on the process of relationship formation, marital stability and permanence, and the problems created by distress in relationships. Over the last several decades, declines in marriage, increases in divorce and remarriage, and delayed and non-marital childbirths has led scholars to investigate the factors that contribute to these patterns. In addition to overall changes in romantic partnering arrangements, it important to acknowledge that there are deep racial and gender-based inequalities in dating, romantic relationships, and marriage. Specifically, for Black Americans scholars have focused much of their inquiry on the processes and patterns involved in romantic relationship and family formation among low-income and economically disadvantaged Black women, with emphases on the availability of Black men as viable partners, marriage as a way to escape poverty, and non-traditional family forms. Less attention, however, has been paid to the romantic and intimate lives of middle class Black women. While it is entirely possible that the romantic beliefs, aspirations, and actions of middle class Black women are similar to low-income Black women, it stands to reason that women who have more education, higher incomes, and greater access to resources and ability to deploy these resources will approach and engage in romantic interactions in ways that are distinct and nuanced.

Drawing on 52 in‐depth interviews with Black middle class women, I examined how these women approached and engaged in romantic interactions and relationships. Three studies are presented here. The first study explored how parents’ behaviors, socialization practices, and messaging shaped Black middle class women’s attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and actions in romantic or intimate relationships. I outlined existing research on the transmission of beliefs and knowledge and present a brief summary of the ways that socialization, family structure and familial characteristics, and social learning and interactional characteristics in the family of origin informed individuals’ beliefs about love and dating. Using intergenerational transmission and social exchange theories to guide this study, results indicated that respondents perceived that their parents employ four types of messaging about romantic relationships and partnering – practical, progressive, protective, and principled.

In the second study, I explored the nonlinearity of romantic experiences and relationships for middle class Black women and considered what role emotions play in these romantic encounters. I examined the relationship between Black middle class women’s location in the marriage market and the kinds of nonlinear relationships Black middle-class women participate in. The marriage market structures the kinds of romantic opportunities that Black middle-class women have, the opportunity to engage in relationships, and the emotions they experience in these engagements. In this study, I queried a finding I found early on in my analysis of the data. If marriage, which was a goal for more than 95 percent of the unmarried respondents in this study, was not a viable or immediately present option for these women, what kinds of relationship arrangements did they engage in and why? Results showed respondents initiated and evaluated romantic interactions and commitments, decided to end or reengage with romantic partners, and determined whether a relationship is worth maintaining or not. I paid particular attention to respondents’ emotions throughout these processes and the bidirectional influence of women’s emotions on their relational experiences. An appreciation for the role of uncertainty in the lives of respondents grounded these analyses as I took into account how relational, economic, and interpersonal insecurity was related to the aforementioned outcomes.

In the third study, I investigated marital satisfaction among Black middle class women. To do so, I considered women’s relational aspirations and experiences and define the expectations, characteristics, and conditions a romantic partner or relationship met in order for women to express contentment or happiness in their marriages. Additionally, I identified shared themes associated with respondent’s marital dissatisfaction.

Despite some clear racialized and gendered inequalities, results indicated that Black middle class women are reflective, strategic, hopeful, and committed to establishing fulfilling romantic interactions. I argue that traditional findings on the romantic partnering practices and processes largely ignore the relationship between the intergenerational transmission of beliefs and values about romantic love, intimacy, and commitment, the ways that race, class, gender, power, and inequality intersect to create a sometimes uneven, unpredictable, movement-filled romantic landscape for Black women, and the role of emotional and financial safety and security, balancing marriage, career, and motherhood, and the desire for personal responsibility influence marital satisfaction among middle-class Black women.

This dissertation explores how low-income and uninsured adults’ everyday experiences of inequality shape both the healthcare they have access to and the ways in which they navigate safety-net healthcare organizations in the years following the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Low-income and uninsured adults in the U.S. are the leading edge in the rising incidence of preventable chronic illness and are in need of high-quality preventive healthcare. However, social scientists have made little progress in understanding the role of healthcare safety-net organizations in the lives of low-income and uninsured adults as they traverse these settings amid everyday experiences of economic insecurity, pressing health needs, and interlocking systems of oppression in an era characterized by significant health and welfare policy changes, neoliberal privatization, and safety net resource fragmentation. The three studies in this dissertation advance this area of research by systematically analyzing multiple data sources centered on the perceptions and experiences of safety net healthcare workers and low-income and uninsured patients as they navigate a private primary care clinic in a mid-sized city in the southeastern U.S. which has become a New Immigrant Destination. In these studies, I explore the ways low-income and uninsured adults navigate a private nonprofit primary care safety net clinic and manage chronic health conditions amid everyday experiences of poverty and uncertainty. The first study explores how organizational features structuring patient eligibility and intake processes may exacerbate or lessen inequality among new patients as they enter primary care treatment in a private clinic in the healthcare safety net. The second study explores worker agency and offers a conceptual model to understand linkages between worker rule-breaking behaviors oriented to provide more equitable patient treatment or possibly harm patients, when and how organizational change occurs, patient background characteristics, and long-term patient health outcomes. The third study explores how individuals in one disadvantaged group, unauthorized Latina mothers, undertake strategies to combat cumulative health disadvantage as they access health-promoting safety net resources and traverse everyday social and economic hardships, uncertainty, and deportation threat.

This research examines the economic well-being of nonmetropolitan low-income households through an analysis of their objective economic outcomes and subjective experiences of poverty. Despite a large body of scholarship aimed at urban poverty, comparatively little research examines economic hardship among impoverished nonmetropolitan families. This research contributes to existing work through an analysis of nonmetropolitan low-income households' employment experiences and short-term economic trajectories. Additionally, this research uses fine-grained longitudinal data to address how families subjectively experience poverty and economic im/mobility. The analyses use ethnographic data from a sample of households (n=71) in the Family Life Project, a multi-method, longitudinal study conducted in six counties within Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The analyses reveal that families across these two regions experience a high level of constraint with respect to their employment choices and economic mobility outcomes. The analyses also present alternative metrics for job quality and job satisfaction which explicitly include criteria from the perspectives of low-wage nonmetropolitan workers. Most households experience little or no upward economic mobility throughout their participation in the study, and family members express conservative expectations for their long-term economic well-being. The study concludes with suggestions for continued research in the nonmetropolitan U.S. This work contributes to existing scholarship in the areas of economic mobility, work and poverty. These analyses reveal scholarly assessments of work, poverty and the decisions of economic actors can be improved through the inclusion of subjective household perspectives. Additionally, these analyses should motivate scholars to reevaluate the effectiveness of employment for promoting upward economic mobility, especially among contemporary nonmetropolitan low-income households.