#sassler

[mariadoylekennedy]

#savage

[middleland]

Roselawn Motel by Ashtabula Archive Via Flickr:

Roselawn Motel and Sassler's Restaurant 22 units, Family accommodations, all Air-Conditioned. Free T.V. in rooms. Swimming Pool and Private Dining Room. Near summer resorts, Hunting, Boating, and Fishing. On U.S. Rt. 20 between Ashtabula and Geneva, Ohio. Cecelia Sassler - owner. Phone 969-1702 or 969-1123. goo.gl/maps/hYvzmfQ61pBAuQYU6 Published by Roberts Studio, Ashtabula, Ohio Dexter Press Inc, West Nyack NY

[assignmentcrackers]

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

For this paper, you will need to not only demonstrate your understanding of the sociological imagination, but you must also analyze the American family from the perspective of the book, Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships by Sharon and Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller. More specifically, in a 4-5 page paper, using the book as your guide, you are to critically…

[assignmentsolutions]

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

For this paper, you will need to not only demonstrate your understanding of the sociological imagination, but you must also analyze the American family from the perspective of the book, Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships by Sharon and Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller. More specifically, in a 4-5 page paper, using the book as your guide, you are to critically…

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

Is it really just sexism? An alternative argument for why women leave STEM

Everyone knows that you’re not supposed to start your argument with ‘everyone knows,’ but in this case, I think we ought to make an exception:

Everyone knows that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has a problem retaining women (see, for example Jean, Payne, and Thompson 2015). We pour money into attracting girls and women to STEM fields. We pour money into recruiting women, training women, and addressing sexism, both overt and subconscious. In 2011, the United States spent nearly $3 billion tax dollars on STEM education, of which roughly one third was spent supporting and encouraging underrepresented groups to enter STEM (including women). And yet, women are still leaving at alarming rates.

Alarming? Isn’t that a little, I don’t know, alarmist? Well, let’s look at some stats.

A recent report by the National Science Foundation (2011) found that women received 20.3% of the bachelor’s degrees and 18.6% of the PhD degrees in physics in 2008. In chemistry, women earned 49.95% of the bachelor’s degrees but only 36.1% of the doctoral degrees. By comparison, in biology women received 59.8% of the bachelor’s degrees and 50.6% of the doctoral degrees. A recent article in Chemical and Engineering News showed a chart based on a survey of life sciences workers by Liftstream and MassBio demonstrating how women are vastly underrepresented in science leadership despite earning degrees at similar rates, which I’ve copied below. The story is the same in academia, as you can see on the second chart — from comparable or even larger number of women at the student level, we move towards a significantly larger proportion of men at the more and more advanced stages of an academic career.

Although 74% of women in STEM report “loving their work,” half (56%, in fact) leave over the course of their career — largely at the “mid-level” point, when the loss of their talent is most costly as they have just completed training and begun to contribute maximally to the work force.

A study by Dr. Flaherty found that women who obtain faculty position in astronomy spent on average 1 year less than their male counterparts between completing their PhD and obtaining their position — but he concluded that this is because women leave the field at a rate 3 to 4 times greater than men, and in particular, if they do not obtain a faculty position quickly, will simply move to another career. So, women and men are hired at about the same rate during the early years of their post docs, but women stop applying to academic positions and drop out of the field as time goes on, pulling down the average time to hiring for women.

There are many more studies to this effect. At this point, the assertion that women leave STEM at an alarming rate after obtaining PhDs is nothing short of an established fact. In fact, it’s actually a problem across all academic disciplines, as you can see in this matching chart showing the same phenomenon in humanities, social sciences, and education. The phenomenon has been affectionately dubbed the “leaky pipeline.”

But hang on a second, maybe there just aren’t enough women qualified for the top levels of STEM? Maybe it’ll all get better in a few years if we just wait around doing nothing?

Nope, sorry. This study says that 41% of highly qualified STEM people are female. And also, it’s clear from the previous charts and stats that a significantly larger number of women are getting PhDs than going on the be professors, in comparison to their male counterparts. Dr. Laurie Glimcher, when she started her professorship at Harvard University in the early 1980s, remembers seeing very few women in leadership positions. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is really going to change dramatically,’ ” she says. But 30 years later, “it’s not where I expected it to be.” Her experiences are similar to those of other leading female faculty.

So what gives? Why are all the STEM women leaving?

It is widely believed that sexism is the leading problem. A quick google search of “sexism in STEM” will turn up a veritable cornucopia of articles to that effect. And indeed, around 60% of women report experiencing some form of sexism in the last year (Robnett 2016). So, that’s clearly not good.

And yet, if you ask leading women researchers like Nobel Laureate in Physics 2018, Professor Donna Strickland, or Canada Research Chair in Advanced Functional Materials (Chemistry), Professor Eugenia Kumacheva, they say that sexism was not a barrier in their careers. Moreover, extensive research has shown that sexism has overall decreased since Professors Strickland and Kumacheva (for example) were starting their careers. Even more interestingly, Dr. Rachael Robnett showed that more mathematical fields such as Physics have a greater problem with sexism than less mathematical fields, such as Chemistry, a finding which rings true with the subjective experience of many women I know in Chemistry and Physics. However, as we saw above, women leave the field of Chemistry in greater proportions following their BSc than they leave Physics. On top of that, although 22% of women report experiencing sexual harassment at work, the proportion is the same among STEM and non-STEM careers, and yet women leave STEM careers at a much higher rate than non-STEM careers.

So, it seems that sexism can not fully explain why women with STEM PhDs are leaving STEM. At the point when women have earned a PhD, for the most part they have already survived the worst of the sexism. They’ve already proven themselves to be generally thick-skinned and, as anyone with a PhD can attest, very stubborn in the face of overwhelming difficulties. Sexism is frustrating, and it can limit advancement, but it doesn’t fully explain why we have so many women obtaining PhDs in STEM, and then leaving. In fact, at least in the U of T chemistry department, faculty hires are directly proportional to the applicant pool —although the exact number of applicants are not made public, from public information we can see that approximately one in four interview invitees are women, and approximately one in four hires are women. Our hiring committees have received bias training, and it seems that it has been largely successful. That’s not to say that we’re done, but it’s time to start looking elsewhere to explain why there are so few women sticking around.

So why don’t more women apply?

Well, one truly brilliant researcher had the groundbreaking idea of asking women why they left the field. When you ask women why they left, the number one reason they cite is balancing work/life responsibilities — which as far as I can tell is a euphemism for family concerns.

The research is in on this. Women who stay in academia expect to marry later, and delay or completely forego having children, and if they do have children, plan to have fewer than their non-STEM counterparts (Sassler et al 2016, Owens 2012). Men in STEM have no such difference compared to their non-STEM counterparts; they marry and have children about the same ages and rates as their non-STEM counterparts (Sassler et al 2016). Women leave STEM in droves in their early to mid thirties (Funk and Parker 2018) — the time when women’s fertility begins to decrease, and risks of childbirth complications begin to skyrocket for both mother and child. Men don’t see an effect on their fertility until their mid forties. Of the 56% of women who leave STEM, 50% wind up self-employed or using their training in a not for profit or government, 30% leave to a non-STEM more ‘family friendly’ career, and 20% leave to be stay-at-home moms (Ashcraft and Blithe 2002). Meanwhile, institutions with better childcare and maternity leave policies have twice(!) the number of female faculty in STEM (Troeger 2018). In analogy to the affectionately named “leaky pipeline,” the challenge of balancing motherhood and career has been titled the “maternal wall.”

To understand the so-called maternal wall better, let’s take a quick look at the sketch of a typical academic career.

For the sake of this exercise, let’s all pretend to be me. I’m a talented 25 year old PhD candidate studying Physical Chemistry — I use laser spectroscopy to try to understand atypical energy transfer processes in innovative materials that I hope will one day be used to make vastly more efficient solar panels. I got my BSc in Chemistry and Mathematics at the age of 22, and have published 4 scientific papers in two different fields already (Astrophysics and Environmental Chemistry). I’ve got a big scholarship, and a lot of people supporting me to give me the best shot at an academic career — a career I dearly want. But, I also want a family — maybe two or three kids. Here’s what I can expect if I pursue an academic career:

With any luck, 2–3 years from now I’ll graduate with a PhD, at the age of 27. Academics are expected to travel a lot, and to move a lot, especially in their 20s and early 30s — all of the key childbearing years. I’m planning to go on exchange next year, and then the year after that I’ll need to work hard to wrap up research, write a thesis, and travel to several conferences to showcase my work. After I finish my PhD, I’ll need to undertake one or two post doctoral fellowships, lasting one or two years each, probably in completely different places. During that time, I’ll start to apply for professorships. In order to do this, I’ll travel around to conferences to advertise my work and to meet important leaders in my field, and then, if I am invited for interviews, I’ll travel around to different universities for two or three days at a time to undertake these interviews. This usually occurs in a person’s early 30s — our helpful astronomy guy, Dr. Flaherty, found the average time to hiring was 5 years, so let’s say I’m 32 at this point. If offered a position, I’ll spend the next year or two renovating and building a lab, buying equipment, recruiting talented graduate students, and designing and teaching courses. People work really, really hard during this time and have essentially no leisure time. Now I’m 34. Within usually 5 years I’ll need to apply for tenure. This means that by the time I’m 36, I’ll need to be making significant contributions in my field, and then in the final year before applying for tenure, I will once more need to travel to many conferences to promote my work, in order to secure tenure — if I fail to do so, my position at the university would probably be terminated. Although many universities offer a “tenure extension” in cases where an assistant professor has had a child, this does not solve all of the problems. Taking a year off during that critical 5 or 6 year period often means that the research “goes bad” — students flounder, projects that were promising get “scooped” by competitors at other institutions, and sometimes, in biology and chemistry especially, experiments literally go bad. You wind up needing to rebuild much more than just a year’s worth of effort.

At no point during this time do I appear stable enough, career-wise, to take even six months off to be pregnant and care for a newborn. Hypothetical future-me is travelling around, or even moving, conducting and promoting my own independent research and training students. As you’re likely aware, very pregnant people and newborns don’t travel well. And academia has a very individualistic and meritocratic culture. Starting at the graduate level, huge emphasis is based on independent research, and independent contributions, rather than valuing team efforts. This feature of academia is both a blessing and a curse. The individualistic culture means that people have the independence and the freedom to pursue whatever research interests them — in fact this is the main draw for me personally. But it also means that there is often no one to fall back on when you need extra support, and because of biological constraints, this winds up impacting women more than men.

At this point, I need to make sure that you’re aware of some basics of female reproductive biology. According to Wikipedia, the unquestionable source of all reliable knowledge, at age 25, my risk of conceiving a baby with chromosomal abnormalities (including Down’s Syndrome) is 1 in about 1400. By 35, that risk more than quadruples to 1 in 340. At 30, I have a 75% chance of a successful birth in one year, but by 35 it has dropped to 66%, and by 40 it’s down to 44%. Meanwhile, 87 to 94% of women report at least 1 health problem immediately after birth, and 1.5% of mothers have a severe health problem, while 31% have long-term persistent health problems as a result of pregnancy (defined as lasting more than six months after delivery). Furthermore, mothers over the age of 35 are at higher risk for pregnancy complications like preterm delivery, hypertension, superimposed preeclampsia, severe preeclampsia (Cavazos-Rehg et al 2016). Because of factors like these, pregnancies in women over 35 are known as “geriatric pregnancies” due to the drastically increased risk of complications. This tight timeline for births is often called the “biological clock” — if women want a family, they basically need to start before 35. Now, that’s not to say it’s impossible to have a child later on, and in fact some studies show that it has positive impacts on the child’s mental health. But it is riskier.

So, women with a PhD in STEM know that they have the capability to make interesting contributions to STEM, and to make plenty of money doing it. They usually marry someone who also has or expects to make a high salary as well. But this isn’t the only consideration. Such highly educated women are usually aware of the biological clock and the risks associated with pregnancy, and are confident in their understanding of statistical risks.

The Irish say, “The common challenge facing young women is achieving a satisfactory work-life balance, especially when children are small. From a career perspective, this period of parenthood (which after all is relatively short compared to an entire working life) tends to coincide exactly with the critical point at which an individual’s career may or may not take off. […] All the evidence shows that it is at this point that women either drop out of the workforce altogether, switch to part-time working or move to more family-friendly jobs, which may be less demanding and which do not always utilise their full skillset.”

And in the Netherlands, “The research project in Tilburg also showed that women academics have more often no children or fewer children than women outside academia.” Meanwhile in Italy “On a personal level, the data show that for a significant number of women there is a trade-off between family and work: a large share of female economists in Italy do not live with a partner and do not have children”

Most jobs available to women with STEM PhDs offer greater stability and a larger salary earlier in the career. Moreover, most non-academic careers have less emphasis on independent research, meaning that employees usually work within the scope of a larger team, and so if a person has to take some time off, there are others who can help cover their workload. By and large, women leave to go to a career where they will be stable, well funded, and well supported, even if it doesn’t fulfill their passion for STEM — or they leave to be stay-at-home moms or self-employed.

I would presume that if we made academia a more feasible place for a woman with a family to work, we could keep almost all of those 20% of leavers who leave to just stay at home, almost all of the 30% who leave to self-employment, and all of those 30% who leave to more family friendly careers (after all, if academia were made to be as family friendly as other careers, there would be no incentive to leave). Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a stay at home parent — it’s an admirable choice and contributes greatly to our society. One estimate valued the equivalent salary benefit of stay-at-home parenthood at about $160,000/year. Moreover, children with a stay-at-home parent show long term benefits such as better school performance — something that most academic women would want for their children. But a lot of people only choose it out of necessity — about half of stay-at-home moms would prefer to be working (Ciciolla, Curlee, & Luthar 2017). When the reality is that your salary is barely more than the cost of daycare, then a lot of people wind up giving up and staying home with their kids rather than paying for daycare. In a heterosexual couple it will usually be the woman that winds up staying home since she is the one who needs to do things like breast feed anyways. And so we lose these women from the workforce.

And yet, somehow, during this informal research adventure of mine, most scholars and policy makers seem to be advising that we try to encourage young girls to be interested in STEM, and to address sexism in the workplace, with the implication that this will fix the high attrition rate in STEM women. But from what I’ve found, the stats don’t back up sexism as the main reason women leave. There is sexism, and that is a problem, and women do leave STEM because of it — but it’s a problem that we’re already dealing with pretty successfully, and it’s not why the majority of women who have already obtained STEM PhDs opt to leave the field. The whole family planning thing is huge and for some reason, almost totally swept under the rug — mostly because we’re too shy to talk about it, I think.

In fact, I think that the plethora of articles suggesting that the problem is sexism actually contribute to our unwillingness to talk about the family planning problem, because it reinforces the perception that that men in power will not hire a woman for fear that she’ll get pregnant and take time off. Why would anyone talk about how they want to have a family when they keep hearing that even the mere suggestion of such a thing will limit their chances of being hired? I personally know women who have avoided bringing up the topic with colleagues or supervisors for fear of professional repercussions. So we spend all this time and energy talking about how sexism is really bad, and very little time trying to address the family planning challenge, because, I guess, as the stats show, if women are serious enough about science then they just give up on the family (except for the really, really exceptional ones who can handle the stresses of both simultaneously).

To be very clear, I’m not saying that sexism is not a problem. What I am saying is that, thanks to the sustained efforts of a large number of people over a long period of time, we’ve reduced the sexism problem to the point where, at least at the graduate level, it is no longer the largest major barrier to women’s advancement in STEM. Hurray! That does not mean that we should stop paying attention to the issue of sexism, but does mean that it’s time to start paying more attention to other issues, like how to properly support women who want to raise a family while also maintaining a career in STEM.

So what can we do to better support STEM women who want families?

A couple of solutions have been tentatively tested. From a study mentioned above, it’s clear that providing free and conveniently located childcare makes a colossal difference to women’s choices of whether or not to stay in STEM, alongside extended and paid maternity leave. Another popular and successful strategy was implemented by a leading woman in STEM, Laurie Glimcher, a past Harvard Professor in Immunology and now CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. While working at NIH, Dr. Glimcher designed a program to provide primary caregivers (usually women) with an assistant or lab technician to help manage their laboratories while they cared for children. Now, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, she has created a similar program to pay for a technician or postdoctoral researcher for assistant professors. In the academic setting, Dr. Glimcher’s strategies are key for helping to alleviate the challenges associated with the individualistic culture of academia without compromising women’s research and leadership potential.

For me personally, I’m in the ideal situation for an academic woman. I graduated my BSc with high honours in four years, and with many awards. I’ve already had success in research and have published several peer reviewed papers. I’ve faced some mild sexism from peers and a couple of TAs, but nothing that’s seriously held me back. My supervisors have all been extremely supportive and feminist, and all of the people that I work with on a daily basis are equally wonderful. Despite all of this support, I’m looking at the timelines of an academic career, and the time constraints of female reproduction, and honestly, I don’t see how I can feasible expect to stay in academia and have the family life I want. And since I’m in the privileged position of being surrounded by supportive and feminist colleagues, I can say it: I’m considering leaving academia, if something doesn’t change, because even though I love it, I don’t see how it can fit in to my family plans.

But wait! All of these interventions are really expensive. Money doesn’t just grow on trees, you know!

It doesn’t in general, but in this case it kind of does — well, actually, we already grew it. We spend billions of dollars training women in STEM. By not making full use of their skills, if we look at only the american economy, we are wasting about $1.5 billion USD per year in economic benefits they would have produced if they stayed in STEM. So here’s a business proposal: let’s spend half of that on better family support and scientific assistants for primary caregivers, and keep the other half in profit. Heck, let’s spend 99% — $1.485 billion (in the states alone) on better support. That should put a dent in the support bill, and I’d sure pick up $15 million if I saw it lying around. Wouldn’t you?

By demonstrating that we will support women in STEM who choose to have a family, we will encourage more women with PhDs to apply for the academic positions that they are eminently qualified for. Our institutions will benefit from the wider applicant pool, and our whole society will benefit from having the skills of these highly trained and intelligent women put to use innovating new solutions to our modern day challenges.

[edglings]

Americans across the income spectrum still highly value marriage, sociologists have found. But while it used to be a marker of adulthood, now it is something more wait to do until the other pieces of adulthood are in place — especially financial stability. For people with less education and lower earnings, that might never happen. College graduates are more likely to plot their lives methodically — vetting people they date until they’re sure they want to move in with them, and using birth control to delay childbirth until their careers are underway. Less educated people are more likely to move in with boyfriends or girlfriends in a matter of months, and to get pregnant at a younger age and before marriage. This can make financial and family stability harder to achieve later on. “It starts with moving in together quickly, for economic exigency reasons as opposed to relationship reasons,” Ms. Sassler said. “Then struggling with making ends meet and trying to manage this with a partner just elevates the challenges.” Evidence shows that the struggles of men without college degrees in recent years have led to a decline in marriage. It has been particularly acute in regions where well-paying jobs in male-dominated fields have disappeared because of automation and trade. In a working paper published in July, three economists studied how the decline in manufacturing jobs from 1990 to 2014, across industries and regions, “contributed to the rapid, simultaneous decline of traditional household structures.” Labor market changes made men less marriageable, they concluded. There were fewer available men, because unemployment was associated with a rise in incarceration or mortality from drugs and alcohol. The men who were left were less desirable, because they lacked income and were more likely to drink to excess or use drugs. Researchers found a corresponding increase in births to unmarried mothers. The decline in marriage was not offset by more couples living together. “A bad economy lowers the cost of having bad values — substance abuse, engaging in crime, not looking for a job right away,” said Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, who wrote the paper with David Autor of M.I.T. and David Dorn of the University of Zurich. Never-married adults cite financial instability as a major reason for being single, especially those who are low-income or under 30, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Most men feel it’s important for a husband to be a financial provider, especially men without college degrees, according to another new Pew survey.

[naytin]

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[bluewatsons]

Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa, Binge Watching: A Life Course Perspective, 3 J Social Thought 1 (2019)

This article uses a life course perspective and in-depth qualitative interviews to examine binge-watchers’ perceptions of their television viewing practices. Three central life course principles organizing this analysis are: 1. trajectories, transitions, and turning points, as well as the concepts of 2. social and historical context, and 3. linked lives. Findings suggest that respondents’ evaluations of binge-watching is conditioned by their past experiences, institutional shifts in media production and consumption, Western norms of productivity, and the television viewing practices of their family and friends. Through a life course perspective, this article maps the ways in which these factors collectively shape the experiences and attitudes of Canadian binge-watchers. Importantly, this study adds to the limited sociological scholarship on binge-watching by using a life course perspective to demonstrate the ways in which the television viewing practices of binge-watchers are informed by a complex array of social and personal factors. In using a life course perspective, this article is able to connect the binge-watching experience to long-term changes in one’s television viewing habits as they occur in social and biographical context, thereby enabling a holistic and multidimensional examination of binge-watchers’ interpretations of how, why, and when they watch television.

Introduction

Broadly defined as consuming two to six episodes of a single television show in one sitting (Zimmer, 2013), binge-watching is quickly becoming the new normal of television viewing within contemporary Western societies such as Canada (Charter Communications, 2013; Vlessing, 2013). While binge-watching is not a new phenomenon (Jenner, 2015), its popularity has significantly increased over the last few years with the advent of Netflix and other popular streaming services, such as Hulu, CraveTV, and YouTube (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). These sites put power and control over the delivery of media content in the hands of consumers, allowing them to choose what and when they want to watch, while also releasing multiple episodes of the same program all at once (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). Taken together, these two factors have made it easier and cheaper for people to binge-watch, thereby leading more individuals to engage in the practice.

Interestingly, the rise of binge-watching in Western society seems to contradict the overarching cultural emphasis on productivity. This culture of productivity can be defined as the normative law or moral code to accumulate capital and maximize profit that underpins Canada’s cultural landscape and subsequently pressures people to work hard in the “pursuit of economic growth and ever-increasing productivity” (Broad & Antony, 2011, p. 28). Seeing as excessive television viewing has long been described as a sedimentary activity akin to physical disorder (Vandewater et al., 2005; Ludwig, 2010; Schroeder, 2015), one would logically assume that, in a society whereby the production of capital is valued above all else, binge-watching would be considered a socially unacceptable behaviour. Yet, while it is evident that Western culture begets the stigmatization of binge-watching (Silverman & Ryalls, 2016), it is also clear that the rise of Netflix has contradictorily served to normalize it. The normalization of binge-watching through Netflix has thus resulted in an emergent cultural tension within the West, wherein we condemn binge-watching for its seemingly unproductive character, while simultaneously supporting media platforms that encourage it.

Little research has been done on the effect that the above tension has had on Canadian media consumption practices. In order to address this gap in the literature, this study investigates how the television viewing practices of binge-watchers have developed in response to our emerging anti-binge-watching, yet pro-Netflix culture. Specifically, this study uses a life course analysis of 15 in-depth interviews to explore the role that past experiences and linked lives play in forming the practices of binge-watchers within this milieu, acknowledging that decisions and feelings about why, when, and how to binge-watch are informed by context (Elder, Johnson & Crosnoe, 2003; Carpenter 2010; McDaniel & Bernard, 2011; Gazso & McDaniel, 2015).

In particular, this paper answers the following three questions: first, how do past experiences affect why and when people transition into the binge-watcher role? Second, how are the television viewing practices of binge-watchers conditioned by socio-historical forces? Third, how are these practices created, revised, and sustained in and through interpersonal relationships over time? Drawing on a life course perspective to answer these questions, this article posits that the viewing trajectories of binge-watchers are shaped by myriad personal and social factors that interact in diverse and complex ways.

Background

The life course perspective is premised on the be- lief that individuals’ lives are shaped by both their social milieu and personal biography (Elder, Johnson & Crosnoe, 2003). A central component of life course scholarship is the idea that people’s lives are constituted by a multitude of intersecting trajectories that span across various dimensions of social life, such as family, education, health, work, and sexuality (Carpenter, 2010; Sassler, 2010; Shuey & Spiegel, 2010; Seabrook & Avison, 2012; Gazso & McDaniel, 2015; Taylor & Earl, 2016; Willson & Shuey, 2016). Trajectories are characterized by the progression of experiences and identities that extend across the life course (George, 1993). Each transition made across the life course can accumulate advantageous and disadvantageous outcomes, often producing further opportunities or constraints, thereby shaping the direction, character, and impact of subsequent life transitions (O’Rand, 1996). Moreover, certain transitions have a greater impact than others on the development of one’s life course – these are called turn- ing points: events that significantly alter the direction of a given trajectory (Clausen, 1995). As stated by life course scholarship, people’s lives are constituted by multiple trajectories made up of various transitions and turning points.

Transitions and turning points are structured by both personal and social conditions, with past experiences and social forces influencing when and how such changes occur (Elder, Johnson & Crosnoe, 2003). Many life course scholars, for example, have demonstrated the ways in which "biographical time," the timing of people’s individual experiences, and "historical time," the timing of social, historical, and cultural shifts, coincide to inform the challenges and opportunities that people face across the life course (Brettell, 2002; Mc- Daniel & Bernard 2011; Gazso & McDaniel, 2015). Here, human development is considered to be a lifelong pro- cess that happens in concert with social change (Gazso & Bischoping, 2016). Thus, when, why, and how a person transitions into a new social position or life experience is thought to be connected to larger socio- historical and institutional shifts.

People’s television viewing practices can be understood as a trajectory for two reasons. First, most people’s television viewing practices span across the life course and are intrinsically linked to their past experiences with media consumption (Boone, Gordon-Lasen, Adair, & Popkin, 2007; Certain & Kahn, 2002; Veerman, 2012; McVeigh, Smith, Howie, & Straker, 2016). The cumulative progression of television viewing practices resonates with the underlining tenet of life course scholarship: that human development turns on the timing and order of life events in context and recognition of biographical time (Macmillan & Copher, 2005). Second, people watch television for different reasons. Some- times, for example, people watch television because they enjoy it, while other times they may watch television to regulate negative emotions (Depp, Schkade, Thompson, & Jeste, 2010).

The idea that peoples’ television viewing practices are buttressed by different factors invokes the life course concept of "roles." Roles can be defined as the different positions people hold within various realms of social life, such as family and work, that engender particular routine behaviours and expectations (Macmillan & Copher, 2005). Generally speaking, roles are basic identifiers of social life that offer a foundation for theorizing behaviours within and beyond a given life course trajectory. As regards television consumption, roles describe the behaviours and expectations that are associated with an individual’s particular viewing trajectory. In the case of binge-watching, specific examples of this include the "recreational" binge-watcher, who binge watches for enjoyment (Flayelle, Maurage & Billieux, 2017; Shim & Kim, 2018) and the "therapeutic" binge-watcher, who binge watches in order to regulate their emotions (Rubenking & Bracken, 2018; Flayelle et al., 2019). Moreover, when people self-identify as binge-watchers, they mark their transition into this role – this aligns with life course theorizations of social role formation (Macmillan & Eliason, 2003).

As is the case with other life course trajectories, television consumers move between different roles, changing how or why they watch television depending on context (see Certain & Kahn, 2002; Depp, Schkade, Thompson, & Jeste, 2010; McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). While limited, past research on people’s everyday experiences of and with binge-watching indicates that it is a complex, multifaceted, and heterogeneous phenomenon (Flayelle, Maurage & Billieux, 2017). Research suggests that, when theorizing binge-watching, one must consider not just the forms that the television viewing practice takes on, but the fluid and dynamic nature by which people enact and perform it as a social role. As a result, the binge-watcher role can somewhat diverge from the developmental styles of other, more traditional role formations.

While becoming a binge-watcher is not mutually exclusive to other television viewing practices in the same way that, for example, getting divorced is mutually exclusive to being married, it is still the case that people tend to only practise one television viewing style at a time. For instance, if you are binge-watching a show, you cannot simultaneously consume that same content using an alternative television viewing practice. Similarly, if you engage in binge-watching in order to achieve emotional enhancement (Perks, 2019), it becomes a therapeutic exercise and can no longer be considered a recreational activity (see Flayelle et al., 2019). Thus, as is the case with other social roles, people only occupy one role at a time, even if they move between different roles in different circumstances. Like other life course trajectories that are similarly complex (see Carpenter, 2010), role transitions occur fluidly within viewing trajectories, so becoming a binge-watcher does not necessarily preclude the possibility of engaging in other television viewing practices.

Individual transitions into the binge-watcher role can be viewed as a turning point brought on by what Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (2016) call "the Netflix effect." The Netflix effect describes the accelerated merging of technology and entertainment in the 21st century that has made media content both widely accessible and highly personalizable (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). Prior to these technological changes, people could only consume mass amounts of television in two ways: by purchasing the season box set of a particular series, or by watching back-to-back episodes of a show when aired on television (Jenner, 2015). Thus, the options for binge-watching were financially and temporally limited. When considering the former, buying multiple box sets is expensive while, in the case of the latter, the content and timing of programming was determined not by consumers, but by network executives and producers. With the shifts signaled by the Netflix effect, however, individuals can now watch more media for less money and with much greater ease. As a result, binge-watching has been on a steady rise over the last few years (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). Thus, we now live in a context in which media is being consumed in a different way than it was in the past. In this sense, the Netflix effect can be understood as a period effect: social change brought on by external environmental, social, and economic factors, or contextual change (O’Brien, 2000). As regards people’s viewing trajectories, this concept captures the rising popularity of binge-watching brought on by technological shifts in media production and distribution. Within this milieu, binge-watching is considered a norm.

However, in our culture of productivity, a strong work ethic and the production of profit is valued above all else (Allahar & Cote, 1998). Consumptive activities like binge-watching, smoking, gambling, overeating, and binge drinking (see Redshaw & Nicoll, 2010; Sanders, 2017), are often stigmatized. These behaviours earn social contempt because they represent an active choice to be unproductive and thus pose a threat to the pursuit of economic growth and productivity that constitute our society (Broad & Antony, 2011, p. 28). Popular descriptions of binge-watching support this claim. Binge-watching is most commonly described as a sedimentary activity that causes harm to one’s health and wellbeing (see Wagstaff, 2014). Similarly, it is routinely associated with addiction and illness in existing academic scholarship (Jones, Cronin & Piacentini, 2018; Riddle et al., 2018; Shim et al., 2018; Walton-Pattison, Dombrowski & Presseau, 2018). Thus, it is clear that, despite being normalized, binge-watching is still stigmatized within Western society.

Methods

The interview data analyzed in this article was collected as part of a collective project on binge-watching in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.1 A total of 15 participants were interviewed, nine women and six men, between 22 and 43 years of age. 2 Participants self-reported their race/ethnicity as Black-Eritrean, Indian, Latin American, Irish, North European, Portuguese, Afro-Caribbean, Western Indian, and white, with seven of the 15 participants identifying as the latter. All respondents are Canadian citizens. With the exception of one participant, all participants were either born in or migrated to Canada (or America) at an early age.

Participants were recruited using convenience sampling in which the researchers asked people who we knew and recognized as self-identified binge-watchers to participate in the study. Upon agreeing to this and volunteering to participate, we interviewed respondents. All respondents completed and signed an informed consent form and confidentiality agreement. In accordance with this agreement, all identifying iformation has been removed from the analysis in order to protect the identities of participants.

Each researcher conducted and transcribed one interview. Interviews were in-depth and approximately one hour in length. We used a semi-structured inter- view guide and asked all respondents general questions about binge-watching, such as how they define binge-watching, what their first memory of binge-watching is, and how they feel before, during, or after binge-watching. By interviewing in this way, we gained a better understanding of the meanings each respondent attributes to their television viewing practices and why.

While interviews were conducted in collaboration, researchers separately analyzed and coded the findings. All projects developed using the data collected through this study were individually produced. Researchers shared neither coding techniques nor theoretical frameworks and made all choices around transcript analysis independently. Accordingly, all decisions made about how to analyze the data of this study were solely determined by the author. Upon reviewing the transcripts, it was decided that, in the context of this article, employing a life course perspective would be most effective in guiding the analysis of the data. The decision to do this was multifold. For one, most participants discuss their experiences of and with binge-watching as unfolding and changing across their life span. More specifically, they describe their choice to become a binge-watcher like that of a role they transitioned into, often emphasizing how and why they became a binge-watcher in the first place. Additionally, participants tended to link their transition into the binge-watcher role to past experiences and larger socio-historical shifts, as well as the media consumption habits of their friends, family, and peers. Each of these observations correspond with one of the following life course principles: that individual life courses are constituted by trajectories, turning points, and transitions; that they are located within a specific socio-historical context; and that they develop in relation to the lives of others.

There are limitations to this study. Mainly, its relatively small sample size. Because only 15 participants were interviewed, this study is limited in its ability to accurately identify all the relevant social and personal factors that shape and inform binge-watchers’ viewing trajectories across the life course. Accordingly, it was not possible to offer informative comparative analyses across ages, as well as race, class, and gender. This is something for future research to consider as demographics, especially age, are thought to impact the development of a person’s life course in important ways (see Connidis, 2001; Carpenter, 2010; Willson & Shuey, 2016). However, the inability to analyze the role that age in particular plays in people’s television viewing practices does not pose a major limitation to this study because past research has suggested that a person’s mass media consumption can be best understood as the product of “contextual” opposed to "chorological" age (Rubin & Rubin, 1982). The former describes an individual’s quality of life in regard to social, environmental, and psychosocial factors, while the latter describes the number of years that they have been alive (Perloff & Krevans, 1987). Due to the fluidity of contextual age, analyzing the age differences between respondents is not prudent to this analysis. Similarly, while race, class, and gender likely inform how and why people binge-watch, the effects that these variables have on television viewing practices were neither clearly referred nor alluded to by respondents within this study. Future research aimed at explicitly address- ing how demographic factors shape binge-watching would thus be better suited to answer such questions.

Another limitation of this study is related to the sampling recruitment techniques used. Because respondents were chosen out of convivence, there is a potential for bias, thereby limiting the generalizability of the research findings. However, the sample for this study was still relatively diverse; respondents spanned a wide range of races/ethnicities, ages, and socioeconomic statuses. Thus, the data was still fairly complex and the findings therefore rich. Moreover, the point of a life course analysis is not to make generalizable claims about the social world, but to better understand how and why people attribute meaning to their lived experiences based on their social milieu and biographical context (Gazso & Bischoping, 2016). In this sense, the small sample size and convenient sampling techniques do not pose a serious limitation to the analysis. 

Findings

Trajectories, Transitions, and Turning Points

Participants in this study all recollected past experiences to explain how they became binge-watchers over time. After being asked why they started binge- watching, for example, respondent #1 made the following remark about the internet:

...A few years ago, when the internet started to get big and people were very enchanted with computers, I remember saying. . . "If you give me a choice between watching a real aquarium, full of fish or watching something on the screen, and the aquarium on the screen, I think the real aquarium would be much more beautiful to watch. It would capture my attention more." But, now, I don’t know. . . [the internet] is a very seductive medium.

By representing the "then" and "now" of their viewing habits as discrete, the above comment exemplifies the typical transition narrative described by interviewees: each respondent recalls a time in their life in which they did not engage in the binge-watching practice and then cites a specific memory, experience, or event that explains why and how they eventually transitioned into the role. In the case of the above respondent, the specific event was the growing popularity of the Internet. Many other respondents also cite this, namely the advent of Netflix, as a cause for why they became binge-watchers. Participants also cite specific past experiences and events, such as watching television box sets with their parents as children, thereby linking their transition into binge-watching to the media consumption habits that they formed in childhood, or gradually becoming binge-watchers after moving away from home and starting university.

All participants in this study found that past events and transitions affected how and why they decided to become binge-watchers. The sequencing of events that stylizes these narratives, whereby participants explain what life changes and events in their past led them to ultimately transition into the binge-watcher role, demonstrates two life course principles: that trajectories are temporalized, evolving over time and across our lifespan; and the principle of cumulative (dis)continuity, which links earlier life experiences to the development of later life transitions (O’Rand, 1996). The fact that respondents describe their media consumption practices as both temporalized and cumulative suggests that television viewing practices constitute a life course trajectory, wherein beginning binge-watching signals a role transition.

All respondents note that once they made this transition, binge-watching became the normal means by which they watched television. Participants consistently described being more enticed to regularly binge- watch after doing so a few times, whereby the more media content they consume en masse, the more routine the practice became. Moreover, many respondents recalled one original show that got them into binge- watching, usually through what Riddle, Peebles, Davis, and Schroeder (2018) refer to as "unintentional binge- watching," wherein a person watches multiple episodes of a given television show "without having the goal of doing so in advance" (p. 590). In this instance, a particular show was thought to be so intriguing that it ultimately lured respondents into binge-watching its contents and, as a result, made the television viewing practice seem more normalized, eventually routinizing it over time. The link made here between unintentionally binging a show and becoming a regular binge-watcher later on suggests that, when people start binge-watching, it often becomes their standard way of consuming television. Seeing as it signals a major shift in one’s media consuming practices, it logically follows that becoming a binge-watcher represents a turning point within the viewing trajectory.

Social and Historical Context

The fact that becoming a binge-watcher constitutes a turning point for so many respondents is arguably a specific product of the Netflix Effect. All 15 participants report that, with the advent of Netflix and similar media platforms, they felt more inclined to binge-watch. For example, after being asked if there are any factors that they think influenced their decision to transition into the binge-watcher role, participant #2 made the following comment:

. . . Um, I think with the availability of like, with Netflix making seasons upon seasons, making it more accessible, it’s easier to binge-watch than like watching T.V. . . It’s convenient that way, . . . And the availability of having seasons available, like I would never have decided to watch Star Trek if the entire series was not on Netflix. Like I would had just gone along on my merry way not caring, but because they are avail- able, and I don’t need to hunt them down and they are not difficult to access, it is easier for me.

Many other respondents made similar remarks, each emphasizing how Netflix’s highly accessible platform was instrumental in their choice to become binge- watchers. These accounts suggest that the changing nature of technology and entertainment in the 21st century has significantly affected people’s viewing trajectories. By making media content more accessible, the Netflix effect has made it more likely that people will transition into the binge-watcher role.

The rising popularity of binge-watching brought on by the Netflix effect has created a cultural tension in Western society that leaves most binge-watchers feeling guilty about their television viewing practices. On the one hand, because people’s viewing practices are no longer solely determined by content producers, they now have the freedom and choice to binge-watch more frequently (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). On the other hand, the normalization of binge-watching brought on by such changes stands in direct contrast with the culture of productivity that pervades Canada and other Western capitalist societies. The emergent cultural tension produced as a result of this contradictory logic explains why most participants describe their transition into binge-watching as disadvantageous.

Many of the respondents in this study emphasize how their transition into the binge-watcher role enabled viewing habits that they considered unhealthy and that negatively impacted their health trajectories, work trajectories, and overall well-being. Participant #3, for instance, notes the negative impact their transition into binge-watching had on their mental health trajectory, observing in particular how binge-watching has come to replace the coping strategies they were taught in therapy. They claim that, unlike the coping strategies they learned in therapy, binge-watching does not actually treat their mental health issues. On the contrary, binge-watching is, for them, more of a "numbing agent;" a means by which to momentarily subdue their symptoms without actually treating them. As such, participant #3 describes binge-watching as posing a threat to their emotional and mental stability. Accordingly, they view their transition into the binge-watcher role as disadvantageous, as it enables viewing habits that they believe hinder the positive development of their health trajectory.

Other respondents focus on how their transition into the binge-watcher role adversely affects their sense of productivity. The following exert from participant  #4 is a good illustration:

...[If] I sit down and I watch two, three, sometimes four hours of a show, and then I remember that there was something that I was supposed to do. . . that I forgot to do because of the binge-watching. . . then I would feel guilty and I’d go "uh, I shouldn’t have been watching this, or I should have done what I had to do."

Feeling guilty in regard to binge-watching, specifically when it gets in the way of other tasks, was a common sentiment expressed among respondents. For in- stance, participant #5 claimed that they feel guilty when they had to call in sick to work because they stayed up too late the night before binge-watching. Like the quoted respondent, participant #5 viewed their transition into the binge-watcher role as disadvantageous due to the negative impact it had on their perceived levels of productivity. The remarks made by these two participants, as well as the participant who expressed similar sentiments in regard to their health, resonates with Flayelle et al.’s (2019) definition of "problematic binge-watching," which they claim not only produces long-term negative side effects, but effects that specifically compromise other areas of an individual’s life course, such as their work or health. By engaging in problematic binge-watching, these respondents came to view their transition into the role as disadvantageous and, as a result, attributed feelings of guilt to their binge-watching experience.

Feeling guilty as a result of "problematic binge-watching" was a common concern found among the binge-watchers of this study. In fact, almost all respondents discussed the adverse effects binge-watching had on their overall ability to do work (paid or unpaid) and then used feeling guilty as the barometer by which to measure these disadvantageous outcomes. The common use of the words "guilt" or "guilty" to describe how binge-watching makes them feel, reveals the ways in which respondents tend to see binge-watching as a violation of Canada’s normative law of productivity. As life course scholars Timothy J. Owens and Suzanne Goodney (2000) claim, guilt is a unique emotion insofar as it places a heavy emphasis on the violation of social norms. Guilt, they argue, assigns fault to people’s actions and behaviors based on the degree to which these actions and behaviours present a social transgression (Owens & Goodney, 2000). When we feel guilty then, we are revealing the larger social mores that regulate our behaviours by expressing our perceived failure to abide by the norms and rules that constitute them. Similarly, existing research suggests that those who attribute feelings of guilt to the binge-watching experience often link these feelings to a sense of nonproductivity that they believe is the result of engaging in the television viewing practice (see Granow, Reinecke & Ziegele, 2018). Taken together, the above findings indicate that binge-watchers consider their media consumption behaviours to constitute a violation of Canada’s norm of productivity.

The idea that binge-watching violates Canadian productivity norms is evident in the fact that respondents tend to link their guilt to beliefs about productivity. Participant #6, for example, consistently talks about how the "wasteful" and "unproductive" nature of binge- watching makes them feel guilty, in which they feel the guiltiest during the day, because, as they put it, "I feel like during the day I should be productive." This statement exemplifies a common tendency among respondents to attribute feelings of guilt to the disadvantageous effects that binge-watching has on their ability to perform productive labour; in fact, all "guilty" respondents explicitly link their guilt to feelings of unproductivity, claiming, like participant #6, that they feel "guiltiest" about binge-watching when they do it instead of working. The link respondents draw between "feeling guilty" and "being unproductive" represents the fact that, al- though the transition into binge-watching is largely socio-historically conditioned, it is still thought to violate the norm of productivity that underpins Canada’s cultural milieu and is therefore viewed as disadvantageous.

Linked-Lives

Importantly, not all respondents felt guilty about binge-watching. While many of them did view their transition into the binge-watcher role as disadvantageous, stressing the ways in which becoming a binge-watcher had negatively impacted their other life course trajectories, others emphasized the positive impact that binge-watching had on their social lives, specifically the ways in which it allowed them to maintain interpersonal ties. Here, the transition into the binge-watcher role was considered to be positive. Positive transitions are those that produce advantageous transitions during the development of later life stages (O’Rand, 1996). When assessing binge-watching, transition into the role is most typically considered to be advantageous when it strengthens interpersonal ties, enhances social connectivity, and is consonant of the values of one’s friends and family. Mainly, those who described

their transition into the binge-watcher role as advantageous believed that the practice created opportunities for them to strengthen their interpersonal relationships. Participant #7, for instance, stated that binge-watching offered them a sense of belonging in a highly globalized world:

...Binge-watching with your friends... especially when you have friends that live in different countries, it is just like yes. . . we can all access Netflix. . . we all have Netflix and we all have T.V., we all know that we can just go back to it and watch...Then, we go on it and we can do something together. Cause, I can’t come to your house anymore and drop my bicycle on your front door and go inside and have dinner with you and your family. . . now we are in separate places in the world and people... we all have Netflix, so why not binge-watch a show together. It gives you, you know, that sense of unity, belonging.

Here, the Netflix effect, and the respondent’s subsequent transition into the binge-watcher role, were viewed as advantageous because it enabled them to renegotiate geographical constraints in an effort to maintain important communal and social ties. This account makes clear that, by increasing accessibility to cultural content that transcends geographical borders, global platforms like Netflix enable social ties linked to migratory trajectories. Importantly, however, the above respondent is the only one who identified as a first-generation immigrant. Thus, while illuminating the relationship between migratory and viewing trajectories under globalization, there was a lack of similar narratives found among respondents as a whole. This, in turn, makes it difficult to produce informative analyses around the role of binge-watching in enabling social ties within the context of migration. This is something for future research to consider.

Despite their unique migratory trajectory, however, the above respondent’s sentiments about binge-watching’s ability to maintain and promote intimate social ties were shared among other participants in this study. For instance, respondent #8 similarly described binge-watching as a social experience in which they and their friends can create shared memories. Maeva Flayelle, Pierre Maurage, and Joel Billieux (2017) identify a similar finding in their qualitative study on the factors motivating binge-watching. Participants within this study indicated that binge-watching a common television series with other people can offer a topic for discussion, which then enabled them to share reactions or thoughts of the show with their loved ones and there- fore keep in better touch with them. In line with these findings, some respondents in this study described their transition into the binge-watcher role as having had positive effects on their friend and family trajectories. Specifically, binge-watching is thought to offer a continuous source of social engagement and interaction and thus operates to strengthen the development of social ties. Here, engaging in binge-watching is believed to reinforce the intimacy of an individual’s social relationships overtime – a process consistent with the life course principle of cumulative continuity (O’Rand, 1996).

Importantly, neither of the above respondents’ attributed feelings of guilt to their binge-watching behaviours, which was a common sentiment found among participants who reported frequently binge-watching with their family and friends. In contrast, all respondents who attributed feelings of guilt to their binge-watching claimed that their friends and family stigmatized the television viewing practice. The tendency of participants to associate levels of guilt with feelings of either social connectivity or social isolation suggests that the degree to which Canada’s culture of productivity conjures up feelings of guiltiness among binge-watchers depends on whether or not their friends and family view the television viewing practice as a social transgression. For instance, respondent #6 claimed that their non-binge-watching partner judged them for their television viewing practices and, as a result, they tried to actively hide their binge-watching from their partner. Notably, this respondent also claimed that if they were able to hide their binging successfully, they no longer felt guilty. On the contrary, the respondent feels proud because they were, in their words, “able to get away with something.” This supports the idea that the guilt associated with binge-watching stems from the belief that the practice represents a social transgression: it is only when people feel judged for binge-watching that they feel guilty and subsequently view their transition into the binge-watcher role as disadvantageous.

Whether they viewed their role transition into binge- watching as advantageous or disadvantageous, every participant in this study touched on the ways in which other people’s media viewing habits affected how, when, and why they became binge-watchers. The fact that the majority of respondents emphasized the ways in which the media consumption habits of their friends and family informed their own viewing trajectories, suggests that linked lives play a fundamental role in shaping the television viewing practices of binge-watchers. Respondents in this study not only attributed notable meaning to how their family and friends interpret binge-watching but actually based much of their own valuation of the practice on these interpretations. The extent to which the perceptions of family and friends were used by participants to assess and measure the negative or positive effects of binge-watching demonstrates that people’s viewing trajectories are not idiosyncratic. Rather, they are adjusted, created, and maintained in and through interpersonal relationships over time. Thus, although socio-historical factors and past experiences clearly play a part in mobilizing people’s transition into the binge-watcher role, the television viewing practices and attitudes of their friends and family significantly affect how, why, and when people make this transition and their feelings about it afterwards.

Discussion & Conclusion

Drawing on a life course perspective, this article demonstrates how the meanings and understandings binge-watchers attribute to their television viewing practices are rooted in the primacy of social networking and highlights how context is relevant to the ways in which binge-watchers interpret their television viewing habits. In particular, it attempts to link respondents’ interpretations of particular aspects of Western culture, specifically norms around productivity and the Netflix effect, to their family and friends’ perceptions of binge-watching. The emphasis participants place on the ways in which norms of productivity, the Netflix effect, and their interpersonal ties interface to shape their television viewing practices supports the key life-course principle that socio-historical forces are expressed in and through personal relationships (Elder, Johnson & Crosnoe, 2003). With this in mind, it is evident that a combination of both personal and social factors informs the development of binge-watchers’ television viewing practices. These findings thus contribute to existing academic literature on binge-watching, as this literature tends to focus on either the social or the personal factors behind the practice, but not both (Jenner, 2015; McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016; Silverman & Ryalls, 2016; Flayelle, Maurage & Billieux, 2017; Granow, Reinecke & Ziegele, 2018; Jones, Cronin & Piacentini, 2018; Rubenking & Bracken, 2018; Walter, Murphy & Rosenthal, 2018).

The findings of this study suggest that binge watchers identify three important factors that inform the character, sequencing, and ordering of their television viewing practices: past media consumption behaviours; the normalization of binge-watching through the Netflix effect; and the practices and perceptions of their family and friends. Despite their divergent socioeconomic statuses, ages, genders, and cultural/racial backgrounds, respondents across this study all identified these three factors. This suggests that binge- watchers recognize that binge-watching is a complex sociopsychological phenomenon. It is beyond the scope of this article to examine the degree to which this awareness is or can be mediated by the above demographic factors, but the fact that all respondents identified the above three causes speaks to how pervasive these forces are in shaping individual interpretations of binge-watching.

Respondents’ perceptions of binge-watching appear to be most informed by the degree of social acceptability their friends and family attribute to the television viewing practice. Whether or not respondents’ family and friends saw binge-watching as socially acceptable seems to stem from their opinions about the effects of binge-watching on social relationships. For participants who view binge-watching as advantageous, it is presumed – by both them and their friends and family – to foster meaningful social connections. Similarly, participants who see binge-watching as disadvantageous were more likely to link the television practice to social condemnation. In the first instance, the larger cultural stigmatization of binge-watching within Western society carries little value because it is not maintained through networks of shared relationships whereas, in the second instance, the stigmatization of binge-watching is reinforced precisely because it is engendered through interpersonal relationships. This suggests that binge-watchers’ perceptions and understandings of larger social norms around binge-watching are mediated by their relationships with others, whereby biographical and socio-historical context interface to shape one’s viewing trajectory across the life course. Future research should thus address the ways in which linked lives condition binge-watchers’ valuations of prevailing social norms and their subsequent use of such norms to understand their television viewing practices.

While previous research suggests that the rising popularity of Netflix and similar media platforms has fundamentally changed how and why people consume media (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016; Shim et al., 2018), little research has been done on the effect of these changes on our everyday lives (see Flayelle, Maurage & Billieux, 2017). By incorporating a life course perspective into this study, this article was able to map out the ways in which people’s viewing trajectories are linked to an array of personal and social factors, such as socio-historical context, linked lives, and past experiences. The above analysis demonstrates that when understanding why and how people binge-watch, we need to account for all these factors and the complex ways in which they interact to shape our viewing trajectories across the life course.

Footnotes

This project was approved by York University’s Human Participant Research Committee.

The exact age range of participants is unknown because two respondents did not want to report their age.

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[buddyrabrahams]

Report: Justin Fields will seek eligibility waiver to play right away at Ohio State

Justin Fields is in the final stages of transferring from Georgia to Ohio State, and the former five-star recruit is hoping he does not have to sit out the entire 2019 season.

Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports reported on Friday that Fields is finalizing his transfer to Ohio State. The No. 2 quarterback in the 2018 recruiting class is expected to enroll in spring classes in Columbus, which begin on Monday. After that, he will be seeking a waiver to avoid having to follow the one-year transfer eligibility rule.

As was previously reported, Fields’ waiver request is expected to center around a racial slur that was hurled at him by a Georgia baseball player early in the 2018 season. Former Bulldogs baseball player Adam Sassler, who was dismissed from the team following the incident, was investigated by Georgia’s Equal Opportunity Office and later issued an apology.

Fields is a two-sport athlete who was considered a pro baseball prospect in high school, so he could argue that he feels the incident with Sassler makes it so he would not feel comfortable pursuing baseball at Georgia and affects his well-being on campus. If the NCAA tried to argue against that, it would not be a great look.

If Fields is granted a waiver, he would immediately compete for the Buckeyes’ starting quarterback job with Tate Martell. Judging by what Martell recently said about Fields’ impending transfer, it sounds like that competition could get a bit testy.

from Larry Brown Sports http://bit.ly/2LSXIA9

[kasiaholla]

they say if you’re friends with someone for over 7 years you’ll be friends for life, but I think I knew we were forever friends when I met you across the hall in chrysostom, we learned we were twins in more ways than one and we’ve never looked back since! happy birthday to you miss sassler! we make the best memories, have the wildest adventures and I love you forever and always! 💛💫🥂 #birthdaywishes #sakt #dayone #thirteenyearsstrong

[foursproutlove-blog]

Blending Homes: Making the Complex Decision with Kids

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/blending-homes-making-the-complex-decision-with-kids/

Blending Homes: Making the Complex Decision with Kids

By Jennifer Harman Ph.D. – Colorado State University

Adventures in Blending: Memoirs of Mixing Families

Before launching back into a blog about being a (step)parent in a blended family, it is important to first describe how and why we became that way. I will start with our decision to move in together, something I wrote a little about a few years ago. I neglected to share, however, just how we came to the decision, which was not an easy one to make.

While neither of us wanted to remarry any time soon, we were committed to investing more of our time and energy into our relationship. Research indicates that this is one of the main reasons people move in together if they don’t marry first.1 But, there were other things to consider.

About 10 months after I started dating the Consultant, maintaining two separate homes did not make financial sense. He was living in a townhouse that he had been renting after separating from his ex-wife (who will now be referred to as X). He travelled about 75% of the time for work and was home every other weekend in order to exercise his parenting time with his daughters. His townhome had essentially become a storage unit because we spent almost all our free time together, as a couple or with my kids and his. It did not make financial sense to retain it. Research indicates that another primary reason many cohabiting couples decide to move in together is for financial reasons1, so the importance of this factor in our decision-making made sense. However, this decision was nothing like when I considered moving into a rental apartment with a previous boyfriend when I was in college. I now owned a home, making moving not so easy. And, my home was too small for all seven of us to live in. Moving in together would require a significant and expensive remodeling of the basement to make enough bedrooms for everyone. In this sense, the decision required a greater investment than either of us have had to make so early on in a relationship.

To inform our decision to move in together, I tried to find research on how parents decide to cohabit and blend their families. I unfortunately did not find a lot of published research that was relevant to our situation. In one study of low-income Black families, where the mother was the only parent with a child, researchers found that partners engage in a gradual process of vetting and letting, meaning that a) the mothers vet their partners to determine whether they would be a good parent and compatible with their children, and at the same time b) the male partners would let the mothers do this vetting to hopefully pass their “test” and move in together. The vetting process itself is generally a gradual one, where the parent considered 1) whether the other partner is interested in parenting; 2) whether they foster/support a relationship with them and their child; 3) what the child’s opinion is; and 4) lessons learned from past relationships. This research indicated that the decision was child-centered, and not just a parent’s decision to cohabit.3

This vetting and letting process explained some of our experience; the Consultant and I thoroughly discussed how we would stepparent each other’s children and coordinate care. We had to consider the potential impact of our decision on the well-being of our children. Clinicians have documented that stepsiblings tend to form instantaneous relationships with fluid boundaries, meaning their relationships can change form and roles with each other easily.2 Our blended family definitely began this way. Our children got along great; my sons always asked when the Consultant’s daughters were coming over. They wanted to plan activities we could all do together, such as camping or going to a movie. There were times our two youngest children would skip around the living room singing “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy” over and over again to their own rhythm.

Although we passed each other’s “tests” and felt confident in our decision to move in together, we had other adults to consider in this vetting process: X, his ex-wife and mother of his daughters, and Y, who was my ex-husband and father of my boys. Children often hold onto the belief that their divorced parents will get back together,4 so we had to work through the kid’s ambivalent feelings about our decision to move in together. We communicated very clearly that their fantasies of parental reunification would never become reality, and discussed the exciting plans we had for the future of our blended family.

All in all, it took some time to weigh all these factors. By allowing the kids to be part of decisions regarding the remodeling the house, they were able to play a role in making my house theirs, and ensure that they all felt they had a place in it.

All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real experiences is purely coincidental. To learn more about this series, please click here.

1Sassler, S. (2004). The process of entering into cohabiting unions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 491-505.

2Rosenberg, E. B., & Hajal, F. (1985). Stepsibling relationships in remarried families. Social Casework, 66, 287- 292.

3Reid, M., & Golub, A. (2015). Vetting and letting: Cohabiting step-family formation processes in low-income Black families. Journal of Marriage & Family, 77, 1234-1249

4Kurdek, L. A. & Berg, B. (1987). Children’s beliefs about parental divorce scale: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity. Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, 55, 712-718.

Interested in learning more about relationships? Click here for other topics on Science of Relationships. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get our articles delivered directly to your NewsFeed. Learn more about our book and download it here.

Dr.  Jennifer Harman – Science of Relationships articles | Website/CV Dr. Harman’s research examines relationship behaviors that put people at-risk for physical and psychological health problems, such as how feelings and beliefs about risk (e.g., sexual risk taking) can be biased when in a relationship. She also studies the role of power on relationship commitment.

[foursprout-blog]

Blending Homes: Making the Complex Decision with Kids

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/blending-homes-making-the-complex-decision-with-kids/

Blending Homes: Making the Complex Decision with Kids

By Jennifer Harman Ph.D. – Colorado State University

Adventures in Blending: Memoirs of Mixing Families

Before launching back into a blog about being a (step)parent in a blended family, it is important to first describe how and why we became that way. I will start with our decision to move in together, something I wrote a little about a few years ago. I neglected to share, however, just how we came to the decision, which was not an easy one to make.

While neither of us wanted to remarry any time soon, we were committed to investing more of our time and energy into our relationship. Research indicates that this is one of the main reasons people move in together if they don’t marry first.1 But, there were other things to consider.

About 10 months after I started dating the Consultant, maintaining two separate homes did not make financial sense. He was living in a townhouse that he had been renting after separating from his ex-wife (who will now be referred to as X). He travelled about 75% of the time for work and was home every other weekend in order to exercise his parenting time with his daughters. His townhome had essentially become a storage unit because we spent almost all our free time together, as a couple or with my kids and his. It did not make financial sense to retain it. Research indicates that another primary reason many cohabiting couples decide to move in together is for financial reasons1, so the importance of this factor in our decision-making made sense. However, this decision was nothing like when I considered moving into a rental apartment with a previous boyfriend when I was in college. I now owned a home, making moving not so easy. And, my home was too small for all seven of us to live in. Moving in together would require a significant and expensive remodeling of the basement to make enough bedrooms for everyone. In this sense, the decision required a greater investment than either of us have had to make so early on in a relationship.

To inform our decision to move in together, I tried to find research on how parents decide to cohabit and blend their families. I unfortunately did not find a lot of published research that was relevant to our situation. In one study of low-income Black families, where the mother was the only parent with a child, researchers found that partners engage in a gradual process of vetting and letting, meaning that a) the mothers vet their partners to determine whether they would be a good parent and compatible with their children, and at the same time b) the male partners would let the mothers do this vetting to hopefully pass their “test” and move in together. The vetting process itself is generally a gradual one, where the parent considered 1) whether the other partner is interested in parenting; 2) whether they foster/support a relationship with them and their child; 3) what the child’s opinion is; and 4) lessons learned from past relationships. This research indicated that the decision was child-centered, and not just a parent’s decision to cohabit.3

This vetting and letting process explained some of our experience; the Consultant and I thoroughly discussed how we would stepparent each other’s children and coordinate care. We had to consider the potential impact of our decision on the well-being of our children. Clinicians have documented that stepsiblings tend to form instantaneous relationships with fluid boundaries, meaning their relationships can change form and roles with each other easily.2 Our blended family definitely began this way. Our children got along great; my sons always asked when the Consultant’s daughters were coming over. They wanted to plan activities we could all do together, such as camping or going to a movie. There were times our two youngest children would skip around the living room singing “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy” over and over again to their own rhythm.

Although we passed each other’s “tests” and felt confident in our decision to move in together, we had other adults to consider in this vetting process: X, his ex-wife and mother of his daughters, and Y, who was my ex-husband and father of my boys. Children often hold onto the belief that their divorced parents will get back together,4 so we had to work through the kid’s ambivalent feelings about our decision to move in together. We communicated very clearly that their fantasies of parental reunification would never become reality, and discussed the exciting plans we had for the future of our blended family.

All in all, it took some time to weigh all these factors. By allowing the kids to be part of decisions regarding the remodeling the house, they were able to play a role in making my house theirs, and ensure that they all felt they had a place in it.

All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real experiences is purely coincidental. To learn more about this series, please click here.

1Sassler, S. (2004). The process of entering into cohabiting unions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66, 491-505.

2Rosenberg, E. B., & Hajal, F. (1985). Stepsibling relationships in remarried families. Social Casework, 66, 287- 292.

3Reid, M., & Golub, A. (2015). Vetting and letting: Cohabiting step-family formation processes in low-income Black families. Journal of Marriage & Family, 77, 1234-1249

4Kurdek, L. A. & Berg, B. (1987). Children’s beliefs about parental divorce scale: Psychometric characteristics and concurrent validity. Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, 55, 712-718.

Interested in learning more about relationships? Click here for other topics on Science of Relationships. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get our articles delivered directly to your NewsFeed. Learn more about our book and download it here.

Dr.  Jennifer Harman – Science of Relationships articles | Website/CV Dr. Harman’s research examines relationship behaviors that put people at-risk for physical and psychological health problems, such as how feelings and beliefs about risk (e.g., sexual risk taking) can be biased when in a relationship. She also studies the role of power on relationship commitment.

[assignmentcrackers]

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

For this paper, you will need to not only demonstrate your understanding of the sociological imagination, but you must also analyze the American family from the perspective of the book, Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships by Sharon and Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller. More specifically, in a 4-5 page paper, using the book as your guide, you are to critically…

[askdonaldressler]

So, is Agent Navabi any good in bed?

A man doesn’t disclose that kind of information!

[thesenpai]

[3:53:24 AM] deep: WHERE;S THE JUNKFOOD

[3:57:27 AM] fisting: i woUDl likE FOOD SAMe

[3:57:31 AM] fisting: eats hand

[3:59:23 AM] deep: sHHH

[3:59:25 AM] deep: DONT

[3:59:27 AM] deep: EAT HAND

[3:59:32 AM] deep: EAT BABY FOOT

[4:12:10 AM] fisting: omg

[insomnia-ler]

we did it... we have slain the dragon

DId yoU Just.

CalL Me a DrAgon?