Tag Archives | Masculinity

Straight Jacket: The Implications of Multidimensional Sexuality for Relationship Quality and Stability

Yue Qian, Yang Hu

Sociological Science January 15, 2025
10.15195/v12.a3


The quality and stability of couple relationships have far-reaching consequences for the well-being of individual partners and patterns of family change. Although much research has compared the quality and stability of same-sex and different-sex relationships, the multidimensional nature of sexuality has received insufficient attention in this scholarship. Individuals in same-sex (different-sex) partnerships do not necessarily identify as gay/lesbian (straight) or report exclusive same-sex (different-sex) attraction—a phenomenon we term “identity/attraction–partnership inconsistency.” By analyzing nationally representative longitudinal data collected between 2017 and 2022, we show that identity/attraction–partnership inconsistency is common among U.S. adults, ranging from 2 percent of men in different-sex partnerships to 41 percent of women in same-sex partnerships. Regression results show that such inconsistency is associated with lower relationship quality and higher relationship instability, and these negative ramifications are particularly pronounced among individuals, notably men, in different-sex partnerships. Our findings uncover the implications of multidimensional sexuality for relationship dynamics and outcomes given the rigid institutionalization of different-sex couplehood and the close normative regulation of men’s heterosexuality. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating multiple dimensions of sexuality and their interplays into research on couple relationships and family change.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Yue Qian: Department of Sociology, The University of British Columbia
E-mail: yue.qian@ubc.ca

Yang Hu: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University
E-mail: yang.hu@lancaster.ac.uk

Acknowledgements: Yue Qian and Yang Hu share joint first authorship.

Supplemental Materials

Reproducibility Package: The data analyzed in this article are available from the Stanford Libraries Social Science Data Collection at https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017. All replication codes for this project are available at https://osf.io/n32ty/.

  • Citation: Qian, Yue, Yang Hu. 2025. “Straight Jacket: The Implications of Multidimensional Sexuality for Relationship Quality and Stability” Sociological Science 12: 51-75.
  • Received: October 21, 2024
  • Accepted: December 7, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Michael Rosenfeld
  • DOI: 10.15195/v12.a3


0

Gender Typicality and Academic Achievement among American High School Students

Jill E. Yavorsky, Claudia Buchmann

Sociological Science December 12, 2019
10.15195/v6.a25


This study is the first to use nationally representative data to examine whether differences in gender-typical behaviors among adolescents are associated with high school academic performance and whether such associations vary by race or socioeconomic status. Using wave I data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and linked academic transcript data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, we find that boys who report moderate levels of gender atypicality earn the highest grade point averages (GPAs), but few boys score in this range. As gender typicality increases, boys’ GPAs decline steeply. In contrast, girls who practice moderate levels of gender typicality earn slightly higher GPAs than other girls. These patterns generally hold across race and socioeconomic status groups.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Jill E. Yavorsky: Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina Charlotte
E-mail: jyavorsk@uncc.edu

Claudia Buchmann: Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University
E-mail: buchmann.4@osu.edu

Acknowledgements: This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. This research also uses data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement study, which was funded by a grant (R01 HD040428-02, Chandra Muller, PI) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a grant (REC-0126167, Chandra Muller, PI, and Pedro Reyes, Co-PI) from the National Science Foundation. This research was also supported by grant 5 R24 HD042849, Population Research Center, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Child Development. Opinions reflect those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies. We thank the reviewers and editor for their helpful comments. We also are grateful to Yue Qian, Paula England, Tom DiPrete, and participants in the Seminar Series at the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia University and participants in the University of Michigan Department of Sociology Seminar Series.

  • Citation: Yavorsky, Jill E., and Claudia Buchmann. 2019. “Gender Typicality and Academic Achievement among American High School Students.” Sociological Science 6: 661-683.
  • Received: October 8, 2019
  • Accepted: November 13, 2019
  • Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Kim Weeden
  • DOI: 10.15195/v6.a25


0
SiteLock