FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- March 12, 2013
CONTACT: Shannon N. Davis, sdaviso@gmu.edu, 703-993-1443

MIAMI, FL--The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) is pleased to present its Eleventh Annual Media Awards at 12:00 on Friday, April 5th at the Newman Alumni Center, University of Miami, Miami, FL, at the CCF annual conference, Immigrant Families as They Really Are. The media awards honor outstanding journalism that contributes to the public understanding of contemporary family issues. Honorees are invited to speak for five minutes on emerging issues affecting American families and how CCF members and supporters can help the media cover these stories effectively.

Press Advisory for CCF’s 16^th Annual Conference on “Immigrant Families as They Really Are” April 5-6, 2013

Miami, FL--One in five children in the United States is in an immigrant family, and those immigrant families come from around the world. How are these children and their families doing? Confusing popular claims surrounding immigrants and the impact of immigration on the United States often interfere with clear and reliable answers to this fundamental question.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / February 5, 2013

CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology

206-375-4139 / vrutter@gmail.com

Gender in ‘Jeopardy!’: Uptalk isn’t just for Valley Girls?

He didn’t provide an answer in question format, but The College of William & Mary’s Thomas Linneman told us how women and men both use uptalk in his new study, “Gender in Jeopardy! Intonation Variation on a Television Game Show,” in the February issue of the journal Gender & Society. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology

vrutter@gmail.com / 206-375-4139

It’s Not Just City Folk: Gays and Lesbians Experience Striking Gains in Acceptance in All Regions and Subgroups of America. New study examines diversity of gays and lesbians living in rural areas

At a time of dramatic change in attitudes towards gays and lesbians in America, a new study released this month in Gender & Society highlights the diversity of gay and lesbian experiences in America. “Midwest or Lesbian? Gender, Rurality, and Sexuality,” by University of Nebraska sociologist Emily Kazyak, puts the lives of rural gays and lesbians under the microscope.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Stephanie Coontz

coontzs@msn.com / 360-352-8117

Myths About Later Motherhood

A Fact Sheet Prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Elizabeth Gregory,

Professor of English & Director of Women's Studies, University of Houston

MIAMI FL/July 25, 2012--Today, almost 40 percent of all babies in the United States are born to women over 30, and almost 15 percent - 1 in 7 - are born to women 35 and over. As this chart of historical trends in women's fertility rates by age demonstrates, birth rates to women aged 15-24 have fallen significantly since 1970, while birth rates for women aged 30-39 have risen significantly.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Stephanie Coontz

coontzs@msn.com / 360 352-8117

AGING ALONE IN AMERICA: CCF Briefing Report Offers New News, Good News, and Not So Good News

In a new report to the Council on Contemporary Families for Older Americans Month, New York University researchers Eric Klinenberg, Stacy Torres, and Elena Portacolone report on the unprecedented movement of the elderly toward solo living.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Virginia Rutter

vrutter@gmail.com / 508 626 4863

Unconventional Wisdom 5^th Annual Edition from the Council on Contemporary Families Thirty-seven new findings about children, mothers, economics, sex (and more)

Chicago, IL -- In preparation for the Council on Contemporary Families' 15^th Annual Conference, Crossing Boundaries: Public and Private Roles in Assuring Child Well-Being, at the Crown Plaza Chicago Metro Hotel, April 27 and 28, 2012, the Council asked conference participants to submit short descriptions of recent research and best practice findings relevant to child well-being, for the Fifth Edition of "Unconventional Wisdom." Here are some highlights of the 37 submissions CCF received. The entire report is available here (pdf).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Stephanie Coontz

coontzs@msn.com; 360-352-8117

CCF REPORTS: Women's Education and Marriage: The Ongoing Reversal of Historical Trends

For most of the 20th century, women who completed higher education were far less likely to be married than their less-educated counterparts. Then in 2010, the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) reported new research showing that although college-educated women were still more likely to never marry at all than women with lower educational levels, they were so much less likely to divorce that by age 40, a higher proportion of college-educated women were married than any other group.

Council on Contemporary Families 2012 Media Awards

Miami, FL--The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) is pleased to present its Tenth Annual Media Awards on Friday, April 27, at the CCF Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. The awards honor outstanding journalism that contributes to the public understanding of contemporary family issues. Awards will be presented at a 5 p.m. reception at the Crowne Plaza Metro Chicago Hotel, where the conference is located. Award recipients will speak briefly about their work and the ways in which scholars and practitioners can help them advance the conversation about the needs of American families today.

Philip Cohen Reponds to International Women's Day Discourse

For more than 30 years, people concerned about the global inequality between men and women have been circulating the claim that women receive only one-tenth of world income and own only 1 percent of the world's property. This claim was repeated on CNN and other outlets for International Women's Day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Stephanie Coontz
coontzs@msn.com
360-352-8117

"YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY." OR HAVE YOU?

In Time for International Women's Day on March 8, Researchers at the Council on Contemporary Families Debate: "Is the Gender Revolution Over?"

MIAMI, March 6, 2012--In 1973 - less than 40 years ago -- the Supreme Court ruled that sex-segregated employment ads were illegal. The next two decades saw massive, rapid action in eradicating old laws and prejudices. But now three researchers argue that progress toward gender equality has slowed or even stalled since the early 1990s. In an online symposium organized by the Council on Contemporary Families in time for International Women's Day, David A. Cotter, Joan M. Hermsen and Reeve Vanneman present their discussion paper "Is the Gender Revolution Over?"

A New Report from the Council on Contemporary Families:

The Recession Is Officially Over, But How Are American Families Faring this Holiday Season?

Retailers report that this year's post-Thanksgiving shopping weekend broke all previous records, raising predictions of "the best holiday shopping season ever." Yet the number of people living in poverty has also broken all previous records.

Poverty, Hardship and Families:
How Many People Are Poor, and What Does Being Poor in America Really Mean?

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families

By Philip N. Cohen, Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

December 5, 2011

This briefing paper describes three common misperceptions about poverty and families, and clarifies new information about recent poverty trends.

Keeping Your Family (and Yourself) Healthy During the Holidays

A Council on Contemporary Families Information Sheet prepared by Deborah Carr, Rutgers University

If you are a typical American, you consumed 3,000 calories at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and another 1,500 nibbling and snacking throughout the day. Exercise physiologists say that the average 160-pound person would need to run for four hours, walk 30 miles, or swim for five hours to burn those calories!

The rest of the weekend probably wasn’t a lot better, what with all the leftovers. And the Thanksgiving Day feeding frenzy is just the kick-off event for the five-week season of holiday eating and drinking that follows.

From Steve Jobs to Kids in Foster Care: Lessons During National Adoption Month

By: Adam Pertman

October 28, 2011

With seemingly ceaseless regularity nowadays, most recently in the coverage of Steve Jobs' passing, we are inundated by conflicting messages relating to adoption.

For the next few weeks, the wonder of adoption will be on display. November is National Adoption Awareness Month, so media outlets nationwide will be -- and should be -- writing stories about children whose lives are improved as a result of moving from foster care into permanent, loving families. President Obama will even issue a proclamation, as he and his predecessors have done routinely in past years, saying something to the effect that our country is blessed by this extraordinary institution.

At other times, of course, a very different picture is transmitted. Sometimes the focus is on adoptive parents who seem to regard adoption as child rental (remember the mother who "returned" her son to Russia?) or ones who purportedly use the child welfare system as a means of getting monthly support payments; the most sensational case took place several years ago in New Jersey, where a couple allegedly starved their four adopted sons in order to retain more of their state subsidies.

Press accounts cast an appropriately suspicious eye on parents who commit such horrid acts but, all too often, they also raise broader concerns about the competence and motives of adoptive parents per se; in particular, they implicitly or explicitly suggest that people may adopt children for dubious reasons or even that adoption itself is somehow a less-legitimate or less-desirable means of building a family than is childbirth. In the coverage of Jobs, for instance, we're regularly seeing and reading reports that question his being "given away" by his "real parents" -- language that hardly affirms adoption as a positive option.

So which is it? Lucky kids or kids relegated to second-class families? Good people trying to do the right thing for their children, either by placing their children for adoption or adopting them, or desperate people with suspect motives? What are we to think when we receive such disparate impressions, not just today, but time after time when there's a high-profile story involving adoption? Or even when adoption is depicted in either very positive ways ("Modern Family") or chillingly negative ways ("Orphan") in the movies and on television?

Based on available research and extensive experience, two unambiguous images emerge: that most adoptive parents are doing the same things as most biological parents -- that is, providing their children with all the affection and care they humanly can; and that, with rare exceptions, boys and girls are far better off in permanent families than in foster care, orphanages or any other temporary or institutional setting.

But adoption's history of secrecy has afforded us with too few opportunities to learn about its realities. So we tend to assume we're learning far more from singular, usually aberrational experiences -- man bites dog is a story, after all, while dog bites man is not -- than we usually are.

Yes, financial payments intended to increase the number of adoptions from foster care can cause complications, but that's the clear exception. And, yes, families sometimes struggle as a result of the challenges their children face as a consequence of having been mistreated and/or institutionalized before they were adopted. But there is no indication that horrors such as the ones that typically make the news are being repeated with any regularity elsewhere, even though many thousands of parents throughout the country receive state subsidies -- and even though the number of children being adopted from foster care is at historic highs.

Moreover, even in the most troubled systems, good things are happening daily. Most children are being reunited with newly healthy mothers, fathers and other biological relatives, while a fast-growing number of kids -- over 52,000 last year alone and over 57,000 the year before that -- are being adopted by loving parents who treat them well. The same is true for the hundreds of thousands of girls and boys who have been adopted from orphanages abroad over the last couple of decades.

It's hard to learn much from secrets, so we as a culture don't yet know enough about adoptions from foster care and institutions to put the aberrational stories in perspective. That's changing, to be sure; organizations such as the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, which I'm proud to lead, are providing more and better research and knowledge - please take a look at www.adoptioninstitute.org to read our most recent work - and, partly as a result, the media are doing a better and better job of informing the public, policy-makers and others who profoundly affect the tens of millions of children and families for whom adoption and foster care are daily realities.

Even as we make progress, however, the still-widespread lack of knowledge has tangible, negative consequences that play out in the attitudes all these people encounter and the policies that impact their lives.

I am not defending any system that does less than everything possible to protect the children within it. But we live in a society in which nearly every program that helps vulnerable children receives insufficient resources; in which well-intentioned quick fixes replace (rather than augment) thoughtful, long-term solutions such as post-adoption services; and in which cases like the ones I've cited above fuel our worst stereotypes about adoptive parents, birth parents, their children, and adoption itself.

A positive and fair question for the media to ask (but I haven't yet heard it asked) would be something like this: Would the world have had Steve Jobs without adoption?

During National Adoption Awareness Month, states across the country will celebrate by holding public ceremonies at which hundreds upon hundreds of children will receive the opportunity to move into permanent, loving and successful families.

I'd like to suggest it's also a good time for all of us to start learning more about adoption, foster care and institutionalization (orphanages), because the problems will be fixed more rapidly if faulty stereotypes are replaced by genuine understandings. And the ultimate beneficiaries will be the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, in our own country and others, who will still need homes long after we turn another page on our calendars.

About CCF: The Council on Contemporary Families is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of family researchers, mental health and social practitioners, and clinicians dedicated to providing the press and public with the latest research and best practice findings about American families. It was founded in 1996 and is based at the University of Miami.

For more information, or to receive future fact sheets and briefing papers from the Council, contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education of CCF and Professor of History and Family Studies at The Evergreen State College. coontzs@msn.com; 360-352-8117.

New Way to Tally Poor Recasts View of Poverty

By Sabrina Tavernise and Robert Gebeloff

The Census Bureau on Monday released what it says is a more accurate measure of poverty in America. The new measure shows more poverty among the elderly, but less among children and African-Americans.

It also shows a slightly higher poverty rate for the nation last year — 16 percent compared with 15.2 percent under the official measure — but lower rates among groups who benefit from noncash government programs the official count leaves out, including food stamps and the earned-income tax credit.