From UBC:
My research interests lie broadly in the areas of family, social inequality, and social policy, where I pay special attention to intersecting inequalities. Following an intersectional perspective, I treat gender, sexuality, race, and class as sociopolitical constructs that involve historically specific sets of co-constitutive practices.
In one research strand, published by New York University Press, I’ve examined the family “sex talk.” Amid controversies over school-based sex education policy, one prominent solution is to give parents greater control over what their children learn about sex. Yet I find parents are uncertain about how best to guide their teenage children’s sexuality and view their own teen children as asexual and innocent while characterizing the stereotypical teenager as highly sexual, with racialized classed, and gendered sexual meanings and inequalities shaping these perceptions. Overall, the book’s findings demonstrate the ways gender, race, class, and age intersect to inform U.S. parents’ views and management of adolescent sexuality.
Another line of inquiry focuses on the family beliefs and experiences of Black single mothers of teenagers in the U.S. Policies promoting marriage and so-called responsible fatherhood have represented one political response to single motherhood over the past couple of decades. With Black single mothers often the face of debates and policy decisions around single motherhood, my research investigates how they make sense of family life and the parenting strategies they adopt, with what implications for social transformation.
A third research strand, with my colleague Dr. Sarah Bowen (NC State University), involves a longitudinal study of families’ food practices and interactions. We followed 124 lower-income Black, white and Latina North Carolina mothers and their young children over five year employing diverse data collection techniques including interviews, time diaries, and ethnographic observations. In several writing projects, including a book at Oxford University Press, this research investigates questions such as: What does it take to put food on the table? How do food assistance programs and other state policies shape families’ food access and practices? What are the meanings people give to food, cooking, and family meals?