Mollborn
Biographic Data
| ID | 19552 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mollborn |
| FAMILY NAME | Mollborn |
| SIGNATURE | MOLLBORN |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6683-9146 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 75 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 683 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Are Intensive Parenting Attitudes a Deterrent to Childbearing?
The widowhood effect across diverse partnerships: Mortality risk after partner loss in same-sex and mixed-sex unions
Losing a marital partner to death is a stressful life event with adverse health effects, including excess mortality risk. Previous research has focused on examining the widowhood effect within mixed-sex unions. Despite the increasing number of same-sex unions, gender composition within a union has not been considered when investigating the widowhood effect. Utilizing Danish Register Data from 1989 to 2022, this study investigates disparities in m…
Does intensive parenting come at the expense of parents' health? Evidence from Sweden
Given concerns that the intensification of parenting could have negative consequences for well-being, this paper explores whether intensive parenting is associated with parents' self-rated health in the case of Sweden, where extensive parental supports may provide protection. We apply binary logistic regression models to responses from 3400 parents in the nationally representative Swedish Generations and Gender Survey from 2021. Results differ de…
Are Intensive Parenting Attitudes Internationally Generalizable? The Case of Sweden
Attitudes promoting 'intensive parenting' are prevalent in many countries and are associated with mothering and class privilege. Are intensive parenting attitudes widespread and similarly classed in Sweden, which has historically shifted burdens off parents and reduced inequalities? Using the 2021 Generations and Gender Survey, descriptive and latent class analyses identified predominant patterns of intensive parenting attitudes and sociodemograp…
JHSB Policy Brief: Children's Health Lifestyles and the Perpetuation of Inequalities
Children's Health Lifestyles and the Perpetuation of Inequalities
Health lifestyles are a well-theorized mechanism perpetuating health and social inequalities, but empirical research has not yet documented crucial aspects: (1) health lifestyles' collective nature or content beyond behaviors and (2) how people choose among available lifestyles in their social contexts. We conducted interviews, observations, and focus groups with families in two middle- to upper-middle-class communities. Contemporary class-privil…
Yes, parents, it reflects on you: Norms and Metanorms regulating teen daughters and parents
ObjectiveExamine normative expectations of teens and parents related to teen behaviors in multiple domains.BackgroundParenting expectations have strengthened in an increasingly evaluative context. Existing literature does not address whether parents are evaluated based on their teens' actions. We argue that understanding the pressures parents face is facilitated by an understanding of norms, which regulate behavior, and metanorms, which regulate …
U.S. Fertility in Life Course Context: A Research Note on Using Census-Held Linked Administrative Records for Geographic and Sociodemographic Subgroup Estimation
Fertility is a life course process that is strongly shaped by geographic and sociodemographic subgroup contexts. In the United States, scholars face a choice: they can situate fertility in a life course perspective using panel data, which is typically representative only at the national level; or they can attend to subnational contexts using rate schedules, which do not include information on life course statuses. The method and data source we in…
Mature Enough to Handle it: Gendered Parental Interventions in and Adolescents' Reactions to Technology Use During the Pandemic
This study investigated how teenagers reacted to parental regulation of technology. Using longitudinal dyadic interviews with 24 teenagers and their 21 parents in two predominantly white middle-class communities, we explored how teenagers used technology during the COVID-19 pandemic and the differential consequences parental interventions had for teens' well-being and confidence with technology. Parents' narratives and actions about technology us…
Optimizing” Health in the Time of Covid-19: How Neoliberal Health Orientations Dictate Families’ Responses
Neoliberal health orientations that emphasize specific health behaviors provide frameworks for how class-advantaged Americans understand themselves and their health. The family is a consequential pathway for such privilege to be enacted. Using dyadic interviews with U.S. parents and teenagers, the authors explore how families in two middle- to upper-middle-class, health-conscious cities reoriented their beliefs and practices around health in resp…
Distinction through distancing: Norm formation and enforcement during the Covid-19 pandemic
The unequal spread of COVID-19 was accompanied by disparities in adherence to social distancing. Research is needed on social processes that facilitated widespread adherence to distancing, how they connected with existing resource access and belief systems, and how they potentially strengthened intergroup boundaries. We integrated insights from research on social norms and cultural capital to analyze early pandemic (April-August 2020) qualitative…
“I just want her to be happy and healthy”: Deploying broad understandings of health in class-privileged parenting
This study examined the role of class privilege in parents' understandings of children's health and their navigation of the work of supporting “healthy” children. Cultural and institutional discourses tend to frame class-advantaged parents as making choices for their children that maximize health, but this is not always the case. Analyses drew on 45 interviews with predominantly white, class-advantaged parents of elementary-aged children and asso…
Family socioeconomic status and children's screen time
Objective: This mixed-methods study examined whether higher-SES children's digital technology use adhered to contemporaneous pediatric guidelines, how it compared to lower-SES children, and why, as analyses showed, higher-SES children's technology use far exceeded pediatric recommendations. Background: 2013 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines recommended limited "screen time" for children. Higher socioeconomic status (SES) families te…
Racial/ethnic and gender differences in smoking in early middle adulthood
Research has documented important differences in smoking rates across race/ethnicity, gender, and age. Much of the research has either focused on smoking initiation among adolescents or cessation among adults, but little is known about racial/ethnic patterns in intermittent and daily smoking across young and early middle adulthood. We therefore use the life course perspective to identify how racial/ethnic and gender differences in smoking unfold …
Mothers’ Sexual Identity and Children’s Health
Sexual minority women face a plethora of structural, socioeconomic, and interpersonal disadvantages and stressors. Research has established negative associations between women’s sexual minority identities and both their own health and their infants’ birth outcomes. Yet a separate body of scholarship has documented similarities in the development and well-being of children living with same-sex couples relative to those living with similarly situat…
Dedicated to being healthy: Young adults' deployments of health-focused cultural capital
Peer Network Processes in Adolescents' Health Lifestyles
Combining theories of health lifestyles-interrelated health behaviors arising from group-based identities-with those of network and behavior change, we investigated network characteristics of health lifestyles and the role of influence and selection processes underlying these characteristics. We examined these questions in two high schools using longitudinal, complete friendship network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to A…
Adolescent Technology, Sleep, and Physical Activity Time in Two U.S. Cohorts
The advent of Internet-enabled mobile digital devices has transformed U.S. adolescent technology use over the last decade, yet little is known about how these changes map onto other health-related behaviors. We provide a national profile of how contemporary technology use fits into adolescents’ daily health lifestyles compared with the previous generation, with particular attention to whether and for whom technology use displaces time spent in sl…
Breastfeeding Initiation and Continuation Among Sexual Minority Women
Developing Health Lifestyle Pathways and Social Inequalities Across Early Childhood
Everything Is Connected: Health Lifestyles and Teenagers' Social Distancing Behaviors in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic requires people to engage in new health behaviors that are public, monitored, and often contested. Parents are typically considered responsible for controlling their children's behavior and instilling norms. We investigated how parents and teens managed teenagers' social distancing behaviors. Analyzing longitudinal (2015-2020), dyadic qualitative interviews with teenagers and their parents in 20 fami…
Contributions and Challenges in Health Lifestyles Research
The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to integrated bundles of behaviors undergirded by group-based identities and norms. Health lifestyles research merges structure with agency, individual-level processes with group-level processes, and multifaceted behaviors with norms and identities, shedding light on why health behaviors persist or change and on the reproduction of health disparities and oth…
Healthier Than Just Healthy: Families Transmitting Health as Cultural Capital
As the relationship between social class and health strengthens and socioeconomic and health inequalities widen, understanding how parents' socioeconomic advantage translates into health and class advantages in the next generation is increasingly important. Our analyses illustrate how a classed performance of 'health' is a fundamental component of transmitting cultural capital in families and communities. Socially advantaged parents' health and c…
A gender framework for understanding health lifestyles
Health Lifestyles and the Transition to Adulthood
Prior research has shown the theoretical importance and empirical feasibility of health lifestyles but has not examined their patterns over the life course or their dynamic associations with socioeconomic status (SES) and adult roles. The authors develop and apply a life-course approach to understanding individuals' health lifestyles across the transition to adulthood, using U.S. data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult He…
Norms: An Integrated Framework
Norms are a foundational concept in sociology. Following a period of skepticism about norms as overly deterministic and as paying too little attention to social conflict, inequalities, and agency, the past 20 years have seen a proliferation of norms research across the social sciences. Here we focus on the burgeoning research in sociology to answer questions about where norms come from, why people enforce them, and how they are applied. To do so,…
Race/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Family Instability on Adolescents' Risk Behavior
We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 7,686) to determine whether racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic stress and social protection explained group differences in the association between family structure instability and three risk behaviors for White, Black, and Mexican American adolescents: delinquent behavior, age at first nonmarital sex, and age at first nonmarital birth. The positive association…
Understanding the educational attainment of sexual minority women and men
Who Matters for Children’s Early Development? Race/Ethnicity and Extended Household Structures in the United States
Family Complexity, Siblings, and Children’s Aggressive Behavior at School Entry
As family structure in the United States has become increasingly dynamic and complex, children have become more likely to reside with step- or half-siblings through a variety of pathways. When these pathways are accounted for, more than one in six U.S. children live with a step- or half-sibling at age 4. We use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (N ~ 6,550) to assess the independent and joint influences of residing with…
Health lifestyles across the transition to adulthood: Implications for health
Growing up Faster, Feeling Older: Hardship in Childhood and Adolescence
We examine whether hardship while growing up shapes subjective age identity, as well as three types of experiences through which it may occur. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that hardship in several domains during childhood and adolescence is associated with feeling relatively older and self-identifying as an adult in the late teens and twenties. Specifically, young people who as adolescents fel…
Family, Peer, and School Influences on Children's Developing Health Lifestyles
Health lifestyles are important for health and social identity, yet little is known about their development in early life. We use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-99 (ECLS-K; N = 8,786) to track children's health lifestyles and assess a theoretical model of health lifestyle development. Latent class analyses identify health lifestyles at four time points from first to eighth grade, and multivariate mode…
Investigating the Relationship between Teenage Childbearing and Psychological Distress Using Longitudinal Evidence
The high levels of depression among teenage mothers have received considerable research attention in smaller targeted samples, but a large-scale examination of the complex relationship between adolescent childbearing and psychological distress that explores bidirectional causality is needed. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, we found that teenage mother…
Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Material Resources and Teenage Parenthood
Past research has largely ignored the influence of material resources on teenage parents' life outcomes. A lack of resources such as housing, child care, and financial support is hypothesized to explain the negative effect of teenage parenthood on educational attainment. Regression analyses use nationally representative data from the 1988 - 2000 National Education Longitudinal Study (N = 8,432, n = 356 teenage parents). Results support the hypoth…
Norms About Nonmarital Pregnancy and Willingness to Provide Resources to Unwed Parents
Contested social norms underlie public concern about adults' and teenagers' nonmarital pregnancy. The original, vignette-based National Pregnancy Norms Survey (N = 812) measures these norms and related sanctions. Descriptive analyses report embarrassment at the prospect of a nonmarital pregnancy by age and gender of hypothetical prospective parents and age, race or ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of respondents. Multivariate analyses show tha…
Healthier Than Just Healthy: Families Transmitting Health as Cultural Capital
As the relationship between social class and health strengthens and socioeconomic and health inequalities widen, understanding how parents' socioeconomic advantage translates into health and class advantages in the next generation is increasingly important. Our analyses illustrate how a classed performance of 'health' is a fundamental component of transmitting cultural capital in families and communities. Socially advantaged parents' health and c…
Health Lifestyles in Early Childhood
This study integrates two important developments, the concept of health lifestyles (which has focused on adults and adolescents) and the increased attention to early childhood. We introduce the concept of children's health lifestyles, identifying differences from adult health lifestyles and articulating intergenerational transmission and socialization processes shaping children's health lifestyles. Using the nationally representative Early Childh…
Extended household transitions, race/ethnicity, and early childhood cognitive outcomes
Life course transitions in early adulthood and SES disparities in tobacco use
Predictors and Consequences of Adolescents' Norms Against Teenage Pregnancy
African American and Latino teenagers and communities are frequently assumed to have weaker norms against teenage pregnancy than whites. Despite their importance, adolescents' norms about teenage pregnancy have not been measured or their correlates and consequences documented. This study examines individual-level and contextual variation in adolescents' embarrassment at the prospect of a teenage pregnancy and its relationship with subsequent teen…
Patients' Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Trust in a Physician
We examine whether racial/ethnic/language-based variation in measured levels of patients' trust in a physician depends on the survey items used to measure that trust. Survey items include: (1) a direct measure of patients' trust that the doctor will put the patient's medical needs above all other considerations, and (2) three indirect measures of trust asking about expectations for specific physician behaviors, including referring to a specialist…
Effects of Minority Status and Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health
Bundles of Norms About Teen Sex and Pregnancy
Teen pregnancy is a cultural battleground in struggles over morality, education, and family. At its heart are norms about teen sex, contraception, pregnancy, and abortion. Analyzing 57 interviews with college students, we found that "bundles" of related norms shaped the messages teens hear. Teens did not think their communities encouraged teen sex or pregnancy, but normative messages differed greatly, with either moral or practical rationalizatio…
Contributions and Challenges in Health Lifestyles Research
The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to integrated bundles of behaviors undergirded by group-based identities and norms. Health lifestyles research merges structure with agency, individual-level processes with group-level processes, and multifaceted behaviors with norms and identities, shedding light on why health behaviors persist or change and on the reproduction of health disparities and oth…
Examining Sexual Orientation Disparities in Unmet Medical Needs Among Men and Women
A gender framework for understanding health lifestyles
How Teenage Fathers Matter for Children: Evidence From the ECLS-B
Much is known about how having a teenage mother influences children's outcomes, but the relationship between teenage fatherhood and children's health and development is less well documented. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, the authors investigated how teenage fathers matter for children. They expected teenage fathers' influence on children to differ from adult fathers' in three domains: the household context, the father…
A Meeting of Minds”: Using Clickers for Critical Thinking and Discussion in Large Sociology Classes
Because lecture-based teaching limits student learning, many instructors are interested in pedagogical strategies that support critical thinking, student participation, and group discussion in large classrooms. Audience response systems, or “clickers,” are an emerging tool for addressing this problem, but predominant pedagogical models for clicker use developed in the natural sciences often do not encourage the “inquiry-guided learning” that is u…
Dedicated to being healthy: Young adults' deployments of health-focused cultural capital
Patients' Race, Ethnicity, Language, and Trust in a Physician
We examine whether racial/ethnic/language-based variation in measured levels of patients' trust in a physician depends on the survey items used to measure that trust. Survey items include: (1) a direct measure of patients' trust that the doctor will put the patient's medical needs above all other considerations, and (2) three indirect measures of trust asking about expectations for specific physician behaviors, including referring to a specialist…
Can Legal Interventions Change Beliefs? The Effect of Exposure to Sexual Harassment Policy on Men's Gender Beliefs
In spite of the relative success of equal opportunity laws on women's status in the workplace, we know little about the influence of such legal interventions on people's attitudes and beliefs. This paper focuses, in particular, on how sexual harassment policy affects men's beliefs about the gender hierarchy. We employ an experimental design in which we measure the effect of a policy intervention on men's explicit and implicit gender beliefs. Resu…
Making the Best of a Bad Situation: Material Resources and Teenage Parenthood
Past research has largely ignored the influence of material resources on teenage parents' life outcomes. A lack of resources such as housing, child care, and financial support is hypothesized to explain the negative effect of teenage parenthood on educational attainment. Regression analyses use nationally representative data from the 1988 - 2000 National Education Longitudinal Study (N = 8,432, n = 356 teenage parents). Results support the hypoth…
Growing up Faster, Feeling Older: Hardship in Childhood and Adolescence
We examine whether hardship while growing up shapes subjective age identity, as well as three types of experiences through which it may occur. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that hardship in several domains during childhood and adolescence is associated with feeling relatively older and self-identifying as an adult in the late teens and twenties. Specifically, young people who as adolescents fel…
Correlates and Consequences of Parent–Teen Incongruence in Reports of Teens' Sexual Experience
Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, factors associated with incongruence between parents' and adolescents' reports of teens' sexual experience were investigated, and the consequences of inaccurate parental knowledge for adolescents' subsequent sexual behaviors were explored. Most parents of virgins accurately reported teens' lack of experience, but most parents of teens who had had sex provided inaccurate reports. Binary l…
Investigating the Relationship between Teenage Childbearing and Psychological Distress Using Longitudinal Evidence
The high levels of depression among teenage mothers have received considerable research attention in smaller targeted samples, but a large-scale examination of the complex relationship between adolescent childbearing and psychological distress that explores bidirectional causality is needed. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, we found that teenage mother…
Norms About Nonmarital Pregnancy and Willingness to Provide Resources to Unwed Parents
Contested social norms underlie public concern about adults' and teenagers' nonmarital pregnancy. The original, vignette-based National Pregnancy Norms Survey (N = 812) measures these norms and related sanctions. Descriptive analyses report embarrassment at the prospect of a nonmarital pregnancy by age and gender of hypothetical prospective parents and age, race or ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of respondents. Multivariate analyses show tha…
Who Matters for Children’s Early Development? Race/Ethnicity and Extended Household Structures in the United States
Exploring Variation in Teenage Mothers' and Fathers' Educational Attainment
Traditional parenting norms, according to which mothers are primary caregivers and fathers are breadwinners, do not appear to be associated with improved odds of graduating. Policies and interventions aimed at helping teenage parents graduate may be most effective if they target both genders, but some are likely to be more beneficial for one gender than the other
A Meeting of Minds”: Using Clickers for Critical Thinking and Discussion in Large Sociology Classes
Because lecture-based teaching limits student learning, many instructors are interested in pedagogical strategies that support critical thinking, student participation, and group discussion in large classrooms. Audience response systems, or “clickers,” are an emerging tool for addressing this problem, but predominant pedagogical models for clicker use developed in the natural sciences often do not encourage the “inquiry-guided learning” that is u…
Race/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Family Instability on Adolescents' Risk Behavior
We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 7,686) to determine whether racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic stress and social protection explained group differences in the association between family structure instability and three risk behaviors for White, Black, and Mexican American adolescents: delinquent behavior, age at first nonmarital sex, and age at first nonmarital birth. The positive association…
Predictors and Consequences of Adolescents' Norms Against Teenage Pregnancy
African American and Latino teenagers and communities are frequently assumed to have weaker norms against teenage pregnancy than whites. Despite their importance, adolescents' norms about teenage pregnancy have not been measured or their correlates and consequences documented. This study examines individual-level and contextual variation in adolescents' embarrassment at the prospect of a teenage pregnancy and its relationship with subsequent teen…
Ready or Not: Predicting High and Low School Readiness Among Teen Parents’ Children
How Teenage Fathers Matter for Children: Evidence From the ECLS-B
Much is known about how having a teenage mother influences children's outcomes, but the relationship between teenage fatherhood and children's health and development is less well documented. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, the authors investigated how teenage fathers matter for children. They expected teenage fathers' influence on children to differ from adult fathers' in three domains: the household context, the father…
Explaining the Early Development and Health of Teen Mothers’ Children 1
The transmission of social disadvantage from teenage mothers to their children is well established, but when and why do these disparities emerge in the early life course? Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, this study investigated the relationship between teen childbearing and children's cognition, behavior, and health from infancy through preschool. Developmental disparities between teen…
Investigating the Life Situations and Development of Teenage Mothers’ Children: Evidence from the ECLS-B
We'll Figure a Way: Teenage Mothers' Experiences in Shifting Social and Economic Contexts
Early Motherhood and the Disruption in Significant Attachments: Autonomy and Reconnection as a Response to Separation and Loss among African American and Latina Teen Mothers
Based on a qualitative study of 48 teenage mothers living in the Denver metropolitan area, this research examines the loss of multiple attachments, including mothers, siblings, and other extended family members and friends, among African American and Latina girls who become young mothers. Through life history narratives, this article explores the isolating effects of teen motherhood on the relational world of young mothers and the transition to '…
Consequences of Teen Parents' Child-Care Arrangements for Mothers and Children
Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (2001-2006; N ≅7,900), the authors examined child-care arrangements among teen parents from birth through prekindergarten. Four latent classes of child care arrangements at 9, 24, and 52 months emerged: (a) "parental care," (b) "center care," (c) "paid home-based care," and (d) "free kin-based care." Disadvantaged teen-parent families were overrepresented in the …
Extended household transitions, race/ethnicity, and early childhood cognitive outcomes
Young maternal age and low birth weight risk: An exploration of racial/ethnic disparities in the birth outcomes of mothers in the United States
This study considers how low birth weight (LBW) prevalence varies by race/ethnicity and maternal age and explores mechanisms that explain disparities. Results show that maternal age patterns in LBW risk for African Americans differ from whites and foreign- and U.S.-born Hispanics. Background socioeconomic disadvantage, together with current socioeconomic status and smoking during pregnancy, explain almost all of the LBW disparity between white te…
Norms as Group-Level Constructs: Investigating School-Level Teen Pregnancy Norms and Behaviors
Social norms are a group-level phenomenon, but past quantitative research has rarely measured them in the aggregate or considered their group-level properties. We used the school-based design of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to measure normative climates regarding teen pregnancy across 75 U.S. high schools. We distinguished between the strength of a school's norm against teen pregnancy and the consensus around that norm. Sc…
Do Depressive Symptoms in Male and Female Adolescents Predict Unintended Births in Emerging Adulthood
Examining Sexual Orientation Disparities in Unmet Medical Needs Among Men and Women
How Resource Dynamics Explain Accumulating Developmental and Health Disparities for Teen Parents’ Children
This study examines the puzzle of disparities experienced by U.S. teen parents’ young children, whose health and development increasingly lag behind those of peers while their parents are simultaneously experiencing socioeconomic improvements. Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001–2007; N ≈ 8,600), we assess four dynamic patterns in socioeconomic resources that might account for these growing de…
Psychology (70 works) · Medicine (56 works) · Developmental psychology (49 works) · Sociology (42 works) · Social Psychology (33 works) · Demography (32 works) · Population (31 works) · Political science (24 works) · Socioeconomic status (24 works) · Demography (23 works)