While existing research offers mixed evidence on how the COVID‐19 pandemic affected adults' division of housework, adolescents have remained largely overlooked in this regard. Using nationally representative data from the 2019–2021 American Time Use Survey and Current Population Survey, this study examines changes in adolescents' unpaid labor before and during the pandemic using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses. Results indicate that boys' domestic labor time remained stable, whereas girls' time decreased during the pandemic, when schools were closed and youth unemployment was high. Individual‐level time availability was associated with modest reductions in domestic labor time, but its explanatory power was limited relative to gender. Despite these changes, a substantial gender gap in total unpaid labor persisted. Girls consistently performed more routine housework than boys, while gender differences were not significant for discretionary chores. The findings provide partial support for time availability theory while underscoring the continued salience of gender in shaping adolescents' domestic labor. By centering youth, the study extends existing scholarship and raises concerns that these patterns may have reinforced gendered expectations about unpaid work.

Thrift shopping, or “thrifting,” has gained widespread popularity over the past 15+ years. Sociological inquiry into thrifting has linked the phenomenon to a wide‐ranging blend of conditions and factors that principally include economic necessity, resistance to economic, environmental, and labor injustices, and hedonism. Yet, how thrift shoppers come to engage thrifting as an agentic, identity‐forming process remains relatively neglected in the relevant literatures. This article introduces a new theoretical perspective to this body of research that centers on a reciprocal dynamic between human and material agency that spurs and sustains thrifting as a form of reflexive consumption and identity work. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with 37 undergraduate student thrift shoppers at an American public research university. I articulate three core elements that characterize thrifting as a form of reflexive consumption and identity work: (1) initial thrifting experiences, (2) reflexivity and self‐formation, and (3) agentic reciprocation. The study empirically shows how thrifting can be an agentic act underpinned by a reciprocal dynamic that turns on materiality, reflexivity, and ongoing identity work.

We use in‐depth interviews to explore the ways that on‐campus students at a selective liberal arts college responded to COVID‐19 regulations in spring 2021. We contribute to the literature on risky behaviors by showing that the “risk frames” these students adopted emphasized the social (wanting to be with friends) and situational (wanting to avoid punishment) concerns for their risky behavior in a setting where the risk of getting others sick was not a salient influence on their behaviors. We also provide a novel case study for “tool kit” approaches to culture by examining the “unsettled” lives of students in “unsettled” times while responding to calls for cultural sociologists to pay increased attention to interactional contexts. Finally, the focus on students at a selective liberal arts college also allows us to make an important addition to research on student responses to risk during the COVID‐19 pandemic, which typically focuses on quantitative surveys of students at large institutions and provides insight into student responses to college behavioral regulations more broadly.

We examine whether the timing and duration of COVID-19 school closures during fall 2020 and winter 2020/21 are associated with employed parents' self-rated health compared to non-parents and parents unexposed to closures. Data comes from a longitudinal survey of 227 employed parents of school-aged children and 497 employed community residents without minor children in an affluent, semi-rural mid-Atlantic county. School closure exposure is measured using interview dates, residential addresses, children's ages, and district-specific closure dates. Multivariate models predict high self-rated health as a function of (1) whether the interview occurred before, during, or after a closure and (2) cumulative days of exposure, adjusting for pandemic-related experiences, social status, proximity to the 2020 election, and school district fixed effects. In fall 2020, fathers reported lower self-rated health during closures and with greater cumulative exposure, while mothers reported higher self-rated health. By winter 2020/21, parental health declined, and closures were nearly universal, eliminating associations. Results highlight gendered health impacts shaped by community resources and pre-pandemic norms about parenting.

Christian nationalists in the United States call for the government to reflect Christian ideals, but it is unclear how theological interpretations would manifest in governmental policy in areas like healthcare. Given Biblical commands to help the sick, Christian nationalists may support the governmental provision of healthcare. However, scholars have noted a starkly individualistic orientation among Christian nationalists, which may lead to opposition to the government paying for medical care. We examine the effect of Christian nationalist ideology on attitudes about whether the government should help sick people pay their medical bills. Using General Social Survey data ( n = 1846), an ordinal logistic regression analysis reveals that Christian nationalists are more opposed to the government paying for medical bills, instead believing people should help themselves, and this effect is independent of other political and religious orientations. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings elucidate the structural consequences of Christian nationalism.

Although singlehood is a desired lifestyle for an increasing number of heterosexual women and men, many are involuntarily single, struggling to find a partner. Meanwhile, popular debates about dating are sharply polarized along gendered lines. While “incels” see themselves as victims on a dating market ruled by women, relatively mainstreamed feminist sensibilities frame heterosexuality as marked by men's power. This article investigates how Swedish heterosexual long‐term involuntary singles experience and make sense of the gendered conditions of contemporary dating. Addressing the tendency in online dating for women to receive significantly more attention and responses from men than men do from women, we reveal substantial tensions in how the participants understand this gendered dynamic, with the men tending to interpret it as a matter of women's power, while the women's experiences and perspectives complicate this notion considerably. By identifying some key mechanisms involved in producing these divergences in women's and men's perspectives, our analysis deepens understandings of contemporary gendered conflicts around love, while also shedding light on the antifeminist dynamics of the incel community.