Date/Time
Date(s) - March 10, 2025
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Location
Wold Research Center, Visual Arts

Categories No Categories

Join us for the second of three Sociology-in-Progress Community Gatherings this spring.

What’s a Parent to Do? Socioeconomic Variation in Parenting Logics Measured with Computational Text Analysis

Dr. Pat Hastings

U.S. Parenting varies widely by socioeconomic status, but it is unclear how much of this reflects different cultural beliefs versus or reflects differences in the resources required to enact the types of parenting that parents believe would be best. In this talk, I’ll share a novel approach to measure parenting logics using computational text analysis of advice respondents gave to hypothetical parenting scenarios. I’ll also show there is little difference in how parenting logics vary by race/ethnicity, education, and income, suggesting more similarity across groups and more variability within groups than commonly understood. Finally, I’ll discuss how this work fits into a broader ongoing project to understand the socioeconomic correlates of parenting and their effects on kids.

Dr. Hastings is an Associate Professor of Sociology at CSU, with research interests mostly centered around inequality and family demography. He recently completed a sabbatical as a visiting scholar at Sciences Po in Paris and Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. In this talk, he will share some highlights from his sabbatical experience and insights from one of his recent research projects.