Research Agenda #1: Racism and Families

My current research on racism and families uses Critical Race Theory as a theoretical perspective to challenge conventional sociological research on racial inequality among families. The central question guiding this line of research is as follows: Why does Black-White inequality persist in the US? While most reasonable people recognize racial inequality as a social fact, strong disagreements emerge about why racial inequality exists and persists. Some Americans view Black-White inequality as a by-product of a lack of effort among people racialized as Black. Yet, many other Americans view racial inequality as a by-product of structural conditions (e.g., laws, policies, social practices, etc.). My work attempts to resolve disparate views by paying close attention to the relationship between racism and race. I argue that racism (as ideologies and structures) make the idea of race possible. This relationship between racism and race is important for understanding (1) the making of racial stratification, (2) the maintenance of racial stratification, and (3) the manifestation of racial stratification.

Research Agenda #2: Racism, Race, & Quantitative Methods

My second line of research focuses on racism, race, and quantitative methods. It is concerned with how and in what ways scholars approach understanding racial inequality via quantitative methods (statistics).

Given that the quantitative study of racial inequality is rooted in eugenics, there is a need to critically understand how to employ quantitative methods to examine racial inequality without running the risk of reducing race as biologically real. As such, my work research guide for family scientists who quantitatively study racial inequality and families.

Research Agenda #3: Stress, Health, & Families

How do couples respond to external factors such as economic hardship, work stress, or race/gender discrimination? How do individuals in romantic relationships respond to their partner’s stress and health? How does stress and health from one partner affect the health and stress of the other partner? Do stress and health affect the quality of relationships in couples? Are the responses symmetrical or asymmetrical – that is, do both partners respond similarly or differently?

To address the above questions, my work uses data from the Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study. One of the strengths of the study is that both parents were interviewed after the birth of their child, and were re-interviewed when the child was one-, three-, five-, and nine-years old. I take advantage of the longitudinal design and leverage data from both parents over time to understand stress, health, and relationship outcomes as longitudinal and dyadic process.

Theoretically, I take an “integrated” approach to address the complexity of stress and health in couple dyads. For instance, I use stress theories such as the stress process and the family stress model in tandem with couple-level theories such as emotional contagion or stress crossover to present a more holistic picture of families. Analytically, I employ dyadic data analysis and longitudinal structural equation modeling to address many of my research questions. For a list of my publications, see CV tab.

My interest in couple dyads has pushed me to think about families, stress, and health in novel ways. For instance, I collected data from African American couples for a pilot study titled “Couples’ Physiological Synchronicity: Stress, Health, and Relationship Functioning in Everyday Life” to understand health physiology, stress, and relationship quality among couple dyads.

The point of departure for this research is the idea of “allostatic load” – that is, “the wear and tear on the body” which grows over time when individuals are exposed to repeated or chronic stress. The Biopsychosocial Model of Family guides this work. As such, I am collecting data that include salivary cortisol, physiological data (e.g., electrodermal activity, heart rate, etc.) via wearable devices, and ecological momentary assessments through smartphone technology to capture emotion states, stress, and relationship interactions over the course of the day. The study is designed to understand how external factors (e.g., discrimination, work, etc.) and family life “gets under the skin” to influence health.