Sarah Knudson

Early, comprehensive and contextually relevant instruction in financial literacy for youth has been found to positively influence financial behaviours as well as psychosocial outcomes such as stress management and feelings of self-efficacy. Yet, financial literacy resources and secondary school curricula have several key limitations, such as piecemeal delivery, which hinder their potential to promote positive and lasting habits. With a focus on the Canadian context, we first assess the potential benefits and limitations of financial literacy education. We then present and assess a newly released financial education curriculum package from Western Canada, analyzing its proposed delivery framework and possibilities for implementation elsewhere.

Three activists have played key roles in recent climate activism in the UK: Greta Thunberg, Dara McAnulty, and Chris Packham. Through qualitative content analysis of popular news coverage, this study explores the messages conveyed about these activists and the social inequities prevalent in media portrayals of activism more broadly. The analysis revealed that while there was content explaining and defining the causes championed by these activists, it was often overshadowed by subject-centric portrayals. The news coverage tended to emphasize the agency and influence of these individuals, while also placing undue focus on their various identity constructs. The coverage also adopted personalized and sensationalized writing strategies. Although this news coverage offered a more inclusive representation of activists in terms of disability, age, and gender, it simultaneously reinforced stereotypes, prejudice, and the authority of White, middle- to upper-class activists from the global North. These findings highlight tensions between reinforcing and challenging the privileged few who are typically allowed to represent and capture public attention and action on pressing issues.

Despite the growing popularity of men’s self-help products, recent debates surrounding hegemonic masculinity, and attention to the “crisis of masculinity,” research has ignored men’s advice about intimate relationships. Consequently, I examine 30 contemporary relationship advice books and conceptualize their constructions of heterosexual masculinity. Findings demonstrate authors’ overall rejection of hegemonic masculinity, alongside an overarching strategy of “masculinizing” intimacy that promotes two subsidiary gender strategies – relational heroism and tempered ambition – which reframe non-hegemonic behavior as manly. The overarching strategy appears in mild forms in books emphasizing “getting laid” and stronger variants in books that promote “growing close” through intimacy. The strategy promotes a promising departure from the constraints of hegemonic masculinity by broadening men’s acceptable range of talking about and doing masculinity, but continues to emphasize gender differe...

Teen motherhood is associated with a variety of adverse consequences in prior literature, even after controlling for selection into teen motherhood. The experience of parenthood, however, is highly gendered, suggesting that the consequences of teenage parenthood might differ for teen mothers and teen fathers. This paper examines gender differences in the long-term human capital, health, and wellbeing consequences of teen parenthood in Canada. OLS and logistic regression models with inverse-probability of treatment weights were estimated using pooled data from the 2006, 2011, and 2017 Canadian General Social Surveys. Models estimate the approximate causal consequences of teen motherhood and fatherhood for measures reported between the ages of 30 and 49. We find that becoming a parent as a teen is similarly detrimental for both women and men in terms of high school completion, postsecondary attendance, personal income, self-reported health, and life satisfaction, even 10 to 35 years after becoming a teen parent. These results, however, should be interpreted with caution because they may be affected by the underreporting of children by men. The findings highlight the importance of considering both teen mothers and teen fathers in efforts to isolate the adverse effects of teen parenthood, and that in Canada, teen fathers face similar disadvantages as teen mothers in these outcomes in their early adulthood to midlife. De nombreuses études montrent que la maternité précoce est associée à une multitude de conséquences négatives chez les adolescentes, même en tenant compte de l’effet de sélection. L’expérience de la parentalité se caractérise néanmoins par de grandes différences entre les sexes, laissant à penser qu’être parent précocement peut produire des effets distincts chez les pères et les mères adolescents. Dans cet article, nous étudions les différences de genre par rapport aux conséquences à long terme de la parentalité adolescente sur le capital humain, la santé et le bien-être au Canada. En nous fondant sur les données regroupées des Enquêtes sociales générales canadiennes (ESG) de 2006, 2011 et 2017, nous avons estimé des modèles de régression MCO et logistique pondérés par la probabilité inverse de traitement. Ces modèles permettent d’évaluer les conséquences causales approximatives de la maternité et de la paternité adolescentes pour tous les indicateurs rapportés entre 30 et 49 ans. Qu’il s'agisse de l’achèvement des études secondaires, de la poursuite des études postsecondaires, des revenus personnels, de la santé autodéclarée et de la satisfaction à l’égard de la vie, nos résultats montrent que devenir parent à l’adolescence est préjudiciable pour les hommes et les femmes de la même façon, même 10 à 35 ans après. Les hommes pouvant sous-déclarer leur paternité, ces résultats peuvent être faussés et doivent être interprétés avec prudence. Nos conclusions soulignent l’importance de considérer indistinctement les mères et les pères adolescents afin d’isoler les conséquences négatives propres à la parentalité précoce, et montrent qu’au Canada, les pères adolescents subissent les mêmes désavantages que les mères adolescentes pour tous ces indicateurs, du début jusqu’au milieu de la vie adulte.

Over the past fifty years, numerous cultural and structural changes have profoundly altered how heterosexual women and men in North America envision and live out their intimate lives. As key social structures where individuals typically sought guidance about their relationships have lost cultural potency, and insecurities about social and economic structures have grown, people have turned increasingly to alternative sources of advice, of which self-help books are a readily available option. In three interrelated studies, this dissertation considers one of North America’s most popular and lucrative book genres—relationship advice—and its readers. On a textual level, it examines connections between ideological shifts in advice and macro-level changes; with regard to audiences, it asks what generates particular modes of self-help reading. All studies then consider the implications of ideological shifts and modes of reading for the creation or maintenance of social boundaries and attend...

There is limited knowledge about the experiences of intimate relationship formation for those with disabilities, particularly amongst Indigenous populations in urban areas. In order to address this research gap, our project uses an Indigenous approach—talking circles facilitated by a Knowledge Keeper—to engage local community members in discussions about their challenges and journeys of relationship formation, and considerations of community-level efforts at improving socialization and safe meeting spaces for disabled Indigenous persons.  Through a central aim of “story-catching” through semi-structured biographical narratives in talking circles, we demonstrate how Indigenous methods can be appropriately and effectively employed to generate rich qualitative data.  Our research also underscores how qualitative Indigenous approaches work to foster an ethical space (Ermine, 2007) between researchers, participants, and their communities, and how this in turn encourages individual and co...

From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal field, we offer an autoethnographic, reflexive account of a three-year research collaboration about close relationships, disability, and social connection. After engaging in one structured reflection exercise, several informal reflective conversations, and a pipe ceremony that marked the beginning of our next research endeavour together, we outline three emergent issues, each representing a point of struggle that ultimately became a strength in our research approach and contributions to knowledge. We also put forward a fourth issue that emerged in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and that has deeply shaped our research and reflection since. Our paper is intended to function as both a specific examination of lessons learned and knowledge generated in our experience of community-engaged Indigenous research, and also as a broader ensemble of principles that can be useful for doing thoughtful an...

Large-scale survey research by social scientists offers general understandings of migrants' challenges and provides assessments of post-migration benchmarks like employment, obtention of educational credentials, and home ownership. Minimal research, however, probes the realm of emotions or "feeling states" in migration and settlement processes, and it is often approached through closed-ended survey questions that superficially assess feeling states. The evaluation of emotions in migration and settlement has been largely left to qualitative researchers using in-depth, interpretive methods like semi-structured interviewing. This approach also has major limitations, namely small sample sizes that capture limited geographic contexts, heavy time burdens analyzing data, and limits to analytic consistency given the nuances of qualitative data coding. Information about migrant emotion states, however, would be valuable to governments and NGOs to enable policy and program devel...

ABSTRACT Young people’s financial lives have undergone change, with delays and struggles attaining stable employment, home ownership, and financial independence. Despite such change, research on the future thinking of young adults suggests the persistent significance of such financial milestones. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 36 young adults aged 18–32 in a mid-sized, prosperous Canadian city, inquiring into their goals and perceptions of their future financial lives in light of their current situations. Findings revealed young adults’ overarching desire for financial security, notably through goals of a steady job, debt reduction, and home ownership. These findings affirm that during this transitional time of life, many young adults are involved in a search for security, hoping to attain financial independence and stability in a conventionally linear and upward fashion. This search for security and stability manifests differently across sociodemographic positions (namely age, gender, birthplace, and socioeconomic status), reflecting differing experiences of precarity, cultural representations of the life course, and positions along financial trajectories. Participants’ visions of their financial futures also appear to connect to factors in the local context, including its relative prosperity, persistence of traditional gender roles, and a relatively modest cost of living compared to other urban centres in Canada.

ABSTRACT Faced with barriers to successful coupling, namely disappointments with online dating, rising numbers of North Americans of varying ages and backgrounds are using personalized, offline matchmaking services to find long-term partners. However, few studies have examined the process interpretively from clients’ and matchmakers’ perspectives. Using interview data from 20 matchmakers and 10 heterosexual clients, content analyses of 102 company websites, and associated client comments and media coverage, this study queries connections between matchmaking’s growing popularity, (un)changing institutions, and gender relations. Analyses demonstrate that opportunities and constraints offered by the strategy are gendered, with men largely maintaining the partnering privileges they enjoy in other dating arenas and women making modest gains when participating as paying clients. Experiences are further shaped by age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

In Eat Pray Love, the film adaptation of author Elizabeth Gilbert’s tale of travel and self-discovery, we see American consumer culture on display. Lucrative industries are ready to help women navigate crises of identity, but these solutions might be nothing more than salves.

Many universities internationally now make concerted efforts to promote curriculum development and classroom and campus cultures that recognize diversity in student viewpoints and life experiences. Increasingly, these efforts have involved promoting recognition and inclusion of indigenous knowledges in the university setting. If adopted in the classroom, the promotion of indigenous perspectives suggests exciting possibilities for teaching qualitative research critically. Existing educational resources, however, offer little guidance on achieving this through undergraduate qualitative methods teaching. Using examples of Canadian undergraduate teaching initiatives, I suggest that by integrating indigenous methods, perspectives, and epistemology, particularly through student opportunities for community-engaged learning and exposure to participatory action research, teaching qualitative research can promote critical recognition of multiple ways of knowing. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/u...

From our standpoints as Indigenous and ally researchers in the social sciences and socio-legal field, we offer an autoethnographic, reflexive account of a three-year research collaboration about close relationships, disability, and social connection.  After engaging in one structured reflection exercise, several informal reflective conversations, and a pipe ceremony that marked the beginning of our next research endeavour together, we outline three emergent issues, each representing a point of struggle that ultimately became a strength in our research approach and contributions to knowledge.  We also put forward a fourth issue that emerged in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and that has deeply shaped our research and reflection since.  Our paper is intended to function as both a specific examination of lessons learned and knowledge generated in our experience of community-engaged Indigenous research, and also as a broader ensemble of principles that can be useful for doing thoughtful and critical reflective practice from an Indigenous perspective.  We maintain that, taken together, the issues and principles we bring forth help to clarify how reflection on Indigenous research can assess whether and how we are doing our work in a ‘good way,’ and exemplify an approach that strives to empower communities while generating new knowledge.

An historically high proportion of Canadian and American young adults are living with their parents. This trend has stimulated research and theorization of “coresidence,” yet recent reviews of the subject are lacking. In this paper, we examine literature on coresiding families spanning the last 25 years, focusing discussion on their economic, cultural, gendered, familial, and psychological characteristics. We argue that theoretical understanding of this topic is expanding, that knowledge of this issue is improving in nuance, but that, despite these encouraging trends, researchers have neglected to examine the actual practices and consequences of coresidence. As a result, the field offers little guidance to parents, young adults, and family counselors. We recommend that researchers expand their methodological approaches, introducing more longitudinal and qualitative designs to capture the day-to-day practices of these families and the consequences of coresidence over time. In addition, we offer some guiding principles for practitioners working with young adults and their parents, based on our findings.

Young people’s financial lives have undergone change, with delays and struggles attaining stable employment, home ownership, and financial independence. Despite such change, research on the future thinking of young adults suggests the persistent significance of such financial milestones. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 36 young adults aged 18–32 in a mid-sized, prosperous Canadian city, inquiring into their goals and perceptions of their future financial lives in light of their current situations. Findings revealed young adults’ overarching desire for financial security, notably through goals of a steady job, debt reduction, and home ownership. These findings affirm that during this transitional time of life, many young adults are involved in a search for security, hoping to attain financial independence and stability in a conventionally linear and upward fashion. This search for security and stability manifests differently across sociodemographic positions (namely age, gender, birthplace, and socioeconomic status), reflecting differing experiences of precarity, cultural representations of the life course, and positions along financial trajectories. Participants’ visions of their financial futures also appear to connect to factors in the local context, including its relative prosperity, persistence of traditional gender roles, and a relatively modest cost of living compared to other urban centres in Canada.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to build on limited understandings of how readers engage with non-fiction. Drawing from prior research and three recent case studies involving non-fiction reading, this paper considers heterogeneity in modes of reading and the central role of libraries in fostering non-fiction reading cultures.
Design/methodology/approach – Findings from three recent case studies of non fiction reading about relationship advice; developmental disorders; and financial planning, based on qualitative interviews, participant observation and survey data, are used to assess and expand understandings of non-fiction reading and collections.
Findings – There is considerable heterogeneity in modes of non-fiction reading, and readers often appropriate non-fiction texts for purposes unintended by the authors. Both physical and online libraries function as sites where non-fiction reading can be used by a broad range of demographic groups to participate in individual or group-based resistance to structural and cultural sources of power and inequality.
Practical implications – This paper provides insight into the role and value of non-fiction collections.
Social implications – Findings speak to the value of robust funding for print and online non-fiction collections in communities and schools.
Originality/value – This paper offers new empirical and theoretical insight into how non-fiction collections are used by a range of demographic
groups in community and school contexts. Sociological theories are introduced to highlight the role of non-fiction collections in facilitating social
change at individual and group levels.

Faced with barriers to successful coupling, namely disappointments with online dating, rising numbers of North Americans of varying ages and backgrounds are using personalized, offline matchmaking services to find long-term partners. However, few studies have examined the process interpretively from clients’ and matchmakers’ perspectives. Using interview data from 20 matchmakers and 10 heterosexual clients, content analyses of 102 company websites, and associated client comments and media coverage, this study queries connections between matchmaking’s growing popularity, (un)changing institutions, and gender relations. Analyses demonstrate that opportunities and constraints offered by the strategy are gendered, with men largely maintaining the partnering privileges they enjoy in other dating arenas and women making modest gains when participating as paying clients. Experiences are further shaped by age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Large-scale survey research by social scientists offers general understandings of migrants' challenges and provides assessments of post-migration benchmarks like employment, obtention of educational credentials, and home ownership. Minimal research, however, probes the realm of emotions or " feeling states " in migration and settlement processes, and it is often approached through closed-ended survey questions that superficially assess feeling states. The evaluation of emotions in migration and settlement has been largely left to qualitative researchers using in-depth, interpretive methods like semi-structured interviewing. This approach also has major limitations, namely small sample sizes that capture limited geographic contexts, heavy time burdens analyzing data, and limits to analytic consistency given the nuances of qualitative data coding. Information about migrant emotion states, however, would be valuable to governments and NGOs to enable policy and program development tailored to migrant challenges and frustrations, and would thereby stimulate economic development through thriving migrant populations. In this paper, we present an interdisciplinary pilot project that offers a way through the methodological impasse by subjecting exhaustive qualitative interviews of migrants to sentiment analysis using the Python NLTK toolkit. We propose that data scientists can efficiently and accurately produce large-scale assessments of migrant feeling states through collaboration with social scientists.

We rely heavily on the Internet for many activities, including accessing dating websites and using apps to search for romance and intimacy (see Milbrodt 2019).  With that in mind, meet Ella Dove, a 25-year-old amputee who has had her share of struggles with online dating, including being conflicted about whether to disclose her disability, awkward silences with potential dates following disability disclosure, being ghosted, receiving inappropriate sexual questions (e.g., Do you keep your prosthetic leg on during sex?) and meeting men with a foot fetish.  After a series of setbacks, Ella finds her life partner, Greg, who loves her for who she is (Dove 2019).  But why did Ella’s physical disability matter so much while she struggled to form romantic relationships?  How do people with disabilities navigate the world of dating and hooking up?

Committing Sociology is a Canadian-contributed text intended as a primary text for introductory undergraduate sociology courses.  The text’s overarching critical framework underscores sociology’s aims of addressing social inequalities and working toward social change, and it considers the role of values and ideologies in guiding research processes.  It aims to introduce theoretical and methodological tools for questioning inequalities and power structures, consider how sociology can give voice to vulnerable populations, and address shifts within the discipline from doing research on to doing research with populations that promote empowerment through research.

Reconciliation and Indigenous ways of knowing are major themes throughout, with theory and methods chapters that are Indigenous co-authored.

The central focus of Chapter 3 is on a major transition in the life course: the choice and act of creating an intimate partnership in contemporary society, with or without children. In this chapter, Knudson discusses the pathways along which people can form couples, including Internet dating, matchmaking, and marriage, and presents innovative ways of constructing intimate relations such as polyamory. While attention is given to couples who remain childless by choice and the non procreative avenues by which people bring children into their lives, Knudson also observes the consistency of family composition—a mother and father and children—over time.