Abstract
In reviewing the chapter list for Cristen Dalessandro's Intimate Inequalities: Millennials’ Romantic Relationships in Contemporary Times, it is clear she is taking on a big task: addressing gender, age, race, AND social class, with a dash of sexual orientation, in millennial romantic relationships. Yet her text skillfully and thoroughly analyzes all these identities as well as their intersections, and Dalessandro brings together an incredibly complete picture of the ways in which millennials, as “emerging adults,” conceptualize, resist, and reinforce various forms of social inequality.
Each chapter of Dalessandro's book focuses on one of these identities—though always with an eye toward intersectionality—and builds toward a cumulative discussion of how the millennial generation is thinking about marriage as an institution. Within each chapter, she introduces the reader to a handful of interviewees who represent experiences across the spectrum of the focal identity to show where commonalities lie and where distinctive differences emerge. One of Dalessandro's recurring themes is that millennials are often assumed to be—and often see themselves as—a particularly socially aware generation, one that is uniquely equipped to navigate social inequalities. The quotes from participants presented in the text are thoughtfully chosen to illustrate that while awareness may be greater among these young adults, “walking the walk” in their intimate lives often proves to be more challenging, both consciously and unconsciously.
Dalessandro uses in’depth semi-structured interviews to elicit her participants’ intimacy stories, which range over the course of romantic and sexual relationships throughout their lifetimes. Dalessandro's participants are reasonably diverse, covering the spectrum of racial/ethnic identities, social class circumstances (both current and background), and sexual orientation, within her specified age range of 22 to 32. While everyone in her study appears to align to at least some degree within the gender binary (that is, there is no one who identifies fully as nonbinary or another gender), she has a few transgender or genderqueer men as well; there were no women who identified as genderqueer or trans, based on her notes. The variety of participants she has recruited lends great support to the cross’identity comparisons she makes, suggesting the views and trends described are at least somewhat broader than just one person.
Because Dalessandro considers so many different forms of inequality, her research is broadly applicable and appealing to sociologists who study a variety of topics. Dalessandro's analysis aptly demonstrates that individuals are often more willing to admit to biases (even if they do not recognize them as such) when discussing their intimate relationships, because they are readily disguised as “personal preference,” as the author and others have noted. However, the nature of some of these biases suggests they are likely to bleed over into other areas of life, and thus Dalessandro hints at some ways in which the perpetuation of inequality in intimate relationships is both indicative of and contributive to the perpetuation of inequality more broadly.
Intimate Inequalities is, in some ways, the latest in a long scholarly tradition of explorations of romantic relationships and families and inequalities—The Second Shift (Hochschild and Machung 1989) and The Mating Game (Lamont 2020) both come to mind (and are cited in the text)—but it is also novel in its consideration of the intersections of a variety of identities and its intense focus on the narratives of a population having an experience that is somewhat newly conceptualized in sociology: emerging adulthood. Dalessandro's focus on those who are (and have been for a few years) legally adults, yet still feel very much unestablished and have yet to reach what they consider to be significant “adult” milestones such as marriage or homeownership, brings an enlightening perspective to the role partner’seeking plays in adult development. While when discussing identity, scholars may feel frustrated that one simply cannot “address everything,” Dalessandro demonstrates that one can, in fact, address quite a bit, and that in fact sometimes it is nigh impossible to discuss one identity without considering another.
In opting to tackle the millennial generation, both intentionally and by dint of the fact that they are the generation currently in this “emerging adulthood” stage of the life course, Dalessandro also takes on the rather sizable task of addressing why millennial patterns in partnering have begun to shift. She describes the significant national and global events that have shaped this generation's adulthood, including the 2008 recession, the student loan debt crisis, and most recently, a global pandemic. Although not her primary focus, Dalessandro touches on the ways these events have both perpetuated and perhaps accelerated pre’existing relationship trends, including the delaying of first marriage (or opting out of marriage altogether) and rising rates of non’marital cohabitation. Dalessandro challenges some assumptions about why these patterns are occurring that have been developed based on data regarding previous generations, demonstrating that millennials of all genders are prioritizing career advancement and stability prior to “settling down” and are more skeptical of marriage generally, even if they see it as a likely event in their lives. Although at first glance her consideration of marriage may seem not to fit with the analysis in the rest of the text, Dalessandro points to marriage as a site of persistent gender inequality, as well as its position as a battleground not only recently, in the 2015 marriage equality Supreme Court decision, but historically as well, in the legalization of interracial marriage in 1967. Thus she demonstrates that marriage is a key institution of inequality, and millennials are increasingly taking this into consideration—although many of them, particularly straight and cisgender millennials, still assume that it is an institution in which they will eventually participate.
Particularly unique among studies of this sort is Dalessandro's consideration of age and its related power differentials. Rather than assuming relationships with large age gaps (seemingly defined as ten years or more) are outliers or uncommon, she discusses them as at least a semi’regular occurrence, and the experiences of her participants seem to confirm this. Although she does not present any quantitative material along with her findings—the number of participants, say, who have been in relationships with large age gaps—she presents stories from enough interviewees to suggest it is not a negligible number of people. Her consideration of the social significance of these relationships and the role they play in adult development is among her most unique contributions.
Also worthy of note is her reconceptualization of her class designations. Rather than letting participants self’identify or using overly static categories and proxies, Dalessandro identifies her participants using both their background and their current circumstances, classifying them as “class advantaged,”“class disadvantaged,” or “upwardly mobile.” The “upwardly mobile” group is composed of those from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds who have achieved or expect to achieve middle’class or greater status in adulthood, primarily through acquisition of a college degree and its associated improved earning possibilities. The nature of the upwardly mobile class proves to be especially significant in her analysis, and her novel method of classification allows her to unveil the particular beliefs of those in the process of accruing greater resources that differ from those who will remain essentially at the same socioeconomic class they grew up in, whether advantaged or not.
Intimate Inequalities is not theoretically dense, with a much heavier focus on the empirical experiences of inequality rather than the development of a modernized inequality theory. Romantic relationships make for an excellent site of study for such an investigation, because they are so tightly tied to homophily, or the desire to build bonds with people we perceive to be “like us.” Homophily resides at the core of many of the forms of inequality that Dalessandro considers in her analysis and is in many ways the main theoretical driver of the research. While Dalessandro does not explicitly define an updated version of homophily based on her findings, implicit within the text is the characterization of millennials as ostensibly anti-homophilous—that is, open to and perhaps even desirous of more diverse romantic relationships. Yet in practice, millennials still frequently choose partners from, in particular, similar racial/ethnic and class circumstances to themselves, as well as somewhat close in age; they tend to find (and by extension expect) their more diverse relationships to be likely to fail, whether over the short- or long’term. This is, of course, in contrast with gender, which for straight millennials is inherently different within their relationships and brings with it intrinsic power differentials. Taken together, all these factors lay the groundwork for the consideration of novel theories of homophily and inequality among millennials and the generations to follow, although the author does not explicitly undertake the building of such.
The greatest utility of Dalessandro's research is, in my opinion, not in seeing romantic relationships as distinct from other social relationships that might perpetuate inequality, but rather as a key microcosm of other, less intimate social relationships. One might consider, for example, the desired social distance scale (Cumming and Cumming 1957; Link et al. 1999) often used to measure stigma, which includes willingness to work closely with a person, be friends with a person, live next door to someone, and have a person marry into the family. This suggests similarities between intimate relationships and other sorts of social interactions, such as being coworkers or neighbors, as places where stigma—and often, by extension, inequality—might exist. Thus, Dalessandro's demonstration of the persistence of certain forms of inequality within romantic relationships could be seen as a strong indicator of these inequalities and their associated biases in other contexts, such as workplaces. For this reason, her text is crucial for scholars of inequality in many spaces to consider as an important illustration of how inequality is perceived and perpetuated by the adults who are rapidly becoming the leaders in their communities and workplaces.
Dalessandro’s analysis is not without limitations, the most significant being that all her interviewees resided in the same geographic location, in the U.S. Mountain West. While she addresses her reasoning for this in her beautifully thorough methodological appendix, it does limit the generalizability of her findings, especially when considering those located far from the coasts, the millennials of Middle America. Along these lines, she does not discuss religion or political orientation much in her text. While religion garners a brief mention at the end of Chapter Six, “Millennial Marriage: Not a One-Size-Fits-All,” it is mentioned as a notable absence from her interviews themselves. As Dalessandro points out, this is representative of the religious non’affiliation of millennials as a whole, but is one characteristic that would likely differ significantly with a less urban/suburban sample or a sample from a different geographic location.
Political orientation or affiliation, meanwhile, goes almost entirely unmentioned; it is largely addressed within discussions critiquing marriage as an institution, a critique that is often closely associated with liberal leanings. One might expect that the range of background factors Dalessandro describes would likely contribute to the development of varying political beliefs, which might in turn contribute to more or less investment in combatting status quo inequality or willingness to have inter’identity relationships. Again, given the geographic location, in conjunction with the age group, and based on the interview selections included in the text, it is reasonable to assume that many of the participants had more liberal viewpoints. Given the degree to which the salient background characteristics shape these political viewpoints, and the ways in which political viewpoints contribute to challenging or reinforcing inequality, it is a striking omission not even addressed as an aside in the text; and there is no mention of the underrepresentation of conservative viewpoints that seems likely in the sample.
Intimate Inequalities is an excellent book for courses in the sociology of intimate relationships or marriage and family, but it could also be useful for sociology of gender, race, or class, as well as aging and the life course, in full or in chapters, as a case study for how inequalities are reproduced in interpersonal relationships. Dalessandro's book may also serve as a useful gateway for undergraduates in introductory courses to begin to understand social inequality, as it situates these inequalities within a context familiar to many of them and creates a jumping’off point for discussing the ways in which inequality is structural but reproduced at the individual and interpersonal levels as well. Additionally, Dalessandro includes an excellent positionality statement in the introduction and an admirably detailed methodological appendix, which would make for a strong example for students in a qualitative methods class.
In sum, Dalessandro's Intimate Inequalities is an impressive text, not only for its wide’ranging yet thorough consideration of various inequalities and their intersections, but also for the author's skill in being readable without sacrificing high’level analysis. She paints the pictures of her participants such that it is easy to imagine them sitting across from the reader in the pubs, parks, and coffee shops in which they were interviewed, while deftly connecting the interviews to one another and to broader social theory. In doing so, Dalessandro successfully provides a thoughtful and vivid analysis of the ways inequality persists in intimate relationships in a new generation of adults.