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Eco-anxiety and associated emotions are on the rise. International estimates range from 25–68% prevalence. Australians now regard climate change as their top concern for the future, with some young people reconsidering their intentions to become parents. The emotional sequela from climate change is becoming clearer. How it is conceptualised, responded to, and reinforced within public discourse requires further consideration. This paper presents a multi-method qualitative text and discourse analysis of Australian online news articles published in 2022 reporting on emotions and our ecological future. Drawing on sociological theories of emotions and Foucauldian conceptualisations of discourse, we present insights into the potency of emotions and discourses within online news media. We identify four differing conceptualisations of emotions, interpret what these discourses can do, and conclude with ways in which the public can reclaim agency in resisting discourses that engender passivity in the context of future ecological threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motherhood can bring joy and enrichment but may also be associated with stress leading to poor health outcomes and low life satisfaction. Young mothers are a group particularly at risk of adverse outcomes, including increased social, economic, and health disadvantage following early entry to motherhood. This article reports results from a mixed-method study examining variations in levels of social support reported by mothers. Cross-sectional analyses of survey data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children showed that young mothers (aged less than 25 years when their child was born) generally reported higher levels of social support, but poorer family relationships than older mothers. In-depth interviews with nine young mothers provided insights into how they perceived support under these circumstances. Our research shows that young mothers often experienced difficult childhoods and strained relationships with parents, but many reconnected with their mothers after pregnancy and saw them as important sources of support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contradictory work environments of new economies in late modernity are associated with a range of emotional experiences, requiring diverse emotion management strategies. Late modernity offers the capacity to pursue happy, safe, rewarding, and meaningful work for the privileged few; a potential trade-off between stressful meaningful and boring precarious work for a greater number; and the prospect of non-meaningful, precarious work for many in the new economy characterised by short-term contracts, gig work, precarity, and anxiety. This study draws on data from the 2015–16 Australian Social Attitudes Survey to examine workers' emotions in various combinations of meaningful and precarious employment, and the degree to which these emotions are managed. It finds that it is best to have secure meaningful work, worst to have highly precarious work, and slightly better to have safe but alienating than risky meaningful work, in terms of avoiding often hidden negative emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of crying and love are not what one might expect to find when examining interactions between recreational bodybuilders online. Gendered emotion ideologies, especially related to muscular masculinities, usually forbid men from exhibiting emotional vulnerability in front of other men, as emotional detachment is one of the ways gender hierarchies are maintained. Building on Connell's concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' and Hochschild's concept of 'emotion management', this article analyses emotional exchanges within an international community of male recreational bodybuilders: fans of Aziz Shavershian, known as 'Zyzz'. We examine the meaning of emotions within the Zyzz fandom's local hierarchy of masculinities, the expressive freedoms afforded by the context of their emotional interactions, and the strategies employed by Zyzz and fans to traverse masculine emotion ideologies that usually prevent men from expressing love and affection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based in a novel ‘meta-reflexive’ review of sociology of emotions (SoE) articles, we suggest that there are two primary SoE theoretical traditions that function within geographic silos: the USA is distinctly social psychological, while in the UK and Australia, SoE is more aligned with the humanities. In both traditions, parallel calls are emerging for interdisciplinarity and further engagement with physiological and pre-personal elements of emotion. Based in Archer’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of reflexivity, we assert the merits of reflexively examining SoE, and then identify key changes in SoE that have emerged across time and geography. Using Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts, we conclude that SoE is entering a stage of growth and change, and raise important questions about the subdiscipline’s future direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal carers of cancer patients have high rates of burden, stress, anxiety and unmet needs; yet, some describe caregiving as fulfilling. Building on the work of Thomas and colleagues, this study takes a sociology of emotions approach to understanding variations in carers of cancer patients’ emotional experiences, using interview data with 32 carers of a spouse with cancer. Analysis indicates that a clearly terminal (negative) prognosis facilitates clear priorities, unambiguous emotion management and improved social bonds. A more ambiguous (positive) prognosis, that includes a greater chance of survival, fosters role conflict, clashing feeling rules and ongoing guilt within spousal carers. This study highlights the importance of a prognosis to emotion management, underscoring a phenomenon that is likely to grow as survival rates continue to improve and explaining some of the variation in carers’ experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]