Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Marla Miller, Distinguished Professor of History, UMass Amherst

For generations, most Americans knew – and maybe believed – a story about upholstery seamstress Betsy Ross and the making of the nation’s first flag.

In the account passed down through her family, Ross was a young Philadelphia widow when George Washington and a congressional committee asked her to make a flag for the Colonies uniting in rebellion against England.

A sketch showed what they envisioned: red and white stripes and a constellation of six-pointed stars across a blue field.

But, the story continues, Ross folded a piece of paper “just so,” made a single cut, and voila! She produced a perfect five-pointed star. The men approved, she stitched a flag, Congress cheered and history was made.

As a historian of early American craftswomen, including Ross, I have often seen how mythologies – history’s sound bites – can bury richer and deeper understandings of the past. That’s the case with Betsy Ross, whose story was never about designing one flag but about producing many – and being one of thousands of women whose labor was essential to the nation’s origins.

Making of a legend

In 1870, Ross’ grandson William J. Canby recounted the family’s story about Betsy Ross and the making of the first flag in a speech to the Pennsylvania Historical Society. Historians and members of the public greeted the tale with skepticism.

Canby’s best efforts notwithstanding, no archival evidence then – or since – has confirmed that Ross fabricated the first U.S. flag.

Still, the story gained traction. For a long while, Ross was a popular historical figure in U.S. culture, up there with the likes of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams. One of the earliest biopics imagined her life story, and her name graced everything from dolls to decanters. Over time, thousands of people began visiting her supposed home at 239 Arch St. in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia. The landmark is preserved as a house museum.

As late as the 1980s, history professor Michael Frisch reported that “college students asked to name any person from pre–Civil War America who is not a politician or military figure” included Ross “year after year.”

But in the years following the 1976 U.S. bicentennial, Ross’ fame was already cresting. Today many Americans aren’t entirely sure whether she was real or fictional.

Widow turned aspiring government contractor

Elizabeth Griscom Ross was indeed real. She was an upholstery worker who lived in Philadelphia from the 1750s to the 1830s. While no written record confirms the flag story, ample evidence survives to document the successful multigenerational flagmaking enterprise that she launched and then sustained with her daughter and granddaughters.

According to an oral history recorded with Ross’ youngest daughter, sometime in the 1760s a young Elizabeth Griscom, who was born in 1752, joined a sister employed by Philadelphia upholsterer John Webster. Ross learned the craft of upholstery as well as the making of tassels and fringe from Ann King, who oversaw women’s work there.

Ross married upholstery apprentice John Ross in 1773, and the pair launched a small shop. John died in January 1776. Ross’ second husband, mariner Joseph Ashburn, served the Revolution as a privateer and died in an English prison. In 1783, another privateer, John Claypoole, became Ross’ third husband, and the couple raised a large family and lived full lives in the city.

My take on the legend’s veracity is that it is partly accurate, partly not, and there isn’t really any “first” flag.

What is certainly true is this: Ross found herself widowed in 1776 just as Philadelphia braced for British forces, an effort that required the building of a navy and new flags representing the Americans. Women all around the seaport were getting contracts to stitch flags, and Ross surely wanted in.

The “Did she or didn’t she sew the ‘first flag’?” question is usually framed as a story of design, but it’s not: It’s a story of production.

Ross, drawing on years of experience, was saying to these potential clients, “If you want a lot of these flags, and fast, five-pointed stars work better.”

Women’s massive wartime effort

When Betsy Ross told this story later to her children and grandchildren, at the heart of the story is a young craftswoman who met the “Father of Our Country” – and believed she taught him something.

Understanding Ross’ real life is important because her story offers a view of women’s massive wartime production of flags, uniforms, tents, knapsacks and more – and because of the deep pride she and women like her felt in their contributions to the independence movement.

Hundreds of Philadelphia women – including, briefly, Ross – manufactured ordnance for the Schuylkill arsenal. White, Black, Indigenous, enslaved and free women provided labor in the form of nursing, cooking, and making and maintaining clothes that was essential to military encampments. Women shaped diplomacy directly, especially among Indigenous peoples, and indirectly as they shared their perspectives with husbands, fathers and sons. They also managed affairs for absent family and stretched scarce resources to sustain wartime households.

Whatever she did or did not offer to the making of the first U.S. flag, Elizabeth Griscom Ross Ashburn Claypoole certainly enjoyed a long career in flagmaking.

The best documentation for this came just before the War of 1812. When Purveyor of public supplies Tench Coxe needed flags, he steered contracts to the onetime Elizabeth Ross, now known as Elizabeth Claypoole. In 1808, for instance, Coxe recorded that yards of blue fabric were en route to her; weeks later, the craftswoman submitted a bill for two garrison flags, two silk flags and seven regimental colors.

In 1810, she was contracted for six 18-by-24-foot garrison flags for a military installation at New Orleans. These flags unfolded to 432 square feet and required more than 100,000 stitches. They must have been well received because another order followed, for 46 garrison flags, which she was to deliver “with all dispatch” to the arsenal. Orders also came in from the Indian Department to produce dozens of flags used in diplomatic exchanges with Native nations.

By the time the U.S. went to war with England a second time in 1812, flags by Elizabeth Claypoole, aka “Betsy Ross,” flew all around the United States.

Over her long career, Betsy Ross produced an unknown number of flags – the hundred or so recorded in archival sources represent a fraction of her total output. As the U.S. observes the 250th anniversary of its independence, Ross’ real life – today fully interpreted by the dedicated staff of the Betsy Ross House – offers a view into the lives of working women across America whose wartime labor helped build a nation.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

Marla Miller receives funding from the National Park Service as a consultant providing expertise on women and the the American Revolution.

– ref. What Betsy Ross’ real story tells us about women’s work in the Revolution − and why it still matters 250 years later – https://theconversation.com/what-betsy-ross-real-story-tells-us-about-womens-work-in-the-revolution-and-why-it-still-matters-250-years-later-276582

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matt A. Barreto, Professor of Political Science, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

In 2024, Donald Trump dramatically improved his performance among nearly all groups of voters from four years earlier. Trump’s growth among Hispanic voters was especially notable, increasing by more than 10 points from 2020 to 2024, at least according to exit polls.

This led to a considerable amount of commentary speculating that Hispanic voters, historically more supportive of Democrats, might continue shifting toward the GOP.

News reports suggesting Latinos were critical to Trump’s 2024 victory were, in our view, overblown. Even if Latinos had not shifted, Trump still would have won in 2024.

Yet there is no question that over the past three election cycles, Latino voters – Latino men under 40, in particular – have shifted right. That change has benefited GOP candidates, even as the majority of Latinos still voted for Democrats.

However, evidence from general elections in 2025 in places such as New Jersey, New York and Virginia, as well as special elections in 2026, suggest an abrupt correction is underway, with some of the Latino voters who backed Trump now swinging back to the Democrats.

As political scientists and pollsters who study Hispanic voting trends, we are concerned with the question of whether these latest movements are real or simply a function of fluctuating Latino Democratic turnout rates. In other words, are Latinos broadly changing their votes back to Democrats, or are Latinos who remained loyal to the Democrats now more angry and fired up?

Survey and election data suggest it’s a bit of both. So what does this portend for the future of American politics?

Latino voting trends

The history of the Latino vote nationwide had for decades been one of long-term stability. Historically, Democrats enjoyed an approximate 65% to 35% advantage over Republicans.

That advantage shrank marginally after Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, providing a path to citizenship for millions. But the more familiar two-thirds advantage for the Democratic Party returned following passage of Proposition 187, a 1994 anti-immigrant initiative in California that ultimately mobilized Latinos against Republicans.

Another effort at GOP outreach to Hispanic voters culminated in President George W. Bush taking approximately 40% of the Latino vote in 2004. That growth, however, soon eroded in the wake of anti-immigrant legislation passed by the Republican-controlled House in 2005 and 2006.

The successful campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, as well as Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 campaign against Trump, saw Democrats reaping a relatively high level of Latino support, peaking at a 3-to-1 advantage in 2012.

That made Trump’s improvements among Latinos in 2020 and 2024 feel, for some, particularly unexpected. He lodged notable breakthroughs in parts of Florida, where he carried Miami-Dade County, and Texas, where he flipped the historically Democratic Rio Grande Valley.

Some Latinos question whether Democrats have delivered

It should not have been such a surprise. There has been a history of sizable shares of Latinos supporting Republican candidates. For instance, both former President George W. Bush and his brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, performed well with Latinos in Texas and Florida.

For two decades, Democrats have campaigned among Latinos on the promise of comprehensive immigration reform and an economic policy that would level the playing field, including raising the federal minimum wage, providing universal pre-K education and promoting affordable housing.

Many Latinos feel they are still waiting for these Democratic policies to be enacted, let alone improve their lives.

Democratic trifectas in 2009-10 and 2021-22 – when the party held both chambers of Congress, along with the presidency – failed to produce meaningful movement on immigration policy. Many Latinos felt their daily lives had not improved, as they faced high costs of living, expensive housing markets and rising health care costs. While House Democrats did pass numerous bills to address these topics, Senate moderates proved difficult to persuade.

Given these shortcomings, running on the message that “the GOP are bad guys” only gets Democrats so far. In 2024, surveys and focus groups of Hispanic voters made it clear that not everyone was convinced by this characterization. The frustrations of working-class families during the Biden administration were real, whereas fears of mass deportations and other social chaos that a second Trump term might portend were, at that point, conjecture.

The Trump campaign specifically promised widespread action against immigrants, but many of our Latino focus group participants felt this was bluster. They believed that Trump’s actions would be targeted against blatant criminals and that his policies would not affect their families and friends.

They did not believe the worst-case scenarios presented by Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats during the campaign. Despite often not liking Trump, his economic promises felt good during the 2024 affordability crisis.

Latinos shifting back left?

Many Latinos are now quite upset with Trump. The 2025 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia point to dramatic 25-point changes in the Latino vote in the Democrats’ direction, compared with Trump’s 2024 performance.

In December 2025, the first Democrat was elected mayor of Miami since 1997, with Latino support. A Democrat won a heavily Republican state legislative district in Texas in February 2026 with an estimated 79% of the Latino vote. Most recently, Latino voter turnout surged to record levels in the March Democratic primary in Texas.

Majorities of Latino voters believe that their economic fortunes have declined since Trump returned to the White House. Moreover, they expect the situation to worsen over the next year. In March 2026, The Economist reported that Trump’s support among Latinos had fallen to 22%.

In a bipartisan poll by UnidosUS released in November 2025, only 14% of Latino voters said their lives were better after one year under Trump, while 39% said they had gotten worse. Looking ahead, 50% expected things to get worse still in 2026, while only 20% were optimistic about their economic future. Two-thirds of Latino voters felt that Trump and the Republicans were not focusing enough on improving the economy for people like them.

What’s more, mass deportations have happened under the second Trump administration. The vast majority of those detained for deportation, including those who have died, had no criminal record.

Latinos are overwhelmingly opposed to federal troops in U.S. cities, according to our polling; 41% fear legal residents and U.S. citizens getting caught up in enforcement actions. The No. 1 immigration concern for Latino voters remains a path to citizenship for Dreamers – the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children – and for immigrants who have worked and paid taxes in the country for more than 20 years but lack formal status.

Among Latinos who actually voted for Trump, many would not do so again. Our poll suggests that 22% of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again. By contrast, Democrats retain support from 93% of their 2024 Latino voters.

The long-term effects of the Trump presidency on the Latino electorate are difficult to predict, but for now party preferences have shifted firmly back toward the Democrats. Among voters in the UnidosUS poll, 55% said they felt the Democrats “care a great deal” about Latinos, compared with 29% saying they felt that way about the GOP. At the same time, 33% of Latino voters see the GOP as “hostile,” compared with just 7% who believe this about the Democrats.

If the recent leftward shift is sustained, or the earlier shift to the right was illusory, the effects on the politics of 2026 could be large, potentially putting control of Congress in the hands of Latino voters. There are 46 House districts where the number of registered voters who are Latino exceeds the total margin of victory for those seats in 2024, with 23 currently held by Republicans and 23 currently held by Democrats.

Latino voters need to believe that politicians truly care about their concerns and will work to implement a plan to create equal opportunities for the nation’s largest minority group to achieve the American dream. We believe the candidates able to make that pitch convincingly will be the most successful.

Matt A. Barreto is principal and co-founder of the polling firm BSP Research. BSP Research has conducted polling for non-profit and advocacy organizations, businesses, and candidates. Barreto has, in the past, directly consulted with Democratic candidates for House, Senate and the presidency.

Gary M. Segura is principal and co-founder of the polling firm BSP Research. BSP Research has conducted polling for non-profit and advocacy organizations, businesses, and candidates. Segura has, in the past, directly consulted with Democratic candidates for House, Senate and the presidency.

– ref. The ever-evolving Latino vote is rapidly shifting away from Trump and Republicans – https://theconversation.com/the-ever-evolving-latino-vote-is-rapidly-shifting-away-from-trump-and-republicans-277335

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Perry Samson, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science, University of Michigan

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

Can a person survive inside a tornado? – Sophia, age 14, Greencastle, Indiana

I have seen the center of a monster. Most people describe the sound of a tornado as like a freight train, but up close, it’s more like a thousand screaming jet engines. I am one of the few people on Earth who has driven into a tornado and lived to tell the tale.

While it might sound like a scene from a Hollywood blockbuster involving a high-tech armored truck, my experience was much more dangerous and terrifying.

I am an atmospheric scientist who studies tornadoes, but I am only alive today because of split-second decisions and a massive amount of dumb luck. Believe me, I do not want to ever be in that situation again.

The day the sky broke

It started in northwest Kansas, where I was studying supercell thunderstorms – the kind that produce tornadoes – with a team of students from the University of Michigan.

We were positioned under a thunderstorm that was so dark, we had to turn on our vehicles’ headlights in the middle of the day. Suddenly, a tornado formed and began charging directly toward us.

The students were in other vehicles and got away, but my car was quickly swallowed by a cloud of flying debris so thick that I couldn’t even see my own hood.

With my options disappearing, I made a desperate move: I turned the car directly into the wind, hoping the vehicle’s aerodynamics would keep us pinned to the ground rather than being flipped like a toy.

The physics of fear

When you’re inside a tornado’s vortex, your body experiences things the news cameras can’t capture:

• The pressure change: A tornado is a localized area of rapidly changing pressure. Your ears don’t just “pop” – they ache, as if your head is being squeezed by giant hands.

• The solid wind: We measured wind speeds of almost 150 mph (241 kph) nearby, but inside the vortex, they were likely much higher. At those speeds, air hits you with the force of a solid object.

• The soup of darkness: In movies, the “eye” is a clear space. In reality, it’s a debris ball – a brownish-black soup of pulverized soil, trees and buildings. It was so dark that my camera couldn’t even register a picture.

As debris slammed into my windshield, I was terrified I’d be crushed by flying materials – tornadoes can pick up fences, wood and metal from buildings, tree branches, even cows. Textbook advice says to get into a ditch so you’re lying flat and might be more protected from flying debris. But the wind was so violent, I couldn’t even open the car door. I just stayed low and prayed.

The making of a monster

How does this severe of a storm even happen? It takes a perfect, violent recipe of atmospheric ingredients:

• Fuel: A tornado needs warm, muggy air (water vapor) near the ground with dry air above it. This creates the potential for rising air, but only if the atmosphere is unstable enough to overcome “the cap.”

• The cap: A thin “inversion” layer of stable air acts like a lid on that warm moist air, bottling it up until the moist air punches through.

• The dry line: The dry line is where warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico and dry air from the west meet. The advancing hot, dry air is actually heavier than muggy air, and this dry air pushes the moist air upward, disrupting the cap.

• Wind shear: Surface winds from the south and upper winds from the west create a horizontal rolling motion in the atmosphere. When the air is pushed upward, that rotation becomes vertical, creating what’s known as a mesocyclone.

• The jet stream: About 5 to 7 miles (8 to 11 kilometers) up, the jet stream is a fast-moving river of air. Disturbances within it can create areas that pull air upward from below and lower surface pressure.

Together, these ingredients can create the powerful, rotating vortex that you know as a tornado.

These storms can have winds up to 300 mph (482 kph) and leave a long path of destruction, sometimes more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide. They can stay on the ground for seconds or many minutes, tearing apart buildings and trees in their path. Where they will travel is hard to predict, so getting to safety should be a priority.

The monster’s lesson

When the storm passed, the silence was jarring. My rental car was mired in mud, the antenna was bent in half, and bits of straw were embedded in every single seam of the car’s body.

Tornadoes are extremely dangerous. Sixty-one people were killed by tornadoes in the U.S. in 2025, and many more were injured by flying debris. Make sure you know what to do when a tornado alert sounds – follow the alert’s advice and get to safety immediately.

When scientists chase storms, they are not trying to experience tornadoes – they are trying to measure the small-scale processes inside storms that cannot be observed in other ways. Many of the key processes that produce tornadoes occur within a few hundred meters of the ground and evolve over minutes, which means radars, satellites and weather stations often miss them.

Seeing a tornado and the damage it causes is a powerful reminder that people are not in control of everything. It serves as a warning to be wise and ready for anything. Sophisticated research using drones and radar is the smart way to study these monsters – seeing them from the inside is definitely not.

Willa Connolly, a student at Tappan Middle School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, contributed to this article.

Perry Samson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can you survive inside a tornado? This scientist did by accident – he’s lucky to be alive – https://theconversation.com/can-you-survive-inside-a-tornado-this-scientist-did-by-accident-hes-lucky-to-be-alive-278648

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By William McCorkle, Associate Professor of Education, College of Charleston

All immigrants, regardless of their citizenship status, have the right to attend a public K-12 school in the United States. Schools cannot collect students’ immigration status when they enroll. This has been the case since 1982, when the Supreme Court ruled against Texas in the case of Plyler v. Doe.

Republican legislators in several states, including Tennessee, Oklahoma and Ohio, are trying to pass legislation that challenges the Plyler decision. These bills would make it harder, if not impossible, for immigrant children to attend public school.

In the U.S., there are approximately 1.5 million children under the age of 18 who are undocumented immigrants, meaning that they live in the country without legal authorization.

There are likely 600,000 to 850,000 undocumented students enrolled in K-12 schools.

Opposition to Plyler

In 1975, Texas passed legislation that allowed school districts to either charge undocumented students to attend public school or not let them enroll at all.

Seven years later, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’ law violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The court determined that someone’s immigration status “does not establish a sufficient rational basis for denying them benefits that the State affords other residents.”

For the past 44 years, this ruling has ensured that no state can ban undocumented students from attending a public K-12 school, charge them extra fees or discriminate against them in any other way because of their immigration status.

A few times over the past few decades, some states have unsuccessfully tried to make it harder for immigrant children to attend school.

In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, a ballot initiative that denied undocumented people the right to receive public services, including a public education. The proposition also required schools to document students’ immigration status.

A federal judge ruled in 1998 that the controversial proposition was unconstitutional.

In 2011, Alabama passed legislation that required K-12 public schools to collect students’ immigration status.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Alabama’s legislation was illegal. Alabama schools, like all other schools, are not allowed to ask students about their immigration status, as it could be a means of discrimination or intimidation.

A new wave of legislation

The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation issued a policy document in February 2026 that encouraged all states to challenge the Plyler v. Doe ruling.

Heritage argued that “illegal aliens should not be eligible for federal, state, or local government benefits, including through their children.” It wrote that giving undocumented immigrants these benefits “takes resources from American citizens and lawful immigrants.”

Heritage also published sample legislation that challenges the Plyler ruling and which state legislators could follow when drafting a new bill.

In 2025, at least five states considered legislation that would make it harder for undocumented students to attend K-12 school. None of those measures have become official policy, though some are still being debated in legislatures.

The Tennessee Senate passed a bill in 2025 that allowed school districts to ban undocumented students. In March 2026, the state’s House of Representatives passed a similar, watered-down version of the legislation. This bill would require schools to check students’ immigration status. The two government chambers are now working to determine next steps on the measure.

In 2025, Ohio legislators introduced a bill that wouldn’t ban immigrants from attending school, but it would require schools to report students’ immigration status to the state. The state’s House Government Oversight Committee is considering the measure.

In January 2025, the Oklahoma Board of Education passed a resolution that would require parents to show their child’s citizenship status before enrolling in school. Oklahoma’s House of Representatives blocked the resolution four months later.

Similarly, Republican legislators in Idaho introduced a bill in February 2026 that would require public K-12 schools to check students’ immigration status. The state’s House Education Committee is currently considering the bill.

A bill was also introduced in New Jersey in January 2025 that would charge undocumented students to study at a K-12 school, but the bill did not gain traction.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has talked about challenging the Plyler ruling, as far back as 2022. The state is not currently considering any specific legislation on the issue.

But in March 2026, Mandy Drogin, a campaign director with the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, spoke out against Plyler in a U.S. Congressional hearing.

“If states are required to educate illegal immigrant students, they must be allowed to identify the student population’s status to fully understand and address the adverse effects of Plyler v. Doe,” Drogin said.

A patchwork higher education landscape

The Plyler decision focused on K-12 schools, not colleges and universities. Undocumented students in some states already face college enrollment and tuition restrictions, particularly when it comes to state schools.

Twenty-five states, including Florida and Texas, require undocumented students to pay higher out-of-state tuition fees for state schools, even if they are Florida residents.

Alabama and South Carolina ban undocumented students from attending state colleges and universities. Undocumented students in Georgia cannot attend certain top public universities, including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech.

These policies all make it harder for undocumented students to receive a college degree. But the stakes of state legislation that would create new hurdles for immigrant children to attend elementary and secondary school would arguably be much higher.

A fragile right

If undocumented students are not offered a free public education, then students who are applying for asylum, or students whose parents are undocumented, could find that this standard is no longer a guarantee for them as well.

This issue has not received a great deal of media attention, perhaps because states have not yet succeeded in passing any of this legislation.

As an education professor, I believe that any of these state measures, if turned into law, would have significant effects on immigrant families – and on American education more broadly.

It would mean that many young people, including the many who are rapidly losing their legal immigration status under the Trump administration, would no longer be able to receive an education in this country and try to reach their full potential. They also would have less opportunities to contribute to our society.

The universal right to public education in the U.S. has long been taken for granted – but this right, like others, might be more fragile than it seems.

William McCorkle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Immigrant kids can attend school regardless of citizenship – some states are challenging this standard – https://theconversation.com/immigrant-kids-can-attend-school-regardless-of-citizenship-some-states-are-challenging-this-standard-278766

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Beth Schinoff, Assistant Professor of Management, University of Delaware

Your back pain gets worse as you sit through a long meeting. Your wrist pain flares when you’re typing furiously to meet a tight deadline. During a busy shift at the grocery store, you feel a migraine coming on.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve got plenty of company. About 1 in 4 U.S. adults suffer from chronic pain. The share who say they are in chronic pain either on most days or every day in the past three months is growing: It jumped by nearly 4 percentage points to 23% of U.S. adults in 2023, up from 19% in 2019.

Chronic pain is not only hard on workers trying to do their jobs, but it also takes a toll on employers and the economy as a whole by costing an estimated US$722 billion in lost productivity each year.

As management scholars who study how people feel at work, we wanted to understand why chronic pain so often makes it impossible for employees to do their work – and even to keep their jobs.

Bad for your health

With this in mind, we teamed up with two other management researchers, Kimberly Rocheville of Creighton University and Njoke Thomas of Boston College, to conduct a study that Academy of Management Journal published online in January 2026 and will include in an upcoming print edition.

We interviewed 66 people between 2019 and 2021. All of them said that they were in chronic pain – meaning pain that lasts for at least three months. They were all U.S. workers and at least 18 years old. They lived all over the country, in relatively more urban than rural areas. Our sample was 78% women because women tend to experience more chronic pain than men and tend to be more open to talking about their pain.

This professionally diverse group included lawyers, grocery store workers, teachers, police officers and health care professionals. They experienced many different kinds of pain, such as back pain, migraines, arthritis and fibromyalgia.

We found that this wide array of workers and white-collar professionals pushed through their pain because they felt pressure to have what we call an “ideal worker body”: a body that is healthy and strong enough to do anything their job requires.

Regardless of what job they had, people described a surprisingly similar pressure to perform despite their pain. From warehouse workers to lawyers, people felt they had no choice but to walk without a limp, lift heavy things and sit still during meetings.

Many of these people felt compelled to be ideal workers who put work before everything else in their lives. Previous research has found that these expectations can harm their mental health. We found that it can harm your physical health too.

Trapped in a cycle of pain and shame

Because they were in chronic pain, all of the participants in our study said their body wasn’t healthy and strong enough to do everything their job required when it required them to do it.

Even though they were more than intellectually capable of doing their work, they felt ashamed that their bodies fell short. This led them to hide their pain. They took the stairs, instead of the elevator, to seem more like their co-workers who felt fine. They avoided managing their pain in ways their colleagues could see, such as by applying ice to areas of their body that were in pain.

Ironically, trying to make it seem like their bodies were ideal worsened pain for all 66 of the people we interviewed. Most of them eventually reached a point where their pain became so intolerable that they could not function at or outside of work.

Some of them ultimately had to leave their jobs and found other ones that were more compatible with their chronic pain symptoms. In a few cases, they exited the workforce entirely.

This is not unusual. Chronic pain is the leading reason for workers becoming eligible for long-term disability benefits.

Breaking free of the cycle of shame and pain

A few of the people we interviewed told us that they managed to escape the damaging cycle of shame and pain.

Why were they able to break free?

First, they found doctors who told them their pain was real. Getting a clear diagnosis and having a medical professional recognize their physical limitations helped them understand that they could never look healthy and strong as expected, no matter how hard they tried.

This released them from the pressure of trying to do so.

Second, most of these people had employers who cared more about what they did – the work itself – and less about how their body looked and moved, even if this meant finding a new job or even changing their profession. As a result, they felt free to ask colleagues for help, stretch during meetings, use dictation software instead of typing, or keep the camera off during Zoom calls so they could lie down when their backs were aching.

They also came up with creative ways of working that were more efficient and better for their bodies. For example, an ultrasound technician told us that she learned to scan patients using both her arms instead of constantly using the same arm. A deli worker said she started using a cart to move heavy meats around the store.

Although we focused on how pressure to be strong and healthy can hurt workers with chronic pain, we believe our findings could matter to everyone – no matter their size, strength, age or employment status.

After all, it’s possible to feel social pressure to conceal aches and pain when you’re in public settings of any kind. And failing to move around when needed or take care of your body in other ways can make you vulnerable to more pain.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. For the nearly 1 in 4 US adults with chronic pain, employers’ expectations of a healthy body can lead to shame – https://theconversation.com/for-the-nearly-1-in-4-us-adults-with-chronic-pain-employers-expectations-of-a-healthy-body-can-lead-to-shame-278140

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Sundeep Venkatesan, Assistant Professor of Speech and Language Pathology, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Last Easter while my children were sorting through their baskets of chocolate eggs and jelly beans, my son looked up from the table and asked a simple question:

“Why don’t Grandma and Grandpa eat candy like we do?”

It was the kind of question children ask without really thinking. To him, it seemed obvious: Candy is delicious, so why wouldn’t everyone want it?

From a child’s perspective, it can look like older adults simply lose their taste for sweets. But as a speech-language pathologist who studies swallowing disorders, I know the explanation is often more complicated. In many cases, the issue has less to do with liking candy and more to do with something most people rarely have to think about: swallowing.

Swallowing is more complex than most people realize

You hardly notice the act of swallowing. It happens automatically every time we eat or drink. But swallowing is actually a remarkably complex process. More than 30 muscles and several nerves coordinate to move food from the mouth through the throat and into the esophagus while briefly protecting the airway.

One way to think about swallowing is like a carefully timed relay race. Each group of muscles passes food along to the next step at exactly the right moment, while the airway briefly closes to keep food from entering the lungs.

When everything works smoothly, it takes only a second or two.

As people age, some parts of this process can change. Chewing muscles may lose a bit of strength. Saliva production can decrease, which makes dry or sticky foods harder to manage. Taste can also shift over time, and the timing of swallowing movements may become slightly slower.

Dental changes or missing teeth can make certain foods harder to chew. These shifts don’t necessarily mean something is wrong, but they can make certain textures more difficult to manage.

Candy is a good example. Many Easter treats – caramels, gummies and sticky chocolate – require strong chewing and precise coordination to swallow comfortably.

For someone whose swallowing has become slightly less efficient, those foods can suddenly feel like more effort than they used to.

When swallowing changes become a disorder

Sometimes, swallowing changes go beyond normal aging. The medical term for difficulty swallowing is dysphagia, and it is a condition that can occur for many reasons. Researchers estimate that about 1 in 25 adults experience dysphagia, making it a relatively common but often overlooked health condition.

Stroke, Parkinson’s disease, dementia and other neurological conditions can affect the muscles and nerves that control swallowing. In health care settings, speech-language pathologists frequently see swallowing problems among older adults recovering from illness or managing chronic conditions.

When swallowing becomes difficult, eating can feel tiring or uncomfortable. Some people cough while eating. Others feel like food is getting stuck in their throat or notice that meals take longer than they used to.

To avoid discomfort, many people quietly begin adjusting what they eat. They may choose softer foods, take smaller bites or skip foods that feel harder to swallow.
Sometimes that includes sticky or chewy candies.

To others at the table, it may appear that Grandma or Grandpa no longer enjoys sweets. But these changes are often subtle adaptations that make eating safer and more manageable.

Food is about more than nutrition

Eating is not just about getting calories or nutrients. Food is tied to memory, tradition and connection.

Think about how many family traditions revolve around meals. Holiday dinners, birthday cakes and seasonal treats bring people together. Sharing food is one of the most universal ways in which families celebrate and connect across generations.

When swallowing becomes difficult, the effects go beyond the physical challenge of eating. People may start avoiding certain foods or feel self-conscious eating around others. Over time, they may even withdraw from shared meals.

That’s one reason many clinicians now emphasize quality of life alongside safety when treating swallowing disorders.

Speech-language pathologists are the health care professionals who evaluate and treat swallowing disorders. Through specialized assessments and therapy, they help people find strategies that make eating safer and more comfortable. Sometimes the changes needed are surprisingly small.

Helping older adults continue to enjoy food

Family members are often the first to notice when someone’s eating habits begin to change. Signs that may suggest swallowing difficulty include coughing or throat clearing during meals, needing extra time to chew food, or avoiding certain textures — especially dry or sticky foods.

If these patterns appear regularly, a medical evaluation can help identify whether swallowing changes are involved.

The goal is rarely to eliminate someone’s favorite foods entirely. Instead, clinicians often help people find ways to continue enjoying meals safely – whether that means modifying food textures, adjusting eating strategies or addressing the underlying condition affecting swallowing.

In many cases, these adjustments allow older adults to keep participating in the meals and traditions that matter most to them.

A different way to see that moment at the table

The next time candy appears at a holiday gathering, a grandparent’s decision to pass might raise a question from a curious child.

Sometimes the explanation really is simple preference. But other times, the answer lies in the quiet changes that can occur in chewing and swallowing as people age. Understanding those changes can help families respond with a little more awareness and patience.

After all, the joy of sharing food together doesn’t disappear with age. It just might require a little more understanding of how the body works.

Sundeep Venkatesan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why many older adults skip hard candy – how aging can change chewing and swallowing – https://theconversation.com/why-many-older-adults-skip-hard-candy-how-aging-can-change-chewing-and-swallowing-278372