Up to this point, I’ve been throwing around the term “social problems” without offering a proper definition. So, what is a social problem?

I’m going to give you a completely cliché and annoying answer: that depends!

On the one hand, we can think about a social problem as a condition that harms society or conditions that undermine well-being. This is an objectivist definition, which is based on objectively measurable characteristics of conditions. Through an objectivist lens, something becomes a social problem when it reaches a threshold of widespread or severe harm.

However, there are some limitations with an objectivist approach to defining social problems. Some things that cause great harm inspire little concern and action, while other things that cause relatively limited harm inspire a great deal of concern and action. Additionally, things that are considered problematic change over time, with some things that were common and accepted in the past inspiring great concern today. Even when people agree that a condition is harmful, they may offer very different explanations of what makes the conditions harmful, such that completely different characterizations of the problem emerge. It’s really rather messy!

Some sociologists argue that these limitations make a subjectivist approach ideal for defining social problems. That is to say that a condition can be considered a social problem if people believe it is harmful, regardless of any actual measure of the harm the condition causes (Best 2021). A subjectivist definition of a social problem is based on people’s beliefs and reactions rather than a measurable trait.

Considering the difference between the objective characteristics of troubling conditions in society and the subjective interpretation of those conditions is important because it highlights the fact that social problems are a product of social processes. Things become social problems because people care about them deeply and launch organized, effective campaigns to put troubling conditions on the public’s radar and persuade others to act.

Let’s look at two contrasting examples.

Becoming a Social Problem

In an early book on the subjective nature of social problems, Threatened Children, Joel Best (1990) described the emergence of child abuse as a social problem. Before 1962, medical professionals didn’t have terminology to describe children who showed up at the hospital covered in bruises. In a survey of 71 hospitals, Kempe and colleagues (1962) identified 302 cases of severe injury (bone fractures, brain damage, or death) in young children over a one-year period that were classified by the hospitals – for lack of better words – as “unrecognized trauma.”

Not only was the language to describe child abuse missing, but there were also no standardized institutional mechanisms to intervene in suspected cases. Only one-third of the 302 identified cases resulted in legal action (Kempe et al. 1962). The authors suggested the term “battered child syndrome” as a replacement for “unrecognized trauma,” and journalists of the day spread the word like wildfire. “Photographs – typically featuring a bruised, emaciated infant or toddler wearing only a diaper – accompanied [popular magazine] articles and helped typify battering” (Best 1990: 66). Awareness and outrage about the issue grew quickly. By 1978, most U.S. states had laws requiring mandatory reporting of suspected cases of neglect, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and physical abuse.

There was a time when children were largely considered ornery rascals in need of an occasional whack. But today our “truths” about children are very different. We now see children as a vulnerable population deserving protection. But this radical change in perspective (and eventually, policy) didn’t just happen with the flip of a switch. It required prominent experts to make convincing assertions, which were carried widely by media outlets, who found sympathetic ears in public audiences. Not all problems are so lucky!

Social Problems that Aren’t

In contrast to the immediate, overwhelming public sympathy that greeted calls to action regarding battered children, the problem of battered husbands never caught on. Men certainly are abuse victims, and violence against any human ought to be cause for concern. So why hasn’t the problem of battered husbands garnered the same interest and outcry as that earned by battered children and wives?

This is the question Betsy Lucal asked in her 1995 article, “The Problem with Battered Husbands.” Lucal argued that, despite objective data demonstrating that men do, in fact, get battered by their wives, advocates for male abuse victims have had a difficult time successfully convincing the public that this is a widespread troubling condition deserving policy action. This is in part because the characteristics typically associated with men and masculinity are at odds with the characteristics typically associated with victims. Men are tough, powerful, dominant (or so the cultural stereotype goes). Victims are weak, disempowered, subordinate. These characteristics of victims make us sympathize with their circumstances – they are helpless and need defense. But men? They are typically characterized in completely opposite terms, making it hard for most people to see men as legitimate victims.

Additionally, there wasn’t an organized men’s movement in the 1970s to advocate for battered husbands in the way that the women’s movement advocated for battered wives and children. Even when an organized men’s movement emerged in the 1980s-90s, its focal point was child custody rights rather than spousal abuse (Lucal 1995). Without an organizational base to connect with, battered husbands lacked capacity to effectively spread awareness about their plight and advocate for resources.

Lacking the ability to find a sympathetic audience and organizations devoted to similar causes, the battered husband’s movement failed to emerge, even as men continue to be victimized by violent domestic partners today.

These contrasting cases illustrate that social problems must be made to mean. The study of meaning making around social problems is the business of sociologists interested in social constructionism. This theoretical perspective can get a little heady, but it’s worth putting on your critical thinking hats for a moment and thinking deeply about, well, your thinking.

The Social Construction of Reality

Remember the first day of class? You sat expectantly in a desk waiting for class to begin. How did you know when I walked in the room that I was the professor? Did anyone ask to see my university identification card? Did you even Google my faculty bio and find a photo? Probably not! So how did you know?

Answer: I performed the role of professor in several ways:

• I assumed position behind the instructor podium.
• I brought props (i.e., books, a laptop, copies of the syllabus).
• I dressed in professional attire.
• I started bossing people around.

My act was so consistent with your expectations of the social role “professor” that you took-for-granted that I was, in fact, Dr. Buday without requesting proof or otherwise verifying my identity.

Likewise, because you have all been socialized into the role of student, you were all knowledgeable in culturally appropriate social behaviors for the classroom. This helped you navigate the first-day experience without instruction, or probably even much thought. You recognized the furniture in our classroom as desks and found an open seat. No one walked in the room and sat on the floor facing the back of the room or set up shop at the white board. You are all aware of the habits of classroom interactions and thus behaved as students and sat down to respectfully listen without needing to be told to do so. You can thank your socially constructed reality for helping you through your first day of class!

According to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), who (quite literally) wrote the book on social constructionism, most human behavior is determined not by the objective facts of a given situation but by the system of meanings and habits people attach to observed conditions. In turn, the structures of law and institutions that provide services in a society, social roles and statuses, valued cultural traditions, popular leisure activities, norms for polite social conduct, and many other aspects of our everyday lives that seem like fixed social facts are better understood as products of routine human interaction.

“The reality of everyday life is taken for granted as reality. It does not require additional verification over and beyond its simple presence. It is simply there, as self-evident and compelling facticity. I know that it is real” (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 23).

Through our interactions with one another – telling stories, participating in rituals, scoffing at weirdos  – we give meaning to and impose values on objective conditions and observable events in our lives, actively creating the conditions that comprise our reality. But we’re typically not attending to this process consciously. Instead, we’re responding to a collection of taken-for-granted social habits that pattern our everyday lives.

If we had to stop and think about the reasons behind everything that we do daily, we’d never get anything done. Having mental shortcuts helps us get on with the business of living, but they come with some liabilities. We’re more likely to make biased judgements about people because we think we can size them up with a glance – oh, she’s one of those types! We’re also more susceptible to manipulation if we’re not thinking about how someone is trying to activate our dramatic instincts or persuade us. So, besides giving you a headache, thinking about your thinking – as well as how someone wants you to think – is an important component of developing the critical thinking skills you need to navigate a 21st Century information environment.

In Sum

In comparing the public attention and advocacy surrounding battered children to that given to battered husbands, we can see that not all troubling conditions succeed in generating the level of public concern that motivates action. Defining social problems based on objective conditions, such as the level of harm a troubling condition causes, is therefore insufficient.

We can gain broader understanding of a situation when we also consider the subjective process of responding to troubling conditions. This shifts our point of analysis slightly away from the troubling condition itself so that we can bring what people are saying and doing into clearer focus. By taking this viewpoint, we can consider how social problems come into being through advocacy, organizing, and policy action – or don’t.