Well, I tried both the Safe Mode and MainMenu suggestions, but no luck. However, I did discover one piece of helpful information. If I use Disk Utility to create a new volume, I do have access to the "Apply to enclosed items" option for folders placed or created on that volume. So, I think that the problem must not be user-related so much as it's tied to how my HD volume is formatted/configured. Comparing the information supplied on the two volumes by Disk Utility, the only difference I can see is that my HD volume isn't Journaled, while the newly created volume is.

To my knowledge, I've never directly altered the format/configuration/permissions of my HD volume; however, I wonder if my creation of a Windows partition could have switched something. Then again, Boot Camp and Parallels are pretty widely used, so it seems like someone else would have noticed something.