Even though ideals in favor of gender equality in the private sphere are wide spread, discrepancies between ideals and actual behavior are common. Such discrepancies and potential dissatisfaction with gender unequal behavior within a couple are expected to influence partnership dynamics negatively. This study examines how discrepancies between the perceived ideal sharing of parental leave and the actual division of leave, as well as satisfaction with the division are associated with (a) relationship satisfaction, (b) continued childbearing, and (c) union dissolution, using Swedish panel data. The findings cannot confirm an effect of discrepancies on partnership dynamics. However, men who wish they had used a larger share of the parental leave have lower relationship satisfaction, lower continued childbearing, and higher probability of union dissolution. Women are seemingly not affected by their (dis)satisfaction with the division. The findings may reflect a changing father role related to the policy setting and norms in Sweden.
Adoptive parents invest more resources into their children than comparable nonadoptive and biological parents, a pattern strongly linked to parental socioeconomic status. But important differences among families related to adoption context (international, private, foster) could affect parental investment and its impact on educational outcomes. Using the National Survey of Children’s Health, our findings indicate that parental investment strategies are contingent on adoption context and partially mitigate the negative direct association between adoption and educational outcomes. Internationally adoptive parents invest significantly more than do other adoptive and nonadoptive families. Without these parental investments, however, internationally adoptive children tend to experience the poorest educational outcomes. Even though parental investments can help mitigate internationally adoptive children’s negative educational outcomes, private domestic adoptive families seem to be more successful at mitigation. Results highlight how social stratification dynamics shape selection into adoption venues while also influencing parents’ efforts to invest and translate investments into educational gains.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics, attributes, and behaviors that promote healthy American Indian (AI) heterosexual couple relationships. Specific attention was given to the role AI men have in developing and maintaining healthy heterosexual couple relationships. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 AI participants. Key themes to emerge from analysis of qualitative data included learning about healthy relationships from elders, demonstrating mutual respect and trust, showing respect for women, and honoring a "balance" between love and sex. Findings suggest that interventions for AI men that reinforce Native beliefs, values, and practices are needed to strengthen AI couple relationships.
In the present study, we examined associations between fathers’ and mothers’ mental health symptoms as related to their own and their partner’s parenting in couples in which fathers (n = 38 families) or both partners (n = 30 families) had substance use disorder. Each partner reported on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and hostility; children reported on each parent’s parenting behaviors, including acceptance, psychological control, and knowledge of children. Actor–partner interdependence models indicated that when substance-abusing fathers have more symptoms of anxiety and depression, nonsubstance-abusing mothers report greater knowledge of children, whereas nonsubstance-abusing mothers’ mental health symptoms were related to less paternal knowledge of children. In dual substance use disorder couples, mothers’ depressive symptoms were associated with more paternal knowledge of children. These preliminary findings offer select support for family systems theory.
Received wisdom says marriage correlates with better health, but men derive a greater benefit than do women. These perceptions persist even though the latter, known as the sex role hypothesis, no longer receives unqualified support. Some researchers attribute declining evidence for the sex role hypothesis to greater gender equality. Such arguments, however, may best apply to Western, developed countries where gains in women’s status have been largest. To date, few researchers have explored these issues in non-Western, developing countries. This study is the first to explore sex-specific differences in the association between marital status and mental health in India, a country with high levels of gender inequality. Data come from the Youth in India Situation and Needs survey, with analysis restricted to 19,163 young adults aged 20 to 24. Results from negative binomial regression models supported the sex role hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed.
This study examines the ways in which family and cultural context influence the romantic prospects of rural women in later life. Using a feminist life course perspective, we interviewed 14 single women over the age of 50 years who lived in rural Appalachia. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze in-depth interview data. Contextualized romantic forecasts of midlife and older rural women are presented. We found that women who were highly integrated into an extended family network, typically their own family of origin, had little if any interest in romance in later life. Women who were not highly integrated into a kin network were most hopeful about finding a romantic or marriage partner. We conclude that place-based kin networks mattered in the romantic forecasts of midlife and older single women, and discuss implications for future research.
Postponed marriage is a general trend among today’s Chinese young people. However, since in traditional Chinese culture, marriage has been regarded as a family responsibility, when adult children reach a certain age, their parents often push them for marriage. In recent years, some retired parents in China’s major cities voluntarily organized matchmaking markets in parks to exchange their single adult children’s personal information in order to "help" the latter find spouse. Most of these matchmaking markets are only attended by parents, whose adult children remain single in their late 20s and beyond. Through a field research on matchmaking events held in four parks in Beijing, it was found that young women’s parents significantly outnumbered young men’s parents. Younger age and good physical appearance are considered as "assets" for women, while men’s most valued "capital" are better education, higher income, and wealth.
Relying on a purposive sample of 550 Chinese older adults in Beijing, China, this study examined the potential influence of children’s out-migration, internally or internationally, on intergenerational relationships and parental well-being. By comparing older adults in nonmigrant, internal migrant, transnational, and hybrid (have both migrant and nonmigrant children) families, we found that children’s out-migration only compromised intergenerational contact and instrumental support, but not monetary or emotional support. Older adults of different family types had similar levels of depression and life satisfaction. Those in internal migrant families were most likely to report financial worries, and those in transnational families were most likely to worry about lack of care. The influence of children’s out-migration was further confounded by parents’ coping resources. The findings suggest that the vulnerability of the "left-behind" elderly might have been exaggerated. Future studies shall distinguish different types of migration and the diversity among older adults with migrant children.
Drawing on semistructured interviews, this study explored 25 Korean American emerging adults’ experience of their parents’ parenting, focusing on the aspects of parenting they perceive as salient as well as their perceptions and interpretations of such experiences. The majority of our respondents highlighted instrumental aspects of their parents’ parenting which includes different ways that their parents provide instrumental tools for their well-being and success, such as material provision and service for children. Importantly, they attributed significant meaning to these parental actions. Youth’s recognition of and appreciation for their parents’ instrumental aspects of parenting was shaped by the immigrant family context as well as an increase in cultural understanding and perspective taking of their parents. Taken together, this study suggests the importance of examining sociocultural contexts of family processes to better understand experiences of youth from diverse immigrant and cultural groups.
Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnational commercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form family subjectivities between traditional kinship patterns and fundamentally new forms of kinship and family. Arguing that class, mobility, and privilege should also be understood as relational and negotiated positions, I show that gay men engaged in surrogacy must be understood as more flexible and differentiated. Second, I show how kinship as synonymous with biogenetic relatedness is supplemented by notions of kinship as devotion, individual will and determination, and reproductive desire in order to strengthen the men’s affinity to their children. Last, I examine how the men negotiate and work within the given structures of heteronormativity and Whiteness and rework notions of parenthood while at the same time reaffirming old hierarchizations of racialized and sexualized forms of procreation and families.
Historically, breadwinning is linked to cultural ideologies about masculinity and fatherhood, suggesting contemporary breadwinner mothers confront a gendered cultural ideal. I draw on 42 in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers in 21 couples in which women provide 80% to 100% of the family income to better understand mothers’ breadwinning. Few mothers self-identify as providers; just 38% of women (and their husbands) reported that wives were the family’s primary financial provider. Interviews indicate that while these mothers feel financial pressures similar to those reported by male breadwinners, their experience can also be characterized by the role it plays in undermining husbands’ masculinity and in deepening conflicts between employment and mothering. Overall, while adopting gender-atypical roles may promote change in the direction of greater equality, as when mothers get more serious about paid work or feel accomplishment as a breadwinner, this process is constricted by embedded cultural ideals of mothering and masculinity.
This study investigated the extent to which White American mothers discuss race with their children, which topics they are willing to discuss, and why some choose not to discuss it. Data were gathered from 107 mothers of children aged 4 to 7 years. Most mothers indicated the topic was important to discuss, especially for the purpose of elimination of bias and discrimination. However, many reported having no or only vague discussions. Only 30% were categorized as having a color conscious approach, whereas 70% indicated a color blind or color mute approach. The latter seemed to presume their silence would lead children to not notice differences and thus remain unbiased. Many also indicated that they would only approach it if an issue came up or the child asked questions. Almost all mothers perceived their children to have no racial biases, but their diagnostic tools for discovering biases may be inadequate. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Using latent growth curve modeling and data from a sample of 308 middle-aged husbands and wives over a 3-year period, this study examines the influence of work control experiences on marital processes, specifically focusing on changes in conflict management behaviors, perceived spousal support, and depressive symptoms, and the connection between these attributes over time. Consistent with human ecological and work socialization perspectives, our findings suggest that adults’ positive experiences at work serve as a resource for developing personal and interpersonal skills that transfer to behaviors exhibited in their marriages and this process consequently contributes to individual depressive symptoms. Husbands’ and wives’ positive work experience such as control over work increases their use of positive conflict management behaviors and spousal support through personal control, which in turn decreases their depressive symptoms over time.
The current study investigated associations among adolescents’ reports of harmfulness and family decision-making beliefs regarding potentially problematic cyber behaviors (e.g., talking to strangers online), cyber-specific information management strategies (disclosure, secrecy, concealment), and family rules regarding adolescents’ use of information and communication technology (ICT). The sample consisted of 159 adolescents aged 12 to 18 years (M = 14.45, SD = 1.72, 59% female, 80% Caucasian). Youth were more likely to disclose their ICT behavior when they recognized the harm associated with cyber risks and viewed their family as less restrictive about ICT activities. Age differences indicated that older adolescents’ ICT beliefs were more strongly related to their information management strategies, whereas families’ ICT rules were more predictive of cyber disclosure for younger adolescents. Results demonstrate that both adolescents’ conceptualization of ICT risks and families’ ICT-specific rules contribute to adolescents’ choice of information management strategies regarding ICT behaviors.
Shifts in union formation and childbearing have undoubtedly altered the prevalence and structure of higher-order unions and stepfamilies, but no study has examined trends over time. Comparing the 1988 and 2011-2013 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, I produce estimates of repartnering and stepfamily formation among currently partnered women aged 15 to 44 years. The percentage of intact unions that are remarriages stayed stable (around 27% to 28%), but a growing proportion of currently married and cohabiting women had another cohabiting partner in the past. The percentage of intact unions that are stepfamilies increased from 24% to 31%, with an increase in cohabiting stepfamilies from 19% to 39% of all stepfamilies. Furthermore, while the majority of remarriages are stepfamilies, the majority of women’s stepfamilies are no longer remarriages due to union formation among never-married parents. Cohabiting (but not marital) stepfamilies also exhibited changes in which partner had children and in shared childbearing.
Mothers’ experiences with their firstborn child may be relevant for understanding the further growth of families. Dutch women (N = 795) reported on motherhood experiences during pregnancy and the first year. Direct effect models of mood symptoms, birth expectations, and child negative reactivity, and indirect effect models via parenting self-efficacy were tested to discriminate mothers who had, wanted, were undecided, and did not want a second child at a 2-year follow-up. Results indicated that mothers with two children had higher prenatal parenting self-efficacy and less postnatal trait anxiety compared with those who wanted a second child. There was no evidence for indirect effects of mood symptoms, birth expectations, or negative reactivity on having a second child via parenting self-efficacy. Also, mothers who did not want a second child had more unmet expectations regarding childbirth and, surprisingly, reported less child negative reactivity than other mothers. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Using data from the nationally representative 2010 Married and Cohabiting Couples Survey of different-sex cohabiting and married couples, we compared the relationship quality of today’s cohabitors and marrieds. Consistent with diffusion theory and recent conceptual work on the deinstitutionalization of marriage, we found that the relationship between union type and relationship quality is now bifurcated with direct marrieds reporting the highest relationship quality and cohabitors without marriage plans reporting the lowest marital quality. In the middle were the two largest groups: marrieds who premaritally cohabited and cohabitors with plans to marry. These two groups did not differ in terms of relationship quality. This study adds to the growing literature indicating that the role of cohabitation in the family life course is changing in the contemporary context.
Stay-at-home and employed mothers have been the subject of a wide range of both academic and popular discourse about roles, satisfaction, and meaning. However, no literature has examined time trends in relative satisfaction with being a stay-at-home versus a working mother. Here, we use pooled, yearly data from the General Social Survey to examine trends in how satisfied stay-at-home mothers are with their work relative to employed mothers. We find that stay-at-home mothers used to report less satisfaction with their work than employed mothers, but this gap became statistically nonsignificant around the same time trends in which societal attitudes toward gender roles began to shift. These changes are widespread across different socioeconomic and ideological groups, and do not appear to be attributable to sociodemographic composition changes.
Mutuality of support provision is a necessary precondition of family solidarity. However, the exchange of care between grandparents and grandchildren has largely been neglected. Using data from the fourth wave of the Anhui Study in China, this study investigated determinants of support exchange between grandparents and grandchildren. Results showed that more grandparents received support from than provided support to their grandchildren. A higher percentage of older adults exchanged support with the grandchildren of their eldest child if that child was male rather than female. Older adults who had strong emotional bonds with the middle generation, especially with sons, or had experience caring for grandchildren were much more likely to receive support from and provide support to their grandchildren. This study confirms the intergenerational solidarity theory and norms of kinship obligation in rural China, where social services are limited.
Our study advances literature on immigrant food insecurity by examining whether national-level differences in immigrant and nonimmigrant families’ risk of food insecurity persist across time and for different ethnic/racial groups. Using data from the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement for low-income households with children aged 0 to 17 years, we examine trends (2003-2013) in immigrant and nonimmigrant food insecurity overall and for different ethnic/racial groups. We also assess how immigrant families are faring compared with their nonimmigrant peers in the wake of the Great Recession and its prolonged recovery period. We find that among low-income households with children, noncitizen immigrant households and their U.S.-born household counterparts experience similar levels of food insecurity, while citizen immigrant households demonstrate the lowest levels of food insecurity. Citizen immigrant households, however, appear to have been most affected by the Great Recession and the protective influences of citizenship status do not appear to extend to Hispanic immigrants.
This article examines the extent to which recent increases in intergenerational coresidence and financial dependency among young Black and White women are associated with declines in marriage and increases in nonmarital parenthood. We use U.S. Census and American Community Survey data for the period 1970 to 2010 to examine how changing family patterns by race have contributed to changes in intergenerational support. We find that compositional shifts in marriage and, to a lesser extent, nonmarital childbearing contribute to rises in coresidence and financial dependency over time, as well as to the growing gap between White and Black women. Controlling for marital and parental status reduces the temporal increase in coresidence and greatly reduces the race difference. Race differences in financial dependency are reversed after controlling for marital and family status, showing that coresiding young Black women are less, not more, likely than similar White women to be financially dependent on their parents.
Using data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (N = 6,013) and applying multinomial logit models, we examined whether type and severity of intimate partner violence (IPV) influence victims’ help-seeking behaviors. Results showed that about 65% of women did not seek help after experiencing IPV. However, most women who sought help did so from informal sources only (31.3%), compared with formal sources (1.9%). Type and severity of violence were significant predictors of the help-seeking behaviors of Nigerian women. Women who experienced severe forms of physical and emotional violence were more likely to seek help from formal and informal support services, than not seeking help. Sexual violence was not a significant predictor of women’s help-seeking behaviors. It is important to educate women on the relevance of seeking help, especially from formal support services after experiencing IPV.
In the present study, the effect of partners’ social support on women’s reentry into the labor market is examined by means of discrete-time event history analysis using the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2013). In doing so, we take into account partners’ instrumental and emotional support. A special focus is placed on the moderating effect of partners’ relative resources on partners’ support. Results reveal that both partners’ instrumental and partners’ emotional support play a major role in women’s return to employment. Particularly with a more egalitarian division of domestic labor and child care, women have a higher likelihood of returning to the labor market. However, a partner’s reduction of working hours can also accelerate women’s reemployment. In addition, we find moderating effects of partners’ resource constellations on partners’ support: with a partner’s increasing comparative advantage, help with housework facilitates labor market reentry, while educational homogamy moderates the effect of a partner’s emotional support.
Experiencing material hardship may bring various negative consequences for married couples and family members. However, little is known about this topic in Korea. Using a nationally representative sample from the Korean Welfare Panel Study, we examined how material hardship was associated with marital well-being among low-income families in Korea, separately for husbands (i.e., male household heads) and wives. Overall, we found experiencing any material hardship was associated with lower levels of satisfaction of both family life and spousal relationship, consistently for husbands and wives. We also found depression and self-esteem partially mediated the associations in both groups. Furthermore, among individual items of material hardship, experiencing food hardship was associated with lower levels of satisfaction of family life for both husbands and wives, whereas experiencing problems with credit was associated with lower levels of satisfaction of both family life and spousal relationship for wives but not for husbands.
The failure of cross-border marriages has often been attributed to the large age discrepancy between husband and wife, while disadvantage resulted from the selectivity of husbands from low socioeconomic backgrounds has received less attention. Analyzing couple-level household survey data (N = 871) in Hong Kong, this study compares marital conflict in local and cross-border couples by examining the mediating factors such as age discrepancy and socioeconomic disadvantages. Our analysis suggests that cross-border marriages are subject to significantly more frequent marital conflict than local marriages. It also showed that an age discrepancy from 6 to 9 years (older husband) significantly increased the frequency of marital conflict. However, our analysis showed that counter to common assumptions, socioeconomic disadvantages—particularly the couple’s financial stress—instead of nonnormative age hypergamy explained the higher frequency of marital conflict in cross-border marriages.
Data from the first two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households are used to examine how individual sibling relationships change in response to life events in a gendered context. We find union formation is associated with a decline in sibling visits, as is transitioning from part- to full-time work. Becoming a parent increases support from a sibling and remaining childless over time is associated with more exchanges of support. Parental death decreases support to a sibling. Moving farther away lowers the number of visits, exchanges of support, and frequency of phoning or writing. However, for most of the life events examined, we find no significant effects on sibling relationships and little evidence that gender of siblings influences the effects of life events on sibling relationships. We conclude that the nature of individual sibling relationships remains relatively stable in the face of life events.
Most measures of father involvement with children have been developed for use with middle-class fathers who reside with their children. The current study documents the development and initial validation of a new measure of decision-making responsibility for low-income fathers with a nonresident child. Focus groups conducted with 71 fathers revealed two dimensions of decision-making responsibility: making decisions with respect to direct care of the child and making decisions with respect to resources. Surveys were then collected from 542 nonresident fathers to validate a set of items measuring these two dimensions. The results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis supported these factors. However, the results of convergent and predictive validity tests suggest that the resources factor does not add additional explanatory power above its association with the care factor. We suggest using only the seven care decision-making items in future studies.
Research has demonstrated beneficial effects on children’s development of both breastfeeding and fathers’ involvement. Evidence has also shown that breastfeeding could influence paternal behaviors. Since there is little data available on paternal representations of breastfeeding and on its effects on paternal involvement, the aim of the present study is to bridge that gap by examining fathers’ perceptions of their relationship with their infant in the context of breastfeeding. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 43 fathers of an infant who had been exclusively breast-fed for a minimum of 6 months. These were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. The fathers identified some impacts of breastfeeding on the father–infant relationship. Feeding their infant themselves appeared to be a determining moment in this relationship. These results highlight the relevance of supporting early father–infant bonding in the breastfeeding context.
Move and Play Every Day: National Physical Activity Recommendations for Children 0-5 Years was part of a suite of physical activity guidelines issued by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing in 2010. Guidelines included the recommendation that "children younger than 2 years should not spend any time watching television or using other electronic media." In-depth semistructured interviews investigated parents’ interpretations and factors affecting decision making regarding screen time behaviors of their young children (from birth to 2 years). Results reveal great diversity in understandings of recommendations and confirm that unique contextual factors, many of which emerge from the micro-environment of the family home, affect decision making. Variations in interpretation may account for disparities in the awareness and effectiveness of recommendations. Results may help inform future guidelines and interventions by pointing to the need to consider the idiosyncratic nature of young families in order to have the desired impact.
Alimony, which involves financial transfers from mostly men to women after a divorce, has recently received more scrutiny in the United States by members of an emerging social movement. These activists are attempting to change alimony policy in ways that economically benefit them. One important part of this movement are second wives, who ally themselves with their new husbands and against first wives in the pursuit of alimony reform. This analysis examines how these second wives articulate their objections to alimony by introducing the concept of economic boundary ambiguity, meaning in this case, a state of human relationships where financial obligations between first and second wives are contested. In addition to creating several tangible stressors, economic boundary ambiguity can also have important consequences for women’s own social identities as well as the collective identity and the success of the social movement overall.
U.S. mothers receive messages that they should breastfeed their babies, yet there is little cultural support for public breastfeeding and evidence of heightened opposition in African American communities. We use a social constructionist perspective to analyze 22 African American mothers’ breastfeeding in public narratives. Findings show that participants use varying definitions of "public" in relation to breastfeeding that are based on geographic spaces and social relationships. Participants identify breastfeeding in public as problematic based on their interpretations of others’ reactions, and discuss covering as an important component of breastfeeding in public. We conclude that the breastfeeding cover operates as a "cloak of neutralization" by creating a symbolically "private" space in a discursively constructed "public" one. Although the cover eliminates potential breast exposure, it announces a woman’s use of the maternal breast—which Young identifies as challenging patriarchal claims to women’s bodies—thereby failing to fully neutralize the situation.
This study compares happiness in the relationship, support, and strain in LAT (living apart together, i.e., noncohabiting) relationships with first marriages, remarriages, and cohabitation among older adults in the United States. The study also asks whether partner’s health affects relationship quality differently in different relationship types. This study draws on the first wave of the National Social Life Health & Aging Project 2005-2006, (n = 1992). Partner’s physical and mental health are good predictors of relationship quality and their effects do not differ by relationship type. Men are more likely to be very happy in their relationship and to receive high support than women, but they also report more strain. LAT relationships are less likely to be very happy and to have high support than marriage and remarriage, but they also have lower strain. Different interpretations of "strain" are discussed.
This study examined the gender difference regarding the simultaneous impacts of Job Demands–Control–Support model variables (job demands, job control, supervisor support, and coworker support) on job satisfaction via work–family conflict using multiple group structural equation modeling. The participants were 1,092 male and 1,367 female employees from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce. Results showed that job control was only significantly associated with work–family conflict in female employees. In addition, high levels of job control, supervisor support, and coworker support were significantly associated with an increase in job satisfaction in both male and female employees. Regarding the mediating effect, work–family conflict mediated relationships between job demands, supervisor support, coworker support, and job satisfaction in both male and female employees, whereas work–family conflict only mediated the association between job control and job satisfaction in female employees. In this study, the implications considering the gender difference and work–family contexts are discussed.
Families in the United States are increasingly diverse, which has given rise to questions about the consequences these new family forms have for children’s outcomes. This study uses a life course perspective to examine the association between family transitions, nontraditional family structures (with particular attention to same-sex parent families), and children’s psychosocial well-being. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten cohort was used to examine children’s externalizing well-being, internalizing well-being, and interpersonal skills. Results indicate that nontraditional family structures are associated with poorer psychosocial well-being, but this is largely accounted for by changes and transitions experienced in the creation of new families. The findings provide a critical look at the assumptions embedded in arguments focused solely on family structure, and joins other research in calling attention to the importance of family processes for understanding the well-being of children.
Abusive head trauma, including shaken baby syndrome, is a serious form of abuse that often results in lifelong developmental challenges or infant death. Educational programs have helped reduce the number of infants hospitalized due to abusive head trauma. The current study provides a process evaluation of Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee’s Shaken Baby Prevention Project. We utilized survey data from (a) 189 trained professionals who delivered the program to new parents in either the hospital or home-visiting setting and (b) 5,565 new mothers who participated in the program in one of those two settings (n = 5,416 hospital setting; n = 149 home-visiting setting). Results suggest that Shaken Baby Prevention Project facilitator training was effective, and the intervention was well-received by mothers in both the home and hospital settings. Furthermore, shaken baby syndrome information should be provided in both home and hospital settings because each provided access to a different population.
As primary agents of socialization, families and schools can powerfully shape the academic adaptation of youth. Using data from the Social Identification and Academic Adaptation studies, we compare the family and school environments of Latino high school seniors living in a new destination, North Carolina, with those living in an established destination, Los Angeles. We then evaluate how family and school environments influence their educational aspirations, expectations, and performance. We find that parents’ achievement expectations promote Latino youths’ academic success, while perceived future family obligations inhibit them. Additionally, we find that schools remain essential in promoting Latino immigrant youths’ achievement by providing a supportive and safe learning environment. Discrimination in schools and the broader community is associated with lower educational expectations and aspirations but not lower academic performance.
Women, particularly those in coresidential unions, have previously been found to spend less time commuting to work than men. This gender gap among couples’ commuting has been linked to inferior labor market opportunities for women. How gender differences in commuting emerge on entering coresidence is underresearched, however. This study examines changes in commuting times at the transition from singlehood to coresidential unions using the British Household Panel Survey (1992-2008; N = 8,122 individuals). Results from fixed effects regression indicate that men increase their commuting time when entering coresidential unions. For childless women, entering coresidential unions is not associated with changes in commuting time. Mothers reduce their commuting time on entering coresidential unions. Changes in labor income and domestic housework responsibilities, previously suggested as likely explanations, are not found to contribute to observed changes in commuting among those entering coresidential unions in this study.
Despite agreement on the value of father involvement in children’s lives, research has been limited due to the exclusion of fathers in studies, questionable validity of mothers’ reports on father involvement, and simple measures of fathering behavior. Our study extends previous research by comparing reports of father involvement using robust, multidimensional father involvement measures. Data from 113 fathers and 126 mothers reporting on 221 children were used to assess father involvement. Results indicate that fathers reported significantly higher levels of involvement than mothers reported. Findings from hierarchical linear models suggest that race/ethnicity and mothers’ reports of positive relationship quality were associated with smaller discrepancies in reports of father involvement, whereas nonmarried partnerships, older children, father residence, and biological status predicted larger discrepancies. Our study demonstrates the importance of obtaining father involvement reports directly from fathers and why father involvement should be assessed as a multidimensional construct to examine fathering behavior.
The current study explores multiple contexts of development—community, family, and relationship—that predict African American emerging adults’ marital beliefs. Findings suggest that nonmarital relationship experiences and childhood community contexts are robust and independent predictors of marital beliefs. The important role of childhood community context found here suggests that communities may not only be indicative of opportunity structure in local marriage markets but may also be indicative of the virtual structure that shapes marital meaning. By offering a better understanding of the extent to which marital beliefs are embedded in broader community, family, and relationship contexts, the current findings may be used to better specify promising models aiming to understand the causal implications of these beliefs across the transition to adulthood and later in the life course.
In the United Kingdom and the United States, significant numbers of university graduates live with their parents, but little is known about expectations regarding parental support. This article focuses on a sample of British middle-class families and their coresident young adult children. It explores the extent to which parents and their graduate children have consistent expectations regarding coresidence and financial support and how such support is negotiated. Fifty-four in-depth interviews with parents and adult children were conducted. The findings reveal that expectations regarding coresidence were broadly consistent across parents and graduate children. Furthermore, within families, there was broad consistency regarding expectations of financial support, although there was variation between families. The nature and ways in which financial arrangements were negotiated varied between families, between parents, and between children. Expectations appear to be shaped by the child’s circumstances and norms, with negotiations of different types enabling a way forward to be agreed.
This study examined household income and maternal cognitive stimulation as moderators of the association between family structure and 48-month-old child emerging literacy and math skills. The data set was the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth cohort (N = 7,300). Controlling for selection factors (race/ethnicity, child gender, maternal education, maternal depression, child attendance in preschool/day care, and 9-month child cognition), the study found support for the moderation hypothesis for household income and maternal cognitive stimulation. The main take-home message was that resources such as household income and mothers’ cognitive stimulation seem to be more strongly and positively associated with early literacy and math skills among children with married parents in comparison to children living in stable single-mother households, stable cohabiting households, or households in which mothers transition from married to single parent. Cognitive stimulation partially mediated the moderating effect of income on stable single-mother household. Implications for research and programs are discussed.
Scholars have argued that both husbands and wives are less satisfied if wives outearn their husbands because this violates the norms of the male breadwinner model. Some scholars find support for this hypothesis when studying the division of household work, marital dissolution, or depression, but other scholars do not find clear evidence. This article adds to this literature by asking how people’s roles in bringing money into the household (as a primary or secondary earner) affect how they feel about that money itself. Analysis of decades of U.S. data finds a clear and consistent result: individuals—whether men or women, whether committed to the male breadwinner model or not—are all more satisfied with their family’s financial situation when they earn more than their spouse. Here, generic social psychological processes (like relative deprivation) appear to trump even powerful worldviews, like the male breadwinner model.
With declining adherence to filial piety in East Asian cultures, the closeness of adult daughters rather than sons may become more important for older Asian immigrants’ well-being. With a sample of 177 older Korean immigrants to the United States (age 60+, M = 72, SD = 7.7), we examined how and to what extent having daughters living nearby rather than sons (daughters-in-law) is related to older Asian immigrants’ mental health, moderating the direct relationship between stressful life events and depressive symptoms. The analyses showed physical proximity of daughters rather than sons (daughters-in-law) functioned as a stress buffer by reducing the direct relation between stressful life events and older immigrants’ depressive symptoms. The findings suggest that gendered cultural expectations of adult children’s caregiving roles for older Korean immigrants are changing, implying that companionship and the perceived quality of instrumental and emotional support might take priority over traditional gendered expectations of filial piety.
While research exists on maternal preferences and decisions about child care, fathers are an underrepresented population in this literature. In an effort to fill this gap, this study examines the types of child care preferred, the level of involvement in the decision-making process, as well as the importance of certain characteristics of nonparental care in a sample of 130 fathers of children under the age of 6 years (6.2% of whom did not live with the child). Sixty-four percent of fathers in this sample indicated active involvement in making child care decisions with the child’s mother and 67% preferred parental care for their infants. Results for ratings, rankings, and conjoint analysis of the importance of certain characteristics of child care revealed slight variations depending on the method used to collect the data. Implications for these results are discussed.
Although research has documented the negative effects of family transitions generally on child and maternal outcomes, transitions into and out of mothers’ relationships with partners who are not the father(s) of their child(ren) are less well understood. Through thematic analysis of semistructured interviews, this study investigated how 21 mothers and their 21 children (aged 9 to 18 years) responded to mothers’ relationship formation following the dissolution of previous relationships. Mothers tried to protect their children from the negative impact of family instability by either limiting contact with partners or maintaining continuity through continued child contact with former partners. When faced with relationship transitions, children endeavored to manage threats to their relationships with their mothers and their mothers’ former partners. When children felt they successfully managed these threats, they were more positive about their mothers’ subsequent partners. The tension between the strategies adopted by mothers and children has implications for family practitioners.
Considerable research has shown that perceptions of inequity in relationships are associated with distress and relationship dissatisfaction, thus providing support for equity theory’s predictions. The evidence, however, is based primarily on correlational data, making it difficult to determine causality. The reverse causal direction could also explain the correlational findings—dissatisfaction could lead to perceptions of inequity. This study employed experimental priming, in which participants wrote a narrative about a past situation in their relationship, either an underbenefiting situation, an overbenefiting situation, or an equity situation (randomly assigned). Participants who were primed to think about a past underbenefiting inequity reported more distress than those who were primed to think about a past overbenefiting inequity; those who were primed for equity were the least distressed. In addition, the equity/inequity prime affected participants’ score on a satisfaction scale completed in regard to their current relationship. Those who wrote about a past underbenefiting inequity reported lower relationship satisfaction than those who wrote about either an equity or an overbenefiting inequity. The results of this study suggest that making salient inequity situations from one’s relationship may have negative effects on the relationship.
Although parenting is clearly linked to academic engagement in adolescence, less is known about links between parenting and academic engagement in emerging adulthood. A diverse sample of college students (N = 633; 53.1% female, 45.7% White/European American, 28.3% Asian American/Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 26.4% Hispanic/Latino American, 21.6% Black/African American, and 2.8% Native American/American Indian) answered surveys about mothers’ and fathers’ parenting style, parent–offspring relationship quality, academic attitudes, academic behaviors, and academic performance. Emerging adults with more permissive mothers viewed grades as less important than emerging adults with less permissive mothers. Mothers’ authoritarian parenting, mothers’ permissive parenting, and relationship quality with father were differentially related to academic engagement depending on emerging adults’ gender. Both mothers’ and fathers’ parenting characteristics may affect the academic engagement of emerging adults via past parenting behaviors and current quality of the parent–offspring relationship, despite decreased physical proximity of emerging adults and their parents.
Families formed through multipartner fertility, where children with a common biological mother were conceived by different biological fathers, represent a growing share of all families in the United States. Using data from four waves of the Fragile Families Child and Wellbeing Study (N = 3,366), I find that women who have engaged in multipartner fertility are more likely to experience parenting stress and depression compared with mothers whose children share the same biological father. Mothers’ depression is explained in the short term by poor relationship quality with the father of her prior children and in the longer term by indicators of boundary ambiguity in complex families. Mothers’ parenting stress was only weakly explained by variation in perceived kin support, father involvement, or boundary ambiguity.
The current study is based on the responses of 153 married Korean mothers accompanying their youth in the United States or in New Zealand while their spouses remained in Korea. Kirogi means "wild geese" in Korean and has come to refer to split-family transnational living for the sake of children’s education. Spillover, or a positive correlation, between indicators assessing marital and parent–child relationship quality was tested within the transnational family context. It was also hypothesized that mother–child relationship quality and youth’s educational progress would be positively and uniquely predictive of indicators of maternal well-being when compared with marital quality due to education-focused Confucian values among Koreans. Results indicated positive correlations between indicators of marital and parent–child relationship quality; and only measures of marital quality had unique associations with maternal well-being.
Interest in the consequences of family legal status for children has grown in response to immigration-related changes in the ethnic composition of American society. However, few population-based empirical studies devote attention to family legal status because of data limitations. Using restricted data from the California Health Interview Survey (2009), the primary objectives of this research are to identify and evaluate strategies for measuring this important determinant of life chances among Mexican-origin children. The results indicate that measurement strategies matter. Estimates of the size of status-specific segments of this population and their risks of living in poverty are sensitive to how family legal status is operationalized. These findings provide the foundation for a discussion of how various "combinatorial" measurement strategies may rely on untenable assumptions that can be avoided with less reductionist approaches.
Despite decades of research indicating that employed women in the United States have fewer children than other women, it remains unclear what it is about work, beyond work hours, that constrains fertility. The current study links a sample of 1,800 women of childbearing age who are employed at least part-time from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers with the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network to examine how characteristics of women’s jobs are associated with their fertility intentions and behaviors. Results indicate that women who work in more professional jobs (e.g., occupations with greater prestige, autonomy, complexity, and supervisory characteristics) are more likely to postpone childbearing than women employed in jobs with lower scores on professional characteristics. Women in more professional jobs do not want fewer children, however, and they report higher intentions to give birth. These findings suggest that women in more professional jobs face greater barriers to having children that they want to have.
The intergenerational ambivalence paradigm is a critical lens for understanding the complexities of aging families, and researchers have begun to explore the potential changes and implications of ambivalence over the life course. This study is one of few to examine trajectories of ambivalence over 13 years and is the first to include two birth cohorts of reciprocal parent–child dyads. This research uses five waves of the Longitudinal Study of Generations to assess changes in ambivalence and reciprocal influences among 903 parent–child dyads using latent growth models. Primary findings show an overall decline in ambivalence over time with different patterns by generation, cohort/life stage, and gender. Children experienced greater levels of ambivalence than parents. There is a reciprocal influence of ambivalence in parent–child dyads; parents and children have similar trajectories of ambivalence and the older generation of parents’ ambivalence exerted influence on the change in their children’s ambivalence over time. This study highlights the importance of using longitudinal data and reciprocal dyads in intergenerational research and adds to theory about the important influences of life stages, social contexts, and linked lives on intergenerational ambivalence.
Using data from 280 divorced or separated parents, we provide initial evidence of the psychometric properties and validity of the Experiences with Coparenting Scale (ECS), an 11-item semantic differential measure of divorced parents’ satisfaction with their coparenting relationships. The ECS consisted of a single factor with high internal reliability. ECS scores were significantly associated with self-reported coparenting behaviors and intentions, even after controlling for demographic variables and participants’ positive feelings about their ex-spouses. Therefore, we conclude that the ECS is a brief measure of the affective domain of postdivorce coparenting. We discuss how the ECS can be used by researchers to enhance their understanding of the development and impacts of postdivorce coparenting and by practitioners as part of family programs for divorced and divorcing parents.
This article replicates an earlier study of mothers who had used the same sperm donor to conceive their children and connected through the Internet. The original study finds that these groups interact mainly on the Internet; donor siblings are latent affiliations that could answer questions about the paternal side. This new study of 2,217 parents and 419 offspring offers a comparison of the manner in which these relationships develop, finding that the movement from latent to active ties occurs at a different moment than the earlier study. The data show that parents and offspring interpret relationships with genetic relatives in some ways that are similar. However, offspring are more likely than parents to view donor siblings as members of their extended family. Replication of the original study with a more diverse sample allows us to determine if the basic findings can be generalized to other participants who share the same circumstances.
Previous research in industrialized countries finds that attitudes toward gender equality are affected by family-related transitions as young adults with egalitarian attitudes based on growing equality between the sexes in the public sphere of education and work encounter a much less equal situation in the private sphere of the family. Sweden, however, is a society known for its emphasis on gender equality in the family. This study examines the effect of family transitions on attitudes toward gender equality, asking whether egalitarian attitudes can withstand changing family transitions in Sweden. Using longitudinal data from the Young Adult Panel Study, we examine six different family transitions and three measures of attitudes toward gender equality for men and women, with only three significant findings across 18 coefficients. We conclude that most Swedish young adults possess "enduring attitudes," likely because there is strong state support for families and gender sharing in the private sphere.
Using a large-scale sample of online daters in eight European countries (N = 196,777), we examine willingness to stepparent among divorcees in relation to both gender and number of children, as well as a set of contextual determinants. We find evidence that having one’s own resident children increases the readiness to partner someone with children. Contrary to previous findings, women are generally less willing to stepparent than men, but when resident children are present, gender dissimilarities fade. Notable national differences are also found. Divorced mothers living in Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, or France are more open to having a partner with children, whereas Polish and Spanish divorced mothers would be less willing to stepparent. These results are interpreted in light of each country’s institutional background.
Individuals working long hours and/or experiencing work-related stress, including work–family conflict, are less likely to engage in health-promoting behaviors. Grounded in a life course perspective and guided by the conceptualization of life course fit, this study examined appraisals of fit between work and family roles and engagement in health-promoting behaviors, specifically physical activity and family meals, using a sample of parents (n = 811). The sample was drawn from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce, a nationally representative sample of workers in the United States. Results suggest that multiple dimensions of fit were associated with greater frequency of exercise and family meals. Furthermore, parenting demands and eldercare moderated these associations. A better understanding of the proximal processes related to engagement in health-promoting behaviors would be valuable in understanding how to secure the health and well-being of families for the future.
Ethnic–racial identity (ERI) development is important for ethnic–racial minority youth because of its association with their positive adjustment. Guided by Garcia Coll’s ecocultural framework and using survey data from 729 Black college students, we examined the associations between relationships with parents (i.e., disrespect, psychological control, nurturance, and connection), ethnic–racial socialization (ERS), and ERI in hopes of understanding ways to promote ERI formation. Findings from two multiple group models suggested that, among men, nurturance from mothers and fathers was associated with ERI and these associations were mediated by ERS. For women, connection with mothers was associated with ERI through ERS and nurturance from fathers was indirectly and positively associated with ERI through ERS. Contrary to our hypothesis, disrespect from fathers was positively associated with ERI via ERS, but only for women. Findings suggest that both ERS and the parent–child relationship are important for ERI formation among Black emerging adults.
This study draws on identity theory to explore parental and work identities. It examined gender differences in identities, as well as the moderating role of gender in the effects of individuals’ sociostructural characteristics. A sample of 148 couples with young children completed extensive questionnaires. As hypothesized, couples’ paid-work strategy moderated gender differences in the salience and centrality of parental and work identities. Whereas significant differences in identities were found between stay-at-home mothers and their breadwinning husbands, no differences were found among dual-earner couples. Moreover, men’s work identity centrality increased when they had more and younger children, whereas women’s work identity centrality decreased. Finally, men’s parental identity centrality increased with their income, whereas women’s parental identity centrality decreased the more they earned. These findings attest to the importance of examining differences within as well as between genders, by taking into account the interactive effects of gender with other sociostructural characteristics.
Using a recent representative survey and supplemental interviews, we investigate household money management and domestic power dynamics in contemporary Russian two-partner families. During the Soviet period, it was women who typically managed household money. Today, while 45.6% of contemporary Russian two-partner households pool money and manage it jointly, and in about a quarter of families women are in charge, families with men in control of domestic money are on the rise among more affluent spouses who have been married for less than 20 years. While previous work finds evidence for the feminization of poverty in the postcommunist region, we underscore the otherwise hidden aspects of inequality—gendered access to household money among the relative "winners" of the transition: Younger and more affluent families. We place these changes in the context of neoliberal market reforms, including labor market and welfare policy changes and the rise of neoconservative gender ideology.
The United States lags behind other industrialized countries in its lack of inclusive parental leave policy after the birth or adoption of a child. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,233), this study examines the patterns and predictors of fathers’ parental leave use, as well as its association with father–child engagement. Our findings indicate that the vast majority of employed fathers take parental leave, but they rarely take more than one week of leave. Fathers who have more positive attitudes about fatherhood and who live with the birth mothers are especially likely to take leave, and to take more weeks of leave, than other fathers. Finally, we find that taking parental leave, and taking more weeks of parental leave, is positively associated with fathers’ engagement levels at one year and five years after the birth of their children.
The growing diversity in mother–father relationship status has led to a debate over the role of fathers in parenting. Little is known, however, about how fathers’ participation in parenting is linked to maternal well-being across different mother–father relationship statuses. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,062), fixed-effects as well as random-effects regression models show that overall fathers’ engagement with children and sharing in child-related chores are negatively related to maternal parenting stress. Fathers’ cooperative coparenting is negatively related to maternal parenting stress only in the random-effects model, suggesting that the association is driven by selection factors. There is little variation in these associations by mother–father relationship status, once selection factors are controlled for. These findings extend support for the current cultural emphasis on benefits of fathers’ active participation in parenting for mothers and children even after the mother–father relationship dissolved.
This study examined the links between different family structures—capturing type and stability thereof—and preschool-aged children’s likelihood of being obese. We build on the limited number of studies that have pursued this topic by using a large, nationally representative sample of preschool-aged children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey–Birth Cohort (n = 8,350) and exploring a wide range of mechanisms to explain these links. Results revealed that, compared with young children with stably married parents, children in cohabiting- and single-parent families that experienced a prior family structure change were more likely to be obese, except for children in single-parent families born to married parents. Children in step, stably single, and stably cohabiting families were at no greater risk of obesity. These patterns were largely driven by female children, for whom the effects of family structure were most robust. None of the 11 tested mechanisms explained such patterns.
In this survey study, we investigate factors that predict the extent of men’s engagement in housework in South Korea. Using data collected from 466 working fathers during the period from March 2013 to August 2013, it was found that a more egalitarian gender ideology and supervisor support for work–family balance were significant predictors of the frequency of men’s participation in housework (i.e., child-rearing activities and household chores), but that long work hours, which are prevalent in South Korea, moderated these relationships. More specifically, the condition of long average work hours reduced the positive effect of an egalitarian gender ideology and a supportive supervisor attitude on the extent of housework. Therefore, we contend that the effects of changes in individuals’ attitudes toward men’s housework will be limited without addressing cultural norms of overwork or "work devotion" in South Korea.
This study investigated longitudinal relationships between fathers’ involvement, as measured by reading, and child socioemotional behavior between infancy and age 7 in 9,238 intact two-parent families from the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study, a national cohort of British children born between 2000 and 2002. Once a variety of covariates and the potential bidirectional nature of relationships were taken into account, a path model showed that fathers’ involvement with their children in infancy significantly predicted better socioemotional behavior at age 3, although the relationship was not strong. Fathers’ reading with their children between ages 3 and 7 was not significantly associated with child socioemotional behavior, but mothers’ reading with their children at age 3 was significantly associated with improved child socioemotional behavior at ages 3 and 5. Results also suggested that parenting in the 21st-century British context remains fairly gendered. Both mothers and fathers were more likely to engage in physical activities with their sons and artistic activities with their daughters. Fathers’ reading was socially patterned in predicted directions.
The goal of this questionnaire-based study was to compare the relative endorsement of specific parenting patterns among two ethnic Chinese groups rearing preschool children: Chinese parents in China (N = 117) and first-generation Chinese immigrant parents in the United States (N = 94). A significant interaction effect was found between country and gender on the nonreasoning/punitive dimension of authoritarian parenting, revealing that Chinese fathers endorsed this pattern more strongly than both Chinese immigrant fathers and Chinese mothers. There was also a significant interaction effect between country and gender on the practice of shaming/love withdrawal, indicating that Chinese fathers espoused this pattern more strongly than Chinese immigrant fathers and Chinese mothers, but Chinese immigrant mothers endorsed it more strongly than Chinese immigrant fathers. Furthermore, it was revealed that Chinese immigrants endorsed beliefs about maternal involvement more strongly than their Chinese counterparts. The results are discussed in the context of cultural and contextual influences.
A growing number of studies examine how, why, and when people form and maintain living apart together (LAT) relationships. Although this literature shows that LAT is a diverse and ambiguous practice, little is known about whether people live apart together in particular ways under distinct constellations of life course circumstances. Moreover, it is unclear how intentions to convert LAT into cohabitation are configured by life trajectories. Drawing on data from an unprecedentedly large survey of people in LAT partnerships, we construct a fourfold typology of individuals in LAT relationships and show that each of the identified profiles is characterized by a distinctive position in the life course and different cohabitation intentions. These results indicate that LAT is a flexible way to practice partnership within the context of life course circumstances.
Partner enhancement is an important relational process that has been linked to better relationship outcomes in existing research. However, little is known about variables that might be associated with the practice of partner enhancement. In this study, we utilized an ecosystemic model with a sample of 1,432 couples and an actor/partner interdependence model to explore whether the family of origin, attachment avoidance and anxiety, and social network approval predicted partner enhancement scores. The results indicated that the family of origin was only indirectly associated with partner enhancement through attachment and social network approval. The best predictors of partner enhancement were attachment avoidance and social network approval. Higher scores on actor attachment avoidance were related to higher scores on partner enhancement contrary to expectations. Curiously, partner effects for attachment avoidance were the opposite in that higher scores were associated with lower levels of partner enhancement. Attachment anxiety was associated with lower scores on partner enhancement for both actor and partner effects, and social network approval was associated with higher scores on partner enhancement.
Earlier studies have documented persistent negative stereotypes of childless or childfree adults, though acceptance has increased in recent decades. Recent studies have also shown negative biases against parents, especially mothers, in work-related contexts. The current study used college students’ responses to hypothetical vignettes (N = 1,266) to compare perceptions of childless and childfree adults and parents using means comparisons with generalized linear modeling methods, controlling for student and vignette characteristics. Results showed that parents were perceived as warmer, but with less positive marital relationships, than those without children. Mothers were perceived as more stressed and childless men and women as more emotionally troubled, but there were few differences in work-related perceptions. Childless wives with no plans to have children were perceived as least warm, whereas husbands were perceived as least stressed. Results indicate some persistent negative stereotypes of childless adults along with negative perceptions of stress and marital strains related to parenthood.
Whether moving back home after a period of economic independence or having never moved out, the share of emerging adults living with parents is increasing. Yet little is known about the associations of coresidence patterns and rationales for coresidence for emerging adult well-being. Using the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 891), we analyzed depressive symptoms among emerging adults who (a) never left the parental home, (b) returned to the parental home, and (c) were not currently living with a parent. About one fifth of emerging adults had boomeranged or moved back in with their parents. Among those living with parents, nearly two fifths had boomeranged or returned to their parental home and they reported significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms. Among coresident emerging adults, both intrinsic and utilitarian motivations (i.e., enjoy living with parents and employment problems) partially mediated the association between coresidence and depressive symptoms. Returning to the parental home was associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms only among emerging adults experiencing employment problems. These findings are especially relevant because the recession hit emerging adults particularly hard. The ability to distinguish boomerang emerging adults and emerging adults who have never left home provides a more nuanced understanding of parental coresidence during this phase of the life course.
Social changes in recent years have led to a broadening of the definition of family. The perception of the concept of family among the American public was assessed in 2003 and 2006 by means of the Family Perception Scale, which found that the respondents fell into three clusters, dubbed Exclusionists, Moderates, and Inclusionists. Based on a sample of adult Jewish population in Israel (N = 1,518), this study examined whether these categories could apply to the Israeli public too, and if so, whether the distribution of these clusters were the same as in the United States. The study’s findings confirm that while this classification is well suited to the perception of family in Israel, the distribution of the three clusters differs from that in the United States. These findings may indicate that while global influences promote similar views of family structures, local influences may result in different cluster distribution patterns in each society.
Exposure to physical and psychological intimate partner violence, victimization (IPV) at age 18 has several consequences for relationships at age 23 among a diverse community-based sample of young people, transitioning to adulthood in Chicago (N = 276). We find exposure to physical IPV increases the likelihood of being single and not involved in relationships in the transition to adulthood among young women. Furthermore, we find evidence of both continuity and change in intimate violence exposure over the early life course. Young men who were exposed to physical and psychological violence at age 18 are likely to be involved in violent relationships compared with nonviolent relationships in young adulthood. However, some young women and men transition out of violent relationships by young adulthood, supporting patterns of change. Our findings of both relationship dissolution among women and relationship continuity in terms of further violence exposure among men warrant further policy consideration.
This study examined how the entrances and exits of biological and social fathers into and out of children’s households were associated with biological parents’ coparenting quality. Piecewise growth curve models tested for variation in these associations between child ages 1 and 3, 3 and 5, and 5 and 9. Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2,394). Results indicated that in all three age intervals, a biological father’s entrance was associated with a contemporaneous increase in coparenting quality, whereas his exit was associated with a contemporaneous decrease. A biological father’s exit between child ages 1 and 3, or 3 and 5, was associated with declining coparenting quality in subsequent intervals. A social father’s entrance was consistently associated with a contemporaneous decrease in the biological parents’ coparenting quality, whereas his exit was associated with a contemporaneous increase between ages 3 and 5, and 5 and 9.
This study produces a grounded theory of the process of communication with former partners for 30 men and women who share physical and legal custody of their children following divorce or separation. The formality of the custody arrangement was the core factor that influenced the ways in which study participants established and maintained boundaries regarding when, how, and what they communicated with their former partners. Other factors that played a role included the relationship with the former partner, the child, and the introduction of new partners. One cannot simply assume that because parents share physical and legal custody, they communicate with their former partners in a particular way; instead, the formality of the custody arrangement and the establishment of communication boundaries needs to be examined in order to understand how coparents communicate with their former partners.
The transitional nature of military life positions the family to serve as the primary and most stable influence for adolescents in military families. These military-related transitions and stressors may also put youth at risk for depression and academic challenges. This study examines the relative impact of family structure (family composition at a given time point) and family processes (interpersonal interactions developed over time) on important adolescent outcomes (depressive symptoms and academic performance) for a sample of military youth (N = 995). While family structure, particularly being part of a stepfamily or single-parent family, was related to greater depressive symptoms and poorer academic performance, family processes (family support and parent–adolescent connection) and personal resources (initiative) also accounted for depressive symptomology and academic performance. Importantly, when modeling family processes, no differences were found across family structures. Military youth thrive in diverse family forms in the presence of healthy family processes.
Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, this research examines the association between timing of oral sex initiation and marital and cohabiting relationship satisfaction among young adults. Findings indicate that women who transition to oral sex "late" or who have no oral sex experience report higher levels of relationship satisfaction in their current coresidential unions than do women who transition at a "normative" age. Higher levels of relationship satisfaction among women who transition "late," however, appear to be explained by their lower likelihood of experiencing forced sexual relations and sexually transmitted infections. We find no evidence of any association between timing of oral sex initiation and relationship satisfaction among men. To best promote healthy relationships, researchers, practitioners, and educators need to better understand the various types of sexual activities in which young people engage.
This study examined parental mediation of children’s video game play in an Internet survey of 433 parents of children aged 5 to 18 years. We assessed the valence of active mediation (i.e., positive, negative, neutral) and the relationship between parental involvement and mediation techniques. Furthermore, we explored whether parental mediation was associated with child delinquency. Our results demonstrate that active mediation is generally negative or neutral in nature. Involved parents were more likely to use each mediation strategy than less involved parents; however, parental involvement did not predict negative mediation. Restrictive and negative mediation were significantly related to child delinquency. In sum, the findings show that parents are involved in monitoring their children’s use of this medium, just as they are with television.
Research shows that interparental conflict is positively associated with internalizing behaviors in children and adolescents, but few have considered these associations among young adults. This study uses the cognitive-contextual framework to explore whether appraisals of threat and self-blame explain the expected associations between interparental conflict and internalizing symptoms in a sample of young adults. Perceptions of interparental conflict, appraisals of threat and self-blame, and two aspects of internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety) were measured in 255 undergraduates (ages 18-21) at two Midwestern universities. Parallel mediation models demonstrated an indirect pathway through threat to depressive symptoms. In contrast, the indirect pathway through self-blame was supported when predicting anxiety. The importance of considering interparental conflict and its psychological consequences during young adulthood is discussed.
Emotional dysregulation was explored as a mediator of the relationship between perceived father rejection and young adult male and female aggression. Among undergraduate college students (N = 534), emotional dysregulation was assessed as a combined construct and then as distinct components. Analyses revealed that impulsivity mediated the relationship between perceived father rejection and aggression for both males and females. Nonacceptance of emotions was partially supported as a mediator of the perceived father rejection–aggression relationship among males, but not females. Results suggest that although father–child relationships may contribute to a variety of emotion regulation difficulties, impulsivity may play an integral role in the development of aggression. Researchers and clinicians are encouraged to pay particular attention to the process by which impulsivity may influence aggression for father-rejected sons and daughters, with additional attention to nonacceptance of emotions for sons. Limitations and future research recommendations are discussed.
U.S. discourse on low-income mothers frames them as social problems and this presumption of deficiency is reflected in studies of parenting logics and practices. Scholars often underestimate the sophistication of low-income mothers’ parenting logic and do not recognize that these mothers work as hard as and use (appropriately) different parenting logics than those of middle-class mothers. I investigate parenting logics of African American and White low-income mothers. These women demonstrate a logic that follows many of the same premises of middle-class parenting strategies but additionally seeks to address obstacles that prevent low-income youth from reaching goals: addiction, drug dealing, pregnancy, and "the street." This logic leads to strategies that may appear to be inexpensive adaptations of middle-class practices, however, analysis of mothers’ narratives reveals they are not derivative but are intended to prepare children to avoid perils of their social context. This study illuminates a previously misunderstood version of intensive mothering.
Family structure has long been a consideration in research focused on adolescent outcomes. The current study uses data derived from the Mobile Youth Survey to examine how parental warmth differs over time for male and female adolescents reporting biological parents and other parental figures (e.g., grandparents, aunts, and siblings). Using estimation of random and fixed growth effects, significant differences were noted for parental type and for adolescent gender. Paternal warmth trajectories decreased across time for biological fathers, while maternal warmth remained stable for biological mothers. Conversely, maternal and paternal warmth trajectories increased from ages 11 to 18 for other parental figures. Implications for adolescent–parent relations are discussed, with an emphasis on family structure and the contributions of other parental figures on adolescent outcomes in Black American families.
The environment in which parents socialize children’s eating, physical activity, and screen-related behaviors has changed and has been widely faulted in the obesity epidemic. This phenomenological study examined the intentions, reflections, and strategies of a purposefully selected group of mothers, self-reported as successful in socializing their children’s obesity-related behaviors as determined by scoring highly on the Family Nutrition and Physical Activity screening tool. Mothers described the power of modeling positive obesity-related behaviors and creating a culture that promoted activity over sedentariness. By focusing on establishing positive behaviors at home, and framing choices and opportunities in support of child autonomy, mothers believed they were preparing children to resist threats from the obesigenic environment. The voices of these mothers present a strengths perspective and provide a narrative which complements research in representative and at-risk populations. Findings may inform obesity prevention and intervention programs as well as parenting education curricula.
To help explain variation in Asian immigrant women’s employment, we examine the association between women’s employment and the presence and characteristics of adult extended household members for seven Asian immigrant groups: Chinese, Korean, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Filipina, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Using the American Community Survey 2009-2011 pooled data, we find that married, first-generation Asian immigrant women’s employment rates are higher when they live with parents or parents-in-law. Furthermore, hampered by housework and care work, these women apparently receive some support in particular from female extended adults providing child care assistance—especially in families with young children. On the other hand, we find a negative association between the presence of disabled adults and employment, but only for Koreans, and employed extended adults’ support varies across nationality groups. Variations in these dynamics across Asian groups suggest the need for further study.
This study examines whether the cost of living is related to the probability of living alone among unmarried persons age 65 years and older in the United States. Cost of living is measured at the metropolitan area level by the Elder Economic Security Standard Index, which takes into account geographic variability in cost of housing, food, transportation, and medical care. Using multilevel modeling, we find that higher cost of living is related to a lower likelihood of living alone net of personal resources. Results also show that the gap in the likelihood of living alone between high- and low-income older adults is slightly lessened in low-cost metropolitan areas. We conclude that the price of "purchasing privacy" is substantially higher in some metropolitan areas than in others. These findings inform policies designed to help older adults age in place.
This study investigates the role of parents’ marital status in adolescents’ mental well-being. Although the separation of parents is generally regarded as a negative condition on adolescents’ growth, we find evidence of strong positive development in certain areas. Faced with an adverse family background, even though teenagers might have lower happiness and life satisfaction, they come to develop stronger purpose in life, higher hope for the future, and higher self-esteem. We argue that this is because the tougher circumstances force them to become independent and develop their own identity. On the other hand, these attributes are found to be lower among older adolescents in "normal" family backgrounds, which provide an interesting contrast to prior research, which has argued that intact families are positive for development. The results of this study have strong implications for the study of teenage well-being.
Compared to first marriages, remarriages have consistently demonstrated higher rates of divorce. Theories used to explain this phenomenon include the family process and selection perspectives. Researchers have attempted to address selection bias in this area but have not yet employed propensity score analysis to bolster causal inference. The purpose of this study is to assess the efficacy of covariate control methods for handling selection bias compared to propensity score methods and to examine whether a direct causal link between marriage order and relationship stability can be inferred after using propensity score greedy matching and propensity score weighting procedures. We analyze a sample of 1,679 first married and 410 remarried individuals drawn from the Relationship Evaluation Survey. Results provide support for the selection perspective and suggest that a direct causal link between marriage order and relationship stability should not be inferred. Implications, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.
Using data from a national sample of 451 single mothers collected 24 months during and after the Great Recession, this study tested four hypotheses related to comprehensive measures of employment problems, number of months without health insurance, and unmet medical or dental needs. The results indicate positive relationships between employment problems and unmet medical or dental needs, employment problems and lacking health insurance, and lacking health insurance and unmet medical or dental needs. Most important, lack of health care coverage significantly reduced the relationships between unemployment (by 26%) and underemployment (by 56%) and unmet medical or dental needs. These results indicate that lack of health insurance at least partially mediates the effects of employment problems on single mothers experiencing an unmet medical or dental need. The findings have implications for these mothers’ medical and dental care access, which are discussed within the context of the recent health care reforms.
Sexual satisfaction is an important contributor to relationship functioning that is not well understood among first-time parents, at a time when relationship functioning is important for the well-being of parents as well as the child. The current study examined how several dimensions of individual and relationship functioning among first-time parents (coparenting, division of household and paid labor, parenting stress, and role overload) at 6 months postbirth predicted multiple domains of sexual satisfaction at 12 months postbirth, in a sample of heterosexual first-time parents. Role overload, work hours, and division of household labor each predicted at least one domain of sexual satisfaction for both mothers and fathers, whereas parenting stress was a unique predictor for mothers only. The implications of these results for first-time parents are discussed.
In recent years, entrepreneurship has grown as an attractive career alternative, promoting much scholarly attention. Still, little is known about the work–life interface of entrepreneurs, in particular whether entrepreneurship enhances work–life balance or exacerbates conflict between domains. We base this study on boundary theory to explore how subjective perceptions of balance and boundary management might illuminate this contradiction. Indeed, entrepreneurial roles are unique in that they entail high flexibility and permeability, facilitating role blurring, or boundarylessness. We interpretively explored three research questions pertaining to entrepreneurs’ perceptions of their work–life interface and boundaries between roles, as well as the context factors that could explain these perceptions. Findings suggest that several subjective as well as objective factors could explain how entrepreneurial work is sometimes experienced as conflicting, and at other times, perceived as conducive to balance. Theoretical and practical implications and recommendations as well as study limitations are discussed in closing.
Informal marital separation often quickly leads to divorce, but can become long-lasting, especially among disadvantaged populations. In this study, we focus on the timing of divorce after separating and examine how unemployment before or during separation affects this pivotal moment in the divorce process. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (N = 2,219), we track unemployment before and during separation and show that men’s unemployment during separation, rather than women’s, reduces the likelihood of divorce, independent of preseparation unemployment and other characteristics. For men, unemployment during a marital separation prolongs the divorce process, creating an extended period of uncertainty in marital relationships on the brink of dissolution. We discuss the gendered relationship observed between employment status during an informal separation and an estranged couple’s decision to complete the divorce process.
This study examined whether work–family support (WF support) buffers permanent and temporary workers similarly against the negative effects of work–family conflict as regard job satisfaction and emotional energy level at work and at home. A total of 1,719 Finnish nurses participated in this study in 2009. The results revealed that high coworker WF support protected temporary workers against the negative effects of high work–family conflict on emotional energy at work. Furthermore, temporary workers with low coworker WF support were at greater risk of job dissatisfaction and diminished emotional energy at home than were their permanent colleagues in the presence of high work–family conflict. Temporary workers may benefit more from coworker WF support if they experience work–family conflict. This should be considered in developing family-friendly practices in organizations where temporary contracts are relatively common.
We examine the psychosocial impact of marital status change, and the spontaneously emerging theme of identity. In-depth interviews were conducted with 82 cohabiting, married, widowed, and divorced British adults, focusing on changes in daily routine, social relationships, and social support. We draw attention to findings of interviews with men and women who entered a married (n = 30) or cohabiting (n = 8) relationship for the first time. The interviews provide an insight into the complex process of identity change in marriage and cohabitation. Participants described an identity shift from "I" to "we" which was associated with social and personal changes in how they understood themselves. Marriage and cohabitation were viewed as positive transitions facilitating personal growth. However, importantly, marriage, in particular, was also associated with a process of depersonalization which posed a challenge to private identity. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which participants managed this identity conflict.
How do emerging and enduring conditions of motherhood in Taiwan shape mothers’ interactions with children who are gender or sexually nonconforming? Bridging research on the transformation of mothering discourses in Taiwan and globally with the small but growing body of work on LGBT family of origin relationships, this article argues that women’s experiences of raising gender and sexually nonconforming children are integrally shaped by the conditions of gender and family inequality in their own lives. These inequalities are sometimes challenged but often reinscribed by new parenting discourses and resources that have proliferated in late 20th and early 21st century Taiwan, including new forms of parental labor, accountability for child outcomes, and emerging expert voices on sexuality and parenthood. This analysis is rooted in ethnographic fieldwork and family history interviews with gender and sexually nonconforming people and with their families of origin throughout Taiwan, with emphasis on heterosexual mothers’ narratives.
We consider how mother–child cohesion in adolescence relates to geographic proximity in young adulthood. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 3,985), ordered probit models the association between adolescents’ emotional closeness to mother and subsequent residential distance, controlling for key factors. Young people "at risk" of living at a distance (i.e., who have left the parental home) may be characterized by poorer relationships with parents. To take account of potential selection bias, two-stage Heckit models address spatial proximity as it relates to the choice to live with parents. The results suggest that emotional closeness to mother is robustly associated with later spatial proximity. The finding holds controlling for family structure, which is often taken as proxy for relationship quality. Although emotional closeness figures in the decision to leave home and move away, we do not find that selection out of coresidence biases the results for geographic proximity.
The present study examines the effect of a supervisor (leadership) position on a father’s time spent on child care (child care involvement). Drawing on time use and work–family research, it adapts the "stress of higher status" hypothesis to child care involvement and explicates the underlying mechanism. The proposed moderated mediation model posits that (1) a leadership position means longer work hours, which explains the lower child care involvement, and that (2) this process depends on the possibility to choose when to start and quit work (flextime), which weakens the work–family border. A Swiss sample (n = 2,820) of tertiary-educated, employed fathers from couple households is used to conduct the analysis. The results provide evidence for both (1) and (2), although, contrary to expectations, flextime does not mean longer work hours for leaders. The issue of child care involvement by fathers in leadership positions has wider relevance for work–family issues, because they are supervisors and thus shape work environments.
We used community-based participatory research with four tiers of governance and grounded theory methods to examine the lives of Alaska Native grandparents rearing grandchildren in a rural community. We explored the reasons Native grandparents reared or are rearing their grandchildren, challenges rearing grandchildren, and the joys of grandparenthood. We used their words to broaden the grandparenting research by focusing solely on Native People living in a rural, arctic climate. Culture, values, and traditions explain the unique reasons grandparents cared for their grandchildren; values and common concerns of all grandparents describe the challenges of grandparenthood; pride and joy, the value of love, and traditional ways of living made clear the joys of Alaska Native grandparents rearing their grandchildren. After the discussion, we offer considerations for future research.
Little research has investigated factors that may moderate the intergenerational transmission of emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors. The present study examined the role of two moderators, emotion dysregulation and maternal age at childbirth, on the relation between maternal childhood history of emotional maltreatment and current observations of emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in 64 mother–child dyads. Results indicated that mothers who were younger at childbirth seemed more likely to engage in emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in the context of high levels of sustained childhood emotional maltreatment, regardless of their level of emotion dysregulation. Mothers who were older at childbirth were at high risk for emotionally unsupportive parenting behaviors in the context of high levels of sustained emotional maltreatment histories and high emotion dysregulation, yet were not at such risk if emotion dysregulation was low. Implications for the buffering effects of emotion regulation on the risk for emotionally unsupportive behaviors were discussed.
Development of knowledge in the area of genetics plays an increasingly important role in the definition and characterization of kinship. To this day, several studies have focused on the risks represented by genetics within the context of new procreation techniques or genetic diseases, but very few have studied the impact of the development of biogenetics on the social institution of adoption. This article explores the issues related to genetics for adoptive parents who previously tried reproductive medicine. If their trajectories seem to illustrate the passage between two distinct spheres, from a fertility-seeking process centered on biology and genetics with assisted procreation to the social and emotional experience of adoption, our study demonstrates the mix of biogenetic and social factors in their representations and definitions of family and kinship.
This study addresses parental involvement in spousal choice and the impacts of migration. Individual and parental characteristics are analyzed as determinants of arranged versus couple-initiated marriages in Turkish families in Turkey and abroad. Analyses are based on the 2000 Families study "Migration Histories of Turks in Europe" and indicate a strong decline of arranged marriages over the past four decades. Arranged marriages are less frequent among migrants in Western Europe than among stayers in Turkey. The difference is largest for second-generation children. This pattern can only partly be explained by their higher educational attainment. Moreover, lower-educated parents are more involved in spousal choice, whereas parental religiosity does not make any difference. Parents strongly transmit their own marriage patterns to their children, but transmission is weaker in migration. Results suggest migration-specific intergenerational adaptation processes in times of general global social and cultural change.
Late-life divorce—divorce at 50 years and older—is an increasingly common event in the United States. Despite this trend, the conditions and outcomes for those involved in late-life divorce remain understudied. Drawing on Schlossberg’s transition theory, we assess four sets of risk and protective factors (i.e., situation, self, support, and coping strategies) that could influence the postdivorce life satisfaction of adults who experience late-life divorces. Using the data set of a nationally representative study, we obtained an analytical sample of 164 men and 145 women who reported a divorce at 50 years or older (N = 309). Results from ordinary least squares regression analysis indicate few statistically significant effects from the sets of risk and protective factors entered in the second and third steps of the analysis. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
Research suggests family meals are associated with positive outcomes for children, leading scholars to recommend their public promotion. Several organizations have created campaigns promoting family meals, but little research has been done on their efficacy. This article compares framing strategies of family meal campaigns with parents’ understandings of feeding work, based on content analysis of 10 campaign websites and interviews with 46 American parents. The analysis suggests that while the motivational and diagnostic frames campaigns use are likely to resonate with parents, their prognostic framing does not align with parents’ experiences. Campaign frames are least likely to resonate with single parents, who face more barriers to having the kinds of meals they want and have fewer ideas for overcoming them. To be more effective, organizations promoting family meals should focus on innovative but relatable strategies for improving family meal frequency and quality, with a particular emphasis on single parents.
Researchers have suggested that apart from the actual division of household labor, housework ideology and spousal support also influence perceptions of fairness regarding the division of household labor. Furthermore, although only individual perceived fairness predictors are typically examined, researchers acknowledge that an individual’s perceived fairness is often contingent on a combination of characteristics within a couple. In addition to self-perceived fairness, we examined perceptions of fairness for spouse in 104 couples expecting their first child. Results indicate that couple-level actual division of housework and housework ideology significantly predict perceptions of fairness. Furthermore, our data provide evidence to suggest that some predictors’ influence may depend on the level of analysis (couple vs. individual), as well as the type of perceived fairness examined (self vs. spouse). Findings illustrate the importance of considering predictors at the dyadic level, as well as examining self-perceived fairness and spousal perceived fairness as separate constructs.
Seventy-four first- and second-year students, participating in focus groups at a northeastern U.S. university, discussed recollections of messages received at home, prior to sexual debut, about sex and sexuality. Responses were categorized as Characteristics of Communication (nature of interactions participants had at home about sexuality) and Major Message Content (actual themes of those conversations). Commonly reported characteristics were trouble talking with parents; most conversations happened with mothers; participants feared parents’ reactions; and among lesbian, gay, bisexual groups, feared parents’ discovering their nonheterosexual orientation. Commonly reported message content included use protection and, among women, wait. Women reported messages that were at best, mixed, and at worst, threatening or moralistic. Men reported fewer conversations, and those recalled were more neutral or encouraging, especially from fathers. Parental messages to males and females differed qualitatively, reflected stereotypical assumptions about gender roles, desire, and appropriate conditions under which to have sex, and lacked support for nonheterosexual orientations.
Children play an important role in shaping the division of labor within couples. This study examines whether the impact of parenthood on the household division of paid work and housework is moderated by child gender, and thereby extends previous work on the effect of child gender on family life. The empirical analysis used fixed effects models and data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1985-2011, N = 7,572). It showed that both fathers and mothers of boys spend more hours on paid work than parents of girls. This child-gender effect is, however, much stronger for women than for men. There is also suggestive evidence that mothers and fathers of a same-sex child spend more time on housework than mothers and fathers of an opposite-sex child. Overall, the analysis indicates that having a daughter is associated with a more traditional division of labor than having a son.
The appropriate format for services supporting military families depends on how vulnerabilities and resources are distributed across and within those families. If different types of vulnerabilities cluster together, then programs supporting families should combine multiple services rather than targeting specific concerns. Yet scant data exist about how vulnerabilities and resources covary within military families. The current study addressed this issue through a latent class analysis of data on a wide range of domains obtained from a stratified random sample of 1,981 deployable, active component, married servicemembers and their spouses. Within married deployable servicemembers, results indicated that vulnerabilities and resources cluster together within individuals; servicemembers at high risk in one domain are likely to be high risk in multiple domains. This is less the case for spouses. One or both spouses are vulnerable in 39% of couples. These results support programs that provide vulnerable military families with more comprehensive services.
Children and adolescents from multicultural families with an immigrant mother tend to experience stress due to problems with cross-cultural adaptation in South Korea, which has a homogeneous cultural identity. This study explored the impact of acculturative stress on externalizing behavior problems (e.g., aggressiveness and delinquency) among 121 elementary, middle, and high school students in Gyeonggi. It analyzed the mediating effects of acculturative stress on externalizing behaviors using structural equation modeling with bootstrapping method. The results showed that stress experienced in relation to cultural adaptation indirectly affected externalizing behaviors through school maladaptation. This indicates that while acculturative stress itself does not directly affect the externalizing behaviors of children and adolescents with immigrant mothers, it does appear to increase the difficulty of adjusting to the school environment, and as the maladaptation worsens, externalizing behaviors may subsequently develop. Schools must function as a protective environment against externalizing behavior problems associated with acculturative stress.
We used a social constructionist and feminist framework to examine how young women negotiate gendered rules for anger in their romantic relationships and how such negotiations are associated with women’s power in these relationships. We analyzed 24 interviews using a grounded-theory methodology. Our analyses indicated five women resisted gendered rules for anger as they accepted their anger, attributed shared responsibility for their anger, and expressed their anger externally and directly. The other 19 young women followed gendered rules for anger as they distanced themselves from their anger, ambivalently attributed responsibility for their anger, and kept their anger in and expressed it indirectly. Women who resisted gendered rules for anger narrated being engaged in egalitarian relationships, while women who followed gendered rules for anger seemed to participate in nonegalitarian relationships. The findings of this study offer a feminist conceptualization of women’s anger in terms of social rules for anger experience and expression.
The purpose of this study was to examine Chinese young adults’ judgments, of parental control across a range of domains (e.g., clothing and friendship), whether judgments would be influenced by experimentally manipulated information regarding cultural values and cultural normativeness, and whether perceptions of parental acceptance/rejection influenced parental control judgments. Participants viewed parental control of training school and clothing more positively than parental control of friendship or use of physical discipline. Contrary to expectations, participants did not view parental control more positively when primed with information about cultural values. Surprisingly, participants’ views of parental control were more negative when primed with information about the high cultural normativeness of parental control as compared with neutral or low normativeness conditions. Regardless of type of control, participants viewed parental control more positively when control was perceived as based on love and acceptance rather than a desire to control the child.
Gender equality and equity in the division of household labor may be associated with couples’ transitions to first, second, and third births. Our comprehensive analysis includes the division of housework and child care as well as the perception of whether this division is fair and satisfactory. We use a unique data set combining the Norwegian Generations and Gender Survey (2007) with information on childbirths within 3 years after the interview from the population register. We found that an unequal division of housework is associated with a decreased chance of first and subsequent births. Child care is most relevant when the respondent is satisfied with the division, as one-child couples where the respondent is less satisfied with the division of child care are less likely to have a second child. Our findings suggest that, even in a high-equity context such as Norway, equality and equity in the household are also important for childbearing.
This article explores ideals and experiences of the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship using semistructured interviews with 46 members of 22 families living in one Indian village. Ideally, the relationship is characterized by love and understanding, where one’s mother-in-law or daughter-in-law is like one’s own daughter or mother. In practice, the relationship varies in quality. Some women experienced affectionate, high-quality relationships, whereas others’ relationships were characterized by hurtful exchanges and not speaking. Previous literature portrays the relationship as negative, but these results point to the relevance of positive aspects as well. I also suggest that these ideals and experiences are shaped by the joint family system. The joint family system contributes to the strongly positive ideal, whereas the tensions that women experience arise from the contradictory family locations that they occupy within that system. Daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law are simultaneously strangers and close family members.
The present study examines the relationship between a variety of organizational support factors and work–family outcomes, as well as gender differences in these relationships. A random sample of 229 working adults completed phone surveys, and multiple regression analysis was used to test the proposed relationships. Results showed that certain types of support may differentially benefit women and men, highlighting the value of having a supervisor and organization supportive of work–family balance. For example, having a supportive work–family supervisor was related to lower negative work–family spillover and intent to quit for women, and higher job satisfaction for men. Telecommuting use, on the other hand, was more beneficial for men than women in our sample. Given these findings, organizations should be aware that certain forms of support—particularly supervisor work–family support—may benefit men and women through different mechanisms.
The social demographic literature on divorce suggests that the lower educated are more likely to have personality traits that reduce relationship stability. However, few empirical verifications of this proposition exist. To fill this void, we look at the distribution of personality traits across educational groups of married individuals in Britain. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (N = 2,665), we first estimated the effects of the "Big Five" personality traits agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience on divorce and subsequently examine their distribution across educational groups. We find that in particular women’s personality traits differ by education. We also observe that personality traits affecting divorce risk are distributed unevenly over educational groups, but they do not favor the higher educated in general. In sum, the data do not support the hypothesis that the lower educated in Britain have personality traits that reduce relationship stability.
Many European families are affected by the 24/7 economy, but relatively little is known about how working parents experience nonstandard hours. The aim of this study was to analyze the possible associations of dual earners’ work schedules and other work-related factors with their experience of time- and strain-based work–family conflict. These phenomena were examined among dual earners living in Finland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, countries that differ in working time practices and policies. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to analyze cross-cultural data on dual earners with children aged 0 to 12 years (N = 1,000). The results showed that working nonstandard schedules was associated with increased time-based work–family conflict, but only among Finnish and British parents. Poorer financial situation, working longer hours, more time spent working at very high speed, and lower work satisfaction were associated with both types of work–family conflict in all countries.
An increasing number of adults, both men and women, are simultaneously managing work and family caregiving roles. Guided by the stress process model, we investigate whether 823 employees occupying diverse family caregiving roles (child caregiving only, elder caregiving only, and both child caregiving and elder caregiving, or "sandwiched" caregiving) and their noncaregiving counterparts in the information technology division of a white-collar organization differ on several indicators of psychosocial stress along with gender differences in stress exposure. Compared with noncaregivers, child caregivers reported more perceived stress and partner strain whereas elder caregivers reported greater perceived stress and psychological distress. With the exception of work-to-family conflict, sandwiched caregivers reported poorer overall psychosocial functioning. Additionally, sandwiched women reported more family-to-work conflict and less partner support than their male counterparts. Further research on the implications of combining a white-collar employment role with different family caregiving roles is warranted.
We conducted a qualitative inquiry to better understand how fathers of young children consider risk in their own life and in the lives of their 2- to 7-year-olds. Interview data were collected from 64 fathers from rural and urban Canada. Fathers’ discourse was considered in the context of masculine identities as well as the implications for father-focused health promotion and safety education. We found that most fathers considered risk taking to be an essential component of their own and their fathering identities. Some fathers held negative views about risk taking in their own and their children’s lives or were inconsistent in risk considerations for themselves compared to their children. For these fathers, identity construction was a somewhat fluid and contradictory process. Overall, we conclude that health promotion programs should support and bolster fathering identities and practices that involve engaging children in physical risk taking while employing appropriate safety strategies.
Substance use (SU) stigma is one factor contributing to unmet need for SU treatment. Additionally, theory suggests that women and single parents who use substances experience enhanced stigma because they do not adhere to normative social expectations. This study examines differences in perceived stigma by gender and parenthood among those with unmet need for SU treatment using the 2003-2010 National Survey of Drug Use and Health (N = 1,474). Results indicate that women are more likely to report stigma as a barrier to treatment compared with men, though the interaction between gender and parenthood is not significant. We find that married parents report the highest level of stigma. We situate our findings in past health-related stigma research. We suggest that these results shed a light on stigma, particularly as it relates to family status, as a contributing factor to differences regarding SU treatment utilization. Finally, we raise a provocative question concerning social status and anticipated stigma.
Mothers and children often experience negative outcomes following unintended pregnancies. The current study examined for whom and under what conditions unintended pregnancy was associated with negative outcomes among a sample of 682 first-time mothers, recruited as part of the Predicting and Preventing Child Neglect in Teen Mothers study. Specifically, maternal demographic characteristics were examined as moderators of the association between pregnancy intention and parenting behaviors when children were 18 months old. Results revealed that unintended pregnancy was associated with fewer positive parenting behaviors; however, both maternal race and education moderated the association. Among mothers who identified as Black or Hispanic, those who intended to get pregnant were less likely to demonstrate positive parenting behaviors, and those with less education tended to demonstrate fewer positive parenting behaviors regardless of pregnancy intention. Implications for research, prevention, and intervention are discussed.
The current study explored how a variety of family-of-origin experiences are related to individuals’ infidelity history. A survey was completed by 294 participants and we found that parental infidelity, parental marital status, parental conflict, and parental marital satisfaction were associated with the likelihood of offspring having ever engaged in infidelity. When considered together, parent infidelity and parent satisfaction were uniquely related to offspring infidelity. Additionally, parental marital status moderated the relationship between parent infidelity and offspring infidelity, as individuals who experienced neither event were particularly unlikely to have ever engaged in infidelity. Little evidence was found that individuals’ infidelity beliefs were linked with their family-of-origin experiences or their own infidelity behavior. Results indicate that family-of-origin experiences are related to individuals’ infidelity behavior, a finding that has implications for future research as well as clinical intervention.
It is a common belief in the fire service that the divorce rate for firefighters is higher than that in the general population. However, no data exists to substantiate this concern. We conducted surveys in 31 U.S. fire departments to assess relationship status, history of divorce, and key health outcomes. Prevalence of divorce among male firefighters was similar to the general population. In contrast, age-standardized prevalence of current divorce among female fighters (32.1%) was more than three times that for females in the general population (10.4%). Prevalence of ever divorce was substantially higher among female (40.0%) compared with male firefighters (24.4%). Married firefighters were less likely to report heavy alcohol use or depression, whereas single firefighters had more favorable body composition. These findings suggest that the rate of divorce among male firefighters is similar to that found in the general public. In contrast, female firefighters report high rates of divorce.
The objective of this study was to examine whether mother, father, and closest grandparent involvement are associated with South African adolescents’ mental health (internalizing and externalizing problems and prosocial behavior) and substance use. A sample of 512 Grade 8 and Grade 9 learners in Cape Town (M age = 14 years) completed a structured survey. Of the participants, 57% were female, and 85% identified themselves as "colored" (mixed race). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses, controlling for age, sex, and socioeconomic status, indicated that mother and father involvement were negatively associated with adolescents’ internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas mother and closest grandparent involvement were positively associated with prosocial behavior. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses revealed that parent involvement was negatively associated with past-month cigarette use, but not with past-month alcohol or past-year marijuana use. The findings suggest the importance of considering parents and grandparents in interventions to promote adolescent mental health.
To better understand emerging adults’ perceptions of family interactions and value transmission to the next generation, we examined Hmong American emerging adults’ reflections on their parents’ parenting. Participants discussed what parenting practices they would do differently and others they hoped to emulate with their future adolescent children. Thirty Hmong American emerging adults (18-25 years; M = 21.2 years; 50% female) participated in interviews that focused retrospectively on the parent–adolescent relationship. Results revealed that emerging adults wanted to parent differently in three ways: less pressure about education, fewer restrictions, and more open communication. Emerging adults imagined being a similar parent in four ways: promoting education, promoting life values, giving guidance, and offering love and support. The findings highlight parenting practices that Hmong American emerging adults plan on transmitting (and not transmitting) to their own children, offering a glimpse into the type of parents the emerging adults may become.
A cross-sectional design based on social cognitive theory was used to examine the association between mother and daughter perceptions of parental indulgence and family health discussions as they influenced eating motivations, health outcomes, and life satisfaction of college females. Results indicated that daughters perceived greater overall indulgence and overnurturance than mothers. Indulgence had both positive and negative associations with daughters’ life satisfaction. Daughters’ perceptions of parental overnurturance and giving too much had the greatest total effects on life satisfaction. Even as daughters began to transition away from their parents, mothers still played an integral role in their health behaviors and outcomes. Additional research was recommended, along with practice recommendations for family and health professionals.
This study used latent profile analysis to develop coping typologies of 340, 14- to16-year-old Mexican American adolescents (M = 14.46, SD = 0.69). Three typologies were identified: (a) opposition coping (adolescents who tended to use anger and venting emotions), (b) support-seeking coping (adolescents who relied on seeking support), and (c) escape and opposition coping (adolescents who relied on anger, venting, substance-use coping, behavioral avoidance, and peer support). Three key parental behaviors (support, knowledge, psychological control) of mothers and fathers and adolescent gender were examined as predictors of the coping typologies. Results indicated that parental support and knowledge, particularly from mothers, predicted membership into the support-seeking coping typology relative to the other two typologies. Girls were more likely than boys to utilize support-seeking coping than opposition coping. Gender socialization norms that may have influenced these results are discussed.
The aim of this study is to investigate the consequences for linked lives of entering into new intimate relationships in later life. The empirical data is based on qualitative interviews with 28 Swedes aged 63 to 91 years, who have established a new intimate relationship after the age of 60 years or are currently dating. Theories on linked lives and individualization are used. The results show that children were generally supportive of their older parents’ unions and older individuals were often integrated into the new partner’s network. However, a new union also restructured the relationship chain so that time and energy were redirected to the new partner. Older parents preferred to be dependent on partners rather than children/others. A new partner was described as a source for autonomy and a way of "unburdening" children. Results are discussed in light of Western individualism generally and Swedish state supported individualism in particular.
Studies of intensive mothering suggest that fulfilling societal expectations of the "good mother" diminishes maternal psychological well-being; however, studies tend to focus on young mothers. We examine the association between intensive mothering and psychological well-being using a sample of mothers in midlife (n = 1,388) drawn from the 2004-2006 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States. Intensive mothering is measured as provision of high levels of emotional support to children, high degree of thought and effort put into these relationships, and reduction of paid work to provide more care. Psychological well-being is measured as depressive symptoms, self-rated mental health, and positive and negative affect. Ordinary least squares regression results are mixed: While providing high levels of emotional support predicts more depressive symptoms, worse self-rated mental health, and higher negative affect, higher investments of thought and effort predict better mental health.
Incarcerated fathers often experience early life risk factors that cumulate over time and are compounded by the negative repercussions of imprisonment. These dynamics may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of risk and help explain the persistent link between paternal incarceration and poor child outcomes. Contact between incarcerated fathers and their children can benefit them both, but there is limited research on the factors that affect father–child contact. Using data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities and a sample of fathers with at least one minor child (N = 5,809), the authors found that incarcerated fathers who experienced more childhood risk factors had less frequent contact with their children. A variety of inmate characteristics were also significant predictors of father–child contact. Parenting interventions could address incarcerated fathers’ childhood risk experiences, which likely undermine the development and maintenance of family relationships, to help them develop prosocial skills.
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,605), the present study examined two aspects of maternal gatekeeping in relation to low-income predominantly nonresidential fathers’ engagement with young children: facilitation and encouragement. The results showed that maternal encouragement when children were 3 years old was positively and longitudinally related to higher levels of paternal engagement with 5 year old children. However, maternal facilitation at age 3 was negatively associated with later levels of paternal engagement. Moreover, the coresidential status of mothers and fathers did not influence the relationship among facilitation, encouragement, and paternal engagement. Implications for future research and practice are discussed in this article.
Our study investigates an understudied issue: care sharing and collaboration between migrant mothers and different caregivers of left-behind children in transnational childrearing. Using qualitative data obtained from 51 Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, our study compares the problems and strategies of migrant mothers working with their left-behind husbands with those of migrant mothers working with female kin, especially grandmothers. It enriches the literature of transnational child care by demonstrating the complexity, diversity, and flexibility of migrant mothers’ cooperation with caregivers in the process of meeting left-behind children’s various needs.
Although some researchers have argued that religiosity has a deterrent effect on criminal offending in general, and serves as a protective factor against men’s intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration, others have obtained inconsistent or contradictory findings indicating that religiosity per se may be less important than other factors and may be protective only for some groups of men. The present study extends previous research by using measures that gauge multiple dimensions of religiosity to examine its effects on IPV perpetration among a national, community sample of adult men (N = 260). Findings indicate that religiosity is functionally less important than religious self-regulation in reducing men’s likelihood of IPV perpetration, supporting previous research showing that the protective effects of religiosity may be limited to certain groups of men. Implications of the findings for future research are discussed.
Recent studies revealed that parental knowledge of the child’s activities and whereabouts moderately declines during adolescence. This study investigated whether (a) there exist trajectory classes that considerably deviate from this average trend and (b) whether early psychosocial factors distinguish the trajectory subgroups. Analyses were based on a German sample of school students (N = 715) who provided annual self-reports from age 10 to 14 years. Growth mixture modeling revealed two same-sized trajectory groups of parental knowledge that both displayed a moderate decline and were only distinguishable by different levels. Membership in the lower level group was associated with a difficult temperament, poor family relationships, problems with peers, and male gender. Contrary to other studies, findings indicated that trajectory classes of parental knowledge which substantially deviate from the normative decline do not exist. Sample characteristics, the focus on early adolescence, and a thorough application of growth mixture specifications may explain our findings.
The study explored the experiences of 35 children of former Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund awardees through qualitative interviews. Particularly, the study sought to understand their experiences in single-parent households, before, during, and after their parents pursued a college degree as well as how they perceived the impact of the scholarships, especially in relation to their own educational attainment. From the qualitative interviews, three main areas were identified: the hardships of single-parent households, the challenges and possibilities of single parents’ higher education, and the generational impact of the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund. For each area, themes and subthemes were identified along with their thick description. The findings of the study emphasize the significance of single parents’ educational and economic accomplishment in children’s education and quality of life even though they also note the challenges within single-parent households, especially during the parents’ college years. The implications of the findings are discussed.
Father involvement is a salient predictor of children’s cognitive development and recent studies suggest that African American and Hispanic fathers, who are highly involved, have children who enter school more poised to succeed. Little is known, however, about contextual barriers to positive father involvement in ethnic minority families. This study examined prospective relations between fathers’ work characteristics (i.e., total work hours per week, job satisfaction, and work shift) and children’s cognitive development in preschool (i.e., reading and math scores). A total of 2,340 children were included in the study (35% African American, 65% Hispanic). Fathers’ total work hours per week positively predicted children’s reading and math scores. Fathers’ work shift (i.e., nonstandard) positively predicted reading, but not math. In contrast, fathers’ job satisfaction negatively predicted children’s math achievement. Findings were evident even after controlling for a host of demographic factors (e.g., father education, mother education, home-learning environment, and family income).
We conducted in-depth interviews with 28 newly married women to explore the experience of postnuptial depressive symptoms. Nearly half of the participants indicated that they felt let down or depressed following their wedding, and some participants reported clinical levels of depression. We found several stark contrasts between the bluest and the happiest brides. Blue brides described feeling uncertain in their marriages, focused on self during wedding planning, and characterized their wedding as an ending followed by unmet expectations. Happier brides expressed relational confidence, demonstrated a relational focus during wedding planning, and framed their wedding in terms of new beginnings and unexpected positive emotions. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of mental and relational health in early marriage.
This study extended prior research on attitudes about the importance of love as a basis for marriage. With data from a sample of 4,245 college students, obtained over a 16-year period, we found that both men and women, but women to a slightly greater degree than men, rated love as important for entering marriage. Over the 16-year period of the study, the importance of love as a prerequisite for marriage decreased slightly for men. Other individual difference variables (beyond gender) that were found to be associated positively with viewing love as an important basis for marriage included being White (vs. Black), high self-esteem, restrictedness in sociosexuality (true for women only), and a secure attachment style. Participants were more undecided or ambivalent about whether love is necessary to maintain a marriage. The importance of love for maintaining marriage was rated slightly higher by women (than by men), less religious participants, those whose parents had divorced, and those who were unrestricted in their sociosexuality; this belief was not found to change over time.
Research indicates the continuance of a rising trend in cohabitation among heterosexual couples. Although most cohabitors eventually marry or break up, there is a subset of cohabitors that are consciously committed to remaining unmarried. Based on interviews with 45 committed unmarried heterosexual couples residing in the United States, this study investigates the reasons why some choose to abstain from legal marriage altogether. Participants indicate a variety of reasons for forgoing legal marriage, including political views, economic practicalities, divorce concerns, and a lack of rationales or incentives to marry. The reasons offered fit into two larger categories: unease about the meanings associated with marriage and concerns about what marriage does to the relationship. As a subset of cohabitors often overlooked in research, it is important to understand what motivates some into saying "I Don’t" to legal marriage.
This article investigates the extended family social support networks of Caribbean Black adults (Afro-Caribbeans). Although there are several ethnographic accounts of familial ties and support exchanges among Black Caribbean immigrants, only a handful of studies use quantitative data. This article uses data from the National Survey of American Life, which contains the first national probability sample of Caribbean Blacks in the United States. Age, gender, income, material hardship, and immigration status were all associated with at least one of the four indicators of family support networks. Subjective family closeness and frequency of family contact were significantly associated with both giving and receiving informal support. A significant age and parental status interaction for receiving support indicated that older adults without children received assistance from their extended families less frequently than older adults with children. Overall, study findings affirm the importance of extended family networks for Caribbean Black adults.
The study examines how family climate counteracts the constraints in the business system created by relationship conflict that is known to negatively affect business outcomes (firm satisfaction and firm performance). Cross-sectional self-reported data were obtained from a nationally representative sample of 392 Austrian family businesses. The core tenet of sustainable family business theory provided the theoretical underpinnings for the study’s hypotheses. Family climate includes measures of cohesion, adaptability, and open communication. Results demonstrate the negative effects of relationship conflict on firm satisfaction and firm performance. Adaptability was significantly related to firm performance. Cohesion and adaptability moderated the negative effect of relationship conflict on firm satisfaction; adaptability moderated the negative effect of relationship conflict on firm performance.
This study investigates the influence of family context and community context on children’s social reasoning about parental negotiation of the gendered roles of breadwinner and caretaker. Participants included 272 seven- and ten-year-old children from traditional and nontraditional parental employment situations, who lived in either a U.S. east coast metropolitan area or in a military-minded community. Children provided judgments and justifications about a parent’s desire to switch roles, the other parent’s opposition, and the use of stereotypes to defend their opposition. Children’s judgments were affected by the gender of parent wanting a new role, age of child, and both personal contexts. The current study provides evidence that children, not just adults, are aware of, and can reason about, parental roles and that it is important to investigate community norms in addition to direct family contexts.
This study aimed to formulate and test a thorough and comprehensive model that explains how irrational beliefs and dysfunctional emotions of partners affect marital adjustment. Unlike previous research that examined the direct association of irrational cognitions and marital disturbance, we hypothesized that emotions—anger, depression, and anxiety—have a mediatory role in the relationship between irrational cognitions and marital adjustment of both partners. We also hypothesized that dysfunctional emotions of one partner affect the perceived marital adjustment of the other partner. The model was tested on nonclinical sample of 100 couples (N = 200). The results of structural equation modeling support the model. We found that irrational beliefs lead to dysfunctional emotions, which further affect the perceived marital adjustment of both partners. However, on examining the partners’ mutual effect, it was found that only dysfunctional emotions of the males affect females’ perceived marital adjustment but not vice versa.
Over one in five households with children has at least one child with a special health care need (CSHCN). Child health caregiving can bleed into paid work time. This research analyzes what factors influence work decisions (who reduces work and by how much) in married-couple families with CSHCN. This article uses data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to examine the specifics of changes in parental work status and a comparison of family/work trade-offs made by parents in families with and without a CSHCN. Results indicate that mothers are more likely to experience negative work changes than fathers. Both mothers and fathers with CSHCN are more likely to report missing work than parents of children without special health care needs. Overall, when children receive treatment in a primary care practice that serves as a medical home, parents are less likely to experience negative employment changes.
The current study focuses on the effects of sibling gender configuration on family processes during early childhood. In a sample of 369 two-parent families with two children (youngest 12 months, oldest about 2 years older), both siblings’ noncompliant and oppositional behaviors and fathers’ and mothers’ sensitivity and discipline strategies were observed. Both siblings’ aggressive behaviors and empathy of the oldest sibling were assessed with parent-reports. Children in families with two sons showed more problematic interaction patterns compared with children in families with an oldest girl. In families with two boys, older siblings were more aggressive and fathers were less sensitive toward their youngest child in comparison with families with two girls. Furthermore, in boy–boy families older siblings showed more oppositional behavior and younger siblings more noncompliance compared with girl–boy families. These findings highlight the importance of sibling gender configuration in the development of child behavior and parent–child interactions.
We examined the associations between love, personality, and creativity for people in relationships of varying durations. Participants (N = 1,529) from regions across the United States completed an online survey. Consistent with prior work, we found that relationship length was negatively associated with passion, positively associated with commitment, and did not exhibit a significant association with intimacy. For personality, agreeableness was positively associated with passion, intimacy, and commitment, and conscientiousness was positively associated with intimacy and commitment. Additionally, openness was significantly associated with passion and intimacy for men, and emotional stability was significantly associated with intimacy for women. Of note, artistic creative behaviors were negatively associated with all three love components, whereas everyday creative behaviors and self-assessed creativity were positively associated with each love component.
This interview study examines the ideological assumptions in women’s accounts of their coethnic mothers-in-law in a sample of 36 Taiwanese, Taiwanese Americans, and Mexican Americans. Respondents across ethnic and national backgrounds deploy an ideology of "expressive mothering" that emphasizes close affective bonds in evaluating their mothers-in-law, often relying on their own mothers as the standard for comparison. While respondents generally expect mothers to be very involved in their lives as an extension of their close bonds, they want mothers-in-law to walk a tightrope between close emotional bonds and noninterference. Our findings suggest that respondents’ use of the mothering ideology promotes high expectations and can contribute to difficult in-law relations. We also describe how Taiwanese and Taiwanese American respondents, but not Mexican Americans, engage racialized assumptions regarding the mother-in-law role and, in so doing, reproduce racial stereotypes.
Transnational marriages are increasing within the Asian region where one spouse migrates across national borders to marry. Compared with other forms of intermarriages, little is known about ethnic intermarriages involving transnational migration, especially in societies that are new immigrant destinations. Using social survey from South Korea (N = 64,972), this article examines the marital power dynamics between transnational couples and the well-being consequences of power differentials for the migrating spouse. The results suggest that upward social mobility obtained through transnational marriages, measured by dyadic gaps in education and family social standing between transnational couples, provides a solid foundation for many marital unions, and thus leads to marriage migrants’ better health, improved life satisfaction, and more positive views on transnational marriage migration. This article sheds light on the unique power dynamics of biethnic families, one of the emerging and unconventional forms of contemporary families, and informs policy makers across family, health, and migration domains.
Military deployments are stressful for service members and partners. Communication is an important factor in trying to maintain a relationship during these separations. This article presents a brief overview of communication in long-distance relationships for context, then reviews articles on communication during military deployments. This review reveals that emerging technology has resulted in an increase in the ability to communicate during deployment, although some studies suggest that access to such technology may vary. The few empirical studies that examine new communication technologies have found that different media (e.g., video calling vs. letters) may serve different functions in communication during deployment (e.g., facilitating problem discussion vs. providing tangible reminders of the partner). Military specific concerns, such as restrictions on communication and the potential for communication to distract service members from their mission, also appear to be important factors. The article concludes with clinical and research recommendations.
When a parent has another child with a new partner, a significant effect on parents and children is likely, making factors associated with multiple-partner fertility of interest to policy makers. For single mothers, one potential policy-relevant factor influencing their subsequent fertility with a new partner is child support income. However, the direction and magnitude of any effect is not well-established. This study documents the simple negative relationship between child support and nonmarital fertility with a new partner in our sample of low-income unmarried mothers. We then take advantage of a policy experiment that resulted in randomly assigned differences in child support income to investigate its effects. We find no support for a negative causal relationship between child support receipt and nonmarital fertility with a new partner, instead finding suggestive evidence that mothers with more child support income are slightly more likely to have a subsequent nonmarital birth with a new partner.
Parental disapproval of a different-sex romantic relationship is associated with reduced relationship quality and stability. However, little is known about how disapproval from parents matters for gay and lesbian relationship quality and stability. This article examines how 60 adults in gay and lesbian relationships understand and negotiate parental disapproval. Findings reveal three main ways parental disapproval is perceived to matter for the quality of gay and lesbian relationships. First, respondents describe experiencing increased relationship strain. Second, disapproval from parents is understood as promoting relationship resilience. Third, respondents separate themselves from parents to protect and bolster their relationship quality. In conversation with previous work on different-sex relationships, findings suggest that gay and lesbian adults perceive and negotiate strain from parents in ways that are both similar to, but also unique from, different-sex contexts. The implications for theory and research on intimate relationship quality in the context of family of origin relationships are discussed.
The transition to first-time parenthood at advanced maternal age has become a rising challenge for families in the 21st century. The present study aimed to examine the perceptions of influencing factors and the satisfaction with child-timing among older first-time mothers and their partners (older parents) compared with younger first-time mothers and their partners (younger parents) and to explore the relationships between these variables, depending on age group. A total of 105 older parents and 93 younger parents were recruited in a Portuguese urban referral maternity and completed self-report scales during pregnancy. Both age groups perceived that a shared desire to have children and a suitable partnership were the most influential factors. However, older parents were less satisfied with the timing of first childbirth than younger parents. Aside from some perceptions of influencing factors, advanced maternal age was the most consistent predictor of lower satisfaction with child-timing.
A period of separation is a ground for divorce in some countries. During this waiting period, some parents live apart in two separate residences, while other parents live apart in one residence. In this article, I examine the experiences of fathers who remain living in the same residence as their former partners and the experiences of a number of fathers who had to move out of the family home and live in a separate residence after the decision to separate. The findings show that restrictive divorce policies that delay divorce potentially create a situation of prolonged boundary ambiguity which complicate the process of renegotiating boundaries between parenting and former spousal relationships on divorce. The article argues that for a sample of divorced fathers, the policies that require a prolonged waiting period relate in some way to issues of unclear boundaries.
The associating factors of hiring domestic help have not been thoroughly studied in a non-Western context. Using household survey data (N = 974), this article investigates the interactive role of gender attitude and women’s income on the decision to hire domestic help in Hong Kong. Some previous studies fall short in finding a significant association between respondents’ gender attitudes and the hiring of domestic help, while wives’ income is a consistent factor in the hiring of domestic help across a number of studies. In this study, we found that husbands’ traditional gender attitudes and wives’ high income sharply increase the likelihood of hiring domestic help. However, their associations with the hiring of domestic help are conditional on each other. In addition to women’s socioeconomic status, ideational factors should be taken into account in projecting local demand for domestic help and in understanding the increasing trend of domestic outsourcing.
This study examines (a) secondary trauma by evaluating World Assumptions (World Assumptions Scale scores) among spouses of Israeli ex-prisoners of war (ex-POWs) and (b) the relationship between the husbands’ current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and PTSD trajectory and the wives’ world assumptions. Data were prospectively collected thrice for ex-POWs and comparable veterans, and twice for their spouses. This study extends current research as it links trauma, beyond PTSD symptoms, to more negative world assumptions among spouses of traumatized ex-POWs. Spouses of ex-POWs with PTSD symptoms reported lower benevolence of the people and self-worth and higher randomness compared with spouses of ex-POWs without PTSD symptoms. Spouses of ex-POWs who endorsed chronic PTSD symptoms also reported greater levels of self-control compared with the delayed PTSD symptoms group. Results suggest that the relationship between husbands’ PTSD symptoms and wives’ world assumptions may be mediated by wives’ PTSD symptoms. The implications of the findings are discussed.
An association between divorce and suicide risk has been noted in numerous studies, but the gender profile of this risk has not been clearly established. This article reviews the evidence on gender differentials in suicide risk following the breakdown of an intimate relationship (including divorce and separation). Nineteen published articles that included individual-level data were identified. Twelve reported a greater risk of suicide in men following relationship breakdown, two indicated a greater risk in women, and a further five showed no clear gender differential. Although there are possible indications of increased risk for men, no definitive conclusion about gender differential can be drawn. Furthermore, research is required that directly compares men with women for suicide risk following relationship breakdown.
Growing research suggests that work–family conflict is harmful to individual well-being. However, few studies have examined this relationship among African Americans, as well as what cultural institutions and practices may help in dealing with the stress of work–family conflict. This study suggests that religion may be an important resource for African Americans in the face of work–family conflict. Using data from the National Survey of Religion and Family Life, a telephone survey of working-age U.S. adults, this study outlines a series of arguments linking work–family conflict, religious involvement, and life satisfaction among African Americans. The results suggest some support for religious involvement in moderating—or buffering—the harmful effects of work–family conflict on the life satisfaction of African Americans. Study limitations are identified and several promising directions for future research are discussed.
With a sample of 120 Mexican-origin couples, we examined the extent to which wives’ marriage work (i.e., discussions about marital concerns) with husband and marriage work with friend moderated associations between wives’ acculturative stress and spouses’ marital satisfaction and marital negativity. Results from a series of multiple regression analyses showed that wives’ marriage work with husbands (a) served to protect husbands’ marital quality from wives’ acculturative stress and (b) was linked with greater marital satisfaction for wives. These findings represent an important first step in understanding the sociocultural factors that compromise and protect marital quality for couples of Mexican origin as they navigate the challenges of adapting to life in the United States.
Although studies have revealed that there are numerous confounding factors affecting intimate partner violence in non-Western societies, the relevance of lineage ties has been overlooked. This article focuses on intimate partner physical violence (IPPV). Specifically, it employs data from the 2008 Demographic and Health Survey to examine the relationship between lineage groups and IPPV in Ghana. Data analyses reveal that married women who belong to patrilineal groups are more likely to experience IPPV, even after controlling for important sociodemographic factors, such as educational status and area of residence. Specifically, the probit regressions show that all else equal, the probability of experiencing IPPV is about 5 percentage points higher for women from patrilineal societies than for women from matrilineal societies. The logit regressions reveal that women from patrilineal societies are about 1.4 times more likely to experience IPPV than women from matrilineal societies. This research contributes to the scarce literature on the nature of domestic violence among women in sub-Saharan Africa.
This article explores the ethnic identity work in which Indian parents engage with regard to allowing their daughters to pursue a tertiary education and a career. Life story interviews were conducted on a purposive sample of 12 sets of South African Indian parents. The results indicate that these parents, especially mothers experience tremendous inner identity conflict, as they are torn between ensuring that daughters maintain their honor and dignity as respectable Indian women, and allowing daughters the freedom to venture away from the protective space of the home and family. The study highlighted that although parents were living in the postapartheid era ethnic identity work was still influenced by the lingering impact of apartheid regarding the status of women. Daughters were still not accorded the same status as sons although they were perceived as future breadwinners in their natal families.
Contemporary norms of fatherhood emphasize the dual demands of breadwinning and daily involvement in child care. Recent qualitative research suggests that working-class fathers find it difficult to meet these demands due to job instability and workplace inflexibility. Yet little quantitative research has examined how employment characteristics are related to fathers’ parenting stress, in comparison with mothers’. Analyses using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,165) show that unemployment and workplace inflexibility, but not overwork, multiple jobs, odd jobs, and nonstandard hours, are related to more parenting stress for fathers. Although these two factors are also related to more parenting stress for mothers, nuanced gender differences emerged: these are better predictors than other parental or child characteristics for fathers only, and the effect size of workplace inflexibility is greater for fathers than mothers. In sum, securing a job with flexible schedule is central to reducing fathers’ parenting stress.
Despite fertility decline across economically developed countries, relatively little is known about the social consequences of children being raised with fewer siblings. Much research suggests that growing up with fewer siblings is probably positive, as children tend to do better in school when sibship size is small. Less scholarship, however, has explored how growing up with few siblings influences children’s ability to get along with peers and develop long-term meaningful relationships. If siblings serve as important social practice partners during childhood, individuals with few or no siblings may struggle to develop successful social lives later in adulthood. With data from the General Social Surveys 1972-2012, we explore this possibility by testing whether sibship size during childhood predicts the probability of divorce in adulthood. We find that, among those who ever marry, each additional sibling is associated with a 3% decline in the likelihood of divorce, net of covariates.
Grandmothers often provide support for Mexican-origin mothers and young children. The factors influencing grandmother involvement, and the implications of this involvement for maternal well-being, particularly in the context of transborder family relationships, remain largely unexplored. This study considers the extent to which maternal, child, and intergenerational factors are linked with levels of grandmother involvement, and in turn grandmother involvement is associated with maternal psychological distress among an American community sample of 78 Mexican-origin families, for which over one third of grandmothers live in Mexico. Findings suggest that mother reported grandmother involvement is higher when children are temperamentally difficult, mothers perceive overall high-quality mother–grandmother relationships, and grandmothers live in the United States. Furthermore, extensive grandmother involvement when grandmothers live in Mexico is related to higher levels of psychological distress. These results highlight the importance of an intergenerational and transborder perspective on family relationships and well-being among Mexican-origin families.
Increasing support for same-sex marriage (SSM) is often explained as a consequence of rising tolerance of homosexuality across successive generations. This article argues that higher levels of SSM support among young people is also linked to their own emerging plans for couple and family formation. Panel data from 1,836 young Australians participating in the Social Futures and Life Pathways Project was used to analyze change in SSM attitudes between late adolescence (2008, aged 14/15 years) and early adulthood (2013, aged 19/20 years). During this period, the sample became less religious, more expectant of unmarried cohabitation, and more approving of SSM. Being male, living in outside a major city, not living with both biological parents, and being more religious were all associated with lower SSM support. Young people’s views on this issue developed in ways that were indicative of distinct (i.e., traditional vs. pragmatic) orientations toward intimate relationships formed earlier in adolescence.
Numerous studies have focused on links between religiosity and marital outcomes. Results suggest that various aspects of religiosity predict outcomes such as marital satisfaction and commitment. However, less research has focused on identifying the processes by which these links occur. This study had two primary goals: (a) determine if perceptions of spousal values mediate associations between religiosity and marital satisfaction and (b) examine the degree to which predictors of marital satisfaction differ across different regions of the United States. Data were gathered from 1,513 married individuals living in Arkansas, Utah, and Vermont. Results indicated that religiosity and perceptions of several spousal values were significantly associated with increased marital satisfaction. Findings suggest little evidence of mediating effects of spousal values, but there was significant variation in findings across the three states.
The aim of this study was the validation of the Dutch version of the Middle Childhood Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (MC-HOME), an interview and observation instrument to measure the quality and quantity of stimulation and support available to a child in the home environment. Participants in this cross-sectional study were 134 children from a generally low-risk sample of Dutch families. Children were between the ages 6 and 10 years, including 73 (54.5%) girls and 61 (45.5%) boys. Internal consistencies were low, but good interrater reliabilities were found. Significant associations between the MC-HOME and socioeconomic status, child behavior problems, and parental stress were found. Although the association with language scores was not statistically significant, it was in the expected direction. This study suggests that the MC-HOME is a valid screening instrument, though modernization and cultural adaptation of the instrument are desirable.
This article examines the impact of religious socialization on Americans’ propensity to engage in interracial dating or romance. Drawing on national survey data, I fit logistic regression models to estimate the net effects of four measures of religious socialization on respondents’ likelihood of engaging in interracial romance. Findings reveal that strong bivariate associations between respondents’ level of religious salience and practice at age 12 and interracial romantic engagement become nonsignificant in the face of sociodemographic controls. However, respondents with Jewish fathers and mothers remain significantly more likely to have interracially dated than those with Protestant fathers and mothers. Moreover, region moderates the effect of childhood religious service attendance such that respondents who more frequently attended religious services at age 12 and reside in non-Western regions, and particularly within the South, are less likely to have interracially dated. Findings ultimately suggest that parents’ religious tradition and childhood religious practice, within certain regional contexts, affect Americans’ likelihood of dating interracially.
Contemporary fathering is characterized by the combined responsibilities of employment and parenting. Relationships between work–family conflict, work–family enrichment, and fathering behaviors have not been widely investigated. Secondary data from fathers of 4- to 5-year-old children participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children were analyzed (N = 2,679). Results revealed that higher work–family conflict was associated with irritable (β = .06, p < .001), less warm (β = –0.04, p < .01), inconsistent parenting (β = –.07, p < .001), when sociodemographic and child characteristics were controlled for. Protective associations were found between work–family enrichment and optimal parenting behaviors (β = .10 warmth; β = –.05 irritability, p < .01). These results were largely unchanged when mental health was included in analyses. Sole-earner fathers and those employed for long hours were most likely to report high work–family conflict. Findings provide impetus for workplace and public policy to extend optimal, family-friendly employment conditions to all parents, including fathers.
This article aims to discuss the influence of transnational family experiences and migratory integration on the redefinition processes of family dynamics through a comparative study among selected families of migrant backgrounds settled in Lisbon. Guiding research questions are the following: How do migrants whose cultures have historically been examples of a particular family dynamic implement it in the Portuguese migratory context? How are these dynamics changing and what are the consequences for the families and individual family members concerned? What is the effect on family dynamics of continuing transnational connections and of different experiences of insertion and exposure to values and attitudes of the receiving society? Comparative analysis has brought to light how continuing family transnationalism and local integration do not significantly transform long-standing migrant family dynamics. While allowing transnational family members to negotiate specific family relations, these negotiations are not experienced as a project in opposition to cultural and religious family traditions.
In this article, we use data from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers—a national, population-based telephone survey—to examine how sexual minority women construct and value motherhood. We analyze the small (N = 43) random sample of self-identified sexual minority women using "survey-driven narrative construction," which entails converting the structured answers and open-ended responses for each respondent into narratives and identifying themes. We focused on both sexual minority women’s desires and intentions to parent and on the importance they place on motherhood. We found that there is considerable variation in this population. Many sexual minority women distinguish between having and raising children, suggesting a broad notion of motherhood. We also found that sexual minority women without children are not all voluntarily childfree. Our results suggest that survey research on fertility would improve by explicitly addressing sexuality.
Parental psychological distress, parental alcohol involvement, and child/adolescent behavior problems frequently occur together with deleterious effects on individuals and families. Extant evidence suggests that parental and child problems are related; however, less is known about the patterns and directions of their relationships over time, particularly among African Americans. This study examined mutual influences between parental psychological distress and alcohol use, and child/adolescent problem behavior over a 10-year period (N = 459), using data from a prospective cohort study of urban African Americans. Using structural equation modeling, we found statistically significant effects between young adult parents’ alcohol use and later adolescent problem behavior, as well as child problem behavior and parental alcohol use 10 years later, even after taking into account potential extraneous influences. Findings also demonstrated continuity in parental and child behaviors over time, and several contemporaneous associations. These findings have potential implications for intervention planning among African American families.
Half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended. The risk is particularly high for certain demographic groups, including those making up lower socioeconomic status and minority groups. Few studies on unintended pregnancy have incorporated the fertility preferences of men, despite the knowledge that they do influence reproductive decisions. I explore how men who are at a relatively high risk for fathering an unintended pregnancy talk about their procreative identities in everyday life. I analyze the transcripts of focus groups conducted with young, socioeconomically disadvantaged African American and Puerto Rican men to examine how they talk about procreative consciousness, procreative responsibility, and pregnancy planning. Analyses demonstrate that men often have a very active sense of procreative consciousness and a lagging sense of procreative responsibility. However, men consider fatherhood to be an important role and look forward to parenting children. These factors may contribute to their relatively higher risk for fathering an unintended pregnancy.
Using a sample of 193 Mexican American adolescents (M age at Wave 1 = 14 years) and three waves of data over 2 years, this study longitudinally examined the effects of parent–youth acculturation differences, relative to no differences, on parent–adolescent relationship quality and youth problem behavior. We examined parent–youth differences in overall acculturation, Mexican acculturation, and American acculturation. We differentiated between cases in which the adolescent was more acculturated than the parent and cases in which the parent was more acculturated than the adolescent. Adolescents were more commonly similar to their parents than different. Where differences existed, adolescents were not uniformly more American than their parents, no type of difference was associated with parent–adolescent relationship quality, and no type of difference in overall acculturation was associated with youth problem behavior. One type of difference by dimension (adolescent had less Mexican acculturation than mother) was associated with less risk of problem behavior.
Regular family meal times have been associated with enhanced family cohesion and positive developmental outcomes for children–youth, especially in White and/or middle-class families. Less is known about the meal time experiences of low-income African American families. Guided by a family resilience perspective, this study examines meal times among a sample of low-income African American caregivers of preschoolers in an inner-city neighborhood. We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews and a photo elicitation interview with 11 low-income African American caregivers about their family meal time experiences. We found that caregivers valued family meal times and acknowledged their benefits for family life. However, competing demands such as family schedules, household configurations, chores, time pressures, fast food restaurants, and low-wage work affected the schedule and structure of meal times. This study adds to discussions of family meal times among low-income African American families and provides suggestions for enhancing mealtimes through culturally and developmentally appropriate interventions.
Character strengths, representing positive attributes of individuals, have been linked with several positive psychological qualities, such as life satisfaction and well-being. However, the effects of character strengths and their deployment on married couples, at the dyadic level, have not been studied to date. The present study focuses on married partners’ strengths endorsement and on their opportunities to deploy their strengths in the relationship, and explores the associations between these variables and both partners’ relationship satisfaction. The results reveal significant associations of strengths endorsement and deployment with relationship satisfaction, as expected. However, unexpectedly, men’s idealization of their wives’ character strengths was negatively associated with relationship satisfaction. These findings hold theoretical and practical implications for couples and therapists, regarding dyadic effects of strengths endorsement and deployment, and their perception.
Marital satisfaction is a culturally bound construct influenced by many traditional family values and processes. Research on marital satisfaction in the United Arab Emirates is very limited perhaps due to unavailability of a culturally relevant scale. In this study, the Emirati Marital Satisfaction Scale (EMSS) was constructed and validated based on a community sample of 407 Emirati married men and women. The 30-item unidimensional EMSS was found to have high construct validity and internal consistency reliability estimates. The validity of the EMSS was supported by the positive correlations between marital satisfaction and life satisfaction and self-esteem. Men reported higher level of marital satisfaction than women. Demographic variables such as religious commitment and living location affect marital satisfaction in the Emirates. Implications for research and practice were provided.
This study examined the link between maternal emotion regulation (ER) and emotion parenting behaviors and child ER, particularly emphasizing the previously understudied potential associations between mothers’ ER and concurrent emotion parenting behaviors. Community-recruited participants included 64 mother–child (M = 9.5 years, 38 girls) dyads. Mothers completed measures on their own ER, their child’s ER, and their emotion parenting strategies. Children completed measures on their ER and mother–child dyads engaged in a conflict discussion task that was coded using an ER behavioral observation scale. Results indicated that observed maternal ER was negatively associated with unsupportive emotion parenting, whereas self-reported maternal emotion dysregulation was positively associated with unsupportive parenting and child emotion dysregulation and negatively associated with child adaptive ER. Partial support was provided for the mediating role of emotion parenting behaviors on the link between maternal and child ER. Implications regarding parenting programs and intervention efforts are discussed.
As recent trends show a slowing down in married mothers’ labor force participation and continuing debate over the importance of maternal care, we explore married men’s ideologies and reality regarding their wives’ employment. Using in-depth interviews with 50 married men, we develop a typology of men’s ideal and reality: traditional (stay-at-home wife), egalitarian (working wife), expectant traditional (ideal is stay-at-home wife, reality is working wife), and expectant egalitarian (ideal is working wife, reality is stay-at-home wife). Traditional men emphasize the benefits of maternal care and importance of their own careers, but traditional expectant men are unable to earn enough money or are thwarted by their wife’s desire to work. Egalitarian men reject traditional roles, support their wife’s career, and value the benefits to children and family of maternal employment, but expectant egalitarian men find themselves in an unexpected position when their wives do not return to work after educational pursuits.
This study began with an interest in how long-term marital couples are able to maintain stability in light of changing social and personal contexts. Using a qualitative grounded theory method as a part of an ongoing study of how couples manage the tension between ideals of partnership and stability over time, 21 couples were selected by theoretical sampling. Participants had to be living together for at least 10 years, with an oldest child at least aged 6. Flexibility—a dyadic process involving how partners adjust to and are influenced by each other, situations, environments, and life changes—emerged as a key component enabling couples to maintain marital stability. This analysis focuses on three processes that seem to influence couples’ ability to maintain flexibility in their relationships: (a) mutual decision making, (b) mutual accommodation regarding household tasks, and (c) mutual giving of personal time. Demonstrating these was associated with a focus on the relationship.
Scholars of transracial adoption (TRA) have theorized that neoliberal ideology—valuing unregulated markets, welfare-retrenchment, color-blindness, and privatized charity—has catalyzed support for TRA among political and religious conservatives as a way of relieving governments from subsidizing poor minority children in foster care or their families on welfare. Drawing on theories linking neoliberal ideology, conservative Protestantism, and race, I examine neoliberalism’s effect on support for TRA and its possible moderating relationship with evangelicalism across both Whites and non-Whites. Analyses of national survey data demonstrate that both neoliberalism and evangelicalism in their main-effects are either unassociated or negatively associated with TRA approval. However, neoliberalism interacts with evangelicalism such that evangelicals who hold more strongly to neoliberal views are more inclined to support TRA. This effect holds across both White and racial minority respondents. Findings suggest that neoliberalism leads to greater support for TRA primarily within the context of evangelical Protestantism, thereby helping account for growing enthusiasm toward TRA among conservative Protestants.
In the contemporary family, which is increasingly shaped by multicultural influences, parents rarely are the sole caretakers of their children. To improve understanding of family dynamics, researchers must redefine caregiving networks to include multiple caregivers, such as extended family members. This study explored the influences of caregiving networks on youth depression by examining who youths perceived as caretakers, how many caretakers were in their networks, the youths’ connectedness with adults in their network, and harmony of relationships among adults within the network. Data from an ethnically diverse, urban sample of 180 middle school youths revealed participation of multiple caregivers for all groups, but ethnic differences existed in network composition. These differences in network composition are discussed within a sociocultural context, considering how positive relationships with specific caregivers may buffer future depression. Longitudinal analyses confirmed the importance of positive relationships with caregiving networks for youth of color when predicting future depression.
This article examines the relative impact of religious factors on Americans’ attitudes toward adoption by same-sex couples. Drawing upon national survey data, we fit logistic regression models and compute standardized logistic regression coefficients to estimate the relative net effects of religious tradition, practices, and beliefs about the Bible on support for same-sex adoption. Findings reveal that religious factors are among the strongest predictors of opposition to same-sex adoption, but that religious tradition has no significant effect on support for same-sex adoption once frequency of religious practice and beliefs about the Bible are held constant. Americans who more frequently engage in practices such as religious service attendance and sacred text reading are less supportive of same-sex adoption, and compared to biblical literalists, those who believe the Bible requires interpretation, contains human error, or is a book of history/legends are all more likely to support same-sex adoption. Findings suggest that religious affiliations matter less for predicting same-sex adoption attitudes than how Americans practice and hold their faith.
This article explores how mothers learn to "babywear" or carry their children on the body using a sling, wrap, or soft carrier. The practice has grown more popular due to the hands-free convenience it offers and the desire of mothers to follow attachment parenting practices. But the profusion of products and unfamiliarity with the practice has led to concerns about health and safety risks. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out at free educational meetings in northern California where mothers, after having done research on the Internet, received advice and instruction from certified educators. The combination of communications technology and in-person meetings allowed mothers to learn caring practices that differ from past patterns that relied on family and physical proximity. Social networks develop that function both locally and in a wider context to create a new parenting culture that draws on global inputs of consumer choice and knowledge.
This article draws on 18 months of residential fieldwork in South Manchester, England. It looks at mothers as targets of state intervention, how they deal with expertise and psy-knowledge. It shows the politics of mothering as everyday resistance and as a genealogy of subjectification. Specifically, it analyses how mothers negotiate "psy-knowledge" and anxieties coming from disciplines and professionals, with their own mundane everyday practices and expertise. It looks at anxieties over parenting styles and childrearing as source of social problems. It shows how meanings about mothering are socially negotiated, reproduced, and sometimes resisted. It explores some ways in which mothering practices resist and overlap with discourses and practices derived from established and legitimized "psy-knowledge," highlighting what may be considered indigenous knowledge.
Since the 1980s, a growing number of American women are choosing to start a family without a male partner. Not only are these women going against the norm, they do so in an era of "intensive mothering," which places enormous responsibility on mothers to assure that their children have every possible advantage and judges mothers for the way their children turn out. An intensive case study of one American single mother by choice illuminates a range of worries produced as a result of engaging in intensive parenting in an age of anxiety and highlights some of the special stresses that may pertain to doing so as an intentionally single mother.
"Intensive parenting" ideologies have been increasingly disseminated in popular culture, expert discourses, and social policy. These have impacted particularly mothers owing to their actual or presumed central role in child rearing. One of the main features of these ideologies is an increasing apportioning of rights and responsibilities to families without taking into account the resources needed to sustain the work of caring according to dominant social expectations. Drawing on 20 interviews in a Portuguese female prison, this article explores how mothering is enacted by underprivileged and criminalized women. Data show a complex web of tensions between the norms implicit in "intensive parenting" ideologies and the actual practices, which imprisoned mothers can accomplish. In their mothering from prison, women enact vulnerable resistance to the penal policies that undermine their primary role in child rearing. That is, prisoners creatively negotiate a space within which they can define themselves as "good mothers."
Mothers who migrated from Morocco and Ecuador to northeast Italy are the subject for this article, which explores the way in which they observe Italian parenting and tend to negatively evaluate the care they received at home. They consider their settlement in Italy as an opportunity to acquire a "modern" style of parenting. They also access websites and books to seek advice on how to parent, mixing home-country and settlement-country sources of information. They do not perceive any contradiction between these different sources of information, which are considered "science," and therefore as culture free. The article shows how parenting advice is more than just scientific or "cultural": It is imbued with hegemonic political discourses. The appropriation of the hegemonic parenting discourses is, indeed, far from deterministic, being riddled with resistances and ambiguities. Through the dynamic entanglements of normative constraints and new resources offered by multiple parenting models, mothers contribute to the renegotiation of the terms of local, transnational, and global citizenship.
In this article, I reflect on the negotiations involved in childcare arrangements during the first year of life in two groups of mothers in Santiago. I focus on the ways in which local imageries of motherhood interact with global tendencies in intensive mothering and the current public encouragement of increasing women’s participation in the workforce. In this study, low-income and lower middle class women prioritize staying with the baby over the year, becoming the main caregiver, and opting for giving up work and other relationships. In contrast, middle-class women go back to work by month six and combine different childcare alternatives. I argue that these women embody two ways of being a mother following different kinship expectations, relationship with expert trends, and cosmological aspects of motherhood. Consequently, they follow different paths in childcare decision making and in the management of concomitant emerging feelings such as guilt.
Black fathers in South Africa face enormous challenges remaining involved in their children’s lives as a result of very high levels of unemployment and union instability. We use data from the Birth to Twenty (Bt20) cohort study to describe trajectories of father contact in the lives of children who have experienced a parental union dissolution and examine the influence of life stage of child at time of union dissolution and mother’s entry into new union on nonresidential contact with fathers. We find that, in the first 5 years after dissolution (1) children who were in the 3 to 5 life stage at time of dissolution face substantially higher odds of having no contact compared with those who were in the 0 to 2 group and (2) children who were in the 6 to 11 group experienced lower odds of intermittent contact. Mother’s entry into a new union increases the odds of having no and intermittent contact.
Mother’s and Father’s Day greeting cards were analyzed for (a) ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood in the themes and objects/pictures; (b) color palette, color, and lettering; and (c) the impact of the sender’s gender and relationship to the recipient. The sample consisted of 442 cards on the Hallmark website. Ritualized holidays tend to support the status quo, and traditional ideologies of motherhood and fatherhood, namely a nurturing role for mothers and an instrumental role for fathers, were reflected in the themes and the objects/pictures on the cards. A pastel color palette, pink and purple, and script lettering characterized Mother’s Day cards, whereas a bold color palette, blue, tan, black, brown and red, and whimsical lettering characterized Father’s Day cards. There were variations across the cards that revealed the salience of the sender’s gender and relationship to the recipient. The limitations of this research and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Using data collected on tenure-line faculty at a research-intensive Midwestern university, this study explored predictors of faculty job turnover intentions due to a desire for a better work–family balance. We adopted Voydanoff’s theoretical framework and included demands and resources both within and spanning across the work and family domains. Results showed that work-related demands and resources were much stronger predictors of work–family turnover intentions than family-related demands or resources. Specifically, work-to-family negative spillover was positively associated with work–family turnover intentions, and two work-related resources (job satisfaction and supportive work–family culture) were negatively associated with work–family turnover intentions. On the other hand, family-related demands and resources (within the family domain or boundary-spanning from family to work) did not significantly predict work–family turnover intentions.
Does adulthood physical health continue to reflect parental support and warmth received during childhood? Although previous research supports this continuity, I examine this question according to a sex-matching perspective. Drawing on representative cross-sectional data featuring detailed measures of maternal and paternal warmth (1995 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States), I focus on adults who came of age in traditional two-parent households containing a biological mother and father. Across three physical health outcomes, I find strong support for sex-matching, in that paternal warmth during childhood is usually more important to male adulthood health whereas maternal warmth tends to be more important to female adulthood health. Sex-matching effects are especially evident for physical health difficulties (number of chronic health conditions and functional limitations). These findings provide a new lens through which to view physical health disparities among today’s middle- to late-aged adults who came of age in traditional households.
Research has established that families in developed countries commonly combine multiple sources of childcare. Yet, families’ packages of childcare and their effect on maternal labor force participation are underresearched, and the few existing empirical studies are primarily descriptive or use cross-sectional data. We add to the existing literature by theorizing and testing the relationships between family type, childcare arrangements, and mothers’ work hours using Australian panel data and panel regression models. We find that employed mothers of young children who use a mixed childcare package complete more hours of paid work than do employed mothers of young children who use other childcare packages, but the reasons for this association are different among single and partnered mothers. For single mothers the most important characteristic of mixed childcare packages appears to be their flexibility, whereas for partnered mothers mixed childcare increases employment hours by maximizing the hours of childcare available to them.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 97, this article investigates how work characteristics (earnings and autonomy) shape young adults’ transition to first marriage separately for men and women. The results suggest that earnings are positively associated with marriage and that this association is as strong for women as men in their mid to late 20s. Additionally, occupational autonomy—having the control over one’s own work structure—facilitates entry into first marriage for women in their mid to late 20s but, for men, occupational autonomy is not associated with marriage at these ages. These results suggest that even as women’s earnings are increasingly important for marriage, other aspects of work are also important for stable family formation.
Black family structures, dynamics, and processes in the United States have had a long history of investigation in the social sciences. And recently, research on sexual orientation disclosure has become an important feature of the scholarship on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations. The various ways in which the family affects a person’s decision to be an out LGBT person, or outness, are less known. Using a national sample of Black LGBT people (N = 2,166), this article assesses the relative importance of a variety of characteristics in understanding outness levels. Regression modeling reveals that having family support is the strongest predictor of outness for Black LGBTs. Two other predictors include the belief that one’s sexual orientation is an important part of one’s identity and having a connection to the LGBT community. The significance of these findings is discussed regarding future research with Black LGBT populations.
Low-income families often simultaneously encounter housing and neighborhood problems pertaining to safety, affordability, and quality issues that necessitate strategies to maximize limited budgets and ensure safety. Such constrained decisions regarding inadequate housing and poor neighborhood conditions, however, may themselves create or exacerbate health risks. Building on the survival strategies literature, this article offers rich and detailed accounts of coping and management strategies on the part of vulnerable families facing housing and neighborhood hardships. The findings are based on in-depth interviews with 72 respondents and ethnographic observations in an urban community. The results illustrate how low-income women avoid neighborhood danger by relegating family life to the home environment, thereby increasing exposure to health risks such as stress, depression, and asthma. The discussion focuses on public health literature linking housing and health and proposes the use of legal strategies and community engagement as resources to complement current approaches to housing and neighborhood problems.
This study addresses the similarities and differences in fatherhood across two generations, relying on the experiences of fathers and their sons. Twenty representative father and son dyads were selected from a larger sample of participants in a longitudinal study examining the leaving home transition in Israel. The fathers and their sons were interviewed about their attachment relationships using the Adult Attachment Interview. Fathers were also interviewed about their parenting via the Parenting Representations Interview–Adolescence. Transcripts of the interviews were analyzed using a qualitative phenomenological approach. Four central themes of intergenerational transmission, mostly reflecting differences rather than similarities across the two generations, were identified: from poverty and shortage to indulgence, from strictness and respect to permissiveness, from precocious maturity to normative development, and from distance to intimacy and closeness. Fathers appear to want to provide their sons with experiences that they missed as children. They appear to be successful in these endeavors, yet surprised by some of the unforeseen outcomes, such as their sons being spoiled and manipulative.
Many studies have shown how important it is for low-income mothers to sustain their moral identities as both good mothers and reliable workers during times of little social valuing of mothers’ caring work. Discovering how low-income mothers sustain this duality when caring crises preclude employment requires a mapping of their social worlds as reflected in their moral justifications. We used an institutional ethnographic approach that focused on situations wherein mothers decide to exit the labor market and devote themselves to their children’s caring needs. Interviews with 48 Israeli mothers revealed that they maintain their moral fitness both as good mothers and good citizens by engaging in a specific emotion management: expressing emotional devotion to their paid job, whereas child care is presented as a necessity. We argue that emotion management is particularly revealing of how macro-level institutional practices and discourses come to the fore in individuals’ daily lives.
Living Apart Together (LAT) relationships involve two people in a long-term, committed intimate relationship who choose to live in separate households. We present findings from one of the first Canadian studies of this phenomenon, also distinct in its use of an interpretive approach to the phenomenon. Fifty-six mid- to late-life participants (28 couples) were interviewed in-person; data were analyzed through the lens of interpretive inquiry. LAT relationships were constructed by participants as protecting personal independence while mitigating relationship risks associated with cohabitation. Participants further justified their arrangements by drawing on ideas about age and/or gender. Though LAT arrangements may help enact the empowering potential of Giddens’ "pure relationship," they can represent individual-level solutions to broader gendered inequities in cohabiting relationships.
Previous research has reported on structural changes in Chinese families. However, questions remain as to whether/how social change has influenced family and gender values and how this differs across generations, regions, and gender in China. Drawing on 2006 data from the China General Social Survey, we find that values pertaining to filial piety are traditional, whereas patrilineal and gender values are less traditional. Historic events/policies provide the context for how social change can shape differential generational, geographic, and gender perspectives. Our hypothesis that generation, region, and gender associations will differ across the various ideational domains is confirmed. We find significant interaction effects in how generation and geography differ by gender in patrilineal, filial piety, and gender values; and higher education erodes patrilineal and traditional gender values but enhances filial piety. Such findings indicate that family values should be understood in the specific sociocultural contexts governing Chinese families across time and place.
The context in which women raise their children has changed significantly over the past 50 years. However, research on families has often neglected to account for the increasing diversity within household structures and its effects on mothers. Using logistic regression, this article examines the likelihood of depression among mothers and multigenerational coresidence, in the first year of the focal child’s life. This research uses data from the first three waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a national representative sample of 2,970 married, single, and cohabitating mothers. The results indicate that those living in a multigenerational household show a statistically significant difference in the likelihood of depression; however, the direction of the relationship is moderated by the duration of the coresidence and the mother’s race/ethnicity and marital status. This article also addresses implications for future research and public policy.
Nonresident fathers have been shown to have much higher psychological distress than married parents with rates similar to or higher than those of single mothers. This study explores how aspects of the father–child relationship influence nonresident fathers’ psychological distress using the 1997 Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Using a structural equation model, this study finds that, other than being married, only father–child relationship quality has a direct influence on nonresident fathers’ psychological distress. Conflict with the mother, talking to the child, and the salience of the fatherhood role all influence psychological distress indirectly through father–child relationship quality.
Siblings are often the main social partners in people’s lives and thus play important roles. In comparison with other family members, siblings are likely to remain in our lives for longer and play more roles. Previous studies suggest that gender can influence these roles. We conducted a qualitative study using semistructured interviews to examine individuals’ perceptions of gender-based sibling roles, with a maximum variation sample of 21 Iranian adults. Interview transcriptions were analyzed by dividing them into two content areas: sisters’ roles and brothers’ roles. Six main role categories emerged for sisters’ roles, whereas four emerged for brothers. "Support," "Service," and "Dominance" were three common categories between genders. "Consideration," "Mediation," and "Counseling and Guidance" categories emerged for sisters, and "Control" emerged for brothers. These findings suggest that Iranian society presents some unique domains of gender-based sibling roles. We discussed implications for research and practice and the limitations of our study.
Similarity of suicide ideation in 1,055 full- and half-adolescent sibling pairs was assessed using Add Health. In each of two waves of data, between 10% and 16% of older and 11% and 13% of younger siblings report suicide ideation, and within families there was some sibling overlap in suicide ideation within and across two waves of data. Logistic regression analyses revealed that sibling warmth predicted older siblings’ suicide ideation, and older siblings’ suicide ideation and sex composition of the sibling dyad predicted younger siblings’ suicide ideation. Suicide ideation was not conditioned by sibling structural and relationship characteristics for older and younger siblings. Using an index of sibling similarity, previous sibling similarity in suicide ideation was predictive of sibling suicide ideation similarity 1 year later. Sibling relationship characteristics were unrelated to sibling similarity index. The importance of considering sibling resemblance in suicide ideation and taking a systemic approach to adolescent suicide are highlighted.
Little is known about how the sexual orientation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer (GLBQ) young adults emerges in their relationships with grandparents. This article explores grandchildren’s experiences with disclosing their sexual orientation to grandparents using qualitative interviews with 28 grandchildren whose grandparents know about their GLBQ sexual orientation. Findings are contextualized using family systems theory as I argue that grandchildren’s motivations to disclose their sexual orientation mirrors previous findings that having a close relationship or having grandparents demonstrate less conservative values motivates grandchildren’s interest in disclosure to grandparents. However, grandchildren’s accounts also demonstrate how their disclosure experiences are shaped by other factors, such as the salience of their sexual orientation in their relationship or the desire to protect grandparents from the negative repercussions of disclosure. Findings indicate that parents and other family members, and the family system more generally, are woven into GLBQ grandchildren’s disclosure experiences. As such, coming out may be usefully contextualized as a family systems issue.
This study examined linkages between providing care for a parent (in contrast to not providing any care to other kin or nonkin) and four dimensions of physical health (self-rated health, functional limitations, physical symptoms, chronic conditions), as well as moderation of these linkages by gender and a negative dimension of marital quality—marital strain. Regression models were estimated using telephone and self-administered questionnaire data from 1,080 married men and women who participated in the National Survey of Midlife in the United States 2005. Although providing filial care was not found to be a global health risk for all married caregivers, marital strain was a critical factor in determining risk. Contrary to hypothesis, robust gender differences were not in evidence. But among both women and men, caregiving for a parent in the presence of high levels of marital strain was associated with significantly poorer health across all four evaluated outcomes.
Pronatal norms exist in various countries to varying degrees. Depending on the strength of pronatalism, adults who remain childless can experience negative sanctions that could affect their happiness and life satisfaction. We test these ideas on childless respondents from 36 nations in two waves of the World Values Survey (1994-1999 and 1999-2004). Childless adults are unhappier and less satisfied if they live in highly pronatalist nations than in other nations. The negative relationship between childlessness and life satisfaction is stronger for childless people in strongly pronatalist nations that have below-replacement fertility or low-to-medium scores on the Human Development Index than in strongly pronatalist nations with at- or above-replacement fertility or high scores on the Human Development Index. The findings show the importance of taking national-level contextual factors into account in understanding the mental well-being of childless people.
The nature of parents’ romantic relationships has been shown to relate to how parents interact with their children and how their children develop. This study used a subsample of 1,318 couples from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study across 8 years to test Belsky’s model of the determinants of parenting. A dyadic path analysis was used to test the effects of relationship quality on negative child behavior, mediated by positive parental engagement. Results revealed that mothers’ and fathers’ early relationship quality predicted their own parental engagement 2 years into the future. Additionally, mothers’, but not fathers’, positive parental engagement predicted negative child behavior. Last, mothers’ parenting behaviors mediated the relationship between relationship quality and child outcome. The results lend support for clinicians and parent educators to include relationship enhancement programs for the benefit of parents and their children.
Marital stability has been linked to multiple social and economic advantages, particularly for African Americans. Clergy provide the majority of marriage preparation in the United States, but historically African American denominations have not been sampled systematically. To address this issue, we conducted an exploratory survey investigating African American clergy members’ behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions about providing marriage preparation. Data were collected from 141 members of the seven primarily African American denominations and compared with 793 clergy from the 15 largest, predominantly White, congregations. African American clergy were significantly more likely than clergy in the comparison group to say they addressed premarital content effectively, say they utilized a skills-based approach to teaching communication, require a longer waiting period, more sessions, more homework assignments, and consider marriage preparation a valuable part of their ministry and to believe that couples had benefited from marriage preparation.
The current study was designed to test hypotheses derived from an ecological framework regarding the association between perceived racial discrimination and maternal emotion talk among a sample of 415 African American mothers living in the rural South. Mothers reported on experiences with racial discrimination when her child was 24 months old. Additionally, maternal emotion awareness was assessed by mothers’ use of emotion words during an emotion-laden picture book interaction with her young child. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that mothers’ perception of racism was a significant positive predictor of mothers’ emotion words, even after controlling for a variety of distal demographics and maternal and child characteristics. However, this main effect was qualified by significant interactions. Specifically, the strength of the association between perceived discrimination and mothers’ emotion words was reduced in the presence of maternal psychological supports, including greater life satisfaction and knowledge of child development.
The purpose of this study was to examine the cumulative impact of parental nonstandard work schedules (NWS) on adolescent alcohol and cigarette use, with a focus on the mediating role of parent–child communication. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and its Child Supplement, our path analyses revealed that (a) parental NWS affected adolescent alcohol and cigarette use via the openness of parent–child communication rather than the frequency of parent–child communication and (b) the pattern and directionality of the mediating effects differed by who worked NWS, when parents worked NWS, and what types of NWS parents worked. Implications and directions for future studies are discussed.
European countries are undergoing significant changes in employment schedules, including increases in weekend work with potential consequences for families. We focus on one arena of family life—the couple’s division of housework—to investigate implications of weekend work for this aspect of gender equality. Furthermore, we situate these divisions within the cross-national context of wives’ weekend work to determine whether nonstandard employment has more general implications for domestic practices. Using 2004 European Social Survey data for married respondents in 25 nations, we test original hypotheses which address time availability arguments, the qualitative differences in weekend and weekday time, and the gendered nature of domestic roles. We find husbands and wives accommodate to weekend employment, but women benefit less from these domestic adaptations. Regardless of their personal employment arrangements, husbands do relatively more housework and wives less in countries where wives’ weekend work is more prevalent.
Most prior studies of intimate partner violence (IPV) have relied on traditional indices of parental support, control, or coercion to examine the nature and extent of parental influences. We explore whether parents’ more general attitudes toward their child’s dating and associated parenting practices are related to the young adult child’s report of IPV, once traditional parent factors and other covariates are introduced. Using data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 625), results indicate that net of covariates, parental negativity about their child’s dating and related parenting practices are associated with later reports of IPV during young adulthood. Parent–child conflict and the child’s own feelings of gender mistrust were considered as potential mediators. Results suggest the importance of moving beyond support, control, and parents’ own use of violence to include a range of parental attitudes and behaviors that influence the child’s approach to and conduct within the romantic realm.
In the past several decades, mothering has intensified by a number of measures. Explanations for this intensification tend to forefront women’s concerns about others, such as concerns about their children’s future economic security. This qualitative 3-year longitudinal study of U.S. mothers of young children looks at women’s own needs in relation to their mothering intensity. It finds an additional factor contributing to this intensity is "compensatory connection," or increasing the attention and prioritization given to one element of one’s life in order to make up for insecurity experienced in other realms. Specifically, women who experience their partnerships or work lives to be insecure are the women most prone to draw on ideals of the centrality of the mother-child relationship and to exhibit pronounced attachment behaviors with their children. As partnership and work insecurities can occur across class, this study nuances prior work on class differences in mothering.
Based on the data collected from 275 Chinese families experiencing economic disadvantage in Hong Kong, the influence of parental beliefs (Chinese cultural beliefs about adversity, attribution of children’s success and failure to effort, and expectations of children’s future) and parental control on adolescent development was examined. It was found that paternal expectations of children’s future predicted adolescents’ perceived maternal control and positive youth development. Furthermore, perceived maternal control mediated the effect of parental beliefs on adolescent positive development. This is the first scientific research that clarified the pathway through which parental beliefs influenced adolescent positive development via maternal control in Chinese families experiencing economic disadvantage. The research findings underscore the importance of understanding the triadic interactions among fathers, mothers, and adolescents in families experiencing economic disadvantage.
Amidst increasingly equality in belief and in practice between the sexes, we ask if height preferences still matter, and if so, why people say they matter. First, we collected data from Yahoo! dating personal advertisements. Second, we used answers to open-ended questions in an online survey. The Yahoo! data document that height is still important in decisions to date but that it is more important to females than to males. Results from the online survey indicate that women wanted tall men for a variety of reasons, but most of the explanations of our respondents were connected to societal expectations or gender stereotypes. Gender-based legitimation of height preferences seem to be more central than evolutionary-based legitimation, but future work may discover a more nuanced interpretation.
This study examined the degree to which 205 full-time employed mothers of infants endorsed intensive mothering beliefs (IMB), the stability of IMB, and contextual correlates of IMB. Results suggested that full-time employed mothers in this study did not endorse IMB, on average, but that endorsement varied for specific domains of IMB for the total sample and by mothers’ education. Global IMB scores did not change from 4 to 16 months postpartum, with the exception of single mothers whose scores declined over time. Endorsement of IMB was associated with multiple socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and endorsement of IMB also varied based on unique intersections of race, education, and marital status.
Parenting support is a new policy field, directed toward teaching parents how to assume their role. Its foundations are embedded in a child-centered social investment approach, which is becoming dominant in Western European welfare states. This article aims at exploring the extent to which ideas underlying these policies are coherent with individual attitudes toward children, parents, their relationship and their change over time. We analyze how these attitudes changed in five selected countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Sweden), using data from all four waves of the European Values Study (1981, 1990, 1999, 2008). We also test what kind of values are behind these attitudes, employing logistic regression as method. Our main finding is that there has been a value shift in public sentiments regarding the primacy of children, which is no longer to be viewed as a traditional type of attitude.
This study extended the job demands–resources model to consider how resources and demands stemming from the work domain were related to the perceived parental success of dual-earner mothers and fathers. The analysis was performed using data from the 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (N = 308 dual-earner mothers and 296 dual-earner fathers). Results for mothers indicated that job resources and demands only mattered when the interactions between them were considered, with supervisor support and organizational support moderating how the demand of nonstandard work hours related to perceived parental success. The findings for fathers highlight the importance of direct relationships, with the results showing that nonstandard work hours were related to lower perceived parental success, whereas the work resources of coworker support and supervisor support were both positively related to the dependent variable. These findings suggest that the job demands–resources model can be extended to examine the perceptions held by mothers and fathers regarding their parenting.
The association between childhood family structure and offspring well-being is well-documented. Recent research shows that adult children of divorced parents will likely marry someone whose parents’ divorced (i.e., family structure homogamy) and are subsequently likely to divorce themselves. This literature has focused primarily on marital unions, despite the rise in cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing. Research suggests that marriage and cohabitation are different types of unions and have different implications for the well-being of children. Therefore, we extend the literature by examining the role of family structure homogamy in matching patterns and union stability among unmarried, cohabiting couples. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study suggest that unmarried, cohabiting mothers and fathers are both more likely to be from nonintact childhood family structures and are significantly more likely to dissolve their unions compared to married parents who both tend to be from intact childhood family structures.
In this study, we examine how financial stress is associated with problem behavior in adolescents through the lives of their parents. Using an actor–partner interdependence model, we explore pathways within (actor) and between (partner) parents. Our data included 340 families, with both parents rating their financial stress, depressive symptoms, and interparental conflict, and with parents and adolescents rating parenting and problem behavior in adolescents. The results indicate that the association between financial stress and problem behavior in adolescents is mediated by depressive symptoms, interparental conflict, and positive parenting. Another finding is that financial stress has direct and indirect effects on interparental conflict. Furthermore, the impact of financial stress on positive parenting is greater for fathers than it is for mothers. Although actor effects are more prominent, there is also evidence of partner effects. Our results underscore the importance of including multiple family members in studies on family stress processes.
The current study examined the influence of perceived fairness of household labor and childcare on relationship satisfaction among new parents. Emotional spousal support and negative spousal interactions were analyzed as potential mediators, using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from couples transitioning to parenthood (N = 92). At 9 months postpartum, mothers’ perceived fairness of household labor and childcare were related to their relationship satisfaction through emotional spousal support. Negative interactions mediated the association between mothers’ perceived fairness of childcare and relationship satisfaction, concurrently and longitudinally across the transition. For fathers, there was no evidence of mediation. However, spousal effects of fathers’ perceived fairness of childcare on mothers’ relationship satisfaction was found longitudinally. Overall, the results demonstrate the importance of emotional spousal support and negative spousal interactions when understanding the influence of new mothers’ perceived fairness of family labor on their relationship satisfaction.
The present study examined the moderating role of family income on the relationships between perceived paternal parenting behavior and adolescents’ anxiety among economically and ethnically diverse sample of adolescents. A total of 1,200 participants aged between 12 and 17 years were selected for the study. A self-administered questionnaire, including Quality of Parenting Behavior Scale and Beck Anxiety Inventory–Malay were used to collect the data. The results obtained indicate that there was a significant relationship between paternal hostility (β = .34, p < .001) and paternal monitoring (β = –.29, p < .01) with adolescents’ anxiety. A multigroup analysis using structural equation modeling also demonstrated that family income level moderated the relationship between parenting and adolescent outcomes. The findings revealed that paternal consistent discipline and paternal monitoring behavior reduced adolescent anxiety in high-income families. Finding advanced understanding on how the associations between fathers’ parenting behaviors and adolescent anxiety could be quite varied when family’s financial circumstances were taken into account.
Family relationships influence children’s beliefs and behaviors. This work examined qualities associated with communication about alcohol among 176 mothers and the influence of this communication on daughters’ alcohol use. Path analyses by maternal HIV status indicated significant differences. Relationship satisfaction was associated with self-efficacy for both HIV-positive (β = 0.545, p < .001) and HIV-negative (β = 0.557, p < .001) mothers. Maternal self-efficacy was associated with communication for both HIV-positive (β = 0.364, p < .01) and HIV-negative (β = 0.310, p < .05) mothers; maternal attitudes toward alcohol use were associated with communication among HIV-negative mothers (β = 0.20, p < .05). Relationship satisfaction was indirectly related to daughter’s alcohol use in HIV-positive dyads (β = 0.153, p < .05). In families with interfamilial and environmental stressors, investing in the mother–daughter relationship, in part by discussing issues related to alcohol use, is protective in nature.
This study explores family formation–work fit (i.e., beliefs that work demands fit with desired family size) and its relation to achievement of desired family size, work–family facilitation and conflict, and marital satisfaction using a subsample (N = 690) drawn from the nationally representative Singapore National Study of Work–Life Harmony. Results indicate that family formation–work fit was positively related to desired family size achievement. Importantly, those with desired family size achievement had more than twice as many children as those who had not achieved their desired family size. In addition, workplace schedule flexibility, work-to-family facilitation, and marital satisfaction were associated with higher family formation–work fit, while family-to-work conflict and work-to-family conflict were associated with lower family formation–work fit. These findings indicate the importance of considering family formation–work fit when studying family fertility decisions, particularly in nations with low fertility rates.
Through the federal child care funding and unspent Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds, states provide subsidies for child care to some employed parents who are income-eligible. Subsidies cannot alter labor market conditions or stabilize low-wage jobs, but they can stabilize child care arrangements. With stable child care, policy makers hope parents’ workforce participation will be more stable. While researchers agree there is a strong relationship between stability in child care and stability in employment, how they are related is not clear. What drives instability in child care and instability in employment, and does instability in one arena affect the other? How might subsidies affect stability in either arena? Using data from in-depth interviews with 44 parents who received child care subsidies in Oregon, we explore the nuanced and often complex relationship between child care stability and employment stability and the effect of subsidies on that stability.
Maternal limit-setting behaviors and patterns were observed and examined in relation to 36-month-old children’s capacities for self-regulation in 50 African American (AA) and 66 European American (EA) mother–child dyads. Children’s capacities for self-regulation were assessed through their self-concept, social competence, and observed responses to limits. Accounting for demographic risk and children’s gender, there were no ethnic differences in children’s self-regulation. In both ethnic groups, a maternal authoritative limit-setting pattern was associated with more optimal children’s self-concept and responses to limits. Maternal limit setting was associated with social competence in the EA sample, but not in the AA sample. Although further research is required to understand contributions to social competence in AA children, these data provide support for the benefits of authoritative (teaching-based) limit setting in both AA and EA mothers with 36-month-old children.
It has been argued that individuals who consider their marriages as sacred are likely to put greater effort into protecting those marriages. As relationship maintenance behaviors have been defined as efforts enacted to maintain features such as marital satisfaction, it is possible that relational maintenance behaviors serve as a link between marital sanctity and marital satisfaction. A sample of 244 heterosexual married couples completed measures of marital sanctity, relationship maintenance, and marital quality. Analyses revealed that one’s own belief in the sanctity of one’s marriage was associated with one’s reported engagement in relational maintenance behaviors. These were linked to one’s partner’s marital satisfaction. Findings suggest that one’s perception of the sanctification of one’s marriage might be manifested in one’s engagement in relational maintenance behaviors and account, in part, for the association between one’s belief in the sanctity of one’s marriage and one’s spouse’s marital satisfaction.
Limited research exists that examines the contribution of family factors to the development and treatment of suicide. Although suicidal behavior occurs within an individual, the context in which it occurs can add necessary insights for understanding and preventing suicide. In this article, the existing literature on the family’s psychosocial role in the development of suicidal behavior is reviewed. Additionally, a review of the limited research on the family’s role in treatment following a suicidal action is provided. Finally, several directions for future research and clinical work are discussed to enhance our understanding of the family’s role in preventing suicide.
Based on propositions from identity theory, this study used a sample of 1,596 coresident couples from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to examine whether parents’ fathering role centrality standards and fathers’ status centrality at the time of their child’s birth were associated with mother and father reports of father involvement 1 and 3 years later. Mothers and fathers who rated fathering roles as more important reported greater father involvement at both Years 1 and 3; centrality of the father status was associated with father reports of involvement at both years, and mother-reported involvement at Year 3. Interactions between fathers’ and mothers’ role centrality standards, and between parents’ role centrality standards and father status centrality, were found for mother reports of involvement at Year 3. Implications for research, practice, and theory are discussed.
This study focuses on the social and cultural sources of an important dimension of solidarity in contemporary marriages: marital generosity. Marital generosity is defined here as freely giving to one’s spouse by regularly engaging in small acts of service, forgiving one’s spouse, and displaying high levels of affection and respect. Using recent data from a national sample, the Survey of Marital Generosity (N = 1,368 couples), we explored the associations between gender egalitarianism, familism, religiosity, and generous behavior among spouses aged 18 to 45. Our results suggest that domestic gender egalitarianism—where spouses reported sharing housework and child care—is linked to greater reports of marital generosity. Religiosity is also positively associated with marital generosity. Finally, the most potent predictor of generosity in this study is commitment, where spouses are personally dedicated to their partner and to continuing the relationship.
Based on qualitative interviews with adult children of alcoholics, this article analyzes three different ways of conceptualizing drinking problems: alcoholism as disease, alcoholism as volitional behavior, and alcoholism as a socially conditioned phenomenon. The interviewees (13 women, 12 men, average age 39 years) were recruited among employees at a large workplace who in a preceding survey had classified their parents as having "alcohol problems." The analysis reveals a pattern in which adult children’s understandings of their parents’ drinking problems, in essence the ways they think alcoholism should be explained, are associated with the ways they describe their relationship to their parents and the hardships of their childhood. The article suggests that differences in childhood experiences may lead to different ways of understanding the phenomenon of alcoholism, just like differences in understandings of alcoholism may affect recollections of childhood experiences.
This study tested links between gratitude and sanctification of the current parent–child relationship for 452 college students and 194 of their parents. Intrapersonal religiousness and spirituality have clear links to gratitude, but there is a dearth of studies that explore sanctification of the family context in relation to gratitude. The cognitive process of sanctifying a family relationship that hinges on perceiving the parent–child relationship as having significant spiritual qualities may have important implications for gratitude. Thus, sanctifying a family relationship may be a contributor to gratitude. To test this assumption, an incremental validity model was employed. Hierarchical regression analyses predicting college students’ and parents’ gratitude were conducted, but only parents’ reports of parent–child relationship sanctification through manifestation of God was significant after controlling for gender, parents’ general religiousness/spirituality, and parent–child relationship quality. A discussion ensues focused on relational spirituality and gratitude in a family context.
Stepcouples remain a comparatively understudied group and few established measures specific to these couples exist. The Remarriage Belief Inventory assesses beliefs and attitudes relevant to couple dynamics in stepfamilies and has been validated using samples of individuals. An important next step in instrument development is the examination of the factorial structure for use with husband–wife dyads. Results from a dyadic confirmatory factor analysis using a sample of 631 stepcouples confirmed the structure of a final 21-item measure with seven subscales, with all but one subscale having adequate individual reliability. Within-couple correlations showed a strong relationship among many remarriage beliefs, yet they suggest that husbands and wives may be differentially influenced by partners’ beliefs. Within-individual correlations among subscales provide support for basic criterion validity. Implications and the future utility of this measure to examine dyadic processes in stepfamilies are discussed.
Communication between parents and teens about sexuality can reduce early sexual behavior. However, little research investigates how parents who were adolescents when they had children (early parents) talk with their teens about sex. In-depth interviews were conducted with a racially/ethnically diverse sample of 29 parents of seventh graders. Salient themes of conversations with adolescents were risks of early parenthood, sexually transmitted infections, delaying sex, and using protection. Compared with parents who were older when they had children (later parents), early parents were more likely to report having had negative sexuality communications with their families of origin and to express a wish to communicate differently with their own children. Early parents were more likely than later parents to discuss risks of early parenthood and to rely on extended family involvement in sexuality communication. Findings suggest that early parents may bring unique perspectives that enable them to approach sexuality communication differently than do later parents.
Although past research suggests that nonstandard parental work arrangements have negative implications for children, researchers typically assess the effects of maternal and paternal work schedules independently, and studies among older adolescents are rare. Combining insights from family sociology and criminology, we evaluate the effects of household work arrangements on family processes and delinquency among a national sample of 10- to 17-year-old children. We find that children from households where both parents work nonstandard hours report weaker levels of family bonding, which in turn is associated with greater delinquency. Children from single-mother households in which the mother works evening or night shifts report weaker levels of parent–child closeness and family bonding, which fully mediate the association with greater delinquency. We also find that select maternal nonstandard schedules in conjunction with paternal standard schedules are associated with lower delinquency among children. We derive implications for parental work schedules in households with adolescents.
Singleness for women beyond the age considered conventional for marriage is regarded as a misnomer in Nigeria. Such women are pitied and blamed for their status. Often the blame is based on assumed personal character defect of the women. Nevertheless, empirical research by some sociologists and other women scholars has linked singlehood to demographic, economic, religious, and personal causative factors. Building on these past studies, this article employed aspects of Silvia Walby’s "theorising patriarchy" to examine patriarchy, a structural determinant of singlehood that has not received much attention in the study of singlehood in Nigeria. Twenty-nine involuntary, childless, never-married women aged 30 to 48 years were interviewed in urban Lagos, Nigeria. The women’s narratives revealed the limiting effects of the six patriarchal structures identified by Walby in their opportunities to marry. This study provides relevant information for attainment of Nigeria’s gender policy and contributes to intercultural understanding of singlehood.
Despite inequalities in domestic work, a majority of couples perceive this arrangement as fair. Our study addresses this paradox by examining whether and why married lawyers perceive domestic work arrangements as unfair to themselves or their spouse. Our results reveal that predictors of perceived equity to self and spouse differ substantially and that the antecedents of perceptions of unfairness vary by gender. That is, women working longer hours are more likely than men to perceive the distribution of tasks as unfair to their spouse. Furthermore, the association between spouse’s time-based conflict and perceived task equity is greater for men than women at lower levels of spouse’s time-based conflict, though the effects converge for men and women at higher levels of time-based conflict. Our findings highlight the value in taking a more nuanced approach to studying perceived inequity in the distribution of domestic tasks among men and women.
Despite evidence of the political salience of family issues, little work has been done to understand how Americans link family issues to their support of various parties and politicians. This study examines whether respondents think party/politician views on family issues are important and asks respondents to provide examples of relevant family issues. Using data from the 2003 Constructing the Family telephone survey conducted at the Indiana University Center for Survey Research, we find that most respondents claim that a party’s/politician’s views on family issues are important to them. Further analysis reveals that, among people who believe family issues are important, the belief is explained differently, with the sample split between a focus on the characteristics of policymakers as compared to the policy itself. The authors conclude that these differing approaches to family issues may stem from the patchwork system of legislation for families in the United States.
This article investigates how children actively influence the division of childcare between couples in intact families in Hong Kong. Past studies that draw on West and Zimmerman’s perspective of "doing gender" have focused narrowly on the dyadic interactions between couples that produce, reproduce, or challenge the unequal division of household labor, but these studies have left unanswered the question of the role children play in shaping and sustaining relations of inequality in families. Using data collected through participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, we show that children make choices based on the gender of their primary caregivers. Specifically, they use strategies such as emotional displays and protests to obtain the compliance of their mothers. Mothers resist these emotional manipulations, but their resistance conflicts with cultural scripts of ideal motherhood and intensive parenting, and it is undermined by their desire not to be demoted in the hierarchy of love.
This study examines consequences of recent policy changes on the lives of Latino adolescents from the perspective of Latino youth and adults. The sample included 1.5- and second-generation youth and adult immigrant parents (N = 43). Findings indicate three common themes including sense of belonging, barriers to education, and lack of opportunities and consequences. Participants view the United States as a home, while enduring discriminatory practices they find supports in their communities where their sense of belonging is nurtured. Youths’ educational access and opportunities are limited. They experience many challenges including documentation status, economic insecurity, and threat of family disintegration through deportation. Responding to barriers created by legislation many youth report shifting from an educational path to a work path, as they are ineligible for financial aid, to support their families. Participants linked limited opportunities, as result of policy changes, to maladaptive behavior among youth. Implications for practice are discussed.
Using a longitudinal sample of 4,010 mothers and fathers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine factors that predict whether children are living with both parents, only their mother, or only their father when the child is 3 years old. We considered parental characteristics and resources and couple\family-level characteristics and found that although many factors increased the odds of parents living together—including the financial resources of each parent, having a supportive relationship, and having a disability-free child—even more factors disproportionately increased the likelihood of either single fatherhood or single motherhood, including parents’ multiple-partner fertility and depression, mother’s drug use, and mother’s greater alcohol use. Our findings suggest that although most children living with a single parent live with their mothers, they are more likely to do so if their fathers exhibit problem behaviors, and more likely to live with their father if their mothers do so.
In this article, I use 20 years of data taken from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Youth to examine the relationship between body weight and both marital status and changes in marital status. I use a latent growth curve model that allows both fixed and random effects. The results show that living without a partner, either being divorced or never married, is associated with lower body weight. Cohabitors and married respondents tend to weigh more. Marital transitions also matter but only for divorce. Gender does not appear to moderate these results.
Few empirical studies have examined the association between parenthood and psychological well-being. Using NLSY79 data (n = 6,297), we examined how various parental roles, or specific parent–child relationship types, were associated with depressive symptoms in adults. We hypothesized that less traditional and more complex parental roles would be associated with higher depressive symptoms. Ordinary least squares regression results revealed that having a stepchild was associated with higher depressive symptoms, regardless of the stepchild’s residential status. Additionally, certain combinations of parental roles were a risk factor for depressive symptoms, including having a biological child residing in the home and another biological child residing outside the home simultaneously, a biological child and a stepchild residing together (with or without a new biological child), and having more than two combined parental roles in general. Findings suggested certain parental roles are indeed associated with higher depressive symptoms, while others may be null relationships.
This longitudinal follow-up studies a group of 90 girls and boys from initial adolescence into emerging adulthood. The relationships between these young people and their parents are analyzed over a 10-year period, while considering possible gender differences. The results indicate that the levels of communication and affection perceived by these young people diminish during emerging adulthood; however, their perceived adaptability remains and cohesion increases as the frequency of conflicts decreases. In terms of gender differences, boys and girls show similar developmental pathways. On the other hand, the results indicated a high relative stability for the scores of the subjects. This work underlines the importance of further studies about family relationships during emerging adulthood, especially from a longitudinal perspective.
Most research on the consequences of the number of siblings highlights their downside—the negative association between sibship size and educational outcomes. But recently scholars have begun to understand the potential benefits of siblings, with some research indicating that kindergartners are more socially adept when they have at least one brother or sister. We expand this line of inquiry by studying fifth graders, a point where sufficient school-based peer interactions have occurred to potentially eliminate the social skills deficit observed among only children beginning kindergarten. Analyzing 11,820 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort of 1998-99, we find that, contrary to our expectations, only children failed to gain more social skills between kindergarten and fifth grade than their counterparts with siblings. This pattern has important implications for the one in five children now raised without siblings.
Drawing on ambivalent sexism and Chicana feminist theories, the purpose of the study was to explore ambivalent sexism and traditional relational scripts among a regional sample of 141 Hispanic young adults. Data derived from self-report questionnaires indicated that men scored higher on hostile sexism and traditional relational scripts but not on benevolent sexism. Structural equation modeling with maximum likelihood procedure was applied and path analyses indicated that, for both men and women, higher endorsement of benevolent and hostile sexism predicted higher traditional dating scripts and family roles. Gender made a difference only in relation to hostile sexism on traditional dating scripts, with men having a stronger association than women. Women’s strongest path was between hostile sexism and family scripts. We discuss these nuanced gendered differences between dating and family relationships as well as stereotypical gendered and cultural notions of Hispanic values. Implications are considered.
Efforts to improve the quality of life of children cannot be considered in isolation from the family. In this study, a short family questionnaire (FQ) is presented that clinicians, researchers, and policy makers can use to assess the quality of family functioning. Measured family characteristics are responsiveness, communication, organization, social network, and partner relationship. A total of 2,450 parents (2,011 mothers and 439 fathers) completed the FQ. Confirmatory factor analysis reveals a robust comparative fit index of 0.98 and RMSEA of 0.04. Internal consistency ranges from 0.83 to 0.97, test–retest reliability from 0.77 to 0.91 and mother–father concordance from 0.64 to 0.74. An estimated 11% of all Dutch families are neutral or negative about their total family functioning. The conclusions are that the results support the reliability and validity of the FQ, and that the majority of Dutch parents perceived the quality of their family functioning positively.
Processes of individualization have transformed families in late modernity. Although families may be more opportunistically created, they still face challenges of economic insecurity. In this article, we explore through in-depth qualitative interviews how families by choice manage low income through the instrumental and expressive supports that they give and receive. Two central themes organize our analysis: "defining/doing family" and "generationing." Coupling the individualization thesis with a life course perspective, we find that families by choice, which can include both kin and nonkin relations, are created as a result of shared life events and daily needs. Families by choice are then sustained through intergenerational practices and relations. Importantly, we add to the growing body of literature that illustrates that both innovation and convention characterize contemporary family life for low-income people.
The purpose of this article was to examine whether recollections of mothers’ emotion socialization practices during childhood are linked to adult emotional well-being as indexed by depression, trait anger, and cardiac vagal tone, and whether these effects vary for African American and European American women. Participants included 251 women (128 European American, 123 African American) who ranged in age from 18 to 44 years (M = 25 years). Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses indicated strong measurement and factor invariance across African American and European American participants. Remembered nonsupportive emotion socialization was linked with elevated depressive symptoms for European American women but not African American women and with elevated trait anger for both groups. Remembered supportive emotion socialization was linked with higher resting vagal tone for both groups. The results provide some support for the view that nonsupportive emotion socialization may be more detrimental for European Americans than African Americans.
In this article, we seek to extend understanding of the role of gender in early fatherhood by examining narratives of paternal masculinities, that is, the social and cultural constructions of gendered practices and conventions produced by men on their roles as male parents. The data comprised interviews with 44 Finnish first-time fathers (aged 20-42 years) living in a heterosexual relationship. The narrative of the "decent father," was identified as the dominant narrative of paternal masculinity in early fatherhood. Although the narrative was characterized by some important gendered differences, it was also in line with the well-known concept of the "new father." Two counter narratives, labeled the "equal father" and "masculine father," in which gendered parenthood was rejected in the former and essentialized in the latter, were also identified. The results indicate the normative quality of narratives on paternal masculinity.
Numerous studies have examined the connection between religion and child-rearing values—operationalized in terms of the importance placed on specific traits in children—in the United States and other mainly Christian societies. Much of this work involves the relative priority placed on "intellectual heteronomy" (obedience to authority) versus "intellectual autonomy" (thinking for oneself). Here, we augment this work focusing on Turkey, a predominantly Muslim society. Using data from the World Values Survey (n = 3,401), findings indicate that religious factors are strong positive predictors of the emphasis on (a) obedience to authority and (b) good manners, but inversely associated with an emphasis on (a) intellectual independence and (b) imagination. The estimated net effects of religion are strongest and most consistent for intellectual autonomy. Furthermore, the links between religious variables and child-rearing orientation are robust across age/cohort, gender, and educational categories. Implications and future directions are discussed.
How do gender attitudes affect second-generation Asian Americans’ decisions to enter into interethnic heterosexual partnerings? A grounded theory approach was applied to 88 in-depth interviews, which represent a subsample of the respondents from Wave III of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study. I find that second-generation Asian women seek relationships across ethnic and racial lines as a way to resist patriarchal and gendered attitudes that they perceive are held by men from their own co-ethnic group and often stereotype Asian American men in the process. Cohabitation was also an important aspect of interethnic partnering: Whereas men cohabitated across ethnic and racial lines but typically married co-ethnics (in a process I term imagining the future), women were more likely to resist co-ethnic relationships and crossed ethnic and racial boundaries regardless of the type of relationship.
African American paternal grandmothers serve an important role in influencing teenage fathers’ involvement with their children in that grandmothers’ support of their sons’ fathering practices is associated with increased father involvement. We used qualitative data from 53 paternal grandmothers to compare satisfaction with teenage sons’ fathering practices with their expectations for ideal fathering and identify reasons for inconsistencies between the two. Paternal grandmothers characterized three practices (providing financial support, being attentive, and performing day-to-day care) that were key to their satisfaction with their sons’ fathering practices. These characterizations mostly overlapped with their expectations for ideal practice. When inconsistencies between expectations and satisfaction were noted, we identified three ways grandmothers interpreted satisfaction with fathering practices. These results have implications for research on teenage fatherhood and interventions meant to enhance teenage fathers’ involvement in rearing their children.
Over the past decade, the Hispanic population has grown in areas with little to no history of recent immigration. Prior research comparing Hispanics in new and established destinations has chiefly focused on differences in socioeconomic indicators of assimilation. Our article departs from this work by shifting the focus to sociocultural outcomes. Specifically, we use data from Los Angeles and North Carolina to examine differences in the strength of family obligation (N = 552). We find that demographic characteristics explain all of the geographic difference in family obligation between these locations. However, we also find that co-ethnic concentration is positively correlated with adolescents’ endorsement of future family support, once ethnic identity is included in the analysis.
This research examines whether being engaged and having a joint banking account influence relationship quality among cohabitors. Drawing on interviews with 936 young cohabitors from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimated ordinary least squares regression of relationship quality on joint banking and engagement. The main effects of joint banking and engagement on relationship quality were both significant and positive, but their interaction was negative. These results indicated that nonengaged cohabitors with joint banking have levels of relationship quality similar to engaged cohabitors, but are advantaged relative to those who are neither engaged nor share a joint bank account. The results suggest the need for increased attention to joint-banking arrangements in cohabitation.
Using data from the 2006 Chinese General Social Survey (N = 2,515), we examine the relationship between parental status and subjective well-being among Chinese adults who are in their first marriages. After accounting for background characteristics, parents and childless individuals do not report significantly different feelings of well-being. When parental status is disaggregated according to family structure, parents of adult children only report higher levels of subjective well-being than both parents of minor children and the childless. The number of daughters is positively associated with feelings of well-being. Furthermore, the effects of coresiding with adult children appear to depend on whether one has minor children in the household. Coresident adult children are positively associated with well-being when minor children are also present but are negatively associated with well-being when minor children are not present.
Through 30 semistructured interviews of members of 15 couples in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, we analyze how gender, age, and emotional labor play out in the social acts of taking, organizing, and sharing family photographs. We find that the expectation for women to initiate the taking of family photos remains, even if the performance of the task is sometimes done by young fathers. The emotional burden of worrying how to organize an overwhelming number of photographs falls more commonly on women’s shoulders. Mothers and young fathers are more likely than older fathers to make a strong effort to view digital photographs with their children on the computer. But, when the sharing process extends beyond the immediate family to maintain kinship ties, women are more likely to take on the primary responsibility for the actions surrounding the photographs, which is consistent with tenets of intensive mothering.
Familism, a Latino value that promotes loyalty, cohesiveness, and obedience within the family, predicts improved outcomes for Latino adolescents. However, few studies have tested whether familism serves a protective role when adolescents are facing stress. We examined whether familism predicted psychosocial outcomes in the context of stress, and whether familism moderated the relationship between peer discrimination, acculturative stress, and economic stress predicting these outcomes in a sample of 173 Latino adolescents. Familism was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and greater school attachment, but it did not moderate the relationship between any of the stressors and outcomes. Discrimination was associated with greater depressive symptoms, worse school attachment, and greater perceived barriers to college, but socioeconomic stress and acculturation stress did not uniquely predict these outcomes once taking into account discrimination. Thus, although familial culture values lead to improved outcomes in youth, they are unable to counter the detrimental effects of discrimination.
We use CPS data from 1976 to 2009 to compare the characteristics and proportions of stay-at-home father (SAHF) households with both stay-at-home mother (SAHM) and dual-earner households. We find that mothers in SAHF households have a significantly higher level of education than their husbands and experience the sharpest increase in education over time compared with spouses in other household types. Caregiving SAHF households are, over time, closing the income gap with their SAHM counterparts. We make a distinction between caregiving and unable-to-work SAHFs and demonstrate that these two types of SAHF households are substantially different from one another. Caregiving SAHF households share key traits with SAHM households. Our results show that families living in stay-at-home households are increasingly the result of a deliberate choice made by spouses to have fathers assume a caregiving role while mothers pursue employment outside the home.
The objectives of the present study are to identify sociodemographic factors associated with father nurturance and assess the relationship between parental (mother and father) nurturance and youth psychological well-being among 216 African American college-aged youth. Participants attended a historically Black college in the Mid-Atlantic region. Findings indicated that the frequency and duration of the participants’ interactions with their fathers were associated with levels of father nurturance. Youth whose mothers and fathers were married or cohabitating, compared with those who were separated, divorced, widowed, or never married, had lower levels of psychological well-being. Furthermore, youth who reported more mother nurturance had higher levels of overall psychological well-being. These findings highlight the importance of time-based variables in youths’ perceptions of father nurturance and raise important questions about how the nature of the coparental relationship and variations in the fathering role affect youth well-being.
We used the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to examine an integrated mediational model linking economic hardship to relationship distress. Depressive symptoms, partner’s discord, parenting stress, and coparenting are combined into a joint model linking economic hardship to relationship distress among mothers and fathers in intimate relationships. Although economic hardship is significantly associated with each mediating factor, only discord is associated with both relationship distress and dissolution in the full model. Moreover, comparisons using multigroup structural equation modeling indicate that while economic hardship is associated with higher discord among both mothers and fathers, the influence is substantially larger among fathers. We suggest that the link between hardship and relationship distress is largely contingent on interactional processes (i.e., discord) and how mothers perceive their child’s father in the midst of economic hard times.
The literature on father involvement suggests that the value men ascribe to being a father is important for understanding their involvement with their children, yet this theory has received only limited empirical attention. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,197), I examined the association between the psychological centrality of men’s father identity at the time their child was born and their trajectories of involvement during their child’s first 5 years, paying particular attention to differences by fathers’ residence status. I found that the centrality of the father identity predicted future levels of fathers’ involvement net of a large number of fathers’ personal and family characteristics and that these patterns generally remained stable over time. These results suggest that programs and interventions designed to enhance men’s father identity early in their child’s life may have long-lasting implications for their continued involvement with their children.
Data from the third wave of India’s 2005-2006 National Family and Health Survey are used to examine the influence of the community-level sex ratio on several dimensions of women’s partnering behavior and sexual experiences. Multilevel logistic regression models that control for individual demographic attributes and community-level characteristics reveal that the local male-to-female sex ratio is positively and significantly associated with the likelihood that women marry prior to age 16 and have experienced forced sex. These associations are modest in magnitude. However, no significant associations are observed between the sex ratio and whether women have had two or more lifetime sexual partners or women’s risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Birth cohort, education, religion, caste, region, urban residence, and several community-level measures of women’s status also emerge as significant predictors of Indian women’s partnering and sexual experiences. The implications of our results for India’s growing surplus of adult men are discussed.
The present study examined the association between retrospective reports of paternal parentification and self-reports of romantic relationship satisfaction and insecurity among a sample of 542 college women (mean age = 19.29 years). Results indicated that paternal parentification is negatively associated with romantic relationship satisfaction and positively associated with romantic relationship insecurity among undergraduate women, after controlling for levels of maternal parentification. These direct relationships were mediated by insecure adult attachment styles, including attachment-related avoidance and anxiety. Finally, consistent with past research of contextual variables, paternal health moderated the indirect effect of avoidant attachment style; the relation between paternal parentification and avoidant attachment was not significant for women who reported their fathers were ill when they were growing up. These results extend the current literature on parentification by focusing on data regarding fathers, and further support the theory that parentification may have differential outcomes based on family context.
Researchers examined whether ethnicity alters the risk for difficulty in the transition out the home among children of alcoholics (COAs). We tested this question in a community based, longitudinal sample of 705 COAs and matched with non-COA controls as well as their parents. Latino COAs were less likely to leave home than were Euro-American COAs. Ethnicity and COA status independently influenced young adult and parental experiences of the transition out of the home. Compared with Euro-American controls, Latino families reported more difficulty and feelings of abandonment in the transition out of the home regardless of COA status. Although COA status increased risk for greater difficulty in the transition among Euro-American young adults, Latinos experienced the transition out of the home similarly regardless of COA status. Future studies examining normative family transitions in at-risk populations should incorporate ethnicity in their models as culture and at-risk status may both influence these transitions.
Using the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, we examine the association between parenthood and distress and anger among the currently incarcerated. We show how variations in the parenting experience—such as amount of child contact—influence the mental health of incarcerated parents and how these relationships vary by gender. Our analysis indicates that parents who are incarcerated are significantly more distressed and are angrier than incarcerated nonparents. Mothers of children below 16 years of age are more distressed than other inmates. Mothers, but not fathers, report more anger than nonparent inmates. Distress among incarcerated parents is associated with child living arrangements and with frequency of phone, mail contact, and visits from children. Both mothers and fathers whose children are in foster care are significantly more distressed and report more anger than other parents. Results are discussed in terms of implications for policies and programming for incarcerated parents.
Using a national sample of married (N = 752) and cohabiting (N = 323) couples, we examined the association between disillusionment and self-perceived breakup likelihood. Because disillusionment had not previously been studied in cohabiting couples, its extent and consequences for them were not known. We found considerable disillusionment in cohabiters, their mean level exceeding that of married couples. Based on a conceptual model of relationship change, we tested further whether disillusionment would predict self-perceived breakup likelihood, controlling for relationship satisfaction, commitment, and length. Furthermore, based on assumptions about barriers to leaving different types of relationships, we examined whether disillusionment’s association with breakup likelihood would be stronger in cohabiting than married couples. Results supported disillusionment’s ability to predict perceived breakup likelihood, even with rigorous controls, and the greater strength of this association in cohabiters. In addition, we found a significantly positive partner effect: Male partners’ disillusionment predicted female partners’ breakup likelihood.
This study considers how the number of sisters and brothers affects the flow of aid from older parents to adult children. Using data from the 2004 Middletown Kinship Survey (N = 338), the authors find that the aid adults receive from their parents varies by the gender composition of the sibship. Adults with more sisters tend to receive less assistance from their older parents. This holds true across a range of helping behaviors, including financial, gifts, transportation, housework and yard work, and technology. The pattern does not hold for brothers. Possible explanations include resource dilution (daughters drawing more on parents’ resources, leaving fewer resources to go around) or cooperative networks created among sisters (thus rendering aid from parents less necessary).
Little research has been done on the social contexts of adolescent sexual behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of a longitudinal cohort study (N = 1275) of teenage girls and boys in two Ghanaian towns, interviewers administered a 26-item questionnaire module intended to assess four dimensions of youth–adult relationships: monitoring, conflict, emotional support, and financial support. Confirmatory factor and traditional psychometric analyses showed the four scales to be reliable. Known-groups comparisons provided evidence of their validity. All four scales had strong bivariate associations with self-reported sexual behavior (odds ratios = 1.66, 0.74, 0.47, and 0.60 for conflict, support, monitoring, and financial support, respectively). The instrument is practical for use in sub-Saharan African settings and produces measures that are reliable, valid, and predictive of sexual behavior in youth.
Using data from a statewide education project for adolescents (N = 736), this study explored family structure of youth in two-parent families and their influence on coping, sexual activity delay, and substance use. Although research in this area has tended to define family structure by the parent–child relationship, this study emphasized variations in family structure based on sibling relatedness. Results indicate differences when examining "traditional" classifications, as well as classifications based on half-sibling presence, such that those in nuclear families and those without half-siblings are advantaged over other groups. Using groups based on a combination of family structure and half-sibling presence, differences were found between youth in nuclear families and step-nuclear hybrid families (biological and stepchildren). Biological and stepchildren in step-nuclear hybrid families did not significantly differ on any measure. A race by family structure interaction effect was seen for measures of coping. On average, differences were seen for European Americans but not for African Americans.
Using panel data from 8,650 infants in the first two waves of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort, the current study found that the negative effects of alternative families on children’s cognitive development started to emerge when children were as young as 9 months of age. Meanwhile, coresidence with grandparents was not disadvantageous and, in some cases, even beneficial for the cognitive development of 9-month-old infants. Our analyses also found that some forms of family instability were actually more beneficial to children’s cognitive growth between 9 months and 2 years of age than all types of stable family structures. However, continuous coresidence with grandparents did not further benefit children’s cognitive growth rate. Overall, the analyses found evidence for the resource deprivation and attachment perspectives but cast some doubt on instability theory.
This study investigated how mothers’ working status directly and indirectly influences their infants’ development. The participants were 1,818 mothers with children aged 11 months to 18 months from the Panel Study on Korean Children. We categorized mothers into four groups according to their working status: consistent working, transition to working, transition to nonworking, and consistent nonworking. We found two competing mediating mechanisms through which mothers’ working status influences infant development. First, mothers’ consistent working and transition to working status had a positive influence on their mental health in terms of low depressive symptoms and high self-esteem, which in turn positively contributed to positive parenting style. Second, mothers’ consistent working and transition to working status had direct adverse effects on their parenting style. Positive parenting style contributed to infant development. We also found that mothers’ transition to working directly enhanced infant development.
The present study used a sample of 779 unmarried emerging adult college students to test the hypothesis that higher levels of helicopter parenting would be related to less positive marital attitudes. Helicopter parenting entails intense and intrusive involvement by parents under the guise of caring and protection. Using hierarchical multiple regression models, results suggested that helicopter parenting was not associated with the general importance placed on marriage but did influence emerging adults’ beliefs about the advantages of being single versus being married and their expected age of marriage. Higher reported helicopter parenting among emerging adults was associated with stronger beliefs that being single held more advantages than being married and an expected delay of eventual marriage. Other results suggested that parental warmth with mothers and fathers was also an important correlate of emerging adults’ marital attitudes.
This study charted the trajectory of coparenting satisfaction during the first and second decades of marriage and examined links between marital characteristics and coparenting satisfaction. Data came from a 3-year study of 145 African American mother–father dyads with pre- to late-adolescent-age offspring. Multilevel growth curves revealed an inverted U-shaped pattern of change in coparenting satisfaction; this effect was qualified by youth age such that the quadratic pattern was evident in families with older but not younger offspring. Controlling for cross-time averages of marital characteristics, changes in marital love were positively related, and changes in marital conflict were negatively related to changes in coparenting satisfaction, with stronger links for fathers than mothers. Interparental incongruence in childrearing attitudes moderated the effects of love, such that parents with more incongruent attitudes and lower levels of love reported the lowest levels of coparenting satisfaction.
This study examined sibling relationship qualities as predictors of romantic relationship characteristics in late adolescence and tested adolescent and sibling gender constellation as potential moderators of these linkages. In home interviews, 125 White working- and middle-class adolescents (M = 16.52, SD = 0.77 years old at Time 1) reported on sibling relationship intimacy, conflict, and control, and 2 years later they reported on intimacy and their relative power in their romantic relationships. Sibling intimacy was a positive predictor of relative romantic power, and sibling conflict was a negative predictor of romantic intimacy, but only for girls. Sibling control positively predicted romantic intimacy and, for mixed-gender sibling dyads, also predicted relative romantic power. Discussion focuses on the role of siblings in romantic relationships and directions for future research.
New data from a national Dutch survey are used to examine the effects of divorce and repartnering on the relationships that fathers have with their adult children. Compared with divorced fathers who live alone, repartnered fathers have less frequent contact with their children, they exchange less support with them, and the quality of the relationship is poorer. Divorce and repartnering thus have cumulative negative effects. These findings primarily apply when the divorce occurred when the child was young. Interpretations are given in terms of the reduced need for support that fathers have when they have a new spouse, the problems children may have with a stepmother, and the tendency of fathers to shift their investments to a new family after divorce ("swapping families"). Indirect evidence especially supports the "swapping families" hypothesis although the principle of need plays a role as well.
The present study investigated the extent to which parental behavior in daily interaction with one’s child mediates the associations between parental depressive symptoms and children’s daily distress. The participants were 152 Finnish families with a 6- to 7-year-old child. Parents’ depressive symptoms were assessed using the revised Beck Depression Inventory. Children’s distress was operationalized as negative daily emotions assessed by using mother-, father-, and teacher-reported diary questionnaires. Parental affection and psychological control in daily interaction were measured using parent self-reported diary questionnaires. The results of structural equation modeling showed that both mothers’ and fathers’ depressive symptoms were associated with their children’s high level of daily distress. Furthermore, the association between parental depressive symptoms and children’s distress was fully mediated via parents’ psychological control, in particular: depressive parents applied psychological control in their daily interaction with their children, which then was associated with their children’s distress.
Previous individual-level research on the association between the status of divorce and suicide risk has been marked by two recurrent limitations: (a) it is not clear if the timing of divorce (recent vs. distal) affects risk of completed suicides and (b) it is not clear if the association between divorce and suicide completions will withstand controls for a series of risk and protective factors including psychiatric morbidity. The present study addresses these two gaps in the literature. Data are from the National Mortality Follow Back Survey and refer to 13,897 deaths including 1,169 suicides. A model is estimated that controls for major alternative predictors of suicide completions including psychiatric predictors (depression scale) and sociological risk and protective factors (job loss, job demotion, and religiosity). The results of a multivariate logistic regression analysis determined that, controlling for the psychiatric, social, and economic predictors of suicide completions, recent divorce increases the odds of death by suicide 1.6 times, compared with 1.3 times for distal divorce. The study provides the first systematic, U.S.-based results that show that the timing of divorce influences risk of completed suicides independent of depression.
Relative to research that has explored outcomes for children associated with living in a single parent family, less attention has been paid to how children interpret and make sense of their family situation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 38 children and adolescents, aged 7 to 17 years in Ireland, this study explores children’s experiences of growing up in a continuously single-parent family, without experiencing separation and transitions usually associated with single-parent families. Children drew on societal discourses and comparisons with their peer group to evaluate their own family situation. Continuity and a sense of normality represented a salient aspect of their experiences since living in a one-parent family was all they had ever known. Children’s agency emerged in how they negotiated family between two homes and how they weighed up the costs and benefits of potential new parental partnerships.
Drawing on the life course paradigm, I assess how the effect of fatherhood on employment hours varies by age of becoming a parent and time elapsed since the birth. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–1979 Cohort from 1979 to 2002 (N = 28,514 observations), separate effects are estimated based on fathers’ marital status and coresidence with own children. Only unmarried men who became fathers before 24 years work longer hours immediately after a first birth, but in the long run, most early fathers work fewer hours as a result of parenthood. Over time, unmarried but coresident men who became fathers between 24 and 29 years increase their hours, as do married, coresident men who delayed fatherhood until 30 years or older. However, the latter increase is moderated by support for egalitarian gender roles. The findings shed light on the contemporary transition to adulthood and on men’s work–family balance.
Americans have positive views of adoption, yet many never consider adoption. This study examined characteristics that predict whether women ever consider adoption as a pathway to motherhood using an analytic sample of 876 childless women from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Using Risman’s theory of gender as a social structure as a framework, we focused on the role of the importance of motherhood and infertility in predicting adoption consideration. Women who held higher levels of importance of motherhood and engaged in medical help-seeking for infertility were more likely to consider adoption at both the bivariate and multivariate levels. Women currently considering adoption were more likely to have seen a doctor for infertility, to have a high importance of motherhood, to be African American, and were generally older. Longitudinal research is needed to evaluate how views of adoption and the importance of motherhood change over time for individual women.
This study is based on interviews with Palestinian women who experienced polygamous marriages. An analysis of women’s narratives illuminates the impact of polygamy on both the contemporary Palestinian family and emerging modalities of governance. By tracing the interrelationships between marriage laws, gender inequalities, and the impact of statelessness and legal ambiguity on the family in Palestine, the research contributes to the ongoing debate about women’s rights and the reform of personal status laws in Palestine. This study analyses the psychology of Palestinian women in polygamous marriages, their feeling of despair, and the coping strategies they have used within the guidelines of the societal context. This research also allows the voices of these women to be heard and their insights on the current personal status law that caused their suffering. The study discusses the pessimism of these women concerning any change on the institutional and the judicial levels.
Few studies have systematically analyzed adoption-themed books for children or how birth parents are depicted. This article analyzes 104 books in English designated for children aged 4 to 8 years that are focused on adoption to understand how birth parents are portrayed. Findings indicate that birth parents are often represented with stereotypical, value-based, and cultural perceptions, resulting in an inability to care for children as the reasons or choices for adoption placement. As parents rely on books to develop narratives and to socialize children, the lack of accurate depictions of birth parents and the structural barriers they face has implications for adoptee understanding of adoption and for adoptee adjustment and identity.
Previous research has suggested that religiosity is associated with positive marital outcomes, but the underlying reasons for this association are not fully understood. We tested the hypothesis that religion influences marriage via partner selection strategies. Specifically, we hypothesized that proximal (more than distal) religiosity would predict partner selection strategies that facilitates positive marital outcomes; we also conducted exploratory analyses examining the influence of religious affiliation. Using a novel methodology that allowed for an examination of explicit and implicit attitudes, we tested our hypotheses using a large sample of emerging adults (N = 437). Findings indicate that religion influences partner selection preferences, but the effect is not uniformly positive. Religious affiliation, not individual level religiosity (distal or proximal), was the most robust predictor of mate-selection preferences. Possible explanations for these findings and implications for intervention are discussed.
This study evaluated associations between dating partners’ risky family backgrounds in childhood and current romantic relationship functioning. One hundred young adult dating couples (N = 200) self-reported childhood risky family environments (e.g., conflict, nonnurturing behavior, neglect) and current relationship satisfaction. Partners also engaged in laboratory-based conflict, which was subsequently coded for positive and negative interaction qualities. Results revealed a positive linkage between males’ and females’ risky family backgrounds. Actor–Partner Interdependence Modeling, which accommodated dyadic data and controlled for neuroticism levels, indicated that males’ riskier family backgrounds were associated with their female partners’ greater observed negative interaction qualities (e.g., conflict) and with their partners’ lower observed positive interaction (e.g., support, communication skills). Experiencing interparental divorce during childhood moderated the results, with riskier family backgrounds holding more negative implications for subsequent young adult romantic relationships when the parents remained together during childhood compared to when the parents divorced.
This article examines the differences between currently married and currently cohabiting couples in their household labor allocation in Italy, distinguishing the experience of both premarital cohabitation and previous unions with other partners. Results suggest that, on one hand, cohabiting couples present more equal arrangements of household labor time than married ones, but the more equal allocation of premarital cohabitation is not carried into marriage. On the other hand, contrary to hypothesis, the experience of previous unions does not mean more equal allocation of household labor in the current union either for marriages or for cohabitations.
Bullying is a widespread problem facing American adolescents. A better understanding of factors that may moderate the impact of bullying is important given its negative consequences for well-being. This study examines the association between bullying experiences and internalizing problems among a nationally representative sample of young adolescents. Additionally, we consider the ease of parental communication as a potential moderating factor in these associations. Using a structural equation modeling technique, results suggest that bullying is characteristically different for adolescent boys and girls and that its association with internalizing problems is stronger for adolescent females. Results also indicate that parental communication moderates the association between bullying and internalizing problems; higher levels of parental communication buffer adolescents against the negative influence of bullying.
The present study modeled the associations between adolescent mothers’ and young fathers’ perceptions of partner conflict, parenting alliance, fathers’ prenatal involvement, and father engagement with infants using a sample of 127 adolescent mothers and their partners. This study hypothesized that (a) higher quality parenting alliances would be associated with increased father engagement with infants, (b) prenatal partner conflict would have a negative spillover effect on the parenting alliance and father engagement during infancy, and (c) fathers’ prenatal involvement would be positively associated with parenting alliance and engagement during infancy. The results showed that mothers’ perceptions of parenting alliance during infancy were robust correlates of father engagement, mothers’ perceptions of prenatal partner conflict had a negative spillover effect on parenting alliance and father engagement with the infant as perceived by mothers, and fathers’ and mothers’ perceptions of fathers’ prenatal involvement were directly linked to engagement with infants.
Over the past five decades, female education attainment has significantly increased in Spain. At the same time, preferences have changed considerably with regard to the role of women in the labor market and in the family. This fact has had a major impact on young women’s decisions: A delay in their entry in the labor market, union formation, and fertility decisions, together with a higher level of persistence in participation once in the labor market. The aim of this article is to analyze the variables that influence fertility and employment decisions in Spain. To carry out the analysis, we use the Fertility, Family, and Values Survey 2006. The decisions are estimated simultaneously through a bivariate probit model and are shown to be interdependent. Women from more recent cohorts and the more educated ones spend more time in employment and postpone motherhood more than women from earlier cohorts and less educated women.
Whether couples have children or remain childless has largely been associated with individual and couple characteristics. We propose that the broader social network additionally differentiates between parents and childless couples, particularly between involuntarily and voluntarily childless couples. In light of this, we studied social network differences and their interplay with dyadic and individual characteristics in three types of couples with and without children, in a sample of 248 German early-midlife adults (n = 41 voluntarily childless, n = 35 involuntarily childless, n = 48 traditional parental dyads). A multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that social network characteristics distinguished between voluntarily and involuntarily childless individuals. Additionally, attitudes toward children differed substantially across types of couples, whereas levels of partnership distress did not. Findings provide new insights into the significance of the social network above and beyond dyadic and individual characteristics in early-midlife couples with and without children.
Many states are implementing asset development strategies to promote postsecondary education for low- to moderate-income families, realizing that limited education is a powerful predictor of poverty, and poverty mediates the likelihood of obtaining postsecondary education. Using demographic and qualitative data collected from two groups of low- to moderate-income parents (N = 24), this article highlights two programs that promote savings and increase post-secondary education for these children and families. The 21st Century Scholars Program targets youths, and the complementary Educational Development Accounts program targets their parents. This article also explores perspectives of the participants’ experiences, beliefs, and perceptions relative to savings and education and the success of their children in these areas. It concludes with implications for asset-building programs and policy whose aim is to assist low- to moderate-income families in achieving economic and educational mobility and implications for social welfare policy.
This study uses data from the first three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, from 8,019 adolescents and their mothers, to examine links between multiple dimensions of family structure and instability over adolescents’ life courses, family functioning, peer contexts, and teenage cohabitation. Investigated explanations include an instability model, socioeconomic-stress model, and intergenerational transmission. Results from logistic regression models link single-mother and stepfamily residence during adolescence to frequent family transitions, weakened maternal bonds, teenage dating, and, ultimately, teenage cohabitation. Moreover, single motherhood and maternal cohabitation fail to predict teenage cohabitation among those living in stable households. Individual poverty and residence in a neighborhood marked by family disruption account partially for the influence of single motherhood. In addition, maternal bonds moderate the influence of maternal cohabitation on adolescent cohabitation, yielding support for an intergenerational transmission effect.
Focusing on the uncertainty of low-income mothers’ lives, this qualitative study examined the family experiences of 57 Appalachian low-income mothers. With scarce economic resources, mothers forged identities that expressed the centrality of motherhood, concentrated their activities within traditional family expectations, and made decisions that often resisted federal welfare reform expectations for work and family. Work and family policies that acknowledge the commitment of low-income, rural mothers to their children and create supportive employment options for them are needed. Parenting education programs that broaden mothers’ understanding of child discipline are recommended.
Mate preferences have a long research history in the social sciences, yet given their evolving nature they must be revisited periodically. We use evolutionary psychology and social role paradigms to frame our study and contribute to this body of work in two important ways. First, we examine preference trends over the past 25 years and find that both men and women increasingly place a higher value on a mate’s financial prospects and desire for home and children. Second, we compare results generated from qualitative mate preference data with two popular methods in mate preference literature in terms of substantive findings and methodological utility.
Although most Americans agree that postsecondary education is the clearest path to later financial security, many families have trouble saving money to help their children in this process. This article focuses on the struggles of middle-income families as they attempt to negotiate their daily financial realities with their aspirations for their children’s postsecondary education. In particular, the article examines the discord between the high educational aspirations these middle-income families have for their children and their daily financial constraints. We do so by analyzing in-depth interviews with 31 middle-income families living in the greater Philadelphia area. The middle-income parents in our sample are acutely aware of the importance of college for their children’s upward mobility, and they ideally would like to support their children in this pursuit. However, their current financial insecurity, their lack of government support, and the rising costs of college make preparing for this dream increasingly difficult.
The tenacity of the intensive mothering ideology—the notion that good mothers should invest vast amounts of time, money, energy, and emotional labor in mothering—is well documented, particularly among affluent White mothers. Drawing on 16 interviews with low-income, Black single mothers, we analyze how gender, race, class, and the ideology of intensive mothering intersect to shape these mothers’ parenting. Mothers repeatedly emphasized the importance of sacrifice, self-reliance, and protection. In short, good mothers sacrifice for their children; they are self-reliant and teach their children to be this way too; and they protect their children. We argue that low-income mothers embrace and perform intensive mothering in the absence of larger social supports for their children’s upbringing and at a cost to their own emotional and physical well-being.
Problems with inattention, physical aggression, and poor cognitive skills when children enter school can have long-term negative effects on their development. In this study, we address the issues of whether and how parental engagement and guidance are related to children’s behavioral and cognitive problems throughout elementary school. The analyses are based on data from nearly 10,000 children aged 6 to 11 years followed longitudinally in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Results were obtained through the multilevel modeling of children’s growth trajectories. We purposefully limited our analyses to the parenting practices of the biological mothers of children from intact families. Our analyses indicate positive relationships between engagement and guidance with children’s cognitive and behavioral development at age 6 as well as over time. These relationships are evident even after controlling for family socioeconomic characteristics; however, they differ with children’s gender and the outcome considered.
Assisted reproductive technologies have engendered new familial arrangements, some of which challenge traditional assumptions about the relationship between biology and social roles. In this article, we report on the first survey ever conducted of parents of former egg and sperm donors. Twenty-two men and women participated in a survey conducted by the Donor Sibling Registry, a worldwide registry facilitating mutual-consent contact among donor offspring, their gamete donors, and other family members. We report on their feelings and thoughts on learning that their child donated gametes and on learning that they have a grandchild (or grandchildren) via gamete donation. We also examine what type of relationship, if any, participants have formed with their donor-conceived grandchildren, as well as their advice to other parents of donors. We conclude with questions and suggestions for future research into this newly emerging terrain of family relations.
This study examined the psychological welfare associated with gay men couplehood (being in relationship) and gay fatherhood. From a sample of 204 Israeli gay men (age range 19-79), we compared 45 gay fathers (55.6% of them being in a steady relationship) with 45 individually matched gay men who were not fathers on indicators of psychological welfare, namely, subjective well-being, depressive symptoms (a reverse indicator), and meaning in life. In line with the study hypothesis, the results indicated that couplehood and parenthood were both associated with higher psychological welfare. Whereas the previously reported heterosexual "parenthood paradox" relates parenthood to decreased levels of subjective well-being along with increased levels of meaning in life, the current study suggests that gay fathers have elevated levels of both subjective well-being and meaning in life. We discuss possible interpretations of the findings.
There is limited research on sibling relationships in families with an eating disorder (ED) child. The aim of the study was to examine the association between sibling relationships, sense of coherence, psychological distress and depression among healthy sisters of females with or without EDs. Participants were 60 females (13-31 years old): 30 who had a sister with an ED (study group) and 30 without (controls). Participants completed self-report questionnaires: depression, psychological distress, sibling relationships, and sense of coherence. Results showed that the study group had significantly higher levels of depression and negative sibling relationships than the control. A significant negative correlation was found between sense of coherence and depression. The study model shows that belonging to one of the groups, sense of coherence, and sibling relationships were significant predictors of the healthy sisters’ depression level. It is suggested that when sister has an ED, negative sibling relationships can influence the psychological condition of her healthy sister.
We investigated the moderating effect of family relationships on the links between maternal postpartum depression and child symptoms in a low-risk community sample of families with 3-month-old infants (n = 57). The level of maternal depression was assessed by the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale from a clinical interview, child symptoms by the Symptom Check List completed by both parents, and family relationships by direct observation of father–mother–baby interactions (Lausanne Trilogue Play). Families were categorized as high coordination or low coordination from their overall coordination level throughout the play. Results showed no significant links between maternal depression level and child symptoms reported by both parents. Mothers with a high depressive level in high coordination families tended to report more symptoms in their child than did mothers with lower depressive scores, whereas this link was not found in low coordination families. Prevention perspectives and clinical implications of these results are discussed.
This study addressed work and family enhancement and conflict among adults at midlife (N = 125). The study included personal well-being measured 25 years earlier. Participants were classified into groups on the basis of latent class analysis. Qualitative analyses of narratives within groups enhanced understanding of the experiences of those in the groups. The first of the three groups identified by latent class analysis consisted of a fairly large number of women who seemed to have achieved balance in roles and enjoyed marital and job satisfaction. The second group, almost exclusively male, was characterized by a low degree of work and family enhancement. In the small third group, a profound lack of marital satisfaction coupled with high work and family conflict and low enhancement identified men and women with seemingly enduring low levels of well-being. Narratives largely validated the quantitative analysis but also provided additional avenues for further research.
This study endorses an urgent call-to-action for researchers to move Hispanic families from outlier to mainstream family research. The top-15 ranked U.S. journals in the field of family studies published more than 8,000 articles in the prior decade—the same time period when Hispanics were also the largest, most rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States. This study contributes to the field of family studies by using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze these articles per journal for empirical evidence that indicates the importance of Hispanic families within this literature. Further empirical evidence comes from extending the analysis to 2011. The evidence presented suggests insufficiency of Hispanic family research with regard to quantity, quality, relevance, and recognized contributions to the field of family studies. The discourse includes examples and recommendations for averting another lost decade of opportunities for research relevant to the health and welfare of a growing U.S. Hispanic population.
This article outlines a conceptual framework for summarizing the marital beliefs and values of individuals regardless of marital status. Drawing on concepts from symbolic interactionism and recent midrange theories of marital attitudes, we propose that marital beliefs can be conceptualized as an individual marital paradigm, which comprises both beliefs about getting married and beliefs about being married. Six interconnected dimensions of marital paradigms are proposed: marital salience, marital timing, martial context, marital processes, marital permanence, and marital centrality. We proceed to make connections between the proposed model and relevant recent research on marital attitudes.
Becoming a parent is regarded as a crucial event in the life course, inducing changes in dietary behaviors. However, little is known about how the healthiness of diets and eating habits is influenced during this transition. Qualitative problem-centered interviews with 15 Danish mothers were analyzed by content analysis. Three stages within the transition are identified. Pregnancy and birth can be perceived as separate turning points in women’s dietary behaviors. In addition, the child joining the family table affects parental diets. Factors of major influence in the three stages were the following: first, responsibility for the child, pregnancy discomfort, and liberation from weight concerns; second, the baby’s digestive discomfort, time scarcity, and social visits; and third, work environment, child care, the child’s food needs, and prioritizing the child’s nutrition. The results indicate a need to differentiate between transition stages, especially in order to curb a "drop" into unhealthy behaviors after birth.
Using a relational model of religion and spirituality in marriage, the role of individual relationship with God, couple’s joint religious communication, and forgiveness were examined as predictors of marital satisfaction. Data from 342 heterosexual married couples were analyzed using an actor partner interdependence model and path analyses. Results indicate that one’s individual relationship with God is important to marital quality indirectly as it appears to manifest itself in religious communication between partners, which in turn is directly linked to martial quality. Also, one’s own forgiveness and forgiveness of the spouse are both positively linked to marital quality, whereas one’s tendency not to forgive and one’s spouse’s tendency not to forgive are both detrimental to marital quality. Finally, joint religious communication is more strongly associated with marital satisfaction among mixed-faith couples than same-faith couples.
Divorce and remarriage have reshaped the American family giving rise to questions about the place of stepchildren in remarried families. In this article, we examine money transfers from a couple to each of their children. We introduce characteristics of the family and estimate the role of shared family membership affecting all children in the family as well as the difference that stepchild status and other individual characteristics make in transfer flows. Data are from the Health and Retirement Study. There are two central results in the analysis. Overall, provision of financial help from parents to children is a family phenomenon. Although help to a particular child is episodic, differences between families in provision of help were much greater than the differences in helping one child versus another within families. Second, stepchild status does differentiate one child from another within a family. Stepchildren are disadvantaged, particularly stepchildren of the wife.
This study explores the monitoring process longitudinally among a sample of rural early adolescents and addresses two research questions: (a) Does maternal knowledge mediate the relationship between three aspects of the parental monitoring process and adolescent problem behavior: active parent monitoring efforts, youth disclosure, and parental supervision? (b) Are these meditational pathways moderated by the affective quality of the parent–child relationship? Parent efforts to monitor youth and youth disclosure in the Fall of Grade 6 predicted substance use and delinquency in Grade 8. These relations were mediated by increases in maternal knowledge assessed in the Spring of Grade 6, suggesting that the protective effects of these constructs are partially indirect. Supervision was not significantly related to maternal knowledge or problem behavior. Parent efforts to monitor were more strongly related to maternal knowledge in families with high levels of positive affect than in families with low levels of positive affect.
This research aims to examine for whom combining work and family/caregiving may be most harmful. Employed parents, elder caregivers, and the sandwiched generation were compared with their coworkers without such responsibilities. Based on the job demands–resources model, we assumed that high job demands/low job resources would relate to work-to-family conflict (WFC) and low job demands/high job resources to work-to-family enrichment. However, this effect would depend on employees’ family/caregiving responsibilities. Using a large sample of Slovenian employees (N = 1,285), we found support for the moderating role of the type of caregiving responsibility between workload and WFC. In addition, the type of caregiving had a moderating effect on the relationship between coworker support and WFC. Support was also found for the differential impact of job resources on work-to-family enrichment. The results therefore indicate the relevance of types of caregiving responsibility in work–family research and practice.
This study investigates household maintenance and decision making among lone female parents in Accra using in-depth interviews and a survey. The study examines how lone mothers economically provide for their children and households and whether they make major decisions. The major findings are that the majority of single mothers through gainful employment bear the bulk of responsibility in the maintenance of children and the household in addition to making major decisions. Kin of lone mothers, on the other hand, mostly assist the women, especially the few unemployed mothers with providing for children, housing, and household chores. The majority of children’s fathers fulfill their responsibility in the payment of school fees; however, most do not provide for the nutritional and clothing needs of their children. The study concludes that single female parents to a large extent provide the needs of their households and are largely responsible for household decisions.
This study investigated married women’s feelings of balance between their occupational and family roles. Data from 274 married and full-time employed women were collected and structural equation modeling techniques were used to assess the connection between their work and leisure lives, work–family conflict and work–family facilitation, and role balance. Women’s satisfaction with their experiences at work and at home, the time they spent in each sphere, and the social support they received from others in each domain were considered. Women’s satisfaction with their workplace and family experiences, most notably, spousal support, were positively related to feelings of role balance. The results of this study suggested that satisfaction with experience in one sphere is stronger and more important than the hours spent doing activities in that sphere when accounting for married women’s role balance.
Research demonstrates that physical limitations are related to lower levels of subjective well-being, but little research has examined whether marital status modifies this relationship, despite evidence showing that marital status is a substantial determinant of subjective well-being. Marital status is likely to be an especially important contingency in collectivistic cultures such as Japan, because cultural emphases heighten the importance of the marital partner as a resource when married individuals experience physical limitations. The current research uses a probability sample of Japanese adults to show that physical limitations are negatively related to both life satisfaction and happiness only among the nonmarried. Marriage obviates the association between limitations and subjective well-being by preventing losses in a sense of control. Furthermore, the married are protected regardless of the level of spousal support or strain, suggesting that the social integration function of marriage is pivotal in the creation of these protective effects.
Academic outcomes as a function of parental absence were examined among 268 newly immigrant Latino youth from Argentina, Colombia, and Cuba. Participants experienced parental absence as a result of divorce, parental death, and serial migration. Students who experienced parental absence reported lower achievement expectations. Parental death, prolonged parental absence, and serial migration negatively affected the academic competence and expectations of students. The extent to which parental absence related to competence and expectations through potential mediating factors was assessed with structural equation modeling. Overall, the model was able to explain some of the relationship between parental absence and the academic competence and expectations of these Latino immigrant students.
Parent involvement (PI) is considered necessary in teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) and preventing other adolescent risk behaviors. However, controversy exists regarding the extent to which families are responsible for adolescent sexual decision making. We adapted two frameworks (Kirby’s risk and protective factors and the Parent–Child Connectedness model) to examine parent- and family-based programs and policies relevant to TPP. There is evidence that PI is an important and effective component of TPP; however, the evidence for PI programs is less strong. Although the United States has legislated various PI-related policies in the context of adolescent sexuality, most have hindered the health of adolescents. Furthermore, the United States falls behind other Western industrialized nations when it comes to healthy family-based policies. PI in TPP is important; however, TPP requires multiple levels of intervention beyond the involvement of parents. We make recommendations for how various stakeholders can effectively use healthy family-based interventions in TPP.
Maternal separation anxiety (MSA) refers to feelings of anxiety elicited in a mother during separation from her infant. The role of social and structural disadvantage in the etiology of high MSA has been overlooked. Secondary analysis of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 3,897) revealed that compared to socioeconomically advantaged women, women of low socioeconomic position had a fourfold increased odds of reporting high (>80th percentile) MSA (odds ratio = 4.37, 95% confidence interval = 3.24-5.89), even when maternal and infant characteristics were controlled for. Inadequate social support and residing in a poor quality neighborhood were also significantly associated with high MSA in adjusted analyses. These findings indicate that high MSA is more common in socioeconomically disadvantaged women and might be a response to adverse circumstances. Mothers’ experience of, and reasons for, MSA needs to be considered in policy formulation about parental leave and postpartum employment, particularly for disadvantaged mothers.
Using data generated from the Global Risk Assessment Device, mental health and disrupted family processes were examined in a sample of 166 court-involved youth being raised by grandparents. Race and gender mean differences were found with regard to both mental health symptoms and disrupted family processes. Specifically, Caucasian male adolescents reported higher mental health symptoms and disrupted family processes than African American males. Also, females in the sample generally reported higher disrupted family processes than males, with African American females reporting significantly higher average disrupted family processes than African American males. Despite mean differences associated with gender and race, when entered as predictors, neither main effects nor interactions of gender or race were related to mental health symptoms. Disrupted family processes were predictive of higher mental health symptoms. Family-targeted interventions with court-involved youth being raised by grandparents would likely benefit the mental health of these adolescents.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) may have an impact on parents struggling with alcohol or other drug (AOD) problems, who are appealing the termination of their parental rights. We conducted a mixed-methods content analysis of court cases from Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, and Georgia involving parental appeals of the termination of their parental rights pre- and post-ASFA. Decisions to uphold termination of parental rights for parents with AOD issues were statistically more frequent post-ASFA. Qualitative differences emerged between pre- and post-ASFA cases with regard to reasons for appeals, substance use factors considered in the appeals, and rationale for final decisions.
Using family systems theory and an actor–partner interdependence model, we examine the influence of the division of family work (including fathers’ participation in child rearing) on father–child relationship quality, satisfaction with the family work division, and marital quality. The strongest effect on both spouses’ marital quality is wives’ perception of father–child relationship quality. Following this, wives’ perceptions of father participation in child rearing are positively associated with both spouses’ reports of marital quality. Furthermore, both husbands and wives report higher marital quality when they are more satisfied with the division of labor. When wives report their husbands have greater responsibility for family tasks, both spouses report higher satisfaction with the division of labor. Post hoc analyses revealed that wives are more satisfied with the division of labor when they work with their spouse rather than alone. All findings support a systemic relational orientation to family work, the division of roles, and relationship quality.
This study reviews the relationship between social policy and the division of domestic chores in the family by providing a new theoretical framework for housework reallocation. We argue that if presented as a dual process composed of modern values formation and behavioral compliance with such values, the reallocation of unpaid labor can be affected by a wide set of welfare state policies. In particular, education or labor market policies contribute to the emergence of modern values, while child care provision or poverty alleviation practices facilitate behavioral compliance with them. We suggest that the level of symmetry in the distribution of domestic chores in families is a function of whether or not policies promoting both stages of the reallocation are introduced. In addition, we demonstrate what may result if only one of them becomes a key target of welfare state activities. This theoretical framework is tested on data from the European Social Survey (2004) for 25 countries, using a variety of statistical techniques.
Contemporary research on parent–adolescent decision making has been concerned with decision outcomes and has viewed these outcomes as indicators of adolescent autonomy. We offer an alternative, dialogical perspective, which directs attention to how adolescents and parents co-construct a decision. The analysis is based on parent and daughter narrations of an important school choice—the decision to apply to a new college-preparatory middle school for girls. By highlighting the decision process in three families, we illustrate how co-construction of a decision can differ even among families who would be classified in the same way on the commonly used outcome assessment. We also question the concept of adolescent decision-making "autonomy" in that it has fostered a disregard for the rich dialogical context of all decision making.
Although there has been a decline in teen pregnancy in recent decades, reports have provided evidence that the decline is reversing. Adolescents involved in the child welfare system (CWS) are vulnerable to engage in high-risk behaviors including sexual behaviors, substance use, and delinquency. The literature on sexual risk behaviors in adolescents in the CWS has emphasized that such behaviors are associated with unplanned pregnancies; however, few studies have explored the co-occurrence of other risk behaviors and sexual behaviors. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which substance use and delinquent acts predict teen pregnancy of youths involved with the CWS. The sample consisted of 291 female adolescents in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being study. Results indicated females who engage in substance use or delinquency at baseline were more likely to have been pregnant 36 months later than those who did not engage in such behaviors.
Most literature on exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) has focused on young children. However, adult children, who have witnessed IPV throughout their lives, bear the effects and continue to be affected by their parents’ ongoing IPV. The purpose of this article is to explore the "lived experiences" of adult children exposed to their parents’ IPV throughout a lifetime. This qualitative study was conducted based on the phenomenological perspective. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 adults aged 30 to 55 years. Content analysis yielded four themes: (a) What type of family do I have: Normal or abnormal; (b) Once violent, always violent; (c) Once my parents, always my parents: To care or not to care; (d) What do I take along with me? Reflections over time. These themes are discussed and practical implications are suggested.
This study contributes to research on race and family ties by exploring racial differences in the direct effects of family support exchanges on daily well-being and the extent to which family support buffers/exacerbates stressor reactivity. African Americans and European Americans aged 34 to 84 years (N = 1,931) from the National Study of Daily Experiences reported on family support exchanges (i.e., support received/support provided), daily stressors, and negative affect during 8 days of telephone interviews. On a daily basis, receiving family support was not associated with well-being, whereas providing family support was associated with compromised well-being among African Americans. As expected, receiving family support buffered reactivity to daily tensions for both races, whereas providing emotional support to family exacerbated African Americans’ reactivity to daily tensions. Together, our findings suggest that even after considering the benefits of receiving family support, providing family support takes an emotional toll on African Americans.
Research on women’s identity development has indicated that women generally form and view their identities within the context of their relationships and connections to others. Previous research has looked at various aspects of motherhood identity including paradoxical, conflictual, and ambivalent components of motherhood. The current study contributes by exploring 30 university faculty women’s personal experiences of motherhood through a grounded theory framework to determine the contributions of motherhood to adult identity development. Mothering expanded the women’s selves and identities multivariously, by developing new personal qualities, by increasing relational capacity and concern for others, by creating a sense of lasting influence by contributing to younger generations, and by enhancing their engagement with their careers. In this way, motherhood was personally, relationally, generationally, and vocationally expansive. Implications for clinical work and research are included.
How is international adoption framed in the popular press? Do those framings shape adoption decision making? Using a multimethod approach of content analysis of newspaper reportage and in-depth interviews with international adoptive parents, this article examines the past two decades of popular press stories on international adoption and explores links between media frames and adoption decision making. Findings reveal that, although the majority of media frames on international adoption are negative, variations exist depending on the sending country profiled. Reportage on Russia adoption consists of more negative frames, whereas China adoption is more likely to be framed positively. These differences in media framings on Russia and China, the two most popular countries for international adoption into the United States from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, emerged in adoptive parents’ narratives of adoption decision making.
In 1997, a multinational company in northern Mexico replaced a work policy that required women to quit on marriage or pregnancy. Analysis of extensive data from a qualitative case study shows how the women perceive the policy change as shaping work–family choices. The women interpret the change as significant because it recognizes women’s "right to work" and grants them access to family-friendly workplace policies. But their interpretations of how it plays out in practice vary over the gendered life course. Furthermore, evidence of obstacles to women’s advancement indicates that workplace practices remain gendered and vary by occupational status and age. This analysis demonstrates the importance of situating women’s workplace experiences within a particular context with its distinct cultural and sociopolitical framings of work and family.
Evidence suggests that social support may act as a potential protective factor for psychological maladjustment, but few studies have examined the social support networks of young children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). The present study examined the in-home networks for 120 preschool-age children who were recently exposed to male-to-female IPV. Results indicated that larger in-home networks were associated with fewer child internalizing and externalizing problems. Mother’s education level was found to moderate the relationship between total in-home network size and child adjustment, such that that when mothers had low levels of education, children had fewer overall adjustment problems as network size increased. When mothers had high levels of education, child adjustment did not significantly vary as network size increased. These findings suggest that the presence of extended family members in the home can positively influence child functioning following exposure to male-to-female IPV.
Little attention has been paid to how early adolescents make attributions for their fathers’ behavior. Guided by symbolic interaction theory, we examined how adolescent gender, ethnicity, family structure, and depressive symptoms explained attributions for residential father behavior. A total of 382 adolescents, grouped by ethnicity (European American, Mexican American) and family structure (intact, stepfamilies), reported attributions for their fathers’ positive and negative behaviors. Results indicated that for positive events, girls made significantly more stable attributions, whereas boys made more unstable attributions. Mexican American adolescents tended to make more unstable attributions for positive events than European Americans, and adolescents from intact families made more stable attributions for positive events than adolescents from stepfamilies. Implications are discussed for the role of attributions in father–adolescent relationships as prime for intervention in families.
This study examines the relationships among nonresident fathers’ financial support, informal instrumental support, mothers’ parenting and parenting stress, and their children’s behavioral and cognitive development in single-mother families with low income. Informed by stress-coping and social support models, this study estimates the mediating effects of nonresident fathers’ financial support on children’s outcomes transmitted through mothers’ parenting and parenting stress. The analyses use the longitudinal data from a subsample of 679 single mothers in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Results suggest that nonresident fathers’ financial support is directly associated with children’s cognitive development. Nonresident fathers’ financial support is found to have indirect effects on children’s behavior problems and cognitive development transmitted through mothers’ parenting and parenting stress. Informal instrumental support is directly and indirectly associated with both outcomes of children transmitted through maternal economic hardship, parenting, and parenting stress. The study discusses the policy and practice implications of these findings.
This study examined the factor structure and validity of the Acculturation Gap Conflicts Inventory (AGCI), a new instrument developed to measure the types of recurring conflicts that young people experience as part of the parent–child acculturation gap. Participants included 283 Hispanic young adults who completed the AGCI and existing measures of acculturation, family dynamics, psychosocial, and academic adjustment. Principal axis factor analysis revealed three factors with good internal consistency: Autonomy Conflicts, Conflicts over Preferred-Culture, and Dating/Being Out Late Conflicts. These factors correlated in the expected direction with acculturative stress and family dynamics variables. Autonomy Conflicts explained more than 25% of the variance in the acculturation gap conflicts items investigated, and this factor demonstrated incremental validity in predicting psychosocial and academic adjustment beyond the variance accounted for by other acculturative stress variables. The AGCI can be valuable to researchers from a variety of disciplines interested in measuring acculturation-related intergenerational conflicts among Hispanic youth that may be predictive of adjustment.
Fathers’ postnatal mental health is associated with emotional and behavioral outcomes for children in early childhood. The aim of this study was to examine whether parenting behavior mediated the relationship between fathers’ postnatal psychological distress and emotional–behavioral outcomes for children at age 5. The sample consisted of 2,025 fathers participating in Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. Data collected when the children were aged 0 to 12 months and 4 to 5 years were used. Results revealed that the relationship between fathers’ postnatal distress and children’s outcomes was mediated by parenting hostility (angry and frustrated reactions toward the child such as yelling), and this remained significant after controlling for fathers’ concurrent mental health and mothers’ postnatal mental health. These findings underscore the important contribution of fathers’ postnatal mental health to later parenting behavior and child outcomes. Implications for policy and practice focused on improving mental health and parenting support to fathers in the early childhood period is discussed.
In a follow-up study of family members who participated in a previous study of high work demands, 130 participants from 71 families responded to questions about recent changes in work and financial well-being, as well as daily family adaptations associated with the recession. The general portrait of the families who belonged to an emergent professional class was of relative stability in their work situations. Nevertheless, a substantial percentage perceived financial decline, an increase in the pace of their work, and increasingly rushed feelings at home. Respondents reported financial adjustments in their daily lives. Adjustments in expenses associated with family dining out and with leisure were especially noteworthy when participants reported the perception of financial decline. Results are discussed in light of how the experience of the current recession among families in the professional class differs from experiences of families during previous recessions.
Using 2002 International Social Survey Programme data, this study examines the association between women’s economic resources (full-time employment, educational attainment, and income) and their attitudes toward marriage across 31 countries (N = 14,827). The focus of this study is to test whether state policy to reduce work–family conflict (shorter working hour schedules and enhancement of public child care services and parental leave) explains cross-national differences in the association between women’s economic independence and their attitudes toward marriage. The results show that highly educated women have negative attitudes toward marriage only in countries with long average working hours. Also, in countries with generous public child care services, the positive effect of educational attainment is stronger. These findings suggest that it is not women’s economic independence per se that reduces attractiveness of marriage; instead, it is the incompatibility between work and family life that lowers women’s marriage aspirations.
Our objective was to estimate, at the general population level, the variance in prevalence of depression attributable to family environment. A cross-sectional survey was conducted door-to-door in rural China with a sample of 3720 individuals aged 18 years and older. Results showed that the difference in depression prevalence between extended and nuclear families was not statistically significant. In addition, the association of family structure and depression (for males and females) was not statistically significant after adjusting for potential confounding variables. The association of family-related negative life events and economic status of the family with depression (for males and females) was statistically significant. The association of family support and depression was statistically significant for males but not for females. Findings suggest that the Chinese traditional extended family may not be protective against depression at the general population level, and family interventions targeting family environment should reflect the above gender differences.
Although an emerging body of research has examined lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adults’ attitudes and feelings about marriage, very little research has explored how their offspring view marriage. The current exploratory, qualitative, interview-based study of 35 adolescents and emerging adults (ages 15-28 years; mean age = 21 years) with LGB parents examines their attitudes about and desire for marriage. Results revealed that many participants endorsed romantic ideas about marriage and hoped to someday marry themselves. Other participants expected to marry, but solely for "pragmatic" reasons (i.e., legal/financial protections). Some participants expressed concerns about the institution of marriage, and therefore rejected marriage for themselves—although some conceded that they might marry if and when all LGB people were able to marry. Finally, a small group of participants expressed a desire to marry, but struggled with the idea of marrying when their LGB parents could not. These findings reveal great diversity in the marital desires of young adults with LGB parents, and highlight the various social contexts that ultimately shape their beliefs and intentions surrounding marriage.
This study investigates birth mothers’ perspectives on their relationships with birth fathers after adoption placement. A total of 125 birth mothers were interviewed 12 to 20 years postplacement about the nature of their relationship with the birth father and their satisfaction with their contact with the birth father both at the time of placement and currently. These interviews were part of a larger longitudinal study of birthparents, adoptive parents, adopted persons, and adoption agency personnel. Recalling the time of the adoption placement, birth mothers reported many negative feelings about the birth father. However, by 12 to 20 years after the adoption, birth mothers were moving toward a more neutral emotional stance regarding the birth father. Most of the birth mothers do not have current contact with the birth father, and of those who do, most characterize their relationship as friendship.
This study examines the degree to which the sharing of parental care, as indicated by the amount of children participating in caregiving and by equality in caregiving intensity, is associated with similarities among sibling characteristics. A selected sample of 186 parents with at least two children was asked to report on the assistance provided by all their children. Results reveal that in most families the care was shared between children. However, there was a large variation in caregiving intensity. Multivariate regression analyses show that similarities in employment status among children predicted a higher chance that the care was shared and a higher degree of equality in caregiving intensity among siblings. Similarities in partner status and emotional support exchanges with parents were associated with the equality among siblings in caregiving intensity. Results from this study suggest that siblings with similar characteristics and opportunities are more likely to share care (equally).
This study examines several aspects of the association between engaging in extramarital sex and the disruption of one’s marriage. Panel data on 1,621 respondents followed from 1980 to 2000 in the Marital Instability Over the Life Course survey were used to answer these questions. Interval-censored Cox regression analysis revealed several noteworthy findings. As previously found in earlier analyses with these data, reports of problems due to extramarital involvement were strongly related to marital disruption, even holding constant the quality of the marriage. Although men were about three times more likely to be the cheating spouse, there was no difference in the effect of an affair on the marriage according to gender of the cheater. Approximately 40% of the effect of extramarital sex on disruption was accounted for by the mediating factors of marital quality, tolerance of divorce, and wife’s employment. Two moderators of infidelity’s positive effect on disruption were found: The effect was substantially stronger for very religious couples but weaker when the wife was in the labor force.
This study examines the romantic relationships of reservists following wartime deployment. Members of an Army Reserve unit and their partners participated in seven waves of interviews in the year following the reservists’ return from deployment. Qualitative analysis of these 101 interviews from 19 participants revealed four themes: (a) intermittent idealized closeness, (b) transition from independence to interdependence, (c) transition in the primary source of social support, and (d) ongoing renegotiation of roles. Intermittent idealized closeness fluctuated over time and was an individual rather than a joint phenomenon. Couples had to relearn how to be interdependent, and for some this was the most difficult aspect of reunion. Individuals shifted away from partners for social support during deployment and gradually shifted back to relying on partners following reunion. Transitions in work and family roles were negotiated on an ongoing basis throughout the year.
Drawing on a survey of more than 600 articles that use the term fictive kin, I demonstrate that this term is used predominantly in reference to African Americans and a variety of marginal people and only rarely is used in conjunction with a mainstream White population. After presenting data on the use of the term, I discuss the implications of these findings. I explore as well two rhetorical shifts in language—the introduction of the notion of families of choice and the recent introduction of the concept of voluntary kin.
This research investigates whether the capacity of parity status to predict disability onset varies by race among older women. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (1998-2008) were used, and a series of discrete-time event-history models were estimated using multinomial logistic regression. Disability onset was constructed from five common activities of daily living measures (i.e., difficulty dressing, bathing, eating, getting in/out of bed, and walking). The initial risk group was old-old women (i.e., born before 1925) without disability in 1998 (N = 2,229). Nulliparous and high-parity Black women born before 1925 were more likely to develop disability onset compared with White women with the same parity status. The results suggest that parity status among Black older women may be a salient risk factor for disability onset.
When confronted with the economic costs of addressing a serious health problem, many American households do not possess the ability to deal with the crises on their own and may turn to family members for help. Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we examine if the level of wealth held by individuals is related to the health problems of their siblings. We find evidence that having a sibling swho has experienced a health problem decreases the amount of wealth that some families have. The research has implications for the existing literatures on altruism and kin networks, as it sheds some light on the nature of altruism that prevails in U.S. families and on how kinship networks matter. Because of its focus on the consequences of health problems, the research also has implications for public policy discussions about the health care system and social insurance more generally.
Rising numbers of single middle-aged and older adults encouraged a proliferation of online dating websites targeting this population. However, few studies examine aging adults’ involvement in online dating. This study uses semistructured interviews with 18 online daters aged 53 to 74 and 2 romance coaches to examine how aspects of their online expectations and experiences are shaped by age and gender. Analyses reveal that men seek committed relationships, whereas women desire companionship without demanding caring roles. Different barriers to dating increase the appeal of online strategies: Men face narrow social networks, while women face competition from younger women and friendship norms limiting the pool of eligible partners. Both genders screen for youthful characteristics and attempt to convey youthful images of themselves. Men’s criteria center on physical attractiveness, whereas women’s focus is on abilities. In constructing profiles, women focus on their looks and sociability and men on their financial and occupational successes.
Using a sample of 344 dual-earner African American married couples, this study examined the effect of control over work on depressive symptoms and physical health with a dyadic model. The mediating role of personal resources capturing positive self-evaluations (i.e., self-esteem and mastery) was also examined. The association between wives’ control over work and wives’ physical and mental health was mediated by wives’ positive self. Although husbands’ control over work was not directly associated with husbands’ physical or mental health, it was associated with their sense of positive self, which influenced their level of depressive symptoms and physical health. No cross-spouse influences were found, suggesting a lack of interdependence for African American husbands and wives. The practical implications of this research include the value of work organization policies that may increase workers’ sense of control and personal resources as these variables are important to workers’ health outcomes.
Using multigenerational population register data that cover the total Swedish population, we studied relative mortality of offspring whose parents had formed a new family with children. These primarily adult-age children are found to have lower death risks than those with divorced parents who did not form a new family, which highlights that the link between parental family formation and offspring health may be attributed not only to causal factors associated with family disruption but also to social selection in parents. The association differs notably according to whether sibling groups are determined according to the mother or the father. This finding is interpreted as reflecting varying environmental exposure, because most minor children who experience parental divorce remain with the mother. We approximate that parental social selection, which maliciously affects offspring health, raises the offspring mortality risk by 20%.
An extensive body of research demonstrates that children increase the stability of marriage, but it is unclear whether the same is true for cohabitation. Marital stability theories often assume fertility is intended, which is less likely to be the case for cohabiting births. Using the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, we find that intended and disagreed-upon pregnancies (but not unintended pregnancies) reduce the risk of dissolution relative to women who have no pregnancy or birth. Relative to nonfertile couples, all pregnancies increase the risk of marriage over staying cohabiting, but there is little difference in the odds of stability or transitions after birth. However, relative to an intended birth, having an unintended or disagreed-upon birth increases the risk of dissolution. These findings suggest that normative pressures influence the union behaviors of cohabitors during pregnancy, whereas selection processes and rational choice considerations play a greater role after a birth.
The outsourcing of domestic tasks is an important strategy for coping with the competing time claims of the family and the workplace. Previousresearch explained the use of domestic help mainly in terms of financial and time constraints. In this article, we conceptualize household work as producing not only goods but also direct utility, and we argue that the more pleasure household members take in doing domestic work, the less they outsource it. Using the Dutch Time Competition Survey (N = 736), we find that if partners enjoy maintenance, cleaning, cooking, or child care, they are less likely to outsource these tasks, controlling for time and monetary resources and gender-role expectations. A woman’s preferences are more important for the outsourcing of cleaning and child care, whereas a man’s preferences are more important for the outsourcing of home maintenance. Cooking is less likely to be outsourced when both men and women find it pleasurable to cook themselves.
Many parents feel uncertain about the actions and experiences their teenage children have on the Internet, thus causing worry and concern. The aim of the study was to examine parents’ worries and concerns in relation to their teenagers’ use of the Internet. The participants were 798 Swedish parents (307 fathers, 491 mothers) and their teenage children (aged between 13 and 15 years). The results indicate that parents’ worries and concerns vary, in certain aspects, according to age and gender of the child. Furthermore, parents’ own Internet skills, experience of using the Internet, and attitudes toward the Internet are related to the type and nature of their worries and concerns. Parents’ beliefs about their teenager’s skills in using the Internet and the teenagers’ Internet use and experiences are related to the parents’ concerns. Parents with an accurate understanding of their children’s negative Internet experiences are those who are the most worried.
Use of social technologies (e.g., cellular telephones, social networking sites) is highly prevalent among American adolescents, in some cases outpacing that of adults (Nielsen Company). Rapid cultural change such as that represented by technological advances comes with the potential to diminish elders’ authority over youth. We analyzed qualitative interviews with 20 African American and European American mother–early adolescent dyads to consider ways in which mothers would—or would not—exert authority over adolescents’ use of social technologies. Three distinct approaches emerged: abdication/loss of authority, conflicted authority, and retained authority. Mothers’ use of these different approaches varied based on factors that included mothers’ and adolescents’ expertise regarding the technology being used, mothers’ perceptions of risks associated with particular technologies, and mothers’ and adolescents’ beliefs and experiences with respect to social technology use.
The children of Mexican immigrants face formidable barriers to achieving socioeconomic mobility due to their parents’ precarious economic position and high rates of unauthorized status. In the short term, Mexican immigrants often coreside in extended household living arrangements with extended kin and unrelated friends and associates to shelter themselves from economic deprivation and insecurity of unauthorized status. Using individual-level Census data, the present study examines how family economic resources relate to household living arrangements. The results are consistent with various theories of immigrant household formation, especially those that explain household structure in terms of economic need and processes of immigration. Families residing in extended arrangements are unique, however, in terms of how often they include a householder and how much they contribute to total household resources, indicators that families may hold more supportive roles within extended households. The implications of the findings for the well-being of immigration children are discussed.
Despite a growing body of research on school-based parental involvement, our knowledge of home-based involvement beliefs and practices, and how these vary across ethnic groups, remains limited. Our study addresses this gap by exploring how the meanings of educational achievement and parents’ roles in young children’s learning vary across ethnic groups. The aim of this study was to construct a detailed picture of the landscape of parental home-based involvement with children and to gain a deeper understanding of the beliefs, meanings, and goals underlying parents’ interactions. Forty-one middle-class Mexican American, African American, and European American mothers participated in semistructured interviews about their goals and interactions with their children in the domain of education. We identified seven themes across the interviews and constructed two cultural models of parental academic socialization: determination with intervention, more typical of ethnic minority group mothers, and trust and laissez-faire, more common among European American mothers.
This article compares the gendered allocation of household labor between married and cohabiting couples in five European countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain, testing whether cohabitors show more egalitarian divisions of labor and hypothesizing that the effect of cohabitation differs across countries, depending on the baseline equality and on the meaning of cohabitation. In order to examine to what extent there is equality, not only each partners’ contribution to the total housework time is considered but also who does what: Some tasks are more constraining than others, and gender and partnership differences specific to those tasks are investigated too. The empirical analysis is based on Multinational Time Use Surveys (N = 58,490), using ordinary least squares linear regression models. Results show that cohabiting couples have a more egalitarian division of labor but that there are important country differences.
In this article, we present a new method for measuring residential arrangements of children following parental divorce. We discuss the limitations of conventional methods for measuring postdivorce residential situations of children, but our principal objective is to present a promising alternative, the residential calendar. We evaluate its utility with data coming from the Leuven Adolescents and Families project, collected from a sample of 878 Flemish adolescents, who have experienced a parental breakup. Several substantive and methodological arguments and supporting analyses illustrate the potential value of the residential calendar for collecting policy-relevant data on the consequences of divorce.
This is the first study evaluating the desire to marry and attitudes toward same-sex family legalization in an Italian sample of lesbians and gay males from 18 to 35 years of age. Even though the majority of participants reported a positive attitude toward same-sex family legalization, gay men expressed a lower desire to marry than lesbian participants. Participants with a high level of internalized sexual stigma were less likely to want to marry and to recognize the positive effects of the legal recognition of the same-sex family. Regression analyses showed the relevance of internalized sexual stigma, self-disclosure to family, political progressivism, and higher education to predict a desire to marry and a more positive attitude toward same-sex family legalization. The results point to the necessity of social policy reform to eliminate social and structural inequalities surrounding the pursuit of intimacy to reduce disparities in intimacy-related stressors of lesbians and gay men.
We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine whether childhood family structure experiences influence the development of romantic relationships during adolescence and whether adolescent relationships, in turn, help to shape long-term relationship trajectories. Young people who live in "nontraditional" families during their childhood are more likely than their peers to engage in romantic relationships during adolescence. Family-related mechanisms are significant mediators of this association. Individuals who were raised in stepparent and single-parent families are also more likely to cohabit during adulthood, and those who were raised in single-parent families are less likely to have ever married. Childhood family structure is not associated with serious relationship conflict during adolescence or adulthood, however. Moreover, although adolescent relationship experiences have long-term effects on relationship trajectories, they do not significantly mediate the associations between childhood family structure and relationship outcomes in adulthood.
In this article, we use longitudinal data on Australian two-parent families to assess the impact of mothers’ leave duration after childbirth on their subsequent mental health, quality of parenting, and couple relationships. We found that 2 to 3 years after the birth, psychological distress was significantly less likely among mothers who took >13 weeks paid leave or >26 to 52 weeks leave in total. However, those who took >26 weeks in total were more likely to register as "distant" in their parenting relationship. The analysis also highlighted the importance of leave supports at the workplace: Mothers who experienced workplace problems during their pregnancy were more likely to report feeling rushed and to rate their couple relationship as unhappy or argumentative 2 to 3 years later. Overall, our study underlined the complexity of leave impact but affirmed the importance of leave duration for maternal mental health and leave takers’ workplace supports for maternal and family outcomes.
Childlessness is an increasingly common condition in many European societies. The consequences that this demographic phenomenon might have on welfare systems—and long-term care policies in particular—are widespread. This is particularly the case for the familistic welfare states of Southern Europe. Using data from the 2003 Italian GGS, the article explores the relation between the absence of children and support received in later life. Overall, the results support the idea that in Italy elderly nonparents, compared with those who have children, do not face significantly large support deficits in terms of the likelihood of receiving support. However, it is shown that they are likely to miss those forms of support that are most needed in the case of bad health. Next, the childless are more likely to be helped by nonrelatives and not-for-profit organizations and to a lesser extent by the welfare system.
Cultural models are shared frameworks that people use to make sense of the world. The cultural model of father involvement (a) specifies ideal roles fathers should play, (b) provides evaluations of involvement, and (c) describes the benefits of fathers’ interactions with offspring for family members. Discourse about benefits of father involvement remains underexamined empirically but is vital to study because it may motivate and/or justify fathering actions. We perform content analysis on the 575 Parents’ Magazine articles on fathering (1926-2006) to describe articulated benefits of father involvement. About half of articles state rewards for fathers, with a shift from enjoyment to fulfillment. Fifty-eight percent of articles state benefits to children, with a dramatic decline from 79% in the 1920s to 30% in the 2000s, and a relative shift in focus from character development to achievement. Nineteen percent of articles mention benefits to mothers; these discussions are sometimes cautious or conditional.
Motherhood has different meanings for women and there are a multitude of factors that shape experiences of parenting. Heuristic inquiry was used to examine the lived experiences of motherhood among 20 Mexican-origin women parenting alone. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted and data were organized and presented by six domains: (a) description of self as a mother, (b) perceptions of strengths, (c) perceptions of challenges, (d) influences as a parent, (e) meaning of motherhood, and (f) mothering as a woman of Mexican origin. Quotes were used to illustrate the six domains and a composite depiction to summarize our description and interpretation of the phenomenon of parenting alone as a Hispanic mother. Despite their challenges, participants described themselves as good mothers, who were protective, loving, and devoted to their children; they also described their culture as enriching their experiences of mothering although they faced obstacles due to marginalization and discrimination. A feminist-informed, intersectionality lens is used to discuss the findings.
We examine how three types of marital commitment—personal, structural, and moral—are associated with perceptions of fairness in chores (N = 1,839 married couples or 3,678 spouses). Using the Actor–Partner Interdependence Model, we find distinct relationships by type of marital commitment and gender. For personal commitment, both actor and partner effects were positively associated with wives’ perceived fairness of chores, with actor effects more influential to perceptions of fairness for wives versus husbands. For structural commitment, actor and partner effects were negatively associated with husbands’ perceived fairness of chores, with actor effects more influential to perceptions of fairness for husbands versus wives. For moral commitment, actor effects were positively associated with husbands’ perceived fairness, without any gender differences found. Given that employed wives continue to do the disproportionate amount of housework, we discuss how differences by gender in marital commitment explain perceptions of fairness in household chores.
Based on 25 interviews with educated and employed never-married men in Japan, this article examines how the diminished social norm to marry by a certain age, never-married men’s beliefs regarding gender in marriage, and the value these men place on individual autonomy all contribute to a trend in late marriage. We argue that the diminished social pressure to marry and the changing age norm do further men’s ambivalence toward marriage by allowing them to rationalize their detachment from the idea of their future marriage, their aversion to the perceived gender constraints of marriage, and the emphasis they place on their autonomy. However, we also argue that the weakening of the social pressure to marry does not relate to changes in employed men’s gendered views of marriage, which remain traditional.
The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Greek version of Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales IV (FACES IV) Package. The original FACES IV displays a six-factor structure with two balanced scales—Balanced Cohesion and Balanced Flexibility—and four unbalanced scales—Disengaged, Enmeshed, Rigid, and Chaotic—and has been shown to have satisfactory internal and test–retest reliability. A total of 584 family members agreed to participate in the study. The findings indicated that the Greek version displays similar factor structure to the original version. Cronbach’s α coefficients for the six scales ranged from .59 to .79. The test–retest correlation coefficients ranged between .94 and .97. The Family Communication Scale and the Family Satisfaction Scale demonstrated high internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Thus, the Greek version of the FACES IV Package appears to be a valid and reliable instrument to be used in both research and clinical assessment of family functioning.
The current research examined the question of child custody with regard to divorced families in Italy. This study proposed to evaluate, following the introduction of Law 54/2006 in March 2006 concerning shared custody, whether or not changes occurred in either the decisions on judicial divorce in the Court of Rome or in the choices of the parents who divorced by mutual consent in the same court. The archival research examined 100 judgments on judicial divorce (50 before Law 54/2006-2005 and 50 after Law 54/2006-2007) and 100 judgments on divorce by mutual consent (by the same procedure). The instrument employed was a schedule of content analysis. The data were examined by means of frequency analyses and statistical tests (chi-square test and ANOVA). Consistently with the expectations of the authors, the results showed that after the enactment of Law 54/2006, there were significant changes in the management of child custody and visit planning with the nonresidential parent. Research and clinical implications are discussed.
Familismo has been described as a core cultural value for Latinos, but there have been few studies of its attitudinal and behavioral manifestations. We explored attitudinal and behavioral familismo using qualitative data collected from 23 Latina mothers who participated in an ethnographic study. The study employed semistructured interviews and participant observation methods carried out across 10 to 12 home visits for each participant. Results indicate that behavioral familismo manifests in five specific areas—financial support, shared daily activities, shared living, shared childrearing, and immigration—and functions as a dynamic construct that moves along a continuum of costs and benefits, over time and across situations, with implications for children’s development. The discussion highlights familismo as both a risk and protective factor for low-income, urban Latino families and underscores the importance of considering the balance between its costs and benefits in studies of Latino child development.
Despite perceptions that infidelity is common among military and veteran populations, there is relatively little evidence documenting the prevalence of extramarital sex among persons with a history of military service or its consequences for marital stability. Using data from the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, we estimate multivariate logistic regression models to examine the associations between veteran status, extramarital sex, and divorce among ever-married persons aged 18 to 60 years. We also conduct supplemental analyses of gender differences. We find that 32.17% of veterans report extramarital sexual relationships, which is twice the rate among nonveterans in this sample. Controlling for sociodemographic and early-life factors, veterans are significantly more likely than nonveterans to report extramarital sex and to have ever divorced, whereas extramarital sex has a strong, independent association with divorce. We conclude that veteran status is strongly associated with extramarital sex and divorce, at least among men; extramarital sex and divorce might also be elevated among female veterans, but research that uses larger, representative samples of female veterans is needed to confirm those associations. The higher rates of infidelity among veterans may be related to selection factors; military experiences, such as deployment; or postmilitary factors. The current research provides a foundation for further research that aims to explicate the mechanisms underlying this association.
We report on a Canadian partnership-based, multiyear, multisite project that examined the diverse experience of father involvement. Based on a sample of 215 fathers, an analysis team identified key themes of father involvement. Qualitative interviews were conducted within seven, geographically dispersed groups that included new fathers, young fathers, immigrant fathers, gay fathers, fathers of children with special needs, indigenous fathers, and separated and divorced fathers. A core track of questioning asked fathers about the way that children had influenced their attitudes and activities. The findings reported here indicate that fathers undergo a reorientation of values and behavior in response to the influence of their children. Specifically, they articulate redefined priorities and an altered sense of purpose, a different awareness of what it means to be a man, changed relationships and a rebalancing of the importance of self and other, and a reorientation toward time and scheduling of their everyday lives.
Educational assortative mating is a crucial aspect of marriage formation because it confers benefits such as improved health and well-being, affects economic standing, and reflects the level of gender equity within marriage. However, little is known about educational assortative mating patterns in remarriage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, this study addresses this shortcoming in two ways. First, I compare educational assortative mating patterns in first and second marriages. Second, I address characteristics associated with homogamy, hypergamy, and hypogamy in remarriage. The results show that assortative mating patterns in remarriage are distinct from those in first marriage, remarriage patterns are unique by educational attainment and gender, and these patterns are not explained by differences in income, age, or parental status. The results illustrate the need for theories which specifically address the unique nature of remarriage in the United States.
The authors examine social-class differences in parents’ child-rearing values for autonomy, self-direction, and conformity and the extent to which their values are influenced by their perceptions of their developing children’s characteristics. Parents from 25 middle-class or working-class families in a Brazilian city participated in interviews, observations, and completed Kohn’s Q-Sort measure when their children were 3, 36, and 72 months of age. Parents’ child-rearing values differed significantly by social class: middle-class parents were more likely to value autonomy and self-direction in their children, whereas working-class parents were more likely to value conformity. In addition, the strength and direction of parental values changed significantly as their children developed. Parents were less likely to value autonomy and self-direction when their children were 36 months than when they were either 3 or 72 months. Middle-class parents were more likely to value conformity when their children were 36 than when they were younger or older.