Wedding Planner
Daniel Schneider
American Journal of Sociology, September 2011, Pages 627-667
Abstract:
Marriage patterns differ dramatically in the United States by race and education. The author identifies a novel explanation for these marital divides, namely, the important role of personal wealth in marriage entry. Using event-history models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort, the author shows that wealth is an important predictor of first marriage and that differences in asset ownership by race and education help to explain a significant portion of the race and education gaps in first marriage. The article also tests possible explanations for why wealth plays an important role in first marriage entry.
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Women's College Decisions: How Much Does Marriage Matter?
Suqin Ge
Journal of Labor Economics, October 2011, Pages 773-818
Abstract:
This article investigates the sequential college attendance decision of young women and quantifies the effect of marriage expectations on their decision to attend and graduate from college. A dynamic choice model of college attendance, labor supply, and marriage is formulated and structurally estimated using panel data from the NLSY79. The model is used to simulate the effects of no marriage benefits and finds that the predicted college enrollment rate will drop from 58.0% to 50.5%. Using the estimated model, the college attendance behavior for a younger cohort from the NLSY97 is predicted and used to validate the behavioral model.
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Sanctification of sexuality: Implications for newlyweds' marital and sexual quality
Krystal Hernandez, Annette Mahoney & Kenneth Pargament
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on the intersection of sexuality, religion, and spirituality has primarily examined whether global levels of religiousness (e.g., service attendance) deter premarital and extramarital sexual activity. Virtually no empirical work has addressed whether specific spiritual beliefs about sexuality enhance marital sexuality. Using a community sample of 83 individuals married between 4 and 18 months, we found that greater perceptions of sexuality as sanctified predicted greater marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, sexual intimacy, and spiritual intimacy beyond global religiousness and demographics. The findings open a new line of research on religion and family life, and extend theories on the possible benefits of the sanctification of intimate relationships.
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Changing Patterns of Interracial Marriage in a Multiracial Society
Zhenchao Qian & Daniel Lichter
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2011, Pages 1065-1084
Abstract:
We use incidence data from the 1980 Census and 2008 American Community Survey to track recent trends in interracial marriage. Intermarriage with Whites increased rapidly among Blacks but stalled among Asians and American Indians. Black-White intermarriage increased threefold over 1980-2008, independent of changing socioeconomic status, suggesting declining social distance between Blacks and Whites. Marriages between the U.S.- and foreign-born populations also grew rapidly. Marriages to immigrants increased fivefold among U.S.-born Asian women and doubled among U.S.-born Latinas since 1980. Out-marriage to Whites also was higher among self-identified biracial than monoracial individuals, but these differences were smallest among Blacks. Interracial couples were overrepresented among cohabiting couples. Finally, log-linear models provide evidence of growing racial exogamy, but only after adjusting for changing demographic opportunities for intermarriage. Marriages between U.S.- and foreign-born coethnics have been driven by new immigration while slowing the upward trajectory of interracial marriage in America.
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"It's the economy, honey!" Couples' blame attributions during the 2007-2009 economic crisis
Lisa Diamond & Angela Hicks
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the current study the authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of 632 cohabiting American couples during the height of the 2007-2009 economic crisis to examine associations between relationship quality and partners' attributions of causation and blame for household money problems. In couples where women attributed causation for household money problems to their partners' debts, spending, or employment, both they and their partners reported lower relationship satisfaction unless women also reported blaming the national economic crisis. Blaming one's partner for household money problems was associated with lower relationship satisfaction unless individuals also blamed themselves. Being blamed for household money problems by one's partner was associated with lower satisfaction among women, but this association was attenuated if the male partner also blamed the economic crisis.
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Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males
Lee Gettler et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 September 2011, Pages 16194-16199
Abstract:
In species in which males care for young, testosterone (T) is often high during mating periods but then declines to allow for caregiving of resulting offspring. This model may apply to human males, but past human studies of T and fatherhood have been cross-sectional, making it unclear whether fatherhood suppresses T or if men with lower T are more likely to become fathers. Here, we use a large representative study in the Philippines (n = 624) to show that among single nonfathers at baseline (2005) (21.5 ± 0.3 y), men with high waking T were more likely to become partnered fathers by the time of follow-up 4.5 y later (P < 0.05). Men who became partnered fathers then experienced large declines in waking (median: -26%) and evening (median: -34%) T, which were significantly greater than declines in single nonfathers (P < 0.001). Consistent with the hypothesis that child interaction suppresses T, fathers reporting 3 h or more of daily childcare had lower T at follow-up compared with fathers not involved in care (P < 0.05). Using longitudinal data, these findings show that T and reproductive strategy have bidirectional relationships in human males, with high T predicting subsequent mating success but then declining rapidly after men become fathers. Our findings suggest that T mediates tradeoffs between mating and parenting in humans, as seen in other species in which fathers care for young. They also highlight one likely explanation for previously observed health disparities between partnered fathers and single men.
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Christopher Ellison, Marc Musick & George Holden
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2011, Pages 946-961
Abstract:
Using longitudinal data from a sample of 456 focal children in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), this study examined two research questions: (a) Does corporal punishment of young children (ages 2-4 at baseline) predict increases in levels of externalizing and internalizing problems over a 5-year study period? (b) Does the religion of the mother - specifically, her conservative Protestant affiliation and conservative beliefs about the Bible - moderate the estimated net effects of corporal punishment? Results revealed that early spanking alone was not associated with adjustment difficulties, but spanking that persisted into or began in middle childhood was associated with difficulties. In contrast to their counterparts from other (or no) religious backgrounds, children whose mothers belonged to conservative Protestant groups exhibited minimal adverse effects of corporal punishment. Several conclusions, limitations, and promising directions for future research are identified.
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A postdeployment expressive writing intervention for military couples: A randomized controlled trial
Jenna Baddeley & James Pennebaker
Journal of Traumatic Stress, October 2011, Pages 581-585
Abstract:
The current study tested the effectiveness of a brief expressive writing intervention on the marital adjustment of 102 military couples recently reunited following a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Active duty soldiers and their spouses were randomly assigned to write about either their relationship or a nonemotional topic on 3 occasions on a single day. The resulting design included 4 couple-level writing topic conditions: soldier-expressive/spouse-expressive, soldier-expressive/spouse-control, soldier-control/spouse-expressive, and soldier-control/spouse-control. Participants completed marital adjustment measures before writing, 1 month, and 6 months after writing. When soldiers, but not spouses, did expressive writing, couples increased in marital satisfaction over the next month, particularly if the soldier had had high combat exposure.
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Do Traditional Fathers Always Work More? Gender Ideology, Race, and Parenthood
Rebecca Glauber & Kristi Gozjolko
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2011, Pages 1133-1148
Abstract:
Research has shown that men who express traditional gender ideologies spend more time in paid work when they become fathers, whereas men who express egalitarian ideologies spend less time in paid work. This study extends previous research by examining racial differences among men. We drew on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 23,261) and found that fatherhood was associated with an increase in married White men's time spent in paid work. The increase was more than twice as strong for traditional White men than for egalitarian White men. In contrast, both egalitarian and traditional African American men did not work more when they became fathers. These findings suggest that African American men may express gender traditionalism but adopt more egalitarian work-family arrangements. This study also presents evidence of an interaction among race, class, and gender ideology that shapes fathers' time spent in paid work.
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Kristina Sessa
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Fall 2011, Pages 401-432
Abstract:
This article examines the problems and possibilities that captivity, remarriage, and the return of kidnapped spouses presented to Roman bishops during the fifth century, a period of social instability and religious change in the Italian peninsula. Through close readings of letters penned by Innocent I (401-417 C.E.) and Leo I (441-461 C.E.), it explores how these bishops attempted to resolve a novel quandary for households: the impasse between emergent Christian ethics that insisted upon the indissolubility of first marriages and the Roman legal position that captivity severed all unions. Rather than pronouncing the sanctity of the former and the venality of the latter, Innocent and Leo offered complementary solutions that established their expertise in solving new conundrums of domestic life.
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Effect on Preschoolers' Literacy when Never-Married Mothers Get Married
Jay Fagan
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2011, Pages 1001-1014
Abstract:
Healthy Marriage programs in the United States aim to promote marriage primarily among low-income individuals. There is little research assessing whether children fare better when their never-married mothers get married. The present study uses the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Birth Cohort to test the hypothesis that children have higher literacy scores when their mothers who had never married when the children were 9 months old had married when the children were 48 months old (N = 2,800). A small positive effect was found, but only when marriage was compared with cohabitation. The association between marriage and literacy is partially explained by mothers' increased household income. The children of mothers who were single noncohabitants or married and then divorced or separated were also doing better with respect to literacy than children of cohabiting mothers. Future research is needed to better understand how cohabitation is associated with negative effects on children's literacy.
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Sanctification, Stress, and Marital Quality
Christopher Ellison et al.
Family Relations, October 2011, Pages 404-420
Abstract:
This article contributes to recent work investigating the role of religious sanctification, that is, the process via which one's spouse or marital relationship is perceived as having divine character or sacred significance. We outline a series of theoretical arguments linking marital sanctification with specific aspects of marital quality. A recent probability sample of Texas adults is used to gauge the links between general religiousness, marital sanctification, and marital quality and functioning. Key findings include the following: (1) General religiousness bears a weak link with marital outcomes; (2) sanctification strongly predicts desirable marital outcomes; and (3) sanctification appears to buffer the deleterious effects of financial and general stress on marital quality. Study limitations and practical implications are discussed, and promising directions for future research are identified.
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Unilateral Divorce vs. Child Custody and Child Support in the U.S.
Rafael González-Val & Miriam Marcén
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper explores the response of the divorce rate to law reforms introducing unilateral divorce after controlling for law reforms concerning the aftermath of divorce, which are omitted from most previous studies. We introduce two main policy changes that have swept the US since the late 1970s: the approval of the joint custody regime and the Child Support Enforcement program. Because those reforms affect divorce decisions by counteracting the reallocation of property rights generated by the unilateral divorce procedure and by increasing the expected financial costs of divorce, it is arguable that their omissions might obscure the impact of unilateral divorce reforms on divorce rates. After allowing for changes in laws concerning the aftermath of divorce, we find that the positive impact of unilateral divorce reforms on divorce rates does not vanish over time, suggesting that the Coase theorem may not apply to changes in divorce laws. Supplemental analysis, developed to examine the frequency of permanent shocks in US divorce rates, indicates that the positive permanent changes in divorce rates can be associated with the implementation of unilateral divorce reforms and that the negative permanent changes can be related to the law reforms concerning living arrangements in the aftermath of divorce. This seems to confirm the important role of these policies in the evolution of divorce rates.
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Parents' testosterone and children's perception of parent-child relationship quality
Cassandra Dorius et al.
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the link between parental testosterone and children's perceptions of their relationship with their mother and father. Using data from 352 predominantly white working and middle class families, we find no direct link between mother's and father's testosterone and parent-child closeness. However, the association between mothers' testosterone and mother-child closeness appears to be influenced by the quality of two other family relationships. When father's marital satisfaction is low, mothers with high testosterone have a poorer relationship with their children. And, when fathers report low levels of intimacy with their children, high testosterone women have a poorer relationship with their children. No comparable associations were observed among fathers.
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The total cost of father desertion
Jeffrey Winking & Michael Gurven
American Journal of Human Biology, forthcoming
Objectives: The benefits of paternal investment have long been explored by assessing the impact of father's presence on child wellbeing. Previous studies, however, have only examined the average effect of father's presence on child survivorship. Here we assess the total fitness cost to men of deserting (or the benefit of staying), by considering effects on the entire progeny. We estimate the total number of children that a deserting father can expect to lose due to reduced survivorship over the life course in five populations, and compare this loss to the benefit gains from remarrying a younger wife.
Methods: We compiled the observed impacts of father's absence, as well as mortality and fertility schedules, for five foraging or foraging/horticultural populations. We calculate how many additional children a man can expect to lose due to father's absence throughout a marriage. We then calculate the minimum age difference between a first and second spouse that would be necessary to overcome this cost.
Results: Because child mortality rates drop so rapidly, the costs that men experience from desertion due to augmented child mortality are modest throughout marriage. Even hypothetically inflated father effects can be overcome with modest age differences between first and second spouses.
Conclusions: Returns to paternal investment in terms of increased child survival are not substantial compared to those received by successfully practicing a serial mating strategy. This suggests that factors other than the ability to enhance child survival, such as female choice, are important to the evolutionary history and continued adaptive functioning of men's unique reproductive strategies.
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Parental Work Schedules and Children's Cognitive Trajectories
Wen-Jui Han & Liana Fox
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2011, Pages 962-980
Abstract:
Previous work has shown an association between mothers' nonstandard work schedules and children's well-being. We built on this research by examining the relationship between parental shift work and children's reading and math trajectories from age 5-6 to 13-14. Using data (N = 7,105) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and growth-curve modeling, we found that children's math and reading trajectories were related to parents' nonstandard shifts (i.e., evening, night, or variable). We found that having a mother who worked more years at a night shift was associated with lower reading scores, having a mother work more years at evening or night shifts was associated with reduced math trajectories, and having a father work more years at an evening shift was associated with reduced math scores. Mediation tests suggest that eating meals together, parental knowledge about children's whereabouts, and certain after-school activities might help explain these results.
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Time Poverty Thresholds and Rates for the US Population
Charlene Kalenkoski, Karen Hamrick & Margaret Andrews
Social Indicators Research, October 2011, Pages 129-155
Abstract:
Time constraints, like money constraints, affect Americans' well-being. This paper defines what it means to be time poor based on the concepts of necessary and committed time and presents time poverty thresholds and rates for the US population and certain subgroups. Multivariate regression techniques are used to identify the key variables associated with discretionary time and time poverty. The data confirm the idea that individuals in households with children have less discretionary time and are thus more likely to be time poor than those in households without children. Controlling for other household characteristics, an additional child reduces a household adult's daily discretionary time by 35 min. Surprisingly, while one might expect the necessary and committed activities required of an individual to be less in a two-adult household with children than in a one-adult household with children because child care can be shared, the data show that the presence of such a second adult only marginally reduces the necessary and committed time burden of an individual household member. Perhaps even more surprisingly, household income is not a statistically significant correlate of discretionary time or time poverty.
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Cooperation and competition in a cliff-dwelling people
Beverly Strassmann
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 28 June 2011, Pages 10894-10901
Abstract:
In animals that breed cooperatively, adult individuals will sometimes delay reproduction to act as helpers at the nest who raise young that are not their genetic offspring. It has been proposed that humans are also a cooperatively breeding species because older daughters, grandmothers, and other kin and nonkin may provide significant childcare. Through a prospective cohort study of children's (n = 1,700) growth and survival in the Dogon of Mali, I show that cooperative breeding theory is a poor fit to the family dynamics of this population. Rather than helping each other, siblings competed for resources, producing a tradeoff between the number of maternal siblings and growth and survival. It did not take a village to raise a child; children fared the same in nuclear as in extended families. Of critical importance was the degree of polygyny, which created conflicts associated with asymmetries in genetic relatedness. The risk of death was higher and the rate of growth was slower in polygynous than monogamous families. The hazard of death for Dogon children was twofold higher if the resident paternal grandmother was alive rather than dead. This finding may reflect the frailty of elderly grandmothers who become net consumers rather than net producers in this resource-poor society. Mothers were of overwhelming importance for child survival and could not be substituted by any category of kin or nonkin. The idea of cooperative breeding taken from animal studies is a poor fit to the complexity and diversity of kin interactions in humans.
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Orly Benjamin & Rivka Haze
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, September 2011, Pages 790-808
Abstract:
Secular-individualist views and poor communication skills are commonly used to explain cohabitation instability. The present study sheds light on the process through which similarity of such views becomes salient to long-term (‘‘committed'') cohabiters' relationships. Based on a couple-level analysis of interview data collected from 20 Israeli committed cohabiters, we argue that value-based similarity (in the present case, a secular-individualist commonality), together with constant work on communication based on a sense of partner exceptionality, are central to couples' ability to experience their disagreements as marginal and to take pride in their intimate communication. We found a cohabiting identity to consolidate in the course of this process, contributing to the couples' conception of their cohabitation as better than marriage.