Parental Divorce and Interpersonal Trust in Adult Offspring

It has been proposed that recent increases in parental divorce have inhibited the development of trust among offspring. This proposition is tested by examining whether parental divorce is associated with offspring trust in parents, intimate partners, and others. Data come from the Marital Instability Over the Life Course Study. Results reveal that although parental divorce is negatively associated with trust, these effects largely disappear once the quality of the past parent‐teen relationship is taken into account. The one exception is trust in fathers where children of divorce remain at higher risk of mistrust. Trust in parents, intimates, and others is strongly linked to positive parent‐teen relationships regardless of parental divorce. Contemporary relationship experiences also influence trusting intimates and others.     

Women's Changing Attitudes Toward Divorce, 1974–2002: Evidence for an Educational Crossover

This article examines trends in divorce attitudes of young adult women in the United States by educational attainment from 1974 to 2002. Women with 4‐year college degrees, who previously had the most permissive attitudes toward divorce, have become more restrictive in their attitudes toward divorce than high school graduates and women with some college education, whereas women with no high school diplomas have increasingly permissive attitudes toward divorce. We examine this educational crossover in divorce attitudes in the context of variables correlated with women's educational attainment, including family attitudes and religion, income and occupational prestige, and family structure. We conclude that the educational crossover in divorce attitudes is associated most strongly with work and family structure variables.     

Relationship Dissolution as a Life Stage Transition: Effects on Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors

In this paper, with the use of linear regressions to investigate how relationship dissolution affects sexual attitudes and behaviors, the authors address the stereotype that newly single people seek multiple sexual partners. Although the newly single people surveyed did obtain new sexual partners, the rate at which they acquired new partners did not support the stereotype. Specifically, men with custody of their children seemed oriented toward finding a steady partner. Additionally, men and women with low incomes reported relatively high rates of partner acquisition after relationship dissolution. The high rates reported by disadvantaged groups may be more directly related to familial instability accompanying poverty than to cultural characteristics associated with income or race. We argue that a life stage model with categorical stages in a rigid, anachronistic progression provides insufficient means to gain an understanding of newly single people.     

Strategic Bargaining Over Child Support and Visitation

When parents divorce, child support and visitation must be determined. The 1988 Family Support Act requires all states to have child support guidelines for courts to use in determining child support obligations. However, many divorcing couples arrive at agreements without court intervention, or they simply fail to enforce the court decision ex post. Given that the guidelines provide a starting point for negotiations, couples may be able to find self-negotiated, Pareto-improving solutions. In this paper we model the bargaining process that divorcing couples engage in when coming to agreements on visitation and child support. The model suggests that individuals may arrive at agreements that are Pareto improvements for both parents but that the children's welfare may decline as a result of these self-negotiated settlements. Data from the Stanford Child Custody Study show that the changes made in child support and visitation agreements are consistent with our model in only 30 percent of the cases. Therefore, we consider alternative specifications of the model and show that both significant costs of enforcing the original agreement and alternative assumptions on parental preferences can explain these empirical results.     

One parent or two? The intertwining of American marriage and fertility patterns

Marriage and fertility in the United States have become less firmly entwined as more women bear children without marrying and more couples with children divorce. Today a sizeable number of children are expected to spend a portion of their childhood in one-parent households. Despite the trends in illegitimacy and divorce, the actual effect of out-of-wedlock childbearing on the living arrangements of children has not been fully explicated. Using the National Survey of Family Growth Cycle III, this paper estimates the probability that children aged 0–13 in 1982 are living in two-parent households, controlling for their mothers' marital statuses at their births. We find that marital status at birth is an important predictor of household structure at later ages for both white and black populations; however, the childhood environment is actually quite elastic as women marry, divorce, remarry, and redivorce.     

离婚审判中保护当事人探视子女权研究

保护离婚父母探视子女权利的法律制度在我国尚属空白。本文介绍了探视权的概念、特点并简要分析国外探视子女的法律规定及我国探视子女规定的历史和现状,并就设立探视制度、处理探视纠纷等提出具体立法建议     

民国时期城市女性自由离婚的现实困境--以《大公报》为中心的考察

民国时期,在婚姻家庭变革思潮的影响下,一些不甘于承受不幸婚姻的城市女性开始逐渐冲破传统的“从一而终”的思想束缚,当婚姻无法维系时,尝试选择以离婚的方式还自己自由之身。但在民国当时的社会条件下,城市女性自由离婚之路却充满了荆棘和坎坷。女性自由离婚的实现还需要其自身和社会做长期的努力。     

Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14

Efforts to improve child survival in lower-income countries typically focus on fundamental factors such as economic resources and infrastructure provision, even though research from post-industrial countries confirms that family instability has important health consequences. We tested the association between maternal union instability and children’s mortality risk in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia using children’s actual experience of mortality (discrete-time probit hazard models) as well as their experience of untreated morbidity (probit regression). Children of divorced/separated mothers experience compromised survival chances, but children of mothers who have never been in a union generally do not. Among children of partnered women, those whose mothers have experienced prior union transitions have a higher mortality risk. Targeting children of mothers who have experienced union instability—regardless of current union status—may augment ongoing efforts to reduce childhood mortality, especially in Africa and Latin America where union transitions are common.