The effect of normative pressures on fertility

Using longitudinal data from a sample of urban, white, married U.S. couples, this paper shows the effects of normative pressures from family and friends on whether or not the couple had a pregnancy within one year. A comparison of parity-specific and all-parity models indicates that more information and better predictions can be obtained from parity-specific models. Normative pressures predict pregnancy best at zero parity, with progressively attenuated predictions at higher parity. A comparison of models using husband and wife data together shows that two-sex models are better than models using either sex alone. In a variety of different models, normative pressures reported by husbands are better predictors of pregnancy than are normative pressures reported by wives. A comparison of models using aggregated measures of normative pressures with models identifying the separate individual sources of pressures indicates that each treatment provides different insights into the effects of normative pressures, but that predictive power is lost through aggregation.This study was supported by a grant from the Center for Population Research, NICHD (Grant No. N01-HD-42804). Boone Turchi and Karl Bauman were collaborators on the original study. The authors would like to thank Judy Kovenock for data analysis. Requests for reprints should be directed to J. Richard Udry, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514.     

Parity and the expected consequences of childbearing

In this study 163 young married women with 0, 1, or 2 children described the advantages and disadvantages of having a (another) child in the next three years and the expectations of significant others regarding their childbearing behavior. Childless women were more likely than women at first and second parity to mention self-fulfillment, pleasing parents, strengthening their marriage, less time and freedom, interference with career and education, being emotionally unprepared, and creating friction in their marriage. Women with one child were most likely to mention companionship and achieving family size goals. For women with two children gender preference and less time for present children were particularly salient consequences. Women with one child report experiencing the strongest pronatalist normative pressures but the perceived preferences of significant others were most closely related to own childbearing plans for childless women. The results are discussed in terms of a parity specific approach to the study of motivations for parenthood.The research reported here was supported by Grant HD 10391-01, Center for Population Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Robyn Boyer is now an independent research consultant in Sacramento, California. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Thomas J. Crawford, Program in Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, California, 92717.     

Measuring change and continuity in parity distributions

Procedures are developed to allocate the change in mean fertility to the change in specific parities or groups of parities. One procedure uses the proportion at each parity and another uses parity progression ratios. Both are based on the delta method for approximating change in a function of several variables. Drawing on an analogy to survival in a life table, the relational logit model is applied to parity progression. This method allows several parity distributions to be synthesized and to have differences summarized with two parameters. The three procedures are applied to successive cohorts of white U.S. women who completed their childbearing between 1920 and 1980.     

Predator,Pet Lesbian,or Just The Nanny? LGBTQ Parents of Children With Disabilities Describe Categorization

How are lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans/queer (LGBTQ) parents of children with disabilities categorized by service providers, and how do parents anticipate, interpret, and respond to such categorizations? This intersectional study investigated the experiences of LGBTQ parents of children with disabilities with service providers in Toronto, Canada. Parents described pressures to “fit” into providers’ limited understanding of family. Some parents described facing overt discrimination, including one parent who was seen as a possible sexual predator. Some described being perceived as representatives of “diversity” for organizations, or “pet lesbians” in the words of one couple. Others described being misread as a non-parent, as in “just the nanny,” particularly in conjunction with their racial minority status. Parents described how their experiences of being “outside the mainstream” helped them challenge systems and normative beliefs. Findings suggest that a context of scarce disability resources shapes parents’ experiences of how LGBTQ identity comes to matter.     

Measuring marital fertility control with CPA

Cohort Parity Analysis (CPA) is an indirect method for measuring the extent and timing of the adoption of fertility control within marriage. Cohort Parity Analysis uses 2 sets of parity distributions, 1 from the population under study (the "target" population) and 1 from a similar population in which fertility control is absent (the "model" population). Fertility control is defined as any set of behaviors in the target population that cause its parity progression rates to differ from those of a similar but noncontrolling population. The target population contains an unidentified mixture of controlling and noncontrolling couples for a given age range and marriage duration. The model population is similar in all respects except that it contains no controllers. Examples are taken from urban and rural Irish populations in the 1911 census data. Cohort parity analysis rests on 2 basic assumptions: 1) For every specified marriage duration and marriage age, there exists some parity above which controllers are never found; and 2) Parity progression rates of those in the mixed population who have never initiated fertility control are identical to those in the model population. Further, one must identify a cutoff parity beyond which controllers are presumed not to be found. In these urban Irish examples cutoff parity for each marriage age and duration is set at 20% of that of the noncontrolling rural Irish population. The upper and lower bounds on the percentage of controllers are derived by obtaining the lower and upper bounds on the size of the group at that parity who never controlled and subtracting these estimates from the observed percentage of the target population observed at that parity. Flow charts are used to present the methodology of cohort parity analysis in a simple format. the method is illustrated in the case of Ireland in 1911. Aggregate parity distributions for the county boroughs of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, LOndonderry, Limerick, and Waterford are taken as the target distribution; and parity distributions for those living outside the county boroughs are taken as the model distributions. The analysis shows that 28% of urban-dwelling Irish women who married before age 30 and were married between 4 and 29 years in 1911 used some effective means of fertility control. The parity distributions also show that women who married later controlled their fertility to a greater extent and that between 20.9 and 25.5% of women married 4 years in 1911 had already practiced fertility control by 1911, but only 15.5% of those married 15-19 years had used fertility control by 1911. Cohort Parity Analysis is thus a useful method of examining historical populations in the process of fertility transition.     

Families,social life,and well-being at older ages

As people age, many aspects of their lives tend to change, including the constellation of people with whom they are connected, their social context, their families, and their health—changes that are often interrelated. Wave I of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) has yielded rich information on intimate ties, especially dyads and families, and on social connections generally. Combined with extensive biological and other health measures, NSHAP enables researchers to address key questions on health and aging. We begin with recent findings on intimate dyads, then move to social participation, and finally to elder mistreatment. Among dyads, we find that whereas sexual activity drops sharply with age for both women and men, gender differences in partner loss as well as psychosocial and normative pressures constrain women’s sex more than men’s. However, surviving partnerships tend to be emotionally and physically satisfying and are marked by relatively frequent sex. In contrast to sex, nonsexual intimacy is highly prevalent at older ages, especially among women. Older adults are also socially resilient—adapting to the loss of social ties by increasing involvement with community and kin networks. Despite these social assets, older adults remain vulnerable to mistreatment. Overall, these findings yield a mixed picture of gender-differentiated vulnerabilities balanced by proactive adaptation and maintenance of social and dyadic assets.     

Changes in fertility expectations and preferences between 1962 and 1977: Their relation to final parity

Changing fertility expectations and preferences from 1962 to 1977 are compared with final parity in a longitudinal study. Results are strongly affected by initial parity in 1962. Final parity, 27 percent below expectations for those initially childless, illustrates the effect for couples free to change expectations downward of declining fertility preferences. Changes in expectations early in marriage had a significant long-term effect on final parity, as did early differences between wife’s expectations and husband’s preferences. Unplanned births increased final parity significantly. Religion, education, and income had no systematic relation to the discrepancy between initial expectations and final parity.     

On some probability distributions for forward birth interval

Statisticians from Varanasi, India have proposed 2 mathematical models for forward birth interval which are more realistic than past models. For example, past models have assumed fecundability to be constant throughout a woman's reproductive life. On the other hand, the proposed models assume fecundability changes with parity. Further the statisticians use all types of marital durations making their models usable even for short marriage durations. The 1st model uses a parity specific model to develop a model for forward birth interval regarless of parity. The statisticians also include moments of the 1st and 2nd models as expressed for the rth order raw movement of these models to estimate some of their parameters. These models can be used to conduct prospective surveys of family planning programs since birth intervals can best evaluate the effect of these programs. These models have not yet been advanced enough to follow women over a fixed period, however. They only observe women until the last woman conceives. The statisticians do not apply the models to parity specific data because they were not available. Yet they do run the models with parities 0 and 1. The models reveal that the mean length of forward birth interval is strongly influenced by the conception rate which the woman has at the time of the survey. Thus, if women with a certain parity in a community begin an effective family planning method on the survey day, which in effect would reduce the prevailing conception rate, that method would significantly postpone the next live birth.     

Normative Life Satisfaction in Chinese Societies

Research over several decades about subjective life satisfaction has led to the conclusion that the majority of people seem to be satisfied with their lives when their social and physical needs are met. In empirical studies which have used self-report instruments, this trend is reflected in respondents’ consistent preference for the positive end of scales. This led to the suggestion that there is a normative range for life satisfaction, which should hold true for general population data and, therefore, serve as a reference point, or a gold standard, for comparison (Cummins Social Indicators Research, 35, 179–200, 1995, Social Indicators Research, 43, 307–334, 1998). Subsequent research has shown that Western and non-Western samples generally conform to the normative range, but more data are needed from Chinese societies. In an attempt to remedy this situation, this paper investigates normative life satisfaction there. This paper reanalyses published and unpublished data from various Chinese societies (People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan) in order to confirm whether or not they lie within the normative range for non-Western countries. The results provide support for the relevance of Cummins’s normative range in Chinese societies. That the normative range generalised to the present study is a very useful finding, as it supports its utility for Chinese samples, and adds support to a theoretical explanation – i.e. the Wellbeing Homeostatisis theory—in Chinese groups.     

Die Projektpolis bei der Arbeit. Open-Source-Software-Entwicklung und der „neue Geist des Kapitalismus“

The paper investigates the implementation of normative aspects in open source development projects. Current social analysis on open source tends to neglect the question how normative dispositions are enacted there in favor of a somewhat functionalist belief in the co-ordination mechanisms of gift economies or hacker ethics. In this paper, the “justificatory regime of projects“ developed by Boltanski and Chiapello is used as a blueprint of the normative order of knowledge-intensive contexts of collaboration. The notion of a “test” provides a micro-macro link in order to investigate the enactment of justifactory regimes in situated action. The paper identifies exemplary tests and critical incidents in two large open source projects, Debian and KDE. The justificatory regime of projects “at work” is found to be more complex and contradictory than the simple mechanisms of gift or knowledge economies would suggest. Their moral economy is not automatically integrated by a comprehensive “hacker ethic” of limitless involvement, technical excellence and fun. Projects, in their conflicts and discussions over norms, handle flexible involvements and the limitations of time and attention, and their normative regimes only work because they are able to manage that.     

A probability mixture model of completed parity

This research was designed to find a probability model that would adequately describe completed parity for women in populations characterized by high fertility combined with high zero parity. A negative binomial mixture distribution was adapted for this purpose. The form of this distribution suggests the hypothesis that human populations consist of two subgroups of women with respect to completed parity, defined according to whether they do or do not produce viable offspring. Results of the present research further suggest that the proposed distribution for completed parity has general applicability across human populations, whether they are of a high or low fertility type, and whether they have a high or low zero parity.     

Multistate cohort models with proportional transfer rates

We present a new, broadly applicable approach to summarizing the behavior of a cohort as it moves through a variety of statuses (or states). The approach is based on the assumption that all rates of transfer maintain a constant ratio to one another over age. We present closed-form expressions for the size and state composition of the cohort at every age and provide expressions for other useful summary measures. The state trajectories, or life course schematics, depict all the possible size and state configurations that the cohort can exhibit over its life course under the specified pattern of transfer rates. The two living state case and hierarchical multistate models with any number of living states are analyzed in detail. Applying our approach to 1997 U.S. fertility data, we find that observed rates of parity progression are roughly proportional over age. Our proportional transfer rate approach provides trajectories by parity state and facilitates analyses of the implications of changes in parity rate levels and patterns. More women complete childbearing at parity 2 than at any other parity, and parity 2 would be the modal parity in models with total fertility rates (TFRs) of 1.40 to 2.61. Increases in parity progression rates to parities 4 and above have little effect on a cohort's TFR, while changes in childlessness have a substantial impact.     

Young women’s transition to marriage

This paper examines determinants of timing of marriage for young women by modeling the transition from the single to the married state by age. This approach, combined with a large longitudinal data set, allows us to disaggregate the analysis into fine age groupings and to include situational and attitudinal factors in our model. We find that those characteristics of a young woman’s parental family that reflect the availability of parental resources tend to decrease the chances of a marriage during the early teens. Chances of marrying appear to decrease with increases in the availability and attractiveness of alternatives to the wife role and in the costs of assuming it. We discuss these results from the perspective of the societal and parental normative pressures which affect timing of marriage for young women.     

Ways by which Comparable Income Affects Life Satisfaction in Hong Kong

Proponents of social equality attribute low life satisfaction to income inequality in society, an inequality which occurs when most people have relatively low income and only a few have high income. In contrast, range-frequency theory and other social comparison theories predict that when most people have low income, they are satisfied because of the absence of relative deprivation among themselves. This prediction essentially suggests that that the size of the group of individuals with comparable income (i.e., income parity) sustains their life satisfaction. This theoretical prediction, however, does not consider their desire to be distinctive. By incorporating the notion of optimal distinctiveness, the size of income parity may have a quadratic effect on the individual’s life satisfaction. This is a hypothesis that receives support from the present study in Hong Kong, China. The study finds a saddle point of income parity size associated with the lowest life satisfaction, other things being equal. Furthermore, middle-income individuals have income parity size equal to or above this saddle point. They would have higher life satisfaction with increased income parity size, which therefore leads to a more enlarged income inequality. Others, however, may have higher life satisfaction with reduced income parity size. Hence, reducing income inequality would have mixed effects on people with different levels of income.

Ethnic variations in the relationship between income and fertility

The effects of husband'spotential andrelative incomes on completed fertility, as well as their effects on certain parity progression probabilities, are examined within samples of Anglos, Blacks and Mexican Americans. Relationships are estimated using data from the one-percent 1960 and 1970 U.S. Public Use Samples. The results reveal different patterns of relationship by ethnicity between the measures of income and the measures of fertility. The effects on completed fertility of the income measures are positive for Anglos and negative for Blacks, while in the case of Mexican Americans the effect ofpotential income is negative and that ofrelative income is positive. Income effects on the parity progression probabilities are similar in pattern to those from the analyses using completed fertility, although somewhat different patterns tend to appear at different birth orders, especially among Anglos.     

The Limits to Low Fertility: A Biosocial Approach

In light of 30 years of below‐replacement fertility in many industrialized societies, demographers are asking whether fertility could drop even further, or whether there is a “floor” below which it will not fall. A key unanswered question is whether there may be a variable biological component to fertility motivation which ensures that we continue to reproduce. Drawing on evidence from evolutionary biology, ethology, quantitative genetics, developmental psychobiology, and psychology, the article argues that our evolved biological predisposition is toward nurturing behaviors, rather than having children per se. Humans have the unique ability to be aware of such biological predispositions and translate them into conscious, but nevertheless biologically based, fertility motivation. It is likely that we have already reached the limits to low fertility since this “need to nurture,” in conjunction with normative pressures, ensures that the majority of women will want to bear at least one child. A sketch for a biosocial model of fertility motivation is outlined.     

Ensuring Parliamentary Gender Equality Through a New Zipper Method: An Application to Finland

Gender equality constitutes a crucial objective for a successful societal development. Although research has found that the differences are shrinking, parliamentary composition is not gender balanced in most areas of the world. Henceforth, recent literature has undertaken important efforts aimed at developing different initiatives to promote parity in democratic parliaments, especially through the use of quota systems. Prior initiatives, although leading to an improvement of gender parity, do not manage to ensure an optimal gender-egalitarian parliamentary composition. Thus, this paper presents a method to organize closed and blocked lists of candidates that guarantees the achievement of gender-balanced representation in parliamentary elections. Specifically, parity is sought globally, in each party and also in each electoral constituency. Furthermore, the method is applied to the elections held over the last two decades in Finland. Results reveal that parity in gender representation increases at global, party, and constituency levels throughout all the parliamentary elections in Finland, even approaching optimal numerical parity (i.e. 50 % for each gender) in most of the cases.     

Hutterite fecundability by age and parity: Strategies for frailty modeling of event histories

Effective fecundability declines with age and parity. Furthermore, women differ in their effective fecundability: some women have persistently low or high monthly chances of live-birth conception. Estimates are presented concerning the magnitude of these effects in a natural-fertility population: 406 Hutterite women in North America who had 3,206 births, largely in the 1940s and 1950s. The estimates are based on models that incorporate the effects of persistent heterogeneity and that use the full information provided by multiple-spell duration data. In addition, hazards rather than probabilities are modeled, piecewise linear hazard functions are used, and age and parity effects are decomposed systematically. These methods permit the development of more elaborate models of changing fecundability and of heterogeneity in postpartum amenorrhea.