Parents,Friends, and Familial Sex Role Attitudes*

The present study treats parental and friendship interaction as predictors of familial sex role attitudes for each sex, taking into account mother's socioeconomic status and work experience. The data are based on a random sample of college students. The findings show that parental interaction is more important than peer associations in influencing familial sex role attitudes, particularly among men. Mother's socioeconomic status and work experience condition the effects of reference group interaction on a daughter's and son's familial sex role attitudes differently and contrary to expectations. The findings are discussed in the context of reference group theory and attitude formation with a focus on the mother as a role model.     

Modeling Trajectories of Adolescent‐Perceived Family Conflict: Effects of Marital Dissatisfaction and Parental Alcoholism

We evaluated the effects of marital dissatisfaction on adolescent‐perceived conflict in 435 families with and without a parental history of alcoholism. On average, family conflict decreased linearly as adolescents aged. Families with an alcoholic parent demonstrated higher adolescent‐reported family conflict and this effect was partially mediated by higher mother‐ and father‐reported marital dissatisfaction. Families with higher marital dissatisfaction had greater conflict when adolescents were young (based on fathers’ marital dissatisfaction) and as they aged (based on mother's marital dissatisfaction). Years in which mothers reported higher marital dissatisfaction than usual coincided with years in which adolescents reported greater family conflict. Results indicate that marital dissatisfaction has both within and between‐family effects on adolescent perceptions of conflict.     

Selected Aspects of Parenting and Children's Social Competence Post-Separation:

The purpose of this study was to assess the moderating effects of child's sex, ace, and family economic hardship on the relationship between (a) residential mother's parenting and frequency of nonresidential father's visitation, and (b) child social competence following marital separation. Dimensions of mother's parenting included loss of time spent with the child since separation, mother's current levels of companionship and coercion, and daily involvement in meaningful activities with the child. Dimensions of children's social competence included dependency, aggression, anxiety/ withdrawal, and productivity. The results indicated that the relationships among mother's parenting, father's visitation, and children's social competence are fairly consistent, regardless of child's age, sex, or level of family economic hardship. The few exceptions are noted and intervention implications are discussed.     

Men in Non‐Traditional Occupations: Career Entry,Career Orientation and Experience of Role Strain

This article explores the experiences of men in non‐traditional occupations. In particular it focuses on the dynamics of career entry, career orientation (namely, a preference for intrinsic or extrinsic rewards) and the possible existence, nature and consequences of role strain. Four occupational groups are examined: nurses, cabin crew, librarians and primary school teachers. The results suggest that men fall into three main categories: seekers (who actively chose the ‘female’ occupation), ‘finders’ (who did not actively seek a non‐traditional career but who found the occupation in the process of making general career decisions) and settlers (who actively chose the occupation, often as a result of dissatisfaction with a more ‘masculine’ job, and who then settled in their non‐traditional career). Settlers, in particular, are associated with a more intrinsic career orientation and express a desire to remain close to occupational and professional practice. Role strain is prevalent in men's experiences in their non‐traditional career. The potential sources of such role strain and the implications for career aspirations and career choices are explored.     

Socioeconomic,Sociodemographic and Attitudinal Correlates of the Tempo of Divorce

This study assesses the impact of socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and attitudinal characteristics of husbands and wives on the timing of marital dissolution. The primary concerns were with divorce and the intervals of marital duration before divorce occured. The analysis was based on data collected from an initial sample of 610 couples in the early years of marriage, all of whom resided within a large North Central Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area in 1978. The couples were reinterviewed seven years later in 1985 (N = 544). The data collected from the first wave of subjects were used to identify antecedent characteristics of husbands and wives, whereas, data from the second wave were used to measure the timing (tempo) of marital dissolution among the 105 couples who subsequently divorced. Partial correlation coefficients indicated that the tempo of divorce significantly varied according to the wife's employment status, occupational status, future work plans, father's education, age at marriage, gender role orientation and number of children. Moreover, a multiple classification analysis of these variables showed that under controlled conditions wives' employment status and number of children were more powerful predictors of the tempo of divorce.     

Family Processes and Adolescent Religiosity and Religious Practice: View From the NLSY97

This article focuses on family processes and adolescent religious attendance and personal religiosity. We find that the closeness and quality of the marital relationship and relationship between adolescent and parents significantly contributes to the strength of adolescent religious conviction and practice. The study used data from the NLSY97 cohort. Predictors include parenting style, closeness, and parent–child closeness; family structure; income, employment, parental education, mother's age at first birth, and number of siblings; adolescent characteristics (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity, disability, lying or cheating); and environmental characteristics (e.g., region of country, urbanicity, and physical environment risk). Family religious attendance was dramatically influenced by race in adolescents aged 16 years. Adolescents living with married, biological parents in 1997 were 36% more likely to attend worship services than those living with stepfamilies. Adolescents living in more physically risky environments, with peers who belonged to gangs, cut classes, or had sex, were less likely to attend weekly worship services with their families. Finally, compared with adolescents whose parents had a high-quality marital relationship and who had good relationships with both parents, all other adolescents were less likely to attend weekly worship services with their families.     

Female Clerical Workers in Academic Settings: An Empirical Test of the Gender Model

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an empirical study designed to test the gender model of work on a sample of 374 female clerical workers in academic settings. In the gender model of work, personal/family variables are given primacy in terms of explaining work attitudes and behavior. Independent variables selected for study were sex role orientation, education, having a blue-collar husband, and having three or more children. Dependent variables were perceived occupational stress, occupational satisfaction, perceived power, thwarted mobility, and work aspirations. Six hypotheses were tested; three were confirmed. The authors conclude that non-traditional sex role orientation is positively related to perceived powerlessness, low occupational satisfaction, and high work aspirations. Low Pearson's r for each confirmed hypothesis suggests the inadequacy of the gender model for this particular population.     

Occupational Sex Composition and Marriage: The Romantic Cost of Gender-Atypical Jobs

The author considers the mechanisms by which occupational sex composition (the proportion of women and men in an occupation) might be associated with romantic transitions in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to 2014, the author estimates the odds of marriage during a period of 35 years as a function of occupational and personal characteristics. Men's odds of marriage are decreased by working in predominately female occupations (75%–100% female) when compared with working in predominately male occupations (0%–25% female) or integrated (26%–74% female) occupations. Also, working in a predominately female occupation increases the odds that men have never married by ages 30 and 40. Women's odds of marriage are unrelated to occupational sex composition. Although the author focuses on marriage, the results are robust to including cohabitation as a competing risk. The author uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health 1994 to 2008 to replicate these findings in a more recent cohort with additional control variables. The romantic penalty for men's occupational gender atypicality demonstrates the continued devaluation of female activities and attributes and the resulting rigidity of expectations for men's gendered behavior, which may reinforce occupational segregation.     

The German Lesbian Family Study

SUMMARY

This is the first study to explore the issues and decisions that lesbians residing in Germany face when striving to create a family by donor insemination. Using a self-constructed questionnaire, information pertaining to the first phases of lesbian family formation (coming-out, lesbian relationship, and decision-making) was collected from 105 lesbian mothers. The participants in this sample demonstrated a strong sense of lesbian identity, were in committed relationships, had taken part in lengthy deliberations about general and lesbian-specific aspects of parenting, and had aspirations of equal parenting which were reflected in their choice of terms for identifying themselves as mothers. Potential advantages for children included wantedness and diversity in up-bringing. Coping strategies for possible discrimination of children included valuing diversity, maintaining open communication, instilling pride, normalizing, and buffering. Maternal role allocation was based on desire to experience pregnancy. Plans for male involvement in children's lives had been made. Women generally experienced support for plans to parent. Co-mothers looked forward to becoming mothers but were sensitized to the consequences of legal and biological asymmetrical parenting. The choice of anonymous, identity-release, or known donor was related to attitudes towards biological fathers/donor issues and availability. The impact of German legislation regarding same sex marriage and lesbian access to reproductive services on family formation is discussed.     

Changing Partners: Toward a Macrostructural‐Opportunity Theory of Marital Dissolution

We merge marital history data for respondents in the National Survey of Families and Households with census data describing the sex composition of their local marriage markets and occupations to examine the impact of the availability of spousal alternatives on marital dissolution. Proportional hazards regression models that adjust for left truncation reveal that the risk of divorce is highest in geographically defined marriage markets where either husbands or wives encounter numerous alternatives to their current partner. Couples are also more likely to divorce when the wife works in an occupation having relatively many men and few women, but husbands' occupational sex ratio has no effect on the risk of marital dissolution. The destabilizing effects of the availability of spousal alternatives in the local marriage market and in wives' occupations are equally strong among couples with many and few other risk factors for divorce. Our findings suggest that spouses' structural opportunities to form alternative opposite‐sex relationships are an important factor in explaining why some couples divorce.     

Perceived Admiration and Transition to Parenthood for Black and White Married Couples

Perceived admiration was examined in this study as a mediator of marital quality and transition to parenthood among Black American and White American couples. Positive and negative dimensions of marital quality were assessed for husbands (n = 148) and wives (n = 155) during their 1st and 3rd years of marriage in a large-scale survey. Findings revealed that transitioning Black American husbands reported lower marital tension than transitioning White American husbands. Perceived admiration mediated the link between transition to parenthood and marital well-being for wives, and between transition to parenthood and marital tension for husbands. Results suggest that perceived admiration plays a critical role in understanding the transition to parenthood, regardless of race. Insights are offered for practitioners who provide relationship or parental counseling and education to couples during the transition to parenthood.     

PARENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR ADOLESCENT CHILDREN,PARENTAL RESOURCES,AND PARENTS' SATISFACTION WITH THE PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP

Building on Belsky's process model of the determinants of parenting and using a nationally representative dataset of U.S. adolescents, this article examines the relationship between parental satisfaction and parents' perceptions of their adolescents and their own personal and social resources. As such, it provides a coherent framework for understanding parental well-being during a critical stage of the family life course. The results suggest that parental satisfaction is negatively related to parents' perceptions that their adolescents are involved in problem behaviors or experiencing challenges in other domains of their lives; however, the relationship between parental satisfaction and adolescents' problem behaviors is mediated by parents' perceptions of their adolescents' characters, including whether or not they have a bad temper and their levels of trustworthiness. With respect to personal and social resources, parents' educational achievement and marital status are positively related to parental satisfaction, and the level of conflict in the spousal relationship is negatively related to parental satisfaction.     

Children's Behavior Problems in Single-Parent and Married-Parent Families

Abstract

A model integrating prevailing perspectives on children's functioning following divorce was used to predict children's behavior problems. The data were collected from 30 custodial mothers, 30 custodial fathers, and 30 married parents with children 6 to 10 years of age, using face-to-face interviews and standardized questionnaires. Results using path analysis indicated that marital status and parental control had significant direct effects on children's behavior problems. Sex of parent, economic strain, co-parental conflict, coping with roles, and parenting indirectly influenced children's behavior through parental control. The findings suggest that the pressures inherent in raising a child alone, combined with too few resources for coping with role demands, are disruptive to both parenting and parental control, and that children in single-parent families appear to respond to these deficits with disruptive behaviors. Implications for family practice and policy are discussed.     

The impact of childcare responsibilities on part-time or single fathers

The study described in this article was designed to determine the effects of childcare involvement on the lifestyles of fathers with young children. One hundred and twenty-seven separated or divorced men were interviewed. Their parental responsibilities ranged from full custody or joint custody to weekends or monthly visits. For the most part these men represented a middle class, highly educated, urban population. The primacy of work and occupational roles in the lives of the fathers was challenged by the contractual obligations of parenting. Fathers who spent time with their children had the opportunity to work out some crisis issues of divorce such as control, interdependence, and self-image. It was found that postdivorce parenting is an important source of resocialization for men in areas of work orientation and personal relationships. It is expected that this new functioning will have positive effects on the structure of reconstituted (i.e., second marriage) families.     

A Cross-Cultural Assessment of Familial Factors in the Development of Female Homosexuality

Nonclinical samples of 224 heterosexual and 205 homosexual females were interviewed with regard to their recalled childhood experiences in Brazil, Peru, the Philippines, and the United States. Twelve items were used to examine differences between heterosexual and homosexual females. These are: "normal" family, absent motherlfather, wanner parent, stronger parent, hostile father, hostile mother, detached/distant father, detached/distant mother, seductive mother, seductive father, father's attitude toward sex, mother's attitude toward sex. Seven items produced no significant differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals in any of the four societies. Another five items resulted in some signif~cant differences between these groups; however, these differences were inconsistent in all four societies. Combining the data for all four societies resulted in only one item-the detacheddistant mother-exhibiting signif~cant differences between homosexual and heterosexual groups. It is not clear whether the detachedldistant mother is a cause of or a reaction to emerging homosexuality. On the whole, these cross-cultural data provide little support for the role of familial factors in the development of female homosexual orientation.     

Predicting College Women's Aspirations From Evaluations of the Housewife and Work Role

We hypothesize that college women's decisions to pursue nontraditional achievement goals are influenced by other women and men's evaluations of the traditional housewife as well as the work-achievement role. Questionnaire data on role perception by self and significant others, maternal employment, the presence of specific achievement aids, SES and two types of achievement aspirations confirmed this expectation for a sample of 492 undergraduate women. Degree expectations and career orientation each imply somewhat different conflicts with the traditional female role. On this basis, we hypothesized and found evidence for relationships between each type of achievement aspiration and evaluations of the work role, the housewife role and the importance of achievement aids. One of the best predictors of both aspiration variables was the father's perceived disparagement of women who were unemployed housewives.     

Gender Differences in Social Acculturation and Social Capital in Determining Marital and Parental Role Expectations Among People of Mexican Descent

Men and women experience acculturation differently, creating acculturative gaps that may affect traditional family role expectations. In the current study, additive moderation between social acculturation, bonding social capital, and gender in relationship to marital and parental role expectations was explored among Mexican Americans (N = 314). The results indicate that when bonding social capital is at low to moderate levels, women are more committed to marital and parental roles and report more marital reward value as social acculturation increases. However, as bonding social capital and social acculturation increase, women report less marital reward value and marital and parental commitment. The size and quality of personal networks among Mexican American men and women appear to relate to social acculturation’s conditional relationship to family role expectations.     

Hard Living,Perceived Entitlement to a Great Marriage,and Marital Dissolution

Using the two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine the effects on marital dissolution of couple's gender attitudes, perceived unfairness, marital disagreements, and relationship alternatives, exploring whether these dimensions of marriage influence marital dissolution, net of serious forms of hardship commonly noted in divorce research. With event history methods, we find that husbands’, but not wives’, perceived disagreements and alternatives are associated with higher odds of marital dissolution, though couples' marital happiness strongly mediates the effects of husbands' dissatisfaction. Wives' traditional attitudes are associated with lower odds and husbands' with higher odds of marital dissolution. We find no significant effects of unfairness perceptions on divorce. A nonviolent relationship is associated with lower odds of marital dissolution, but accumulated assets and debt and husbands' drug or alcohol abuse are not associated significantly with marital dissolution. Our analysis contributes to divorce research by demonstrating the importance of gender attitudes and low physical conflict and by showing that instances of perceived dissatisfaction might not matter for couples as much as marital happiness as an influence on divorce.