“You're not getting married for the moon and the stars”: The uncertainties of older British widowers about the idea of new romantic relationships

Older widowers are more likely to remarry than older widowed women. However, relatively little is known about the attitudes of older widowers to new romantic relationships and remarriage or repartnering. In this study of 60 widowers, more than half spontaneously discussed their attitudes toward, and experiences of, these relationships. However, none of the widowers had remarried and of those who described themselves as repartnered only one was cohabiting. We examine these data in the light of Lopata's concept of ‘husband sanctification’ (1981). We identify four themes. First, some widowers do sanctify their late wives. Second, we argue that wife sanctification contributes to widowers' uncertainties about repartnering. Third, when widowers make decisions to repartner, wife sanctification does not appear to make an important contribution. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that wife sanctification influences how men refer to their new women friends. Thus, we conclude by arguing that wife sanctification influences widowers' decisions surrounding remarriage/repartnering.     

Black and White Families: Factors Affecting the Wife's Contribution to the Family Income Where the Husband's Income Is Low to Moderate*

The economic role of the black wife in contrast to her husband's weak economic position is a key assumption in Moynihan's thesis of a black matriarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of women, aged 30 to 44, in 1967, this paper examines the factors affecting the wife's contribution to the family income for both black and white families where the husband's income is below the median of all male-headed families. The results suggest that black wives and white wives respond similarly with respect to their overall contribution, the demand for female labor, and the effect of children. There is no support, moreover, for Moynihan's assumption that black wives are compensating for their husband's weak economic position. It appears, however, that the definition of the provider may differ among black families and white families.     

Happy Marriage,Happy Life? Marital Quality and Subjective Well‐being in Later Life

The authors examined associations between marital quality and both general life satisfaction and experienced (momentary) well‐being among older husbands and wives, the relative importance of own versus spouse's marital appraisals for well‐being, and the extent to which the association between own marital appraisals and well‐being is moderated by spouse's appraisals. Data are from the 2009 Disability and Use of Time daily diary supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 722). One's own marital satisfaction is a sizable and significant correlate of life satisfaction and momentary happiness; associations do not differ significantly by gender. The authors did not find a significant association between spouse's marital appraisals and own well‐being. However, the association between husband's marital quality and life satisfaction is buoyed when his wife also reports a happy marriage, yet flattened when his wife reports low marital quality. Implications for understanding marital dynamics and well‐being in later life are discussed.     

The Implication of Wife's Occupational Attainment for Husband's Class Identification*

Drawing upon research indicating that the subjective class identifications of working wives are to a considerable extent the result of their own occupational attainments, this study seeks to determine if husbands of working wives also derive perceptions of status from their wives' occupational attainments. Regression analysis is conducted on a subset of husbands of working wives in three General Social Surveys gathered from 1973 to 1975. A husband's level of subjective class identification is unaffected by the occupational achievements of his working wife. If husbands and wives derive perceptions of status from different sources, then they may not perceive themselves as sharing the same level of status in society.     

Risk and final offer arbitration usage rates: Evidence from major league baseball

We use major league baseball data to examine risk and final-offer arbitration usage. Risk attitudes are proxied by the likelihood that FOA-generated salary increases place the player’s baseball employment at risk. Employment risk is inversely related to player quality. Our evidence suggests that higher-quality (low-risk) players are more likely to file for arbitration and seek an arbitrated settlement than lowerquality (high-risk) players. We thank Paul Burgess for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Women's “Justification” of Domestic Violence in Egypt

We explored the influences of women's social learning, marital resources and constraints, and exposure to norms about women's family roles on their views about wife hitting or beating among 5,450 participants in the 2005 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey. One half justified wife hitting or beating for some reason. Women from rural areas who were exposed to domestic violence more often justified such acts. Dependent wives whose husbands had more schooling, were blood relatives, and were coresident more often justified such acts. In settings where women tended to marry at older ages, women less often justified such acts. Women's resources and constraints in marriage accounted for the largest share of the variability in their attitudes about domestic violence against women.     

Equity Dynamics in the Perceived Fairness of Infant Care

How is the perceived fairness of infant care affected by spouses' relative contributions to it and to other domains of their relationship? Longitudinal data on 178 couples expecting the birth of their first child were collected during a period spanning approximately the first year of the child's life. Overall, wives were more likely than husbands to see infant care as fair to the wife. Net of fathers' contributions to infant care, spouses were more likely to see infant care as fair to wives the more the father worked in paid labor and did housework and the more wives benefited in the sexual relationship. Fathers' contributions to infant care had a stronger effect on fairness when the child was a son. The findings are consistent with equity predictions in that fathers' compensatory contributions to other domains of marriage counterbalance an unequal workload in the arena of family work.     

When His Ship Comes Home: The Stress of The Australian Seafarer's Partner

This article explores the stress that the wives of Australian Merchant Navy men experience as a result of the seafarer's lifestyle. The article first describes the difficulties that the wife and family experience due to the long absence of the seafarer. An exploratory survey was conducted in which 52 partners of seafarers answered questions regarding the stress they and their family experience. In addition, data were collected on their work patterns, the effect of the lifestyle on their marriage and sexual relations. While the sample obtained in this study was small, it did reveal several interesting problems associated with the seafaring family life. Eighty-three per cent (83%) of seafarer's wives found it stressful before and after their husband was due to return home. In their roles as mothers, they also felt their children experienced considerable stress because of the seafarer's absence. Many women felt that the seafaring life caused difficulties in their marriage and 25 % of the wives believed that their husbands had or were having sexual relations outside their marriage. The results of this study offer a preliminary profile into some of the difficulties families experience as a result of the seafaring life.     

Where Does Religion Matter Most? Personal Religiosity and the Acceptability of Wife‐beating in Cross‐National Perspective

Does religion justify violent acts against wives, or does it reduce approval of this type of intimate partner violence? We examine whether personal religiosity raises or lowers the acceptability of wife‐beating. In addition, we investigate how the relationship between personal religiosity and attitudes toward wife‐beating differs depending on the overall normative context of the country where a person lives. Using multilevel modeling with data from the fifth wave of the World Values Survey (2005–2008), we find that greater individual‐level religiosity reduces the acceptability of wife‐beating. More importantly, cross‐level interactions show that these reductions are greatest in countries where there is a general lack of normative restraint as measured by the “anomie” scale. These observations suggest that religiosity may influence an individual's norms the most in countries where secular controls are absent or weak.     

EXTERNALITIES, PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES IN MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Most economists who have analyzed professional baseball have concluded that two distinctive features of its labor market—the reserve clause and player draft—influence the distribution of wealth between players and owners but do not affect the allocation of playing talent among teams. Such conclusions, which are strongly at variance with laymen's views of such matters, are derived from theoretical considerations rather than empirical examinations. Our paper examines data from the two decades of major league history and concludes that, on the basis of that data, the empirical generalizations of previous economists do not appear to be justified.     

How Dual Are Dual‐Income Couples? Documenting Change From 1970 to 2001

Using Current Population Survey data for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2001 (N =73,001), we document change in the prevalence of couples where (a) the wife contributes less than 40% of the family income, (b) income contributions are relatively equal, and (c) the wife's income contribution surpasses her husband's contribution. In 1970, close to 90% of couples had conventional earning arrangements: The husband was the sole provider in 56% of couples and contributed 60% or more of the income in an additional 31% of couples. By 2001, husbands were still the sole (25%) or major provider (39%) in a majority (64%) of couples but wives shared equally in providing income in 24% of couples, more than double the 9% in 1970. Additionally, wives as primary (or sole) earners increased from 4% to 12%. We investigate the associations between income provisioning within dual‐income families and ongoing cohort replacement by younger couples, women's increased human capital, life course processes, couple's labor supply, and race. Our findings suggest that wives’ increased human capital and couple's labor supply were strongly associated with increased female breadwinning patterns, but age cohort replacement processes and life stage factors also played a role in explaining change over time.     

Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico

The purpose of this text is to analyse the motives of seasonal migrant workers for attempting to get their wives pregnant when they return to Mexico. The meanings attributed to paternity, pregnancy and rearing are analysed from the perspective of the migrant worker and his wife. Ethnographic research was conducted in several Purépecha communities in Michoacán, supported by interviews with indigenous, who travelled to the United States for periods of up to three years, and with their wives, who stayed in Mexico. The migrant workers interviewed consider pregnancy and the paternity derived from it as an important means of male legitimization and sexual control of their wives, particularly valid in their rural communities of origin, where they know they are absentee males. When they return to Mexico they seek sexual relations for reproductive purposes, since they fear their wives will have extramarital relations in their absence. From these findings, it was considered necessary to implement sexual and reproductive health policies with pluri‐ethnic and gender approaches that take into account male beliefs and practices regarding paternity and pregnancy in a rural context. The development of sensitizing policies aimed at migrant males during their stays in Mexico is recommended.     

Economic Dependence,Gender, and the Division of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension

The fundamental question in the study of the gendered division of household labor has come to be why, in the face of dramatic changes in women's employment and earnings, housework remains “women's work.” As a possible answer to this question, Brines (1994) presented a provocative conceptual model of the relationship between economic dependence and the performance of housework by wives and husbands. She concluded that the link between economic dependence and housework follows rules of economic exchange for wives, but among husbands, a gender display model is operative. This paper replicates and extends Brines' model by (a) replicating her work using a different data set; (b) adding additional controls to the model, including a measure of gender ideology; and (c) modeling a distributional (as opposed to absolute) measure of housework. For a measure of hours spent doing housework, the results of my analyses are consistent with Brines' suggestion of separate gender‐specific processes linking economic dependence and amount of housework performed. For a distributional measure of housework, on the other hand, my analyses contradict Brines' findings and suggest that both husbands and wives are acting to neutralize a nonnormative provider role when they do housework. Further analyses suggest that the phenomenon is more likely one of deviance neutralization than of gender display.     

Homosexuality: The right to be wrong

Though the literature focusing on interpersonal sexuality continues to expand, little is known about how husbands and wives value their sexual and affectional activities compared to other outlets for their discretionary time. Preferences for discretionary sexual activity, other joint activities, and independent activities were examined as a function of the number of years married. A stratified area probability sample of middle‐class households yielded 227 husbands and 233 wives. Respondents completed a questionnaire that included items on leisure activities they most preferred. The proportion of husbands and wives who indicated a preference for “engaging in sexual or affectional activities” decreased as the number of years married increased. When other joint and independent activity types were examined over the marital career, it was found that husbands' preferences for other joint activities increased proportionally, whereas wives' preferences for independent activities increased. These results seem to point to husband‐wife perceptual differences regarding the nature of marital sexuality, toward a partial explanation of declining sexual activity over time, and toward husband‐wife differences in relation to preferences for the use of time.     

A New Approach to Jewish Divorce

The traditional Jewish law of divorce, which permits a husband to divorce his wife, but does not sanction the wife's divorcing him, has created hardship for Jewish women for centuries. In view of the new attitudes toward the equality of women, the rabbis of the Reconstructionist Movement in Judaism have innovated an egalitarian "get" (divorce), a bold effort to prevent Jewish women from becoming agunot (abandoned wives.) By means of the new type of divorce, the Jewish woman takes the initiative and divorces the husband.     

Changes in Housework After Retirement: A Panel Analysis

Grounded in family systems theory and based on panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this study shows that retirees spend more time with housework both in their own and their partner's domain than do continuously employed spouses. Moreover, husbands and wives spend less time with female chores if their partner retires. The data further reveal that the effect of changes in paid labor on housework time is contingent on the other spouse's employment as well as on gender roles and marital dependence. These findings are consistent with assumptions of interdependence among system parts and the hierarchical nature of transformation rules.     

Women,the law,and the family in Tunisia

As in other Arab-Muslim states, women's status in Tunisia is based upon the superiority of male elders. However, the legal status of women in the family in Tunisia differs from that in other countries in the region. From independence in 1956, the state of Tunisia has been involved in legislating the status of women in the family, denying women the right to vote for members of the constituent National Assembly. The 1956 Code on the Status of the Person allows women to agree freely and personally to their marriage, established the minimum age of marriage for women at greater than 17 years, requires a pre-marriage medical certificate, and allows the wife to consent to the marriage of her children when they are minors. A woman may contribute to the costs of a marriage if she has the means, wives may cooperate with husbands in family matters and child rearing, and they automatically assume guardianship of minor children in the event of a husband's death. In the event of divorce, the wife can assume certain guardianship prerogatives if the male guardian has behaved improperly. The 1956 code forbade polygamy, makes divorce available to both spouses, gives women the right to manage their own assets, and recognizes and protects other para-family rights. Women therefore have the right to abortion in an approved hospital within the first 12 weeks, may grant their nationality to their children with the consent of the husband, and married women have the right to adopt children. The author describes the barriers to the actual practice of such civil law and building democracy in the family.     

Gendered Resources,Division of Housework,and Perceived Fairness—A Case in Urban China

Drawing upon equity and gender theories, we investigate Chinese couples' perceived fairness of the wife's disproportionately heavy household responsibility. Data come from in‐depth interviews with 39 married couples in Beijing during the summer of 1998. Although housework division remained unequal among dual‐earner couples, the majority of wives and husbands saw it as fair. We explore the notion of gendered resources by examining husbands' and wives' opinions about both paid and domestic work. We find that husband's breadwinner role and wife's housekeeper role retain their primary place in the family and that gender‐role expectations produce gendered resources to both wives and husbands. These expectations release both the husbands, who have fulfilled the provider role, from the obligation to share housework equally, and the wives, who combine paid and domestic work, from an equal responsibility of breadwinning. Therefore, the failure to bring adequate gendered resources to a marriage, rather than the unequal distribution of housework, causes a sense of unfairness.     

Implications of Overwork and Overload for the Quality of Men's Family Relationships

This study examined the implications of men's long work hours and role overload for the quality of their relationships with their wives and their firstborn (M= 15 years) and secondborn adolescent offspring (M= 12.5 years) in a sample of 190 dual‐earner families. Holding constant men's occupational self‐direction and level of education, long hours were related to less time spent with the wife but were unrelated to spouses' love, perspective‐taking, or conflict; high levels of role overload consistently predicted less positive marital relationships. In contrast, the combination of long hours and high overload was consistently associated with less positive father‐adolescent relationships, a pattern that was similar for older and younger adolescents and for sons and daughters.