Returns on Lifetime Investments in Children in Egypt

Parental expectations about the companionship and assistance they will receive in later life from their children are key considerations in family formation decisions. We explore patterns of parents’ investment and the support and contact they receive from adult children in Egypt, where fertility is falling and sources of support at all life stages are in flux. Using data from a survey of older adults in Ismailia governorate, we consider parents’ past investments in childbearing, child survival, and children’s education and marriage, as well as recent assistance to adult children via housing, care for grandchildren, gifts, and money. The returns from children considered include economic assistance, instrumental support, and visits. Most parental investments are associated with frequent visits from children. The assistance children provide to parents is gendered: sons tend to provide economic transfers, whereas daughters tend to provide instrumental help. A greater number of surviving children is most strongly associated with parents’ receipt of multiple types of later-life returns. Investments in children’s education and marriage are not associated with assistance, but recent assistance to children—especially economic transfers and provision of housing—is associated with receiving instrumental assistance from adult children.     

Nonmarital cohabitation and fertility in the United States and Western Europe

The increasing popularity of nonmarital cohabitation and a decline in marriage rates in the United States and Western Europe has led to a growing research interest in cohabitation without marriage and its relationship to traditional marriage. This article examines the evidence on the prevalence of cohabitation and the characteristics of cohabitants, and focuses on the childbearing behavior of cohabiting couples who are not married. The evidence to date suggests that in Denmark and Sweden cohabitation is widespread, especially among young people, and childbearing within cohabitational unions is relatively common. In the rest of Western Europe and in the United States, cohabitation is less common and fertility is less frequent. Fertility will be affected to the extent that couples delay having children until they are married. Policy and law concerning cohabitants and their children are changing rapidly. Most of these changes have resulted in a blurring of the distinctions between married and unmarried couples and between legitimate and illegitimate children.     

The changing American family

This Bulletin documents recent changes in American family patterns resulting both from longterm trends in urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth and the disruption of the Great Depression and World War 2, as well as changed attitudes toward marriage, parenthood, divorce, and the roles of women. Following a postwar boom in the 1950s and 1960s, marriage rates have now fallen to levels observed in the early 20th century. Since 1970, the number of unmarried couples living together has more than tripled to 1.9 million in 1983. The divorce rate has now stabilized after more than doubling since 1960, but at the current level, 1/2 of all recent marriages will end in divorce. Most divorced persons remarry fairly quickly, often creating complex families of "step-relatives." With 19% of households with minor children now headed by a women with no husband present, up to 1/2 of all children will live for sometime in a fatherless family before age 18. Over 1/2 of all married women, including 49% of married mothers of preschool children, now hold a paid job outside the home. Working wives boost a family's income by an average 40% but still are expected to shoulder most responsiblility for home and childcare. White women now in their 20s say they expect to have an average of 2 children, but are delaying childbearing to such an extent that 29% could end up childless. Most of the elderly live on their own but usually near children whom they see frequently. Despite changes in traditional family patterns, Americans consistently report that a happy marriage and good family are the most important aspects of life. And though most Americans now live with few or no family members, they maintain active contact with a large network of family.     

青年人口迁出对农村婚姻的影响

我国当前农村青年外流对地区婚姻问题和自身婚姻的影响主要表现在三个方面:一是对自身婚配的影响,一些大龄未婚农村外流青年择偶难;二是贫困地区女青年婚姻迁移导致当地男性青年成婚困难;三是农村已婚青年流动对婚姻稳定性产生影响。针对农村青年外流带来的婚姻问题,要关心大龄未婚打工仔和打工女的婚姻问题;要关注农村单亲家庭中的孩子;要关注婚姻迁移导致的贫困农村地区“弱势累积”问题。     

Mate availability and unmarried parent relationships

Theoretically, a shortage of males in a local marriage market may influence the formation, quality, and trajectory of unmarried parent relationships. To test these hypotheses, I combine city-level sex ratio data from the U.S. census with microdata on unmarried couples who recently had a child from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. A shortage of men in a marriage market is associated with lower relationship quality for unmarried parents. Male shortages are associated with lower rates of marriage following a nonmarital birth, in part because of the mediating influence of relationship quality. A shortage of men is not significantly related to the economic quality of male, nonmarital childbearing partners.     

Changes in union status during the transition to parenthood in eleven European countries, 1970s to early 2000s

Couples who have children are increasingly likely to have lived together without being married at some point in their relationship. Some couples begin their unions with cohabitation and marry before first conception, some marry during pregnancy or directly after the first birth, while others remain unmarried 3 years after the first birth. Using union and fertility histories since the 1970s for eleven countries, we examine whether women who have children in unions marry, and if so, at what stage in family formation. We also examine whether women who conceive when cohabiting are more likely to marry or separate. We find that patterns of union formation and childbearing develop along different trajectories across countries. In all countries, however, less than 40 per cent of women remained in cohabitation up to 3 years after the first birth, suggesting that marriage remains the predominant institution for raising children.     

Parenthood, Marital Status, and Well-Being in Later Life: Evidence from SHARE

Using pooled cross-sectional data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we address the question of whether and how parenthood and marital status are associated with various dimensions of elders’ well-being, which we define by elements of the individual’s economic situation, psychological well-being, and social connectedness. The results of our multivariate analysis suggest that childless individuals do not generally fare worse than parents in terms of their economic, psychological, or social well-being. Although there is some indication for a ‘protective effect’ of marriage, having a partner does not per se contribute to greater psychological well-being: only those reporting satisfaction with the extent of reciprocity in their relationship report lower numbers of depression symptoms than their unmarried counterparts. We observe no systematic associations between parenthood (marriage, respectively) and individuals’ propensity to participate in social activities. These findings are fairly stable, that is, they hold for both men and women as well as across various cohorts, and they do not vary systematically between countries.     

The Compositional and Institutional Sources of Union Dissolution for Married and Unmarried Parents in the United States

Unmarried parents have less stable unions than married parents, but there is considerable debate over the sources of this instability. Unmarried parents may be more likely than married parents to end their unions because of compositional differences, such as more disadvantaged personal and relationship characteristics, or because they lack the normative and institutional supports of marriage, thus rendering their relationships more sensitive to disadvantage. In this article, we evaluate these two sources of union instability among married, cohabiting, and dating parents following the birth of a shared child, using five waves of longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Using discrete-time event history models, we find that demographic, economic, and relationship differences explain more than two-thirds of the increased risk of dissolution for unmarried parents relative to married parents. We also find that differential responses to economic or relationship disadvantage do not explain why unmarried parents are more likely to end their unions than married parents.     

城市化进程中农村代际关系的变迁

通过对全国几个村庄的田野调查,探索当前中国农村代际关系的变迁。在城市化进程中,新生代农民工外出务工行为不再具有兼业性质,而具有职业性质,农村出现结婚即分家、自己养老、隔代抚养等新的代际规范,表现为失衡的代际关系。这可称为代际关系的辅助模式,是亲代尽一切努力辅助子代向城市移民,人口和生产的再生产在农村和城市两个不同的空间完成。新生代农民工的城市化和传统家庭伦理本位的价值观在共同形塑着代际关系的辅助模式。     

我国男性的婚姻溢酬——基于内生选择性模型的分析

本文利用2008年的RUMiC（中印农民工调查数据）构造内生选择模型分析我国男性的婚姻溢酬。OI．S结果显示,控制个人特征和单位特征后,已婚男性的工资大于未婚男性的工资,婚姻溢酬为O．360。控制了婚姻选择性和妻子工作时间内生性后,使用Hekman两步法对此分析后发现婚姻溢酬更大一些,达到了O．523;这表明我国男性的婚姻溢酬不能简单归因于选择性假说,即已婚男性比未婚男性拥有更高的不可观测的生产力。进一步的研究发现,我国男性的婚姻溢酬可以用生产力假说中的家庭内部分工理论来解释,OLS和Heckman两步法的回归结果均表明,我国男性的婚姻溢酬随妻子的工作时间上升而下降。     

养老倒逼婚姻：理解当前农村早婚现象的一个视角

农村近年来重新出现早婚高潮,早婚率甚至已经逼近上世纪80年代的水平。本文基于豫东西村的实地调查,认为当前农村的早婚现象是代际关系变动的结果,即养老倒逼婚姻：父母希望早日完成人生任务以便趁年轻力壮为自己积攒养老资源,子女在接受早婚要求的同时也通过婚姻向父母索取了大量家庭财富,代际之间的理性博弈助推了早婚的出现。在未来相当长的时期内,由代际关系变动推动的早婚仍将存在并可能有所发展。     

Heterosexual women's perceptions of their marriages to bisexual or homosexual men

Twenty-one heterosexual women who were or had been married to bisexual or homosexual men and had children by them responded to a 28-page questionnaire that explored their experiences as wives and mothers. All of the married women expected a lasting, monogamous marriage. Only three had partial knowledge of their husband's sexual orientation before marriage. All of them went through a painful grief reaction when they learned that their husbands had emotional or sexual, or both, attachments to other men. The suffering was aggravated by feeling deceived or stupid for not having guessed the truth. What made it difficult for them to seek support from family and friends was the fear of encountering social disapproval or ostracism. They were afraid for themselves, their husbands, and their children. At the time of the study 11 of the 21 women were still married and living with their husbands, but most of them felt unsure that the marriage would last. Ten were in transition, separated, or divorced. Only three of the still married wives had complete confidence in the future stability of their relationships. These marriages were characterized by good communications, husbands who considered themselves bisexual, and an open marriage contract whereby wives could have heterosexual affairs. Findings cannot be generalized from this small convenience sample, but will hopefully encourage further research. The writers are also soliciting more subjects to enlarge the sample.     

“白发相亲”——上海相亲角的择偶行为分析

相亲角和＂白发相亲＂是2005年以来城市青年择偶领域内出现的新现象。本文考察了＂白发相亲＂者的阶层构成及其特征,重点分析了＂知青一代＂父母代替子女相亲所采取的择偶步骤和择偶策略。研究发现相亲角和＂白发相亲＂现象具有城市性;从＂自发相亲＂到＂白发相亲＂,在一定程度上是一种路径依赖。＂白发相亲＂的实质是＂毛的孩子们＂试图帮助＂邓的一代＂解决婚恋难题。     

Does It Matter What She Wants? The Role of Individual Preferences Against Unmarried Motherhood in Young Women’s Likelihood of a Nonmarital First Birth

Most young people in the United States express the desire to marry. Norms at all socioeconomic levels posit marriage as the optimal context for childbearing. At the same time, nonmarital fertility accounts for approximately 40 % of U.S. births, experienced disproportionately by women with educational attainment less than a bachelor’s degree. Research has shown that women’s intentions for the number and timing of children and couples’ intent to marry are strong predictors of realized fertility and marriage. The present study investigates whether U.S. young women’s preferences about nonmarital fertility, as stated before childbearing begins, predict their likelihood of having a nonmarital first birth. I track marriage and fertility histories through ages 24–30 of women asked at ages 11–16 whether they would consider unmarried childbearing. One-quarter of women who responded “no” in fact had a nonmarital birth by age 24–30. The ability of women and their partners to access material resources in adulthood were, as expected, the strongest predictors of the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing. Nonetheless, I find that women who said they would not consider nonmarital childbearing had substantially higher hazards of fertility postponement and especially of marital fertility, even after controlling for race/ethnicity, mother’s educational attainment, family of origin intactness, self-efficacy and planning ability, perceived future prospects, and markers of own educational attainment and work experience into early adulthood.     

Age at First Marriage and Age at Death in the Lincolnshire Fenland, 1252–1478

In five Lincolnshire villages between 1252 and 1478 there is evidence that men and women married fairly late before the Black Death, and that by 1348/9 the Western European marriage pattern of late and prudential marriage was well established. Households were usually nucleated; husbands were on average eight years older than their wives before 1348/9, and five years older after 1348/9. Marriages were short: according to the best calculation shorter before 1348/9 than after, most often terminated by the death of the first husband, and were unlikely to produce more than three children. Since there were more males than females amongst children and young adults, many men remained unmarried, but since the death rate of women was very high, men lived longer.     

A joint model of marital childbearing and marital disruption

Married couples with children appear to be less likely to end their marriages than childless couples, especially when the children are young. Although this suggests that children affect the chances that their parents will divorce, the process may not be so simple: the chances that the marriage will last also may affect couples’ willingness to make the commitment to the marriage implied by having children. This paper uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to test the hypothesis that the risk of disruption faced by a married woman affects the chances that she will conceive and bear a child. The model used takes into account the simultaneous relationships between marital dissolution and marital fertility by including the hazard of disruption as a predictor of timing and likelihood of marital conception, and by including the results of previous fertility decisions as predictors of disruption of the marriage. We find that the hazard of disruption has strong negative effects on the hazard of marital childbearing, lengthening the intervals between births and decreasing the chances that a child will be born. This effect appears to be strongest for women who have had at least one child, either before or during the current marriage, although it is also large for childless women. Explicitly including the hazard of disruption in models of marital childbearing has sizable and important effects on many predictors of fertility.     

Gay Men and Lesbian Women Who Become Parents in the Context of a Former Heterosexual Relationship: An Explorative Study in Italy

In Italy, homosexual people are not allowed to perform donor insemination/surrogacy or adoption, thus they become parents mainly in the context of previous heterosexual relationships. The current study examines the experiences of 34 gay fathers and 32 lesbian mothers with children from a heterosexual relationship. Data on homosexuality awareness, reasons for marriage and parenthood, and the coming-out process to children were collected. Most participants reported not being aware of their homosexuality when they married and became parents. The most common reasons for marriage were “love” and “social expectancy,” whereas parenthood was motivated mainly by the “desire for children and family.” Most participants came out to at least one child and reported a positive reaction. The most cited benefit of coming out was “openness/not hiding anymore.” The results suggest that the lives of gay and lesbian parents are shaped by their sexual minority status as well as by societal heterosexism.     

Smokers’ Sexual Behavior and Their Satisfaction with Family Life

Smokers tend to be more impatient and prefer immediate benefits compared with non-smokers. If people follow their primitive instincts they will engage in sexual behavior. Impatient people are more likely to have sex. However, for married people, having sex with a spouse is considered to be an investment in family life. Based on individual level data of Japan General Social Surveys, this paper investigated how sexual behavior differs between smokers and non-smokers. In addition to it, determinants of life satisfaction are also investigated. The important findings through the interval regression model and the ordered probit model are: (1) frequency of sex is positively associated with family satisfaction; (2) unmarried smokers are more likely to have sex than unmarried non-smokers; (3) married smokers are less likely to have sex than married non-smokers. It follows from estimation results that smoking behavior alerts us to his unobserved characteristics before marriage, thus reducing information asymmetry.     

Predictors of Life Satisfaction among Urban Iranian Women: An Exploratory Analysis

This paper explores life satisfaction among married and unmarried Iranian women in urban areas. Data is analyzed from a sample of 335 women of which 61% are married and 39% are unmarried (i.e., single, divorced, or widows). Data is collected through the use of self-reported questionnaires administered during 1992 and 1994. A series of path analysis and cross tabulations suggest that for married women life satisfaction is directly linked to their satisfaction with marriage, employment, and their leisure experiences. There is an inverse relationship between satisfaction and the women's activity, however. For unmarried women, satisfaction is affected by their leisure experiences and educational level. The study suggests that any effort to reduce or increase the educational, employment, or leisure activities of women will directly affect women's general satisfaction and therefore affect Iranian society as a whole.