Do the Kids Think They're Okay? Adolescents' Views on the Impact of Marriage and Divorce

A sample (N?=?365) of middle school and high school students from both divorced and intact families were surveyed with regard to their opinions about the impact of their parents' relationships (divorced or married) on a variety of areas of their lives. Adolescents from separated or divorced (S/D) families tended to rate their parents' relationships and impact on them more negatively than adolescents from living together or married (L/M) families. However, both groups consistently rated their parents in the same direction on a variety of topics. Gender was not a factor in the responses of either group. However, age (middle school vs. high school) was related to significant differences in adolescents' views about parents.     

Marriage Advantages in Perinatal Health: Evidence of Marriage Selection or Marriage Protection?

Marriage is a social tie associated with health advantages for adults and their children, as lower rates of preterm birth and low birth weight are observed among married women. In this study the author tested 2 competing hypotheses explaining this marriage advantage—marriage protection versus marriage selection—using a sample of recent births to single, cohabiting, and married women from the National Survey of Family Growth, 2006–2010. Propensity score matching and fixed effects regression results demonstrated support for marriage selection, as a rich set of early life selection factors account for all of the cohabiting–married disparity and part of the single–married disparity. Subsequent analyses demonstrated that prenatal smoking mediates the adjusted single–married disparity in birth weight, lending some support for the marriage protection perspective. The study's findings sharpen our understanding of why and how marriage matters for child well‐being and provide insight into pre‐conception and prenatal factors describing intergenerational transmissions of inequality via birth weight.     

Do Young Mothers and Fathers Differ in the Likelihood of Returning Home?

Building on research examining “boomerang” adult children, the author examines multigenerational living among young parents. Returning home likely differs between young mothers and fathers given variation in socioeconomic characteristics, health and risk taking, their own children's coresidence, and union stability. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), the author finds that more than 40% of young parents (n = 2,721) live with their own parents at their first child's birth or subsequently. Mothers are generally less likely to move home than fathers but only when not controlling for child coresidence and union stability. Individuals who live with all their children are less likely to return home, and controlling for child coresidence reverses gender differences, though this association disappears in the full model. Young parents who are stably single and those who experience dissolution are highly likely to return home compared to the stably partnered, with the association significantly stronger for fathers than mothers.     

Do Nonprofits Treat Their Employees Differently? Incentive Pay and Health Benefits

We examine how nonprofit, public, and for‐profit establishments vary in the provision of health benefits and insurance and performance‐based incentives using the 2002 National Organization Survey of establishments in the United States. We found that in comparison to for‐profit firms, both nonprofit and public organizations are less likely to use performance‐based incentives, although they provide their employees with better health benefits and insurance. Sectoral differences in the provision of health benefits and insurance and use of performance‐based incentives persist after controlling for correlates of sector that predict these outcomes, including establishment size, independence of establishment, market competition, establishment age, and unionization. We also found trade‐offs between the provision of health benefits and insurance and use of performance‐based incentives. Our results are generally consistent with the prediction from agency theory and also consistent with a view that public and nonprofit organizations are more concerned with the well‐being of their employees.     

Does the Risk Outweigh the Benefits? Adolescent Responses to Completing Health Surveys

The aim of this study is to describe the self‐reported experiences of adolescents in population‐based samples when completing health‐related surveys on topics with varying potential for evoking distress. Survey data were collected in three school‐based studies of bullying behaviors (N = 1,771, 12–14 years), alcohol use (N = 823, 12, 15, and 17 years), and electronic image sharing (N = 274, 13 years). Between 5% and 15% of respondents reported being upset at survey completion, but at most 1.4% were entirely negative in their evaluation. Age was not associated with being upset, but younger adolescents were more likely to see benefit in participation. Although concurrent mental health symptoms increased the risk of being upset, this was mostly mitigated by perceived benefits from participation.     

Can Marriage Reduce Risky Health Behavior for African-Americans?

This paper estimates whether marriage can improve health outcomes for African-Americans through changes in risky health behaviors like smoking, drinking, and drug use. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health and propensity score matching methodology to account for the potential selection bias, the results show that marriage does lead to a reduction in risky health behaviors, specifically drinking and drug use. This question has important policy implications because if marriage has the same benefits for African-Americans as it does for the general population, social welfare programs can be re-evaluated to incorporate marriage promotion, and further support can be given to programs that decrease adverse health behaviors.     

Marriage,the Final Frontier? Same‐Sex Marriage and the Future of the Lesbian and Gay Movement

Given hostility within segments of LGBT communities toward same‐sex marriage, how do Australian activists justify their efforts toward achieving marriage equality? In this article, we expand the social movement literature by examining how activists construct identity, meaning, and goals in contradistinction to others within the same movement. We draw on interviews with Australian lesbian and gay activists to examine what enables them to pursue the contested goal of same‐sex marriage in light of internal movement critiques that marriage equality will undermine the significance of lesbian and gay identity and impair activism on other issues as a result of the view that equality has been achieved. We expand debates over the post‐gay trajectory of lesbian and gay activism and identity by illustrating how activists attach different, what we term, mobilizing meanings, to the same movement goal which enables them to withstand internal movement critiques. We provide a typology of mobilizing meanings that can be applied more generally.     

Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China

The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China was adopted at the Third Session of the Fifth National People's Congress and promulgated by Order No. 9 of the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Nation-     

The History of the Chinese Marriage Law

IN this issue of Women of China we will introduce readers to the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China. The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China was adopted at the Third Session of the Fifth National People's Congress and promulgated on September 10, 1980. It     

How Do New Media Influence Youths’ Health Literacy? Exploring the Effects of Media Channel and Content on Safer Sex Literacy

Abstract

This study examines whether youths’ safer sex literacy and their intentions to share health-related information are affected by channel (websites vs. social networking sites) and content (fact-based vs. feeling-based content). A 2?×?2 factorial experiment with repeated measures was implemented in a large public university in Hong Kong. The results showed that website-based content facilitated respondents’ safer sex literacy and information sharing intentions more effectively than content based on social networking sites. The interaction effect suggests that feeling-based content yielded a stronger effect on information sharing intentions on the website than on the social networking site.     

Variation in the Relationship Between Education and Marriage: Marriage Market Mismatch?

Educational expansion has led to greater diversity in the social backgrounds of college students. We ask how schooling interacts with this diversity to influence marriage formation among men and women. Relying on data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3208), we use a propensity score approach to group men and women into social strata and multilevel event history models to test differences in the effects of college attendance across strata. We find a statistically significant, positive trend in the effects of college attendance across strata, with the largest effects of college on first marriage among the more advantaged and the smallest-indeed, negative-effects among the least advantaged men and women. These findings appear consistent with a mismatch in the marriage market between individuals' education and their social backgrounds.     

Can’t We Just Live Together? New Evidence on the Effect of Relationship Status on Health

There has been a large empirical literature on the effect of marriage on health, but scant empirical evidence on the effect of cohabitation on health, although cohabitation is increasingly common. We contributed to this literature in three ways. First we explicitly modeled cohabitation distinct from marriage. Second, we included lagged health in our models to address the dynamic process of health and health-related selection into relationships. Extant literature has failed to control for lagged health risking omitted variable bias. Rather, it has controlled for general unobservable heterogeneity using fixed effects models that have relied on limited variation in relationship status over time to identify the effect of relationship status on health. Third, we employed a continuous health index that aids in estimation and inference of dynamic models. Using the Blundell and Bond dynamic panel data estimator and 18 years of the British Household Panel Survey of nearly 18,000 adults, we found that being in a relationship is good for health, but the benefits are not unique to marriage. Our finding that cohabitation is as beneficial as marriage for health was good news for health policy as changing social norms and economic instability have delayed or impaired family formation.     

Same-Sex Marriage and the Boundaries of Diversity: Will Marriage and Family Therapy Remain Inclusive of Religious and Social Conservatives?

The expanding legalization of same-sex marriage in the Western World may pose significant challenges for the relationship between many religious and socially conservative marriage and family therapists and their professional associations. In the present analysis, I look to the field of moral psychology, particularly Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory, to provide greater clarity regarding the nature of this tension and a resultant tightening of the boundaries of acceptable diversity that could ensue. I then outline some concerning indicators from mental health associations relative to their potential willingness to tolerate conservative perspectives in meaningful ways and identify some specific areas of possible tension for conservative therapists trying to integrate their deeply held moral values into ethical practice with same-sex couples, with a specific reference to the viability of “conscience clauses” and values-based referrals. I conclude with some recommendations through which the field of marriage and family therapy can reduce the potential for conflicts and thereby reassure these clinicians that they continue to be welcomed even if their vision of marriage differs from that which is formally endorsed by their professional associations.     

Do Reservation Wages Really Decline? Some International Evidence on the Determinants of Reservation Wages

Using cross-country data, we investigate the determinants of reservation wages and their course over the jobless spell. Higher unemployment benefits lead to higher reservation wages. Further, again consistent with the basic search model, repeated observations on the same individual provide scant evidence of declining reservation wages.

The Marriage System in the Age of Revolutionary War

IN the late 1920s, the Communist Party of China (CPC) founded the (Chinese) Soviet Area (established during the Second Revolutionary Civil War period, 1927-1937) which operated in the revolutionary base areas. The outline of the Soviet constitution stipulated that women should have equal rights in politics, economy, culture and hold the same social position as men.     

What Can Interactionism Contribute to the Study of Inequality? The Case of Marriage and Beyond

The equality/inequality dichotomy is a central concept in sociology and in the study of marriage. Almost all researchers, though, use their own preconceived definitions and measurement strategies to identify equal and unequal states of affairs. An alternative approach, one that better accords with interactionist principles, is to privilege people's interpretations of equality over analysts' Drawing on interviews with individuals who define their own marriages as equal or unequal, I compare people's stories about marital equality with scholars' depictions. While some narratives resonate (in part) with the themes propounded by scholars, others do not. If people's experiences of equality and inequality are to be taken seriously, then it is important to listen to what they have to say on the subject, as well as to how they say it. This is the distinctive contribution symbolic interactionists can make to the study of inequality.