High Fertility and Children's Schooling in Ghana: Sex Differences in Parental Contributions and Educational Outcomes

This paper explores the linkages at the family level between sustained high fertility and children's schooling in Ghana, in the context of a constrained economic environment and rising school fees. The unique feature of the paper is its exploration of the operational significance of alternative definitions of “sib size” – the number of “same-mother” siblings and “same-father” siblings – in relation to enrolment, grade attainment, and school drop-out for boys and girls of primary and secondary school age. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Ghana Living Standards Measurement Survey (GLSS) data, collected in 1987–88. The results of the statistical analysis lead to the conclusion that the co-existence of high fertility, rising school costs, and economic reversals is having a negative impact on the education of girls, in terms of drop-out rates and grade attainment. Some of the costs of high fertility are borne by older siblings (particularly girls) rather than by parents, with the result that children from larger families experience greater inequality between themselves and their siblings by sex and birth order. Because fathers have more children on average than mothers, the inequality between their children appears to be even greater than between mothers' children, particularly given the importance of fathers' role in the payment of school fees. The paper concludes that the greatest cost for children in Ghana of sustained high fertility is likely to be the reinforcement of traditional sex roles, largely a product of high fertility in the past.     

Reproductive ideals and educational attainment among white Americans, 1943-1960

Abstract Would the persistent inverse relation between educational attainment and family size in the United States be removed if actual fertility were equal to ideal? Data on ideal family size from 10 national surveys among white Americans of both sexes (from 1943 to 1960) show that gradeschool level respondents have higher ideals than the more educated even when age, religious affiliation, and farm residence are used as controls. Comparison of these ideals with the actual family size or ever-fertile women in the United States indicates that, on the average, the actual family size of all major educational groups falls below the ideal, but the college-educated are furthest from their ideal. If this group lessened the gap between actual and ideal family size, the educational differential in fertility would decrease, but at the price of increasing the rate of population growth.     

Intended and Ideal Family Size in the United States, 1970–2002

Cross‐nationally, observed fertility is well below mean levels of reported ideal family size and also usually well below survey respondents' fertility desires and intentions. The United States is an exception. In this article we: (1) discuss the importance of fertility ideals and intentions for understanding observed fertility levels, (2) propose a model that can account for variable attitude‐behavior consistency, and (3) use this model as a framework to examine trends in American women's fertility ideals, intentions, and actual fertility. Our study uses data from the General Social Surveys and the Current Population Surveys. We ask whether preferences and intentions for moderate family sizes have eroded with time. The answer is remarkably clear: the dominant American ideals and intentions are for two or three children, and these preferences have persisted across the last three decades. The unusual aggregate correspondence between fertility intentions and behavior in the United States is explained by an apparent offsetting of factors that increase/decrease fertility relative to intentions.     

Family size and the quality of children

If couples decide to have fewer children in order to achieve higher “quality” offspring, are they correct in assuming that the quality of children bears an important and inverse relation to family size? If they are correct, how does number of children operate to affect individual quality? This research (using U.S. whites primarily) takes educational attainment (among adults) and college plans (among youngsters) as the principal indicators of quality, but also directs some attention to measures of intelligence. The analysis supports the “dilution model” (on average, the more children the lower the quality of each child) and indicates that only children do not suffer from lack of siblings, and that other last-borns are not handicapped by a “teaching deficit.” Number of siblings (relative to other background variables) is found to have an important detrimental impact on child quality—an impact compounded by the fact that, when couples are at a stage in life to make family-size decisions, most background factors (however important to the quality of their children) are no longer readily manipulable. A special path analysis of college plans among boys uses a modification of Sewell’s Wisconsin Model as its base. The results show that number of siblings is a negative influence on intervening variables affecting college plans. In general, the research documents the unfavorable consequences for individual siblings of high fertility, even in a country that is (at least for whites) as socially, economically, and politically advantaged as the United States.     

Relative cohort size: source of a unifying theory of global fertility transition

Using United Nations estimates of age structure and vital rates for 184 countries at five‐year intervals from 1950 through 1995, this article demonstrates how changes in relative cohort size appear to have affected patterns of fertility across countries since 1950—not just in developed countries, but perhaps even more importantly in developing countries as they pass through the demographic transition. The increase in relative cohort size (defined as the proportion of males aged 15–24 relative to males aged 25–59), which occurs as a result of declining mortality rates among infants, children, and young adults during the demographic transition, appears to act as the mechanism that determines when the fertility portion of the transition begins. As hypothesized by Richard Easterlin, the increasing proportion of young adults generates a downward pressure on young men's relative wages (or on the size of landhold‐ings passed on from parent to child), which in turn causes young adults to accept a tradeoff between family size and material wellbeing, setting in motion a “cascade” or “snowball” effect in which total fertility rates tumble as social norms regarding acceptable family sizes begin to change.     

Another Child? Fertility Ideals,Resources and Opportunities

Low fertility in most developed countries has prompted policy concern in relation to labour market supply, pensions, and expenditure on health and welfare services as well as policy debate about both the cost of children and the opportunity costs of parenthood. The extent to which family policy interventions can be effective in slowing or reversing fertility decline is much debated. This paper, based on a fertility module of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2005, examines the current fertility, and ideal and expected fertility of a nationally representative sample of 455 parents of reproductive age and focuses on whether they plan to have another child. It compares the characteristics of those who intend to have another child with those who do not, and how parents with one child differ from those with more children. It addresses three questions about family size: (1) fertility ideals, (2) resources and the economic implications of childbearing, and (3) opportunities for childbearing and the effects of a late start on fertility expectations. It concludes that, despite a sustained period of low fertility in Scotland, childbearing ideals are robust and explanations of low fertility must derive from difficulties in realising those ideals. Difficulties in realising fertility aspirations are associated less with resources than with opportunities for childbearing, especially the timing of first birth. Those who delay their first birth are less likely to realise their ideal family size, and their lower fertility is associated with the opportunity costs of childbearing in terms of foregone qualifications, careers and earnings.     

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.     

Desired family size in Thailand: Are the responses meaningful?

Data for both rural and urban women in Thailand indicate that the large majority of respondents are able to provide numerical responses to questions on desired family size. Although there is evidence that some women tend to rationalize the number of children they have when stating the number they would want if they were recently married, the vast majority of respondents prefer a number which is different from the number of living children they had at the time of the interview. Women who had already reached or exceeded their desired number were almost universal in stating they wanted no additional children, whereas only a minority of women who had yet to reach their desired family size said they wanted no more children. Finally, the proportion of women who practiced family planning is substantially greater among women who had already achieved or exceeded their desired family size than among women who had fewer than their desired number. The results thus suggest that, in Thailand at least, responses to family size preferences need to be interpreted with caution but nevertheless can be of use to the population analyst.     

Family sizes of children and family sizes of women

This paper demonstrates the relation that obtains between the average family size of women and the average family size of offspring of those women. It estimates the value of these two measures for cohorts of American women aged 45–49 in various years from 1890 to 1970. It shows that children born during the post-war baby boom actually derived from smaller families than those born during the low-fertility 1930’s; that under current patterns a woman would have to bear an average of almost two children fewer than were borne by her mother merely to keep population fertility rates constant from generation to generation; and that average family size for nonwhite children exceeds that for white by 50 percent, although the racial difference in family sizes of women is only 19 percent.     

Effects of various factors on selection for family planning status and natural fecundability: A simulation study

The effect of various factors on selection for family planning status and for natural fecund ability is studied in a simulation that incorporates a beta distribution of fecundability among women. The mean fecundabilities of current spacers, current limiters, current nonusers, and pregnant women are compared. These ratios are influenced by duration of marriage and by desired number of children. Effects of different levels of contraception are measured. Another strategy, spacing the last two wanted births, is also studied. It is found that breast-feeding status has little effect on fecundability selection. The women usually found to have greatest fecundability are not those recently pregnant at durations of marriage five and ten years, unless they wanted fewer than two children, but rather those who are using contraception to limit the number of children.     

Wandlungen des Sterbens im Krankenhaus und die Konflikte zwischen Krankenrolle und Sterberolle

Dying in hospital has long been considered as inevitable but talking about it should be avoided, if possible. For some time now, new ideals of dying demand higher social expectations and requirements for the care of dying people (e.g. psycho-social and spiritual care). This trend can also be found in hospitals. On the basis of a running micro-sociological observational study carried out so far in four hospitals and two hospices the social organisation of dying in the hospital is being investigated and results are presented with an example of a case study. Observed dying trajectories show that the staff refers to two competing metaphors as an interpretative frame for performing its work that we call the ideal of the “short and good” dying and the ideal of the “long and laborious” dying. These idealisation correspond with the practice of “discrete” dying (that have been found in hospitals until the 1970s and that are still dominant in the medical world) and with the practice of “intimating” dying (which are drawn from the demands of the hospice-movement). Within this interpretative frame the staff is able to cope with uncertainties of the dying process. The idealisa-tions help to reformulate cumulative mess trajectories as successful and good work and thus tensions between the sick role and the dying role are minimised.     

Global concerns,local negotiations and moral selves:

Parents are contradictorily positioned within the “sexualisation of childhood” debate. They (“we”) are assumed to be concerned about sexualisation, and are urged to challenge it through campaigning, “saying no,” discussing “media messages” with children, and so on. Yet “irresponsible” consumption practices, particularly by mothers, are also held responsible for sexualisation. We argue that parental concern may be overstated: participants in our qualitative research into “sexualised goods” tended not to perceive their own children as “sexualised,” did not accept that products are inherently sexualised, and subscribed to ideas about child development and “good” parenting that entailed letting children make their own decisions about such items. Nonetheless, mothers are increasingly compelled to participate in the “sexualisation debate,” and doing so appears to encourage perpetual self-scrutiny and surveillance of others to maintain boundaries between “acceptable,” peer-group-appropriate and “inappropriate” practices and choices. In this sense sexualisation can be seen as a site for the formation of ethical, responsibilised parent subjectivities. We argue that it has costs for (working-class) women and girls in particular: it naturalises social inequalities by obscuring the constraints on individual choice, converges with older discourses that make women responsible for male sexual violence, and reinforces narrow and conventional moral agendas.     

Family size and maternal health: evidence from the One-Child policy in China

In this paper, we examine the impact of family size on maternal health outcomes by exploiting the tremendous change in family size under the One-Child policy in China. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey 1993–2006, we find that mothers with fewer children have a higher calorie intake and a lower probability of being underweight and having low blood pressure; meanwhile, they have a higher probability of being overweight. This would occur if a smaller family size increases the food consumption of mothers, leading underweight women to attain a normal weight and normal weight women becoming overweight. Robust tests are performed to provide evidence on the hypothesis that the tradeoff between children’s quantity and mother’s “quality” is through a budget constraint mechanism, that is, having more children decreases the resource allocated to mothers and affects their health outcomes.     

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.     

Something Else Besides a Father

While heterosexuality has long been the assumed ideology of reproduction, the material existence of over thirty-three thousand US children a year born from sperm donation alone attests to a radical disjuncture between our conceptions of conception and how a good many children are actually conceived. Reproductive technologies, ranging from the aforementioned sperm donation to the more complicated processes of egg harvesting, surrogacy, and IVF, can thus be read as subverting our notions of the heteronormative family. As such, assisted reproductive technology evokes widespread cultural anxiety, especially for how it challenges notions of gender, sexuality, and parenthood.

Not surprisingly, popular culture has stepped in to allay some of these anxieties, and as such it is a productive site through which to examine debates around gender, sexuality, and parenthood. At the very least, the wide market of Hollywood cinema is evidence of the discursive pull of these debates. In an examination of three recent and representative Hollywood films, Baby Mama (2008), The Switch, and The Back-Up Plan (both 2010), I will analyze how they both challenge and reinforce the “socially foundational status of the male–female couple.” Through their (re)deployment of a variety of cinematic conventions, these films attempt to yoke the radical potential of reproductive technology to a conservative ideology incorporating post-feminism and new masculinity that insists on the emotive primacy of the heterosexual couple and its “language of naturalness.”     

Grade level differences in school satisfaction

Despite evidence that children and adolescents are much more dissatisfied with the student role than adults are with the worker role, sociologists and psychologists have devoted much more effort to examining adult age differences in job satisfaction than grade level differences in school satisfaction. In this study, scores from a 3-item school satisfaction measure were analyzed via a 12 (Grade Level) by 5 (Ethnicity) by 2 (Gender) ANOVA. Twenty-five percent of the 431 330 public school students surveyed in the state of Arizona endorsed none of the school satisfaction items. Grade level was nonlinearly related to school satisfaction. School satisfaction decreased over grades 1–8 and did not vary across grades 9–12. Ethnicity and gender did not moderate the grade level-school satisfaction relation.     

Attitudes toward family size in some East European countries

Summary The paper is a review of published materials on attitudes toward family size derived from nationwide family planning studies conducted in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the USSR around 1970. Priority is given to the findings on expected family size, though other attitudinal variables such as the ideal number of children and/or the number planned at marriage are also discussed. The paper shows that the majority of women in all the countries surveyed tend to have a limited number of children. Although the trend is especially striking among better-educated and gainfully employed women, it is also spreading fast, particularly among the younger generations, through the whole urban and rural population. The average expected family size is generally close to, and for a sizeable group of women below, replacement level. The trend toward a small family size is only partially a reflection of real desires. Various factors, most of them apparently of an economic nature, prompt many women to have fewer children than they would wish. If the average expected fertility were equal to that considered as ideal or to that planned at marriage there would be no danger that births would fall below replacement level. In contrast to the situation in the countries as a whole, women in the Asian Republics of the USSR not only expect but also tend to regard as ideal a family with larger numbers of children.     

Family Structure and Children’s Economic Well-Being: Incorporating Same-Sex Cohabiting Mother Families

Research on family structure and child well-being rarely includes children in same-sex parent families, a notable omission since 28 % of female–female couple households contain children. Using the 2010–2013 pooled current population survey (CPS), we examined children’s economic well-being by family structure. These data were ideal for this study because they included a sizeable number of children in same-sex cohabiting mother families and the CPS measured both official and supplemental poverty, incorporating the cohabiting partner. Using the official poverty measure, children in same-sex cohabiting mother families were more likely to be poor than their counterparts in either different-sex cohabiting or married parent families. Using the supplemental poverty measure, children in same-sex mother families were no more likely to be poor than children in all other types of different-sex two-parent families.     

Do family caps reduce out-of-wedlock births? Evidence from Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia

During the 1990s, 23 states implemented family cap policies as a means to reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births among welfare recipients. Using Current Population Survey data from 1989 to 1999, we examine the impact of family cap policies on the birth rates of single, less-educated women with children. We use the first five states that were granted waivers from the Department of Health and Human Services to implement family caps as “natural experiments.” Specifically, we compare trends in out-of-wedlock birth rates in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, New Jersey and Virginia to trends in states that did not implement family caps or any other waivers prior to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. We employ several techniques to increase the credibility of results from our “natural experiment,” such as the inclusion of multiple comparison groups, controls for differential time trends, and “difference-in-difference-in-differences” estimators. Our regression estimates generally do not provide evidence that family cap policies reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock births among single, less-educated women with children.     

“And she does it all in heels”: mothers in contemporary Israeli TV commercials

Although numerous studies have examined the image of women in advertising, the current study is exceptional in looking at the representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials, in an attempt to shed light on the ideological messages they reflect and promote. Sixty-four TV commercials were analyzed using critical discourse analysis. In many ads the mother is depicted as aesthetically pleasing and shapely. This inclusion of the beauty myth in all its cruel demands into the can-do mother myth, could lead Israeli women to a sense of failure as they compare themselves to the glamorous image in the ads and invariably fall short. The hetero-couple-headed nuclear family shown in many ads seems to be a conservative manifestation of the assumption that the “good mother” exists only in the framework of the normative family unit. It seems that in the context of the advertising genre, these are products that lie at the heart of family and couple relationships, and that it is therefore possible to speak of the commodification of the family. The study also found progressive images of the clever, resourceful mother alongside the pathetic, ridiculed one—a new kind of a “bad mother.”