Trends and incidence of childlessness by race: indicators of black progress over three decades

Patterns in childlessness rates for blacks and whites in the U.S. from 1950-1972 were examined using 1940, 1950, and 1960 census data and data from Current Population Reports for 1969 and 1972. Among ever married women, aged 15-49, the proportion of childless black women declined from 29.1%-13.6% from 1940-1972, while the porportion of childless white women declined from 22.9%-14.3% from 1940-1969 and then increased slightly to 15.6% in 1972. The decline in childlessness observed for both blacks and whites during this period was attributable, at least in part, to improved medical care. When age specific rates were examined 2 diverse patterns emerged. For females, aged 15-24, childlessness rates for blacks were lower than for whites throughout 1940-1972, and the differences between blacks and whites increased over time. However, for females, aged 30-39, childlessness rates were higher for blacks than for whites throughout 1940-1972, and the gap between white and black rates decreased over time. In general the data demonstrated a convergence in childlessness patterns for blacks and whites. Childlessness rates were viewed as an indication of social integration. Childlessness is not a norm in American society. The general decline in childless rates among blacks and especially among blacks over 30 years of age indicated that the wider society was serving as a reference group for blacks. Among blacks under 25 years convergence was less apparent and indicated that younger black women were less integrated into the larger society than older black women. On the basis of recent trends it was predicted that convergence between black and white childlessness patterns would continue; however, in view of the upturn in the childlessness rate observed for whites since 1969, it was expected that the childlessness rates for both blacks and whites would increase somewhat in the coming years.     

More Than Help? Volunteerism in US Latino Culture

Volunteerism makes critical contributions to individual lives and society as a whole. However, to date, few studies have investigated volunteerism within Latino communities, a large and growing US population. The aim of this study was to understand how non-metropolitan US Latinos perceive volunteerism, as well as to determine what motivates and what deters their participation in volunteer programs. Our research team conducted six focus groups with 36 Latina women living in the State of Illinois. The focus groups covered topics such as the definition of volunteerism, participation motives and barriers, personal volunteer experience, and Latino culture, community, and organizations. We also assessed demographic information. Results from this study indicate that Latinas have a unique understanding of the concept of volunteerism. Participants associated everyday “helping” with volunteerism, establishing commonplace forms of aid as perhaps a “Latino way of volunteering.” We found time-consuming activities such as family responsibilities and work to be deterrents to Latinas participating in more formal volunteer activities.     

Linking collegiate service‐learning to future volunteerism: Implications for nonprofit organizations

One of the biggest challenges facing nonprofits is attracting and retaining volunteers to help deliver their programs. One way that colleges and universities are attempting to educate students on the importance of community issues and to graduate “good citizens” is through service‐learning (S‐L) programs. Although many scholars argue that collegiate S‐L programs will increase the extent to which students volunteer following graduation (for example, Astin, Sax, and Avalos, 1999; Misa, Anderson, and Yamamura, 2005), more empirical research has been called for to examine this relationship. This article proposes three predictors of future volunteerism for alumni of a collegiate S‐L experience: the amount of personal development experienced during the S‐L project, the perceived value of the S‐L project to the community organization, and the level of volunteerism prior to participation in an S‐L project. Results showed significant effects of all the proposed predictors on postgraduation volunteering. Our findings have implications for nonprofit managers charged with maintaining a sufficient level of volunteers to provide their community services as well as individuals who are responsible for organizing S‐L programs. These managerial implications and directions for future S‐L research are discussed.     

Community Attachment,Religious Participation,and Quality of Life Satisfaction among Adults Involved in Civic Participation

Civic participation constitutes a range of activities that strengthen participatory democracy, such as voting, volunteerism, association membership, or political and community activism. Factors associated with civic participation are community attachment, religious participation, and quality of life satisfaction. Using a sample of 55 adults, ages 18 to 92 years, the results indicate that this is an engaged sample group in the volunteer arena with high religious attendance, attachment to their communities, and average satisfaction with their quality of life as outcomes of their civic participation.     

Curriculum requirements and subsequent civic engagement: is there a difference between ‘forced’ and ‘free’ community service?

Despite figures showing the growth of mandatory community service programmes, there is mixed empirical evidence of their effectiveness. This paper addresses the relationship of mandated community service to one of its purported aims: subsequent volunteerism. It compares current volunteerism among four university student cohorts: those doing no service in secondary school, those volunteering with no requirement, those volunteering both before and after the introduction of a requirement, and those introduced to service through a requirement. The analysis indicates that (1) students who were introduced to service through a mandated programme exhibit current levels of engagement no greater than non‐volunteers; (2) this relationship stems largely from the different service experiences of our four cohorts and relates to the fact that service satisfaction and duration, as well as background variables account for current levels of civic engagement. The findings suggest that mandatory service programmes might well be failing the very population they seek to target, particularly in weaker, less structured programmes.     

Understanding Leadership Development in African American Youth

Abstract

This exploratory study assesses factors related to leadership development for African American adolescents participating in a community service program designed to develop young African American leaders (N = 345). Psychometric characteristics of self-reported levels of leadership are explored to determine similarities and differences between gender groups. A multivariate analysis of socioeconomic factors, levels of self-esteem, school grades, and social activities as predictors of leadership development produced mixed findings. The results suggest that higher levels of global and academic self-esteem are related to leadership characteristics in female respondents, but not males. On the other hand, the impact of program participation on leadership was only significant in the area of personal relationship skills as a form of leadership for males. Findings from this investigation point out the need for research on leadership development dynamics among African American children and adolescents.     

Patterns of Volunteer Activity in Professional Associations and Societies

Professional and occupational societies rely on volunteers for leadership, expertise, member recruitment, fundraising, legislative activity, and many other activities. Yet, volunteerism in the professions has received very little analytic attention. This study uses a large, international dataset produced by the American Society of Association Executives to examine patterns of volunteer activity in 23 professional associations and societies. A comparative analysis allows us to test widespread theories on the factors that predict volunteer activity in the particular context of professional life, where the motivations to volunteer may vary. Our findings suggest that some patterns of professional volunteer activity mirror what we can expect in a non-professional context (i.e., church or community volunteering), while other patterns are distinct. Our findings have particular relevance in understanding that a professional??s demographic characteristics and voluntary preferences are context-specific and must be accounted for in volunteer recruitment efforts.     

Language in the process of labour market rationalisation: A sociohistorical approach across twentieth-century Spain

This article analyses the role of linguistic skills in the process of defining professional classifications in Spain during 1919–1980. The aim is to determine the social evaluation of the skills involved. To retrace the classifications, a total of 114 official documents were examined, establishing a chronological division into three major stages: 1920–1940, 1940–1960 and 1960–1980. The first period (1920–1940) shows efforts toward the initial objectification of working conditions and salary scales, revealing social prejudices and tacit conventions shaping the employment hierarchy, while the second one (1940–1960) indicates the extent to which office work stood out over manual work. Finally, the third stage (1960–1980) shows processes of language rationalisation, which entailed attempts to standardise positions based on required skill sets.     

Service Learning in Baccalaureate Social Work Education: Results of a National Survey of Accredited Programs

Service learning is neither field education nor volunteerism. Rather, it is a pedagogical approach designed to reinforce classroom instruction with concurrent service activities occurring in the local community. This service is driven by community-identified needs. Service learning supports social work values, yet the profession has been slow to embrace it in social work education. This article reports results of a national survey examining the use of service learning among baccalaureate programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. The majority of respondents report service learning is a required component of at least one course (generally an introductory or practice-based course) and has been incorporated into their programs for more than a decade. Results also suggest some programs may not implement service learning appropriately as it remains undifferentiated from volunteerism or field education.     

Bridge Leadership: Gendered Consumerism and Black Women’s Political Power within Early 20th Century “Don’t Buy” Campaigns

This research surveys the literature around black consumerism and social movements, exploring the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” (DBWYCW) campaigns of the 1920s-1940s. The author examines the integral roles women played (as organizers, agitators, and beneficiaries) in various economic boycotts within the context of Belinda Robnett’s theory of bridge leadership, with a particular focus on consumerism as a major vehicle through which African-American women engaged in movement work during the DBWYCW campaigns. This article challenges the erasure of women’s leadership by reframing “Don’t Buy” as a women’s movement. Applying Robnett’s bridge leadership theory to different eras, regions, and movements, we see how the Great Depression combined with activism in the gendered sphere of consumerism and facilitated the activism of black women. This paper also expands Robnett’s conceptualization of professional and indigenous bridge leaders by identifying urban working class women within the “Don’t Buy” movement who fit these leadership categories.     

Civic engagement among student veterans

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess participation rates in civic volunteering among service member and veteran students. Participants: Data for the present cross-sectional study were obtained from the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) 2011–2014 National College Health Assessment II (NCHA). Methods: Demographic characteristics of the study sample were explored by calculating frequencies and percentages by military service status. Research questions were explored with either Fisher’s exact test or maximum likelihood multiple logistic regression. Results: Service member and veteran students were more likely to engage in volunteerism than their non-veteran counterparts. Additionally, student veterans and non-veteran students reported that engagement in volunteer efforts both reduces their feelings of depression and increases their use of mental health services. Conclusion: The findings of this research suggest that the promotion of civic engagement and participation in volunteerism for service member and veteran students on college campuses might contribute to successful reintegration outcomes.     

The Social and Political Implications of Muslim Middle Eastern Women's Participation in Violent Political Conflict

Five cases from the twentieth centuty Islamic Middle East are investigated in terms of the role patterns of women's participation in violent political conflict and the post-conflict social and political consequences of their participation. The study finds extensive role segregation between male and female participants, and virtual absence of women from leadership roles. These conflicts are seen not to be a catalyst for permanent social and political change, and reason for this consequence are discussed.     

Communalization and Homophile Organization Membership:

This paper applies a sociological perspective to homophile organizational membership in the pre- and post-Stonewall gay community, and now, during AIDS. Focus is on comparing early theories of gay community organizational participation with the genesis, nature, and meaning of gay/AIDS volunteerism as a political statement. By emphasizing how the communalization of AIDS empowered gay people, earlier homophobic vocabularies of analysis are replaced with those that recognize gay pride as the source of organizational membership. Today, self-acceptance by gays leads to the willingness to “bear witness” to People with AIDS in voluntary community based initiatives which join the personal and collective interest in a way that confirms a positive homosexual identity. The theory that communalization empowers by undermining homophobia is supported by data taken for a survey of volunteers at Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York.     

The participation of women in the labour force of Latin America: fertility and other factors

The level of labor force participation among Latin American women, when compared with participation rates for other countries, is the lowest in the world. Only 20% or less of women 10 years of age and older are economically active. This level did not change much between 1950 and 1970. Few women work in agriculture. The following factors are considered for their effect on labor force participation of urban women: marital status, education, income, and the structure and stage of development of the society. Married women have a low participation rate. More highly educated women are more likely to work, but there must be demand for their work services. As the economy of various countries has progressed, female participation in domestic services has decreased, in industry has remained constant between 1960 and 1970, and in social services has expanded. It is concluded that work participation for married women will only increase with the following changes: 1) improved educational opportunities for women; 2) structural change and modernization in the economy; and 3) reduced family fertility. Changes in the first 2 factors are more important than reduced fertility. Since 1960, only Chile and Costa Rica have had a 25% decline in fertility rates.     

Welfare,Premarital Childbearing,and the Role of Normative Climate: 1968–1994

Nationally representative, longitudinal survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics were used to examine the conditions under which welfare benefit levels affected the likelihood that low‐income women age 15–24 bore their first child prior to marriage. Benefit levels had a positive effect on premarital childbearing during the 1980s and early 1990s but not during the 1970s or late 1960s. The effect of benefit levels was also stronger where community attitudes toward premarital sex were more tolerant than where attitudes were less tolerant, but this did not account for the varying effect of benefit levels over time. The study introduces a new way of measuring normative climate using attitudinal data from the General Social Surveys.     

Communique on the one-in-one thousand sample survey of birthrate of China's population

To analyze the history of the marriage and birth of Chinese women and to inspect the results of family planning work, to do well the jobs of demographic forecasting and formulating demographic plans, to provide a reliable basis for strengthening the scientific management of family planning work, the state Family Planning Commission organized and carried out a nationwide 1-person-in-1-thousand survey of birthrates in 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. The following are survey results: 1) 24.77% of the total survey population were women between 15 and 49 years of age; 2) among the women of childbearing age, 31.46% were unmarried, 64.53% were in 1st marriages, 2.89% were remarried; .19% were divorced but not remarried, and .94% were widows; 3) the average age of first marriage was 18.4 in the 1940s, 19 in the 1950s, 19.8 in the 1960s, 21.6 in the 1970s, and 23 in the late 1970s; and 4) the average number of births was 5.44 in the 1940s, 5.87 in the 1950s, 5.8 in the 1960s, and 4.01 in the 1970s. The survey reveals that education level and occupation have a strong relation to childbearing among Chinese women. The survey found that China and 170 million married childbearing aged women and that 118 million or 69.46% used birth control measures. 33 million couples had 1 child only, among them 42.3% has officially committed themselves to maintaining a 1 child family. The data reveal that major achievements in family planning work have been obtained, but the mission ahead is still arduous.     

Does population aging produce increasing gerontocracy?

As the population of the United States grows older, we might expect the role of the elderly to change. Among the many questions that could be asked about changes in the age stratification system, here we focus on the engagement of older persons in leadership roles. The period covered is roughly 1940 to the present, and the areas of leadership examined are representation in Congress and in professional and managerial occupations. If age-specific rates of representation remain constant over time, the proportion of leadership positions filled by older persons will increase at the same pace that the proportion of the adult population age sixty-five and over is increasing. On the other hand, if changes are occurring in the age stratification system, the role of the elderly in leadership may be either decreasing or increasing more rapidly than the population is aging. The data examined here show that over the past several decades the engagement of older persons in leadership positions has declined rapidly.     

Black Minority Racial Status and Fertility in the United States, 1970

Abstract

Reversal in the trend toward convergence of black and white fertility rates in the United States between 1940 and 1970 has given rise to the theory of independent effect of minority racial status. The 1970 Public Use Sample is used in this study to extract data on a 1/1000 sample of all black and white women (excluding Spanish Americans) ages 15 to 59 in order to analyze relationships between fertility and other census variables. The results tend to support the theory of independent effect of minority racial status on fertility. The relationship is more pronounced for women under 35 than for women 40 and over. Distinctive patterns emerge by race and age cohorts.     

Cohort shifts in the timing of births in Ghana

A comparison of cohorts of ever-married Chanaian women suggests evidence of a fertility transition beginning among younger women and select subgroups. Ghana's crude birth rate declined from a high of 50/1000 population in 1970 to 38.8/1000 in 1985. To ascertain whether marital fertility is now being controlled through conscious attempts to lengthen birth intervals, World Fertility Survey data from 1979-80 on the timing of births among different birth cohorts were analyzed. It was hypothesized that, as a result of the influence of Western values that stress independence from parents and the introduction of compulsory education, cohorts of the mid-1950s and 1960s would be more likely to postpone childbearing, more active in the modern sector of the economy, and more accepting of modern contraceptive usage for birth spacing than women in the 1930-39, 1940-49, and 1950-59 cohorts. For the 1940-49 cohort, it took 10.8 months for 25% to have a birth following 1st marriage, 18.7 months for 50% to have a 1st birth, and 27.4 months for 75% to complete this step. By comparison, these figures for the 1955-64 birth cohort were 9.9, 16.7, and 20.5 months, respectively. The significantly shorter (p 0.01) interval between marriage and 1st birth found among younger women in part reflects rising age at marriage; mean age at 1st marriage was 17.9 years for the 1940 cohort and 21.6 years for the most recent cohort. After the birth of the 1st child, recent cohorts were more likely to wait longer for the 2nd birth. For women born in 1950-64, it took 21.8, 36.7, and 44.6 months for 25%, 50%, and 75%, respectively, to reach parity 2. This pattern of lengthened birth interval beyond the 1st birth was apparent at all parities in the youngest cohort and indicates increasing acceptance of contraception among those who have come of age during a period of rapid social change.     

Framing Chinese civil actors: earthquake relief and unintended consequences for media coverage

In 2008, the participation of NGOs in disaster relief during and after a severe earthquake attracted public attention and extensive media coverage. This study analyzes how mainstream Chinese news media framed NGOs in 2008. The findings suggest that after the earthquake, not only did the amount of media coverage about Chinese NGOs increase but also the patterns of coverage changed. Furthermore, the Chinese party media and market-oriented media demonstrated different coverage patterns. The party media tended to frame the contributions of NGOs as dependent on governmental leadership and downplayed their role in disaster relief to one of support. The market-oriented media increasingly covered NGOs from multiple angles and depicted them as service providers, decision makers, and resource mobilizers.