Spousal Support of Older Women with Osteoporotic Pain: Congruity of Perceptions

ABSTRACT

Thirty-four couples were interviewed to assess the congruity of husbands' and wives' perceptions of the wives' osteoporotic pain and the exchange of instrumental support within the marital relationship. Moderate correlations were found between the husbands' and wives' ratings of two specific dimensions of the wives' pain experience: interference with daily life and pain severity. Wives who perceived their pain as more severe but as having a lesser impact on their personal lives provided the most frequent help to their husbands. The wives' pain perceptions were not predictive of the amount of assistance they perceived receiving from their spouses. Husbands' perceptions of their wives' pain experience were not predictive of the frequency of instrumental support they either received from or gave to their wives.     

A theoretical analysis of antecedents of young couples’ fertility decisions and outcomes

Longitudinal survey data from 509 couples who at Time 1 interview had recently married or had their first child did not support the hypothesis that demographic factors influence fertility intentions, decisions, and outcomes only indirectly through their effects on attitudes and motivations. Husbands’ and wives’ attitudes exerted reciprocal influence on one another. However, while husbands’ sex-role traditionalism and motivation for parenthood strongly influenced wives’ traditionalism and motivation in the case of recently married couples, this pattern was reversed for riew parents. Birth control use was directly affected by wives’ fertility intentions, but not by husbands’ intentions. Difficulties in examining couple interaction variables such as relative power and the possible limitations of fitting these data to a complex theoretical model using LISREL are discussed.     

Experiencing Undesired Daily Life Events,Instrumental Functioning,Social Support and Well-Being of Israeli Elderly Women: Comparison Between Caregivers/Non-Caregivers for Adult Children with Mental Retardation

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which 160 mothers who care for an adult child with mental retardation differ in respect to undesired daily life events, instrumental functioning, social support and well-being from a comparably matched group of age peers. Findings indicated that caregivers for adult children with mental retardation reported more undesired daily life events in comparison to the matched group. However, no differences were found in respect to their instrumental functioning, social support and well-being. A detailed analysis showed significant variations in measures of undesired daily life events and social support.     

Couple childbearing desires, intentions, and births

Using new panel data from the National Surveys of Families and Households, I investigate the effects of wives’ and husbands’ childbearing desires on their spouses’ intentions, and the effects of spouses’ desires and intentions on subsequent births. The results show clearly that husbands’ desires and intentions influence couples’ births, with approximately equal force to that of wives’ desires and intentions. When couples disagreed about wanting a child, each partners’ intentions were shifted toward not having a child; and disagreement in desires or intentions were reflected in birth rates that were lower than average. These patterns were generally not different for couples with more or less traditional gender roles or attitudes.     

Women ‘like parched earth in need of rain’ and who relax by working: gossip and the surveillance of Filipino seafarer wives’ morality and mobility

Research on the impact of male emigration on stay-behind wives shows that gossip, which transnational migration intensifies, surveils the women’s morality and constricts their mobility. Based on semi-structured interviews supplemented by field observations, this article examines the impact of gossip on the lives and experiences of stay-behind Filipino seafarer wives. First, it looks into how the women negotiated an environment in which their morality became dominated by the need to keep their reputation as faithful wives intact. As women whose husbands were away for long periods of time, they were seen as being ‘like parched earth in need of rain’ and therefore susceptible to temptation and seduction. Second, it examines how through dibersyon – activities that translated work into recreation – they counteracted the constricting effects of gossip on their mobility without compromising their perceived morality. The article concludes with a reflection on the contradiction the women’s negotiation of gossip creates: they inadvertently help to maintain gendered conceptions of morality and mobility while simultaneously working around the gender ideological and normative boundaries gossip enforces.     

What Will You Do If I Say ‘I Do’?: The Effect of the Sex Ratio on Time Use within Taiwanese Married Couples

This paper uses the natural experiment of a large imbalance between men and women of marriageable age in Taiwan in the 1960s to test the hypothesis that higher sex ratios lead to husbands (wives) having a lower (higher) share of couple’s time in leisure and higher (lower) share of the couple’s total work time (employment, commuting, and housework). The sample includes 18,134 Taiwanese couples’ time diaries from 1987, 1990, and 1994. The OLS analysis finds evidence of the predicted effects of the county-level sex ratio on husbands’ and wives’ share of leisure and total work time. The county-level sex ratio’s impact on college-educated husbands’ time use is shown to be larger than the impact on non-college-educated husbands’ time use. A two-stage least square analysis controlling for possible endogeneity of county of residence returns similar findings.     

Work, income, the economy, and married fathers as child-care providers

Previous research on fathers as child-care providers indicates a need to study the father’s role in child care in the context of different economic cycles. Using data from the 1988, 1991, and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine whether father’ availability and the couple’s economic resources are differentially related to child care by fathers over time. We focus on the differences between 1991—a recession year—and 1988 and 1993—two nonrecession years. Increased availability of fathers is significantly related to higher levels of fathers’ participation in child care in all three years. Relative economic resources between husbands and wives help explain care by fathers only during the recession year, whereas family income is important only in the nonrecession years. These results suggest that in the future, researchers should acknowledge fluctuations in the economy when studying husbands’ participation in traditional female tasks, as macroeconomic shifts appear to impact the likelihood of married fathers caring for their preschoolers during mothers’ working hours.     

Experiencing undesired daily life events, instrumental functioning, social support and well-being of Israeli elderly women: comparison between caregivers/non-caregivers for adult children with mental retardation

The purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which 160 mothers who care for an adult child with mental retardation differ in respect to undesired daily life events, instrumental functioning, social support and well-being from a comparably matched group of age peers. Findings indicated that caregivers for adult children with mental retardation reported more undesired daily life events in comparison to the matched group. However, no differences were found in respect to their instrumental functioning, social support and well-being. A detailed analysis showed significant variations in measures of undesired daily life events and social support.     

Perception of health,well-being,and quality of life in female caregivers: Comparative study of a sample of adult and older women in Spain

In a study on informal or unpaid care, it is difficult to identify the consequences and effects of care provision on the caregiver’s daily life. Thus, it is important to analyze the perceptions of the individual caregiver. This study describes the perceptions of health, well-being, support networks, and quality of life of 13 women aged between 45 and 70 years after completing an intervention program. The data indicate that caregivers’ health and quality of life worsen with the intervention, and their well-being and social relations (through new technologies) improve.     

The Psychological and Health Consequences of Caring for a Spouse With Dementia: A Critical Comparison of Husbands and Wives

Caring for someone with dementia can be demanding, particularly for spouses living with the care recipient. The main goal of this study was to clarify differences in the experience of caregivers who were husbands and wives with respect to burden, health, healthy behaviors, presence of difficult care recipient behaviors, social supports, and the quality of the premorbid relationship. The results of this study support research demonstrating a difference between the caregiving experiences of women and men. It is becoming increasingly apparent that female gender is a marker that places them at increased risk of high burden and less support.     

The effects of time allocation on parental stress

The time allocated to various activities by both husbands and wives influences the stress experienced in life roles. Looking at the division of labor before as well as after the birth of a baby gives an indication of the parents' ability to cope with the stress of parenthood. Here, time allocation variables as well as child characteristics that might explain parental stress are examined based on responses of 117 couples to the Abidin parental stress index 4–7 months after the birth of their first child, measuring stress in 2 domains-parental and child each modeled for both mother and father as a function of personal characteristics of the baby and time allocated to child care, household production, paid work, and leisure. Standardized regression analysis reveals the most important predictor variables to be age and sex of the infant, with older infants and girls predicting lower stress scores, especially in the child domain of the mother. The allocation of time by both parents failed to predict stress scores.     

Individual and couple utility of children

Models specifying the utility of another child as either a couple or an individual experience and incorporating variations in the measurement properties of responses about child utility and expectations are estimated with data from the U.S. Value of Children survey. Full information, maximum likelihood analyses indicate that child utility is an individual experience of wives and husbands rather than a shared couple experience. That is, differences in the measurement properties of wives’ and husbands’ responses do not account entirely for the less than perfect correlations between their responses. These findings demonstrate the importance of estimating errors in measurement in the analysis of wives’ and husbands’ responses about the utility of children, and they challenge the assumption that marital partners share the utility of children.     

Job characteristics of spouses and their work shifts

This study builds on an earlier finding from the May 1980 Current Population Survey that one-third of full-time dual-earner couples with children in the United States include at least one spouse who works other than a regular day shift. Using the same data source, the relevance of husbands’ and wives’ job characteristics (occupation and industry) on their shift work status are considered, and the nature of the association between husbands’ and wives’ work shifts is explored. Four alternative models are initially posed and tested with log-linear analysis; these models vary in the extent to which a spouse’s shift work status is contingent upon the job characteristics of a husband or wife. None of these models fit the data. A modification of the simplest of the four models (using forward selection) is the best fitting model. It is not symmetrical: the wife’s shift is contingent upon both her occupation and industry and that of her husband, but the husband’s shift is contingent only upon his occupation and industry. There is a relationship between husband’s and wife’s shift, the direction of which depends upon the occupations of both spouses. This study demonstrates the importance of taking a “couple” perspective on shift work among married persons, and the need for models that include interaction effects.     

Linked lives,dependent demise? Survival analysis of husbands and wives

Past research has found that married individuals have substantially lower risks of mortality than their single counterparts. This paper examines how household characteristics affect spouses’ risks of mortality. A paired hazard rate model is estimated and tests are made to ascertain whether the estimated coefficients associated with risk factors differ between husbands’ and wives’ equations. Cigarette smoking, risk-avoidance behavior, poverty, and children are found to affect wives’ and husbands’ mortality in similar ways. Divorce, which can be interpreted as the termination of this shared household environment, is found to affect spouses differently.     

Aging Children and Their Older Parents: The Coming Generation of Caregiving

ABSTRACT

This study uses a data set of older children and their older parents to examine caregiving relationships. Using the 1993 Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the 1993 Health Care Burden file, we examine help given by children to their parents. We distinguish between daughters who are household heads and daughters who are wives. We find parents receive substantially more care from daughters than from sons. The caregiving role of daughters who are household heads differs notably from that of wives. An analysis of caregiving, employment, and housework shows that children who are caregivers devote more combined hours to these activities than children who do not provide care.     

婚姻匹配结构与主观幸福感——来自中国大样本微观数据的实证研究

本文利用2006年中国综合社会调查（ CGSS ）数据,研究首次婚姻中,夫妻个人经济状况匹配和家庭经济状况匹配的不同组合与婚后生活幸福感之间的关系。本文发现,无论是男性还是女性,在控制了年龄、年龄的平方、受教育年限、民族、政治面貌、户口、宗教信仰、工作满意程度、个人健康满意程度、人际关系满意程度、住房状况、家庭经济状况、家庭关系满意程度以及省份哑变量等变量的情况下,相对于“门当户对”,家庭经济状况为“男低女高”婚配结构的生活会更幸福。在分组回归中,本文进一步发现,以“个人经济状况和家庭、经济状况同为门当户对”作为基准组,“个人经济状况为门当户对,且家庭经济状况为男低女高”的婚配结构会更幸福。如果家庭经济状况为“男低女高”是男女双方为了追求爱情而冲破传统“门第”观点的结果,那么,本文发现的引申含义是基于爱情的婚姻会更幸福。     

Husbands,wives, sons,and daughters: Fertility preferences and the demand for contraception in Ethiopia

Ethiopia, with nearly 65 millionpeople, is the second most populous country in sub-Saharan Africa. Fertility levels are among the highest in the world. Using the matched wife-husband sample from the 1990 National Family and Fertility Survey of Ethiopia we investigate the fertility desires of wives and husbands and the degree to which they are similar, including whether a preference for sons exists. We model the determinants of the desire to limit or space births, and estimate unmet need. Results indicate high levels of concurrence among husbands and wives on reproductive preferences. Where differences exist, husbands are more pronatalist than their wives. Both husbands and wives prefer to have sons and daughters, but more sons overall. Approximately 22% of wives and husbands desire to limit or space births but do not use contraception. More than half of wives and husbands with an unmet need for limiting are paired with a partner who has no such need. Three implications follow from these results: (1) differences in wives' and husbands' son and daughter preferences may help to explain discordant views among couples when it comes to the desire to limit or space births; (2) husbands' overall contribution to wives' unmet need can be substantial in African societies in the early stages of fertility transition; and (3) wives' preferences regarding children and contraception can result in unmet need on the part of husbands, even in highly gender-stratified societies where men are more pronatalist.     

Mobility,Non-Familial Activity,and Fertility

In this analysis of fertility data from a sample of non-Catholic faculty couples in an American university, temporal patterns and variations in education, employment, marriage, and parenthood of the husbands and wives are discussed in reference to (1) the social mobility-fertility hypothesis and (2) a non-familial activity-fertility hypothesis.The couples are divided into four groups on the basis of family size and mobility status: (1) mobile-small, (2) non-mobile-small, (3) mobile-large, and (4) non-mobile-large. Whatever their mobility status, the four groups of husbands successfully completed requirements for the doctoral degree at about the same age and became established at about the same time in life and within the profession. Whatever their husbands' social origins, the wives also differ little with respect to educational attainment and in their work experiences in prematrimonial days. However, a different pattern is found in the work experiences of the wives since marriage. Those with two children are more likely to be employed after marriage and parenthood.On the other hand, a good many more wives with four or more children not only never worked before marriage but also remained outside the labor force after marriage (in the earlier years of marriage as well as after the tenth anniversary). The present data thus seem to support an analytically useful distinction between the "working wives" and the "working mothers."     

Aging children and their older parents: the coming generation of caregiving

This study uses a data set of older children and their older parents to examine caregiving relationships. Using the 1993 Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the 1993 Health Care Burden file, we examine help given by children to their parents. We distinguish between daughters who are household heads and daughters who are wives. We find parents receive substantially more care from daughters than from sons. The caregiving role of daughters who are household heads differs notably from that of wives. An analysis of caregiving, employment, and house-work shows that children who are caregivers devote more combined hours to these activities than children who do not provide care.