Young Women’s Dynamic Family Size Preferences in the Context of Transitioning Fertility

Dynamic theories of family size preferences posit that they are not a fixed and stable goal but rather are akin to a moving target that changes within individuals over time. Nonetheless, in high-fertility contexts, changes in family size preferences tend to be attributed to low construct validity and measurement error instead of genuine revisions in preferences. To address the appropriateness of this incongruity, the present study examines evidence for the sequential model of fertility among a sample of young Malawian women living in a context of transitioning fertility. Using eight waves of closely spaced data and fixed-effects models, we find that these women frequently change their reported family size preferences and that these changes are often associated with changes in their relationship and reproductive circumstances. The predictability of change gives credence to the argument that ideal family size is a meaningful construct, even in this higher-fertility setting. Changes are not equally predictable across all women, however, and gamma regression results demonstrate that women for whom reproduction is a more distant goal change their fertility preferences in less-predictable ways.     

The Impact of Fathers’ Work and Family Conflicts on Children’s Self-Esteem: The Hong Kong Case

Work and family conflicts are always viewed as issues of human resource management or occupational health. Insufficient attention has been focused on the impact on child development and quality of parenting, especially regarding the impact of a father’s work. To examine the impact of work and family conflicts on the quality of father–child interactions in Hong Kong, a cross-sectional survey was conducted. In total, 556 pairs of working fathers and their school-aged children participated in the survey. The findings of the survey indicated that fathers’ work-to-family conflicts negatively affected the quality of father–child interactions, which in turn caused harm to children’s self-esteem. In addition to work-family conflicts, a low income level of the fathers, a larger number of children in the family, and the presence in the family of children approaching adolescence were significant risk factors to the quality of father–child interactions. The mothers’ active parental involvement and the complexity of the fathers’ occupation were significant protective factors of the quality of father–child interactions. To facilitate strong family bonding and good quality parenting, possible measures to ensure a healthy work-family balance among working fathers are discussed.     

The Effects of Grandparents on Children’s Schooling: Evidence From Rural China

The issue of whether the social class of grandparents affects grandchildren’s socioeconomic outcomes net of the characteristics of the middle generation is much debated in the social mobility literature. Using data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project, we investigate the direct effects of grandparents on grandchildren’s educational attainment in rural China. We find that the influence of grandparents is contingent on living arrangements. Although the educational level of coresident grandparents directly affects the educational attainment of their grandchildren, with an effect size similar to that of parental education, the education of noncoresident and deceased grandparents does not have any effect. These findings suggest that grandparents can directly affect grandchildren’s educational outcomes through sociopsychological pathways. Our study not only adds an important case study to the literature but also sheds new light on theoretical interpretations of grandparent effects when they are found.     

Schooling the public on boys: the ongoing salience in media representations of the “crisis” in boys’ education

This paper explores the salience of the “crisis” in boys’ education as it is articulated in Australian print media. We will consider the ways in which this crisis is expressed through a gendered language which simultaneously represents boys as “forgotten” by teaching practices thought to be prioritising girls’ learning, and as an equity (disadvantaged) grouping who require specialised teaching methods different from those currently offered within the Australian school system. Further, we will examine the extent to which feminist-inspired reforms in education are either implicitly or explicitly referenced as an explanation for boys’ apparently poor education attainment, and relatedly consider the work of “experts” supporting claims of a pro-feminine bias that adversely affects boys’ learning outcomes, particularly those experts offering neurological or psychological/cognitive findings which assert a biological basis for gender difference. In this context, we argue that rather than advancing gender equity in schools, popular public discourse, as presented in Australian print media, reinforces and perpetuates notions of gender difference and masculine entitlement.     

Family Size and Children’s Education: Evidence from the One-Child Policy in China

Population Research and Policy Review - Evidence on a causal link between family size and children’s education is still inconclusive. Recent empirical studies have focused heavily on China,...     

The Impact of Migration on Fertility under China’s Underlying Restrictions: A Comparative Study Between Permanent and Temporary Migrants

Compared with that in other countries, the issue of fertility in China is more complicated because of its restriction policy or system. Several major hypotheses have been proposed to explain and predict the impact of migration on China’s fertility regardless of China’s real situation. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impact of migration on fertility considering China’s underlying restrictions using the data from the Chinese General Social Survey carried out in 2008. The social class in this study was divided into two, namely urban class and rural class. By building the 2 × 2 mobility tables and the diagonal mobility model, the study determined the impact of migration on fertility and analyzed the influence of some restrictions, such as family planning, traditional fertility concept, and household registration system. Results show that migration greatly affects fertility: upward migration (i.e., from rural to urban) may decrease the fertility, whereas downward migration (i.e., from urban to rural) may increase it. The degree of decline on fertility is greater than that of increase. Family planning still plays a role in fertility decline. Traditional concepts on fertility, for example, bringing up sons to take care of parents in their old age and preferring boys to girls, are anchored on the people’s mind, which is detrimental to the stability of the fertility rate. Moreover, the household registration system primarily influences the fertility behavior of temporary migration, with a negative relationship between them.     

The Impact of Having a Baby on the Level and Content of Women’s Well-Being

The primary objective of this study was to more fully understand the impact of having a baby on women’s well-being by attending to both the level and the content of well-being. To cover the judgemental and affective aspects of well-being we included global measures of life satisfaction and well-being and affective experience measures derived from the day reconstruction method. In a sample of 19 first-time mothers no differences between pre and postnatal reports of general life satisfaction, depression, anxiety, and experienced positive and negative affect were found, suggesting that the arrival of the newborn baby does not universally impact on women’s level of well-being. Changes in the content of well-being were studied by examining changes in the way women experience specific activities and interactions with various social partners. There appeared to be an upward shift in experienced positive affect during active leisure and a slight decrease in negative affect during time spent with relatives. The results are discussed in light of previously documented changes across the transition to motherhood in negative mood states, time use, women’s evaluation of various aspects of daily life, and relational satisfaction.     

Children and Careers: How Family Size Affects Parents’ Labor Market Outcomes in the Long Run

We estimate the effect of family size on various measures of labor market outcomes over the whole career until retirement, using instrumental variables estimation in data from Norwegian administrative registers. Parents’ number of children is instrumented with the sex mix of their first two children. We find that having additional children causes sizable reductions in labor supply for women, which fade as children mature and even turn positive for women without a college degree. Among women with a college degree, there is evidence of persistent and even increasing career penalties of family size. Having additional children reduces these women’s probability of being employed by higher-paying firms, their earnings rank within the employing firm, and their probability of being the top earner at the workplace. Some of the career effects persist long after labor supply is restored. We find no effect of family size on any of men’s labor market outcomes in either the short or long run.     

Homosexuality,Religion, and the Family: The Effects of Religion on Americans’ Appraisals of the Parenting Abilities of Same-Sex Couples

Although a growing body of research focuses on Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex couples as parents, very few include measures of religion, and those that do fail to capture its multidimensional nature. Furthermore, many past studies relied on convenience samples of college students, or samples gathered outside the United States. Multivariate analyses of the 2012 General Social Survey—a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States—reveal that a slim majority of Americans still do not believe same-sex couples can parent as well as male-female couples, and the religious beliefs, behaviors, and affiliations of Americans are significantly and at times differentially associated with appraisals of same-sex couples’ parenting abilities. It appears that although religion is generally associated with more negative appraisals of the parenting abilities of same-sex couples, it is not uniformly so. Americans’ immediate religious and cultural context can shape their appraisals of homosexuality in diverse ways.     

The Performance of the World Health Organization’s WHOQOL-BREF in Assessing the Quality of Life of Thai College Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of the Thai-version of WHOQOL-BREF in assessing the quality of life (QoL) among Thai college students. The psychometric properties of WHOQOL-BREF were assessed in this study. The self-administered WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire was applied. A total of 407 Thai college students (male age = 20.5 ± 1.2; female age = 20.5 ± 1.2) participated in this study. Item-response distributions, internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, criterion-related validity and construct validity through confirmatory analysis were analyzed. The findings indicate that the WHOQOL-BREF had acceptable internal consistency (α = 0.73–0.83 across four domains), all items highly correlated with corresponding domain scores (r = 0.53–0.80), the indices of a two-order confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrate that the data fit the model well with allowing covary of error variances of some items, all items had good property of criterion-related validity and item discrimination and, all three domain scores except the social relationship domain had significant associations with overall QoL or general health. The results suggest that the WHOQOL-BREF was reliable and valid to health professionals in the assessment of the QoL of college-based Thai youth, but some unsuitable items may be deleted in future studies.     

Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

Disparities in Children’s Family Experiences by Mother’s Socioeconomic Status: The Case of Finland

A well-known argument claims that socioeconomic differentials in children’s family structures have become increasingly important in shaping child outcomes and the resources available to children in developed societies. One assumption is that differentials are comparatively small in Nordic welfare states. Our study examines how children’s experiences of family structures and family dynamics vary by their mother’s educational attainment in Finland. Based on register data on the childbearing and union histories of women in Finland born from 1969 onwards, we provide life-table estimates of children’s (N?=?64,162) experiences of family dissolution, family formation, and family structure from ages 0–15 years, stratified by mother’s education level at the child’s birth. We find huge socioeconomic disparities in children’s experiences of family structures and transitions. Compared to children of highly educated mothers, children of mothers with low levels of education are almost twice as likely to be born in cohabitation and four times as likely to be born to a lone mother. They are also much more likely to experience further changes in family structure—particularly parental separation. On average, children of low-educated mothers spend just half of their childhood years living with both their parents, whereas those of high-educated mothers spend four-fifths of their childhood with both parents. The sociodemographic inequalities among children in Nordic welfare states clearly deserve more scholarly attention.     

Pregnancy and Dropout: Effects of Family,Neighborhood, and High School Characteristics on Girls’ Fertility and Dropout Status

Population Research and Policy Review - Administrative data from multiple sources are combined to measure pregnancy (excluding those ending in abortion or miscarriage) and high school dropout in a...     

External Information Model in a Compositional Perspective: Evaluation of Campania Adolescents’ Preferences in the Allocation of Leisure-Time

Social Indicators Research - The study of preferences of leisure-time activities provides important information on the characteristics and inclinations of specific demographics. Modeling these data...     

The Impact of Sense of Community in the School,Social Skills,and Exposure to Aggression and Victimization on Students’ Well-Being

Research suggests that sense of community in the school is a promising construct in terms of its ability to promote students’ well-being. However, mechanisms behind and the potential benefits of school sense of community have not been studied in detail. This cross-sectional study tested a model which examined the role of sense of community in the school, social skills, exposure to aggression, and victimization in shaping students’ well-being. The sample consisted of 1076 students from 22 public middle schools and 724 students from 22 public high schools located in the Italian Region of Liguria. Using a Bayesian estimation for a structural equation model, results showed that sense of community in the school directly predicted students’ social skills, exposure to aggression, and well-being and, indirectly (through social skills and exposure to aggression), victimization. In addition, we found that social skills were related to victimization. Finally, results showed that victimization was predicted by exposure to aggression and predicted well-being. The current study suggests that sense of community in the school and social skills are key variables for interventions that aim to prevent aggressive behaviors at school and to increase students’ well-being.     

Sharing the wealth: The effect of siblings on adults’ wealth ownership

Inequality in wealth has been well-documented, but its causes remain uncertain. Family processes in childhood are likely to shape adults' wealth accumulation, but these factors have attracted little attention. I argue that family size matters: children from larger families accumulate less wealth than do those from smaller families. Siblings dilute parents' finite financial resources and nonmaterial resources, such as time. This diminishment of resources reduces educational attainment, inter vivos transfers, and inheritance. Reduced educational attainment and transfers alter financial behavior; saving; and, ultimately, adults' wealth. I demonstrate that sibship size is associated with lower overall wealth in adulthood and that parents' resources and education, respondent's education, financial transfers, and financial behavior all mitigate the effect of siblings. Sibship size also reduces the likelihood of receiving a trust account or an inheritance and decreases home- and stock ownership. The findings provide important insights into early family processes that shape wealth accumulation and inequality.     

The recalcitrance of distance: exploring the infrastructures of sending in migrants’ lives

This paper puts the spatiality of migration, and more specifically post-migration connections, centre stage. It explores the distances confronted by migrants as they stay connected with their pre-migration lives, recognising that these distances are recalcitrant, asymmetrically governed spaces. Indeed, migrants can be understood as experts in the navigation of international space and ‘the tyranny of distance’. Inspired by recent work on urban and translocal infrastructures and taking the empirical example of migration infrastructures in the lives of Poles and Zimbabweans in the UK, looking particularly at the materiality and logistics of sending things back, this paper builds new discussions about migration which take the spatial, physical and grounded elements of migration and translocalism more seriously.     

The Short-Term Impact of Involuntary Migration in China’s Three Gorges: A Prospective Study

The aim of this study is to measure the short-term impact of involuntary migration resulting from China’s Three Gorges Dam project on the 1.3 million persons being displaced. We focus on the social, economic, and mental and physical health impact using three sets of indicators. Using a prospective research design, we gathered information about these indicators from a sample of migrants first before they moved and then again after they moved. Changes in the migrants’ wellbeing during the period, when benchmarked to corresponding changes computed for a control group of non-migrants, are attributed to the impact of involuntary migration. Our results showed that although the displaced have enjoyed a relative gain in housing quality, most of the changes were in the negative direction and many of such negative changes were statistically significant.     

The effect of women’s participation in the labour market on the postponement of first childbirth: a comparison of Italy and Hungary

This paper analyses the effect of increasing female participation in the labour market on the transition to first childbirth. Regional perspectives are considered to help us understand how postponement behaviour is changing over time and at different paces in each region. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey of Italy and Hungary. We use a multilevel event history random intercept model to examine the effect of individuals’ positions in the labour market on the transition to motherhood, controlling for differences in macrolevel factors related to regional backgrounds in the two countries. The regional data for Italy came from the Italian National Statistical Institute, and for Hungary from our imputation developed from the time series available at the national and the regional levels (Hungarian Central Statistical Office, KSH). The postponement of first childbirth is strongly linked to the increasing involvement of women in paid work, but with opposite effects in the two countries. Even if we control for changes in women’s levels of education over time and for shifts in women’s aspirations and levels of attainment in the labour market, we find that being employed remains a risk factor for the postponement of the first birth among Italian women, and a strong protective factor among Hungarian women. At the contextual level, the variables that take into account the regional socio-economic changes provides evidence of important effects on individual behaviour among Italian women, and of only minor effects among Hungarian women. All of the regional breakdowns in both Italy and Hungary show that the postponement of motherhood goes hand-in-hand with the acceptance of deep cultural and socio-economic changes.