Parental Predivorce Relations and Offspring Postdivorce Well‐Being

This 2‐part study uses national longitudinal interview data from parents and their adult children to examine the way in which predivorce marital conflict influences the impact of divorce on children. In the 1st study, we find that the dissolution of low‐conflict marriages appears to have negative effects on offspring's lives, whereas the dissolution of high‐conflict marriages appears to have beneficial effects. The dissolution of low‐conflict marriages is associated with the quality of children's intimate relationships, social support from friends and relatives, and general psychological well‐being. The 2nd study considers how parents in low‐conflict marriages that end in divorce differ from other parents before divorce. We find that low‐conflict parents who divorce are less integrated into the community, have fewer impediments to divorce, have more favorable attitudes toward divorce, are more predisposed to engage in risky behavior, and are less likely to have experienced a parental divorce.     

Parenthood and Life Satisfaction: Why Don't Children Make People Happy?

Previous research on the association between parenthood and life satisfaction has shown that parents of minor children are not more satisfied with their lives than childless people. This study addressed the question of why children do not enhance their parents' life satisfaction. A major objective of this study was to determine whether and to what extent the costs of raising children act as suppressors of life satisfaction. The empirical analysis applied fixed‐effects models and used data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel (1994–2010, N = 16,021). The 3 primary findings of this study were that (a) parenthood by itself has substantial and enduring positive effects on life satisfaction; (b) these positive effects are offset by financial and time costs of parenthood; and (c) the impact of these costs varies considerably with family factors, such as the age and number of children, marital status, and the parents' employment arrangements.     

Responsibility Inferences and Intergenerational Obligations to Parents and Stepparents: Are Step/Children Less Obligated When Older Adults Are at Fault for Their Problems?

Beliefs about intergenerational obligations to assist older adults are known to be influenced by contextual variables such as the type of kin relationship (i.e., stepparent, parent) between older and younger adults. One contextual variable that has not been studied is the degree to which older individuals are seen as culpable for their problems. If older kin are perceived to be at fault for their problems, are they seen as less deserving of help than if they are not to blame? Do judgments about being at fault for problems affect beliefs about helping parents differently than beliefs about helping stepparents? A random national sample of 229 men and 274 women responded to vignettes about an older parent or stepparent who needed help managing diabetes, which was presented as either the consequence of the older adult's actions or as an inherited illness. Respondents were asked about younger family members' obligations to help older adults, how much help younger adults and public agencies should provide, and how much older adults were responsible for themselves. The effects of older adults' marital status and sex of both adults also were examined. Obligations to stepparents were less than obligations to parents. The amount of help respondents thought should be provided was moderated by older adults' marital status. Obligations and aid to parents and stepparents generally were not affected by the older adults' culpability for the problems.     

Cohabiting and Married Individuals' Relations With Their Partner's Parents

Using Norwegian survey data on partnered individuals ages 18 to 55 (N = 4,061; 31% cohabitors), the current study investigated differences across marital and cohabiting unions regarding the patterns of contact with the parents of the partner. In addition to investigating the frequency of such contact, we assessed the nature of and perceived quality of contacts with the partner's parents. The authors grouped respondents according to whether they had children with their partner and controlled for a range of selection characteristics. Results confirmed that parents with preschool children met their in‐laws more frequently than the childless, irrespective of union type. Married respondents as well as cohabitors with preschool children reported better relations with their partner's parents than childless cohabitors. Taken together, the results imply that having small children was more decisive for the relationship with the parents of the partner than getting married, particularly with regard to contact frequency.     

Willingness and availability: Explaining new attitudes toward institutional elder care among Chinese elderly parents and their adult children

This paper studies the attitudes of Chinese elderly parents and their family members toward institutional elder care. Based on a sample survey of 265 elderly residents in 67 elder home institutions and 114 family members, this study finds that elders and family members generally had high evaluations of institutions' quality in terms of facility, medical, and direct care conditions. Elders who reported improved health and emotional well-being after entering institutions gave higher ratings to those institutions' quality. Among adult children, those who had more siblings tended to rate institutions higher than those who had fewer siblings. Factors that influenced elders' willingness to stay in an institution included marital status and financial ability. Widowed elders were more willing to stay in institutions compared with married counterparts. Elders who rated service charge very high preferred to stay at home due to the high cost of institutional care. In the family relatives' sample, gender was found to be related to willingness to place elderly parents in an institution; female children were less willing to place elderly parents in the institution.     

Psychological Well‐being Among Older Adults: The Role of Partnership Status

Today's older adults are increasingly unmarried. Some are in cohabiting unions, others are dating, and many remain unpartnered. Unmarried older adults are at risk of poorer well‐being than married older adults, but it is unclear whether older cohabitors fare worse than or similar to their married counterparts; nor have well‐being differences among cohabitors, daters, and unpartnered persons been considered. Conceptualizing marital status as a continuum of social attachment, data from Waves I and II of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project are used to examine how older married, cohabiting, dating, and unpartnered individuals differ across multiple indicators of psychological well‐being. Among men, cohabitors appear to fare similarly to the married, and better than daters and the unpartnered. In contrast, there are few differences in psychological well‐being by partnership status for women.     

Maternal Employment in Childhood and Adults’ Retrospective Reports of Parenting Practices

Do adults’ perceptions of their mothers’ and fathers’ parenting practices in childhood vary by their mothers’ employment status? Among adults in the Survey of Midlife Development in United States who lived with 2 biological parents until the age of 16 years (N = 2,246), those who had employed mothers during most or all of their childhood reported less support and less discipline from both parents than those who had stay‐at‐home mothers. Sons but not daughters who had employed mothers reported more verbal or physical assaults by both parents than their counterparts who had homemaker mothers. Despite greater social acceptance of maternal employment among younger Americans, cohort differences were not evident. These findings underscore the significance of mothers’ economic roles in influencing offspring’s perceptions of family dynamics.     

Reconfigured Everyday Lives of Children from Divorced-Parent Families in Singapore

With the termination of a marriage, children involved inevitably experience dramatic changes in different facets of their lives. This article makes use of narrative accounts of divorced single parents to investigate how their marital dissolution has impacted and changed their children's lives. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 25 Singaporean divorced parents. Within the policy and social context of Singapore society, I highlight transformations in three specific aspects of the children's lives: one, the reconfigurations of familial relationships and formation of a new family unit; two, the creation of and adaptation to new family practices and routine; three, the adoption of new social identity following parental divorce. This article hopes to present a more nuanced understanding of the divorce experience by emphasizing both the precarious and productive aspects in the children's lives, contra to the existing divorce literature that typically focuses on the former.     

Pregnancy Intentions and Parents' Psychological Well‐Being

Extant research suggests that parents are more depressed than childless adults, yet the role of pregnancy intentions is largely absent from the discussion. Using 2 waves of data from the National Survey of Families and Households (n = 825 women, n = 889 men), the author found that pregnancy intentions are an important consideration for parents' well‐being. The results suggest that unintended births are associated with increased depressive symptoms among fathers and decreased happiness among mothers. This association persisted even after accounting for union status and measures of depressive symptoms and happiness prior to the birth. The author also investigated the social, psychological, and economic mechanisms that explain this relationship. Self‐efficacy and financial strain partially explain the link between unintended births and poorer well‐being.     

Parental Divorce and Child Mental Health Trajectories

A process‐oriented approach to parental divorce locates the experience within the social and developmental context of children's lives, providing greater insight into how parental divorce produces vulnerability in some children and resiliency in others. The current study involves prospectively tracking a nationally representative sample of Canadian children of ages 4–7 and living with two biological parents at initial interview in 1994 (N = 2,819), and comparing the mental health trajectories of children whose parents remain married with those whose parents divorce by 1998. Results from growth curve models confirm that, even before marital breakup, children whose parents later divorce exhibit higher levels of anxiety/depression and antisocial behavior than children whose parents remain married. There is a further increase in child anxiety/depression but not antisocial behavior associated with the event of parental divorce itself. Controlling for predivorce parental socioeconomic and psychosocial resources fully accounts for poorer child mental health at initial interview among children whose parents later divorce, but does not explain the divorce‐specific increase in anxiety/depression. Finally, a significant interaction between parental divorce and predivorce levels of family dysfunction suggests that child antisocial behavior decreases when marriages in highly dysfunctional families are dissolved.     

Choosing Childlessness: Weber's Typology of Action and Motives of the Voluntarily Childless*

There has been little in‐depth theoretical study in sociology of the motives of women and men who are childless by choice. This article begins to remedy this deficiency by analyzing the motives articulated by twenty‐three childless women and men using Weber's typology of social action and distinction between primary and end motives. In‐depth interview and focus group data reveal that, compared to men, women more often were affected by the parenting models of significant others, saw parenting as conflicting with career and leisured identities, and claimed the lack of a “maternal instinct” or disinterest in children as dominant influences. Men more explicitly than women rejected parenthood because of its perceived sacrifices, including financial expense. Both women and men were motivated by personality traits that they deemed incongruent with good parenting. Declared motives especially demonstrated instrumentally rational action in Weber's schema, although affectual and value‐rational actions also were present. Respondent motives are compared to those that they, and empirical studies, have attributed to parents.     

The Mental Health of the Childless Elderly

The substantial number of childless elderly in Canada and the United States raises important concerns about the nature of their family support, as well as their psychological well-being. Although the (mixed) effects of childlessness on the mental health of the elderly are well documented in the literature, little is known about the social distribution of psychological distress and depression within this population: how well the childless elderly live, the status of their mental health, and what factors affect their psychological well-being are all crucial questions that remain unanswered. This paper utilizes Pearlin et al.'s (1981) stress process model to examine psychological distress and depression among the childless elderly. Our empirical analysis uses a nationally representative sample of childless individuals aged 55 and over ( N = 2,311) from the 1996-1997 National Population Health Survey (NPHS), and generalized linear model (GLM) techniques. Generally, our results support the stress process model. We find that individual-level stressors exert a strong and consistently negative impact on psychological distress and depression. We also find significant buffering effects of (perceived) social support.     

Parenthood or nonparenthood: A comparison of intentional families

A sample of the intentionally childless was compared with a sample of parents who exerted an equal amount of control over their family size by planning the number, timing, and spacing of their children. While both the childless and the parents expressed high levels of marital and life satisfaction, the intentionally childless were significantly more satisfied with their marital relationships. The childless were less conforming, had higher self-esteem, and were equally as empathic as the parents. The childless and the parents were markedly similar with regard to background factors and in their perceptions of their childhood and of their parents' relationship.The authors wish to thank Linda Gorin Sibner for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.Bonnie Burman received a B.A. and a M.S.W. from UCLA. She is currently a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Southern California. Diane de Anda is associate professor, School of Social Welfare, UCLA. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. de Anda, UCLA, School of Social Welfare, 405 N. Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA. 90024.     

Women's Marriage Behavior Following a Premarital Birth in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This study examines the relationship between premarital childbearing and the timing of women's entry into their first marriage in sub‐Saharan Africa. The study shows that African women who have a premarital birth generally experience later transitions to marriage than do their childless peers. Although the birth of a child precipitates a quicker transition to marriage initially, unmarried mothers, on average, marry at older ages than their childless peers and remain single for between 2 and 14 years. Evidence from a subsample of countries confirms that the time between having a child and first marriage has lengthened slightly in some countries; however, this reflects mainly the overall trend toward later marriage, rather than a further bifurcation of the marital trajectories of mothers versus childless women. The study raises policy concerns about the welfare of Africa's single mothers and their children.     

The Effects of Divorce on Children: Married and Divorced Parents' Perspectives

Three hypotheses, derived from the social psychology literature, regarding the impact of marital status history on parents' attitudes toward the impact of divorce on children were examined. Married parents (n = 118) were expected to report more negative effects of divorce on children than divorced parents (n = 114); mothers and fathers whose own parents remained married were expected to rate the impact of divorce more negatively than mothers and fathers whose parents had divorced; and, divorced parents who initiated their own divorce were expected to report fewer negative effects of divorce on children than parents who did not initiate divorce. All three hypotheses were supported, extending the self- and vested-interest research to the divorce literature.     

Italian College Student-Reported Childhood Exposure to Parental Alienation: Correlates With Well-Being

Two hundred and fifty-seven undergraduate psychology students in Chieti, Italy completed an anonymous and confidential survey regarding their childhood exposure to parental alienation, psychological maltreatment, and measures of current functioning. Results revealed high levels of reported exposure to parental alienation behaviors by those whose parents divorced or separated and by those who reported that—regardless of marital status—their parents’ relationship was “very bad.” Those with any exposure to parental alienation reported higher rates of parental psychological maltreatment, lower rates of parental caring, as well as poor functioning with respect to self-esteem, depression, adult attachment styles, alcohol abuse, self-direction, and cooperation. These findings support the theory that parental alienation represents a risk factor for compromised outcomes across the life span.     

Beyond Parental Status: Psychological Well‐Being in Middle and Old Age

Surveys show little evidence of psychosocial disadvantage among childless middle‐aged and older adults, but less is known about the diverse experiences that influence subjective well‐being among parents and childless adults. In this article, the author uses the National Survey of Families and Households to test a parental‐status typology on the basis of attitudes among childless adults and parent‐child relationship quality and the connection of these factors with loneliness and depression. Poorer parent‐child relationships are linked to worse outcomes for both mothers and fathers, net of other factors. For childless adults, negative attitudes about childlessness are associated with greater distress for women than for men.     

College Student Perceptions of the Content of Father Stereotypes

This study used a three‐step procedure to examine 663 Midwestern university students' perceptions of the content of social stereotypes related to seven types of fathers. Married and adoptive fathers were the most positively stereotyped groups, and divorced residential fathers were also viewed quite positively. There were relatively neutral views of stepfathers and gay fathers, whereas divorced nonresidential and never‐married fathers were the most negatively stereotyped groups. Our results empirically supported the notion that younger adults' stereotypes of fathers depend on the father’s marital status, parental status, and sexual orientation.     

Life Course Status and Exchanges of Support Between Young Adults and Parents

The authors investigated intergenerational support exchanges in relation to young adults' life course status. In a sample of 2,022 young adults (ages 18–34 years) in The Netherlands, single young adults reported receiving more advice from parents than married young adults, and those with children of their own received more practical support. Married young adults and young adults with children provided less support to parents than, respectively, single young adults and young adults without children. Congruent with the life course perspective, the authors' findings suggest that the intergenerational support network is both durable and flexible, responding to the resources and needs associated with an individual's life course status.     

Joy and sorrow: Explaining Chinese caregivers' reward and stress

This study explores positive and negative aspects of Chinese caregivers' experience, specifically, caregiving social reward as well as depression. Based on data collected in 1997–1999 with 110 caregivers who were then taking care of physically dependent parents or parents-in-law, this study finds that caregivers caring for elder parents with pensions reported higher levels of social rewards. Caregivers who were unemployed and had poor self-rated health reported higher levels of depression. Cultural values were found to have two dimensions of effect on caregiving experiences: while caregivers' report of strong filial responsibility was positively related to caregivers' depression scores, caregivers' report of social pressure was negatively related to their report of social reward. The author argues that the dual effect of family economic conditions and caregivers' cultural values calls for greater attention to elders' financial stability and caregivers' psychological well-being.