Decision-making by children

In this paper, we examine the determinants of decision-making power by children and young adolescents. Moving beyond previous economic models that treat children as goods consumed by adults, we develop a noncooperative model of parental control of child behavior and child resistance. Using child reports of decision-making and psychological and cognitive measures from the NLSY79 Child Supplement, we examine the determinants of shared and sole decision-making based on indices created from seven domains of child activity. We find that the determinants of sole decision-making by the child and shared decision-making with parents are quite distinct: sharing decisions appears to be a form of parental investment in child development rather than a simple stage in the transfer of authority. In addition, we find that indicators of child capabilities and preferences affect reports of decision-making authority in ways that suggest child demand for autonomy as well as parental discretion in determining these outcomes.

The response of household parental investment to child endowments

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child’s initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.

Did the legalization of abortion increase women’s household bargaining power? Evidence from labor supply

I estimate the impact of abortion legalization on spouses’ labor supplies to test whether legalization increased women’s household bargaining power, in a collective household behavior framework. Based on CPS data, I find that wives’ labor supply decreased and their husbands’ increased, which is consistent with the bargaining hypothesis. This contrasts with most studies of abortion and birth control technologies, which predict a labor supply effect only for women, and of opposite sign. Also consistent with the bargaining interpretation, I estimate no significant impact on anti-abortion religious couples or on those who regularly used contraceptives. PSID data yield supportive evidence.

Combining Stated and Revealed Preference Data to Construct an Empirical Examination of Intrahousehold Bargaining

Most analysis of intrahousehold decisions has been conducted using aggregate revealed preference data where preferences of individual agents are never observed, only the household consumption outcomes are observed. We examine household behavior in a bargaining framework by combining stated preference information from individual members of the household with revealed preference information on the household’s actual choices. The resulting model provides information on the degree to which the decision is the result of a bargaining process as well as information on the factors affecting bargaining power.

Gender preference,biased sex ratio,and parental investments in single-child households

This article investigates parental investments in single-child households. It shows that son preference triggers more parental investments in children and its effects are stronger on investments in sons. A rise in the sex ratio creates a marriage market squeeze. It, however, has ambiguous effects on investments in children, which depends on how strong these investments are as measures for influencing children’s marriage probability. A rise in the sex ratio may particularly raise investments in daughters and lower investments in sons, or vice versa, or it may induce more or less parental investments in both sons and daughters. If the sex ratio and preference of sons are correlated, then the effect of the preference for sons on investments in children is generally ambiguous. If the sex ratio is influenced by parental health investments, then son preference induces a higher sex ratio. However, the higher sex ratio has ambiguous effects on the subsequent parental investments before a child’s marriage. We also show that parental preference of child services over a child’s marital status may explain parental investments.

A Review of the Literature on the Social and Economic Determinants of Parental Time

Parental time has been identified as a key determinant in the healthy development of a child. The literature on this topic has rapidly increased in recent years and has revealed large variations in the amount of time that parents devote to their children, including variations over time and across social and economic subgroups of the population. This paper synthesizes research devoted to parental time to provide a more succinct understanding of its significance and its variations. Beginning with the measurement issues associated with parental time research and the theoretical foundations, the paper goes on to document the social and economic determinants of parental time. It concludes with a discussion of the theoretical implications of the findings and suggestions for future research.

The Monster Within: Countertransference Reflections on a Gay Adolescent’s Struggle with Sexual Identity

This paper concerns the author’s countertransference reflections on her work with a gay adolescent who identifies with powerfully destructive internal objects, including Hitler and the Monster. The author describes her countertransference inquiry through which she experiences her own potential destructiveness in order to help accommodate her adolescent patient’s rejected and disowned self states.

Government Intervention in Public Sector Industrial Relations: Lessons from the Alberta Teachers’ Association

In the public sector, Canadian governments intervene frequently in labor disputes by suspending collective bargaining and curtailing legal strikes. Previous research has focused on the contours of government intervention, such as its overall effects on collective bargaining and strikes. The discussion highlights one actor, a government, restricting the behavior of another actor, a union, using legislation and policy making. As a result, we know less about more micro-level elements and implications of the process of government intervention. I address these themes using a detailed case study of the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the strikes it coordinated in 2002.

Agreeing on more than chicken soup: Intra-household decision-making and treatment for child psychopathology

Using a large, U.S. dataset it is shown that children are more likely to receive needed mental health specialty treatment when women have greater decision-making power, as measured by an index of wife-favorable divorce laws and by the sex ratio at the time of marriage. Stratified analyses show that this effect is modified by the degree of marital conflict. Marriages characterized by high conflict conform more closely to the unified household model. The paper then presents a model of household decision-making consistent with these results that incorporates both objective determinants of bargaining power as well as the role of violent coercion in maintaining otherwise unsustainable equilibria. Implications for improving children’s access to mental health treatment are offered.

The labor supply of married women and spousal tax deductions in Japan—a structural estimation

The Japanese tax system offers an opportunity to investigate the labor supply response of married women to the income tax and the intrahousehold resource allocation mechanism, since the deductible amount from the husband’s income decreases as the wife’s earnings increase. Using cross-section data, I structurally estimate the labor supply of married women under the piece-wise linear budget constraint created by the Japanese tax and social security system. I find that the wife’s labor supply response to her husband’s decreasing deduction tends to be greater than the response to her own income tax. This suggests that not only the unitary model is rejected but also that female labor is allocated inefficiently within a family. Finally, this study shows that the choice of household model affects the predicted effect of policy reform and that the currently proposed reforms will have less of an effect on the labor supply of married women than previous studies claim.

“Which One Is Yours?”: Children and Ethnography

This paper explores roles that children play in ethnographic research. Based on the limited literature on children in the field, and drawing on examples from ethnographies across disciplines, I identify four roles for children: 1) as “wedges,” or as instrumentally important in helping adult ethnographers gain access in various ways; 2) as collaborators; 3) as objects of study; and 4) as subjects of study. I also discuss the ways in which these roles illuminate key methodological issues in ethnography, like reflexivity, ethics, and agency. The paper synthesizes and integrates previously disconnected research on the presence of children in the field with ethnographies in which children and childhood are the topics of research. I draw on my own fieldwork experiences for further illustration.

Airline Negotiations and the New Concessionary Bargaining

I ask whether the highly confrontational collective bargaining in the airlines is unique to that industry or a sign of a deepening crisis in union–management relations nationally. First, airline labor relations are reviewed in the context of extremely contentious negotiations, intense industry competition, complex and fragmented bargaining structures, frequent bankruptcies, and unpredictable external shocks. Next, concessionary bargaining in the airlines is discussed, and a new and extreme form of concessionary bargaining is identified. The emergence of the new concessionary bargaining in the airlines and its spread to the automobile sector is then interpreted as the early signs of a fundamental transformation of collective bargaining. The implications of the new concessionary bargaining are then described at the workplace, company, union, and societal levels.

Antecedents and Consequences of Faculty Women’s Academic–Parental Role Balancing

This paper examines antecedents and consequences of faculty women’s academic–parental role balancing, defined as the process of experiencing greater interrole facilitation/enhancement than interrole conflict/depletion. It is posited that childcare responsibilities affect the career–family challenges academic women face, i.e., dueling tenure and biological clocks, reduced mobility for faculty women with children, and the illusion that a flexible academic schedule permits one to perform all the responsibilities of a full-time academic and a full-time parent. The paper presents a theoretical model of factors that serve either to contribute to or complicate academic–parental role balancing. Propositions about the relationships between these antecedents and role balancing, and between role balancing and its consequences, are identified. Practical implications of academic–parental role balancing are also considered.

How Satisfied are Spouses with their Leisure Time? Evidence from Europe

This paper first identifies the determinants of spouses’ satisfaction levels within the household with respect to their leisure time and, secondly, characterizes whether their preferences have some degree of altruistic or egoistic character in regard to this particular satisfaction. To that end, it formulates a theoretical framework from the collective family model whose stochastic formulations are estimated for 14 EU countries. The general empirical results first reveal that the presence of children has a significantly negative impact on the leisure satisfaction of both spouses. Then, increases in individual incomes lead to lower own leisure satisfaction levels. Both husbands and wives show egoistic behavior with respect to the labor and non-labor incomes (wage rate) of their respective spouses’ satisfaction levels.

Labor market participation in France: an asymptotic least squares analysis of couples’ decisions

This paper examines the interactions between spouses’ decisions to join the labor force. We use the asymptotic least squares method in order to estimate a system of equations with limited dependent variables. We find that when spouse’s decision-making is modeled as simultaneous, this affects primarily the man’s participation equation who appears to be positively influenced by whether the woman works or not, by the number of children and by the birth of a child. The woman’s decision to participate is not affected by whether the man participates or not and depends negatively of the number of children and the birth of a child. This implies that there is a female leadership in decisions to participate in the labor market and that the added-worker effect should be reinterpreted as a function of demography rather than unemployment.

Understanding and Utilizing Parallel Processes of Social Interaction for Attachment-based Parenting Interventions

In an effort to meet both the parenting and treatment needs of substance-abusing women who are parents, residential drug treatment programs have been struggling to find the best approach. A qualitative-quantitative study of the parenting experience of mothers in residential drug treatment programs housing both mothers and their children found that relational processes characterized how these mothers perceived parenting as well as treatment. The findings presented the interplay and mutuality between a mother’s interactions (natural or facilitated) with the external social world that includes her child and those connected to the treatment facility and the internal formation of her sense of herself, her child, and others, along with the changes in both areas that took place in the facility. These findings lend important support to the use of attachment-based parenting interventions in residential drug treatment programs by drawing on these relational processes.

The Therapeutic Action of Play in the Psychodynamic Treatment of Children: A Critical Analysis

This paper critically appraises the therapeutic action of play in psychodynamic child therapy and identifies obstacles to utilizing play therapeutically with children. An examination of the functions of action and verbal means of communication as well as their roles in shaping therapeutic relationships in treating children is provided in light of recent theoretical advances. The significance of engaging children directly through play and for redressing the balance between action and verbalization in child therapy is discussed.

Evidence of the Effectiveness of Child Support and Visitation: Examining Food Insecurity among Children with Nonresident Fathers

Over six million children who reside with a single mother and have a father who lives elsewhere are food insecure. This study examines the effectiveness of two aspects of nonresident father involvement, in-person visitation and financial contributions, in reducing food acquisition problems using data from the National Survey of America’s Families. We find that frequent visits by nonresident fathers are related to a reduced likelihood that the resident mother’s household will experience indicators of food insecurity. The effects of child support receipt on reducing food acquisition problems, however, are less consistent. Our results support policies designed to recognize and encourage nonresidential parents to make both monetary and nonmonetary contributions to the lives of their children.

A demographic analysis of the family structure experiences of children in the United States

This paper analyzes the family structure experiences of children in the U.S. Childbearing and transitions among single, cohabiting, and married states are analyzed jointly. A novel contribution is to distinguish men by their relationship to children: biological father or stepfather. The analysis uses data from the NLSY79. A key finding is that children of black mothers spend on average only 33% of their childhood living with the biological father and mother, compared to 74% for children of white mothers. The two most important proximate demographic determinants of the large racial gap are the much higher propensity of black women to conceive children outside of a union, and the lower rate of “shotgun” unions for blacks compared to whites. Another notable finding is that cohabitation plays a negligible role in the family structure experiences of children of white mothers, and even for children of black mothers accounts for less than one fifth of time spent living with both biological parents.

Business Diversification in the Securities Industry: Implications for the Exchanges

The growth strategies of the listed exchanges affect the morphology of the securities industry as they are focused on the consolidation of trading infrastructures and, on the other hand, on the diversification of the business model. New “conglomeral exchanges” are characterized by a far-reaching production function. Since they integrate product-service lines which are complementary, they potentially herald competitive distorsions limiting the investor’s freedom of choice and prejudicing the interest for the best result from the investment.