The impact of early life-course transitions on equality at work and home

This paper investigates two aspects of the paid employment relationship between female and male partners aged 23. It is argued that in order to understand women's position in the home and the labour market it is necessary to consider employment relationships in the context of the household. The impact of children on women's labour force participation is already well known and in this paper we show that marriage also has an independent effect on hours worked. The second aspect of the paper concerns the relative financial contribution of each partner to the family income from their labour market earnings. It is recognised that power and equality within the home are to some extent derived from the relative contribution of partners to the family income. It is shown that women are economically dependent on men even in the early stages of their partnership before children and that this dependence is greater among women with children.     

Triadic Interaction among Newly Acquainted 2-year-olds

Are children as young as 2 years old able to interact in groups of three? The study applied the family triad model first introduced by Parke, Power, and Gottman (1979 ) to the case of peer interaction. In Experiment 1 , the model was refined for use in studies of peer interaction and applied to an existing dataset of 16 triads of newly acquainted 24‐month‐olds. In Experiment 2 , the triadic coding system was further refined and applied to 12 single‐sex triads of newly acquainted 2‐year‐olds. The findings demonstrated that 2‐year‐olds are capable of triadic interaction although the predominant interaction pattern in triads is still dyadic. Contrary to past reports, triadic interaction was more likely to occur when the children were not in conflict. Both girls and boys were capable of triadic interaction.     

Ordinal utility models of decision making under uncertainty

This paper studies two models of rational behavior under uncertainty whose predictions are invariant under ordinal transformations of utility. The quantile utility model assumes that the agent maximizes some quantile of the distribution of utility. The utility mass model assumes maximization of the probability of obtaining an outcome whose utility is higher than some fixed critical value. Both models satisfy weak stochastic dominance. Lexicographic refinements satisfy strong dominance.The study of these utility models suggests a significant generalization of traditional ideas of riskiness and risk preference. We define one action to be riskier than another if the utility distribution of the latter crosses that of the former from below. The single crossing property is equivalent to a minmax spread of a random variable. With relative risk defined by the single crossing criterion, the risk preference of a quantile utility maximizer increases with the utility distribution quantile that he maximizes. The risk preference of a utility mass maximizer increases with his critical utility value.     

Book reviews

Nathan Glazer Ethnic Dilemmas Harvard, Harvard University Press. 1985

Giddens, Anthony The Constitution of Society, Berkeley, University of California, 1985, pp.XXXVII, 402. Notes, glossary, diagrams, bibliographic notes and index.

Jeremy Rifkin Declaration of a Heretic. Boston. London, Melbourne and Henley, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp.X,140.

Ted Benton The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence, New York, St.Martin's Press, 1984, pp. VII,259.

Raymond L. Garthoff Détente and Confrontation Washington, The Brookings Institution, 1985, pp.XVI,1126.

Joseph J. Collins The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. A Study in the Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy, Massachusetts/Toronto, D.C. Heath and Company/Lexington, 1986, pp. XV, 195.

Jan Shipps Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1985, pp.211.

Robert Jay Lifton Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners, New York, Basic Books, 1985, pp.478     

Complaint as a form of association

Complaining is a common pattern of interaction that can be viewed as a form of association. Our understanding of complaint and other forms of association is enhanced by applying insights from Simmel's formal sociology. The emergence of complaint, like other forms of association, adheres to a general developmental process and has specifiable social consequences. The integrative and disintegrative social consequences of complaint are spelled out.