Child support guidelines: Economic theory and policy considerations

Federal legislation has mandated that all states develop numeric guidelines for child support awards in divorce and paternity suits. The purpose of this article is to review the theoretical models currently used in guidelines development and to present an analysis of issues pertinent to the development and use of guidelines. A familiarity with the principles underlying child support guidelines will assist family scientists who may be called upon to provide expertise on this public policy issue.Barbara R. Rowe is Family Resource Management Extension Specialist, College of Family Life, Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322-2949. Her research interests include the economics of divorce and at-home-income-generation. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.     

A critique of ‘new’ rural local governance: The case of gender in a rural Australian setting

Over the past decade rural social scientists have demonstrated significant interest in documenting the new forms of governance emerging in rural and regional areas. However, little attention has been given to examining the gendered aspects of these new arrangements. This paper takes up the issue of gender and governance in rural areas by reporting on the establishment, membership and practices of a new governing organisation in a local government area in a small rural township in Australia. Men hold almost all positions on the 19-member board of this institution charged with facilitating development in the shire. This is not surprising, given women's exclusion from the male-dominated networks from which appointees are selected. While this numerical dominance is important, it is not just the presence of men's bodies that is of concern to this paper. Also of interest is the way in which hegemonic discourses of masculinity are privileged by board members. This includes an emphasis on competition, entrepreneurialism, and aggression, and a focus on economic concerns over and above social issues. In conclusion, there may be a lot that is ‘new’ in the governance of contemporary Western rural nations, but what is not is that these forms of governance are gendered, just as the traditional state has always been, in a way that excludes women and feminine subjectivities.     

The Visibility of Feminist Thought in Family Studies

We assessed feminist visibility in family journals by tallying the feminist content of articles in Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Issues, and Family Relations. There was an increase in feminist visibility from 1972 to 1992, at which point the growth of visibility stalled. From 1992 to 2002, almost 1 out of 4 articles appeared to be influenced, at least minimally, by feminist scholarship when including in our tally a measure of articles' mentioning of gender in its abstract or title without a detectable feminist perspective in the article. Only about 6% of articles, however, involved an explicit feminist analysis. We offer explanations for this apparent glass ceiling for feminist visibility and make suggestions for future research.     

Gender,marital status,and body weight in older U.S. adults

Marital terminations are life transitions that may lead to changes in diet, activity, and body weight. This investigation examined how marital status was associated with relative body weight, underweight, overweight, and obesity among men and women in the United States using cross-sectional nationally representative data from the 1992 HRS cohort age 51–61 and the 1993 AHEAD cohort age 70 and older. Results in the HRS cohort revealed that even when adjusting for demographic and behavioral variables, widowed women were significantly more likely to be obese than married women, while men who were never married, divorced, or separated were more likely to be underweight. Results in the AHEAD cohort showed few significant associations between marital status and weight for either men or women when demographics were controlled. Clear gender variations appeared to exist in how marriage is related to body weight among unmarried older adults, with widows in their 50s being obese and divorced/separated/never married men being underweight. However, marital status differences in weight were not present among much older adults of either gender. Jeffery Sobal is a asociologist who is an associate professor at the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. He has studied food systems, food choice, and is currently examining social aspects of body weight and obesity, particularly marriage and body weight. Barbara S. Rauschenbach is a sociologist who is a research associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She has studied food insecurity and food assistance, and is currently examining marital status and body weight.     

Alternative Bases of Source Selection

Dans un article précédent nous avons présenté les résultats d'une expérience concue pour mettre à l'épreuve certaines prédictions d'une théorie formelle de la relation interpersonnelle en ce qui à trait a l'émergence des anticipations de conduite lorsque plusieurs sources d'évaluation de cette conduite anticipee sont disponibles a un individu, Dans cet article nous formulons deux alternatives additionnelles qui sont théoriquement plausibles, les multiples prédictions em-piriques qu'elles engendrent, et une évaluation de ces trois formulations particu-lières à la lumière des données existantes. De ces trois formulations, seule la première est appuyee par nos donnees empiriques. Voici de quelle manière elle s'exprime: mis en présence de plusieurs sources d'évaluation l'individu intègre l'ensemble des éléments de l'évaluation plutot que de (a) choisir seu-lement la meilleure source disponible, ou (b) d'utiliser la source la moins bonne comme une ?source négative?, ou encore de se servir de l'évaluation de celui dont l'exactitude ne peut etre mise en doute. In an earlier paper we reported the results of an experiment designed to test certain predictions of a formal theory of interpersonal behaviour concerning the formation of performance expectations when multiple sources of performance evaluation were available to an individual. In this paper we present two additional theoretically reasonable alternative formulations, the different empirical predictions derivable from them, and an evaluation of the three formulations in the light of the existing data. Of the three, only the original formulation received clear empirical support. This formulation holds that when faced with multiple sources of evaluation, the individual combines the evaluations received, rather than (a) selecting only the best source available, or (b) using the lower source as a “negative source,” or someone whose evaluation is so likely to be incorrect as to provide an accurate measure of the correct evaluation.     

Race,Sex, and Perception of the Occupational Opportunity Structure among College Students*

Questionnaires were administered to 70 black female, 75 black male, 1,457 white female and 1,429 white male university freshmen. In order to test three alternative theories regarding perceptions of discrimination, analyses of variance related sex, race, and SES to total scores of perceived occupational discrimination against blacks (BDST) and against women (WDST). Blacks perceived significantly more discrimination against black people than did whites; neither sex nor SES differentialed scores on BDST. Black females and white males perceived significantly more discrimination against women than did white females; black females had the highest and white females the lowest WDST scores. A discriminant analysis on white females indicated that high WDST scorers were characterized by an “underdog syndrome” whereas low WDST scorers held internal, individualistic values. The findings indicated the greatest support for the formulation that differential anticipatory socialization into the role of “a person who is discriminated against” characterized white females who perceived more or less discrimination against women.