Son survivorship motivation and family size in India: A computer simulation

Abstract Many sociologists and demographers have argued that the comparatively large families of six to eight children found in rural India to-day result from ignorance of family planning methods, from tradition, and from passive indecision; and that large reductions in the Indian growth rate to Western levels would occur spontaneously if each Indian family were given access to birth control facilities, materials and information. On the other hand, it has been maintained that large family sizes are functional for rural families in India and other developing countries; and that they result from conscious or unconscious choice based upon enlightened self-interest.     

Divorce Counseling or Marriage Therapy? A Therapeutic Option

Divorce, if properly orchestrated by a specially trained therapist, can be a liberating experience that promotes, rather than undermines, family solidarity. Of course, a happy marriage is preferable to an amicable divorce, but some marriages are beyond repair. Gross incompatibility often leads to "emotional blackmail" and other coercive states within an unhappy marriage. The present paper, through the use of several case histories, addresses the foregoing issues and also delineates effective marital therapy strategies. The rationale and implementation of creative divorce counseling is also described.     

Commitment in same-sex love relationships

This study sought to desribe and compare commitment structures among lesbian and gay male living-together relationships, and to develop an instrument which would measure different dimensions of commitment among gay dyads without some heterosexual biases inherent in traditional measures of interpersonal commitment. Questionnaire data collected from 32 lesbians and 50 gay males who had lived together for at least six months were factor analyzed, yielding three factors: (1) intradyadic commitment, (2) extradyadic commitment, and (3) commitment-as-trust. On all three of these indices the lesbians scored somewhat higher than did the gay males, but in fact there were surprisingly few significant differences between the gay men and the lesbians. Suggestions in the data that lesbians report somewhat less social supports and are more concerned with couple boundary maintenance, whereas gay males report somewhat more jealousy and dependency, are discussed in terms of their implications for such relationships.