The relationship between childbearing and transitions from marriage and cohabitation in Britain

In this article, we describe a general framework for the analysis of correlated event histories, with an application to a study of partnership transitions and fertility among a cohort of British women. Using a multilevel, multistate competing-risks model, we examine the relationship between prior fertility outcomes (the presence and characteristics of children and current pregnancy) and the dissolution of marital and cohabiting unions and movements from cohabitation to marriage. Using a simultaneous-equations model, we model these partnership transitions jointly with fertility, allowing for correlation between the unobserved woman-level characteristics that affect each process. The analysis is based on the partnership and birth histories that were collected for the 1958 birth cohort (National Child Development Study) aged 16-42. The findings indicate that preschool children have a stabilizing effect on their parents 'partnership, whether married or cohabiting, but the effect is weaker for older children. There is also evidence that although pregnancy precipitates marriage among cohabitors, the odds of marriage decline to prepregnancy levels following a birth.     

Generations in organizations

Despite a rich tradition of scholarship across many disciplines, organizational research on the topic of generations has been relatively scarce. In this article we develop a framework for studying generations in organizations that draws on multiple conceptualizations across multiple disciplines. Our framework distills two distinct critical elements that give ‘generations’ agency in organizational settings – chronology (the idea that a unique location in time creates a ‘generation’) and genealogy (the idea that generations are linked through the transmission/descent of ideas/values/skills/knowledge). After an historic overview of the evolution of the topic of generations, we review generational research across the fields of political sociology, family sociology, psychology, social anthropology, cultural sociology, demography, and gerontology. Our framework elucidates how linkages between generations, based on chronology and genealogy, can be characterized in organizations and how the nature of intergenerational contact and transfer predicts a wide range of organizational outcomes such as change/innovation, conflict, turnover, and socialization. We outline the implications of this framework for future research on generations in organizations.     

Internalising and externalising children's behaviour problems in Britain and the US: relationships to family resources1

A large sample of British children (n=994) of varying ages (7–18 years) and a large sample of American children (n=886) of varying ages (7–16 years) were rated by their mothers using respectively the Rutter Child Scale A and the Behaviour Problems Index both of which cover a variety of behavioural problems. Factor analysis of the behavioural scales distinguished externalising and internalising dimensions of behaviour in both countries. We examined whether children's experiences of family change, cognitive ability and family adversity including economic deprivation were associated with differences in the prevalence of the behavioural dimensions. Mean cognitive scores decreased significantly with increasing level of externalising behavioural problems in British and American children but showed no significant relationship to levels of internalising behaviour problems in either sample. Among American children internalising and externalising behavioural problems were related to experience of non‐intact family structures and measures of family adversity. Externalising behavioural problems were related to measures of family adversity among British boys and girls but were only related to experience of non‐intact family structures in the sample of British girls. Among British girls, internalising behavioural problems were also related to non‐intact family structures. The associations between non‐intact family structures and behavioural problems were independent of measures of economic deprivation in both samples of children. This study documents some of the background factors which affect children's behavioural and cognitive outcomes. Unlike children's family structure economic deprivation can be influenced through policy intervention, and the analysis supports the view that relieving economic deprivation would help improve children's behavioural outcomes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Employment after childbearing and women's subsequent labour force participation: evidence from the British 1958 birth cohort

Data on women from the British 1958 Cohort Study is used as evidence on the determinants of their labour force participation at age 33. A conventional cross-sectional model of full or part-time employment makes use of some longitudinal material not normally included in such models. Whether the woman made the hitherto customary break from. employment at the time of the first maternity is included in recognition that this cohort was among the first generation to be offered Statutory Maternity Leave. Results suggest that the presence of children (still) inhibits full-time employment and raises the probability of part-time employment; that income effects on participation have continued to weaken while wage elasticity for full-time employment is high. Continuity of employment straight after childbearing raises the chances of subsequent full-time employment, but by no means guarantees it. Gains from maternity leave and other family friendly employment policies have been far from uniform.All correspondence to Heather Joshi. Our research was supported by the ESRC Grant R000234600. Helpful comments by John F. Ermisch, Siv Gustafsson and two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editors: Siv S. Gustafsson, John F. Ermisch.     

On the distributions of components sums of squares in one-way unbalanced random model under heter06ene0us error variances

Exact sampling distributions of sums of squares in the unbalanced one-way random model are obtained under heterogeneous error variances. These distributions are used to investigate the effect of heteroscedasticity and unbalancedness on the probability of negative estimate of the group variance component. The computed results reveal that heteroscedasticity affects the probability of negative estimate in all situations of group sizes. Further, the probability decreases with heterogeneity of error variances for balanced situations and increases with variability among group size for equal error variances case.     

Sequential analysis applied to testing the scale parameter in the problem of the nile

The parameter O in the problem of the Nile is tested using the Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT). It is observed that the test can be used to discriminate between two one–sided hypotheses.     

Employment after childbearing in post-war Britain: cohort-study evidence on contrasts within and across generations

"In post-war Britain, mothers have been returning to the labour-market after diminishing breaks around childbearing. Longitudinal data, mainly from two generations in the National Survey of the 1946 cohort, are used to describe and help explain the trend. Class and regional differences diminish over time, both in simple two-way analyses and in multiple (hazard) regression. Women's education and occupational attainments retain a positive effect on their chances of entering employment over the two generations. The weakening of class differentials is taken to signal a reduction in the income effect of a shifting labour-supply function."     

Changing compatibility of cohabitation and childbearing between young British women born in 1958 and 1970

We investigate the effect of parenthood on whether non-marital unions led to marriage or parting for two cohorts of British women when they were aged between 16 and 29. We compare the effect of conceptions leading to births and the presence and characteristics of children on the odds that a cohabitation was dissolved, or that it was converted to marriage, for women born in 1958 and 1970. A multilevel, multiprocess, competing-risks model allows for multiple cohabitation per woman and endogeneity of fertility status. We find that cohabiting couples' response to impending parenthood and the presence of children changed over time. In particular, the proportion of cohabiting couples who married before a birth decreased and, in the 1970 cohort only, the risk of dissolution declined during pregnancy. There is also evidence that the presence of a child cemented a cohabiting union for women from the 1970, but not the earlier, cohort.     

Why have relative rates of class mobility become more equal among women in Britain?

In a previous paper it has been shown that across three cohorts of men and women born in Britain in 1946, 1958 and 1970 a gender difference exists in regard to relative rates of class mobility. For men these rates display an essential stability but for women they become more equal. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the causes of this trend—or, that is, of increasing social fluidity—among women. We begin by considering a refined version of the perverse fluidity hypothesis: that is, one that proposes that part‐time work leads to increasing downward worklife mobility among women that also entails downward intergenerational mobility and thus promotes greater fluidity. We do in fact find that the increase in fluidity is very largely, if not entirely, confined to women who have had at least one period of part‐time work. However, a more direct test of the hypothesis is not supportive. We are then led to investigate whether it is not that part‐time working itself is the crucial factor but rather that women who subsequently work part‐time already differ from those who do not at entry into employment. We find that eventual full‐ and part‐timers do not differ in their class origins nor, in any systematic way, in their educational qualifications. But there is a marked and increasing difference in the levels of employment at which they make their labour market entry. Eventual part‐timers are more likely than eventual full‐timers to enter in working‐class positions, regardless of their class origins and qualifications. Insofar as these women are from more advantaged origins, they would appear not to seek to exploit their advantages to the same extent as do full‐timers in order to advance their own work careers. And it is, then, in the downward mobility accepted by these women—who increase in number across the cohorts—that we would locate the main source of the weakening association between class origins and destinations that is revealed among women at large.