Patterns underlying fertility schedules: A decomposition by both age and marriage duration

Summary Model fertility schedules based on the proportions married and the age pattern of marital fertility are unsatisfactory to the extent that marital fertility does not depend on age alone but also on other factors. Most notably, models based just on age fail to allow for differences between populations in their composition by marriage duration. Examination of the major series of fertility rates specific by both age and duration of marriage (Sweden 1911-70, England and Wales, 1941-70) reveals striking underlying regularities. The marital fertility rates observed at any given point in time can be factored into three independent components - an overall level, a vector of age effects common to all marriage durations and a vector of duration effects common to all age groups. A simple product of these three components is shown to approximate the data very closely over the entire series, despite major changes in the aggregate levels of fertility and nuptiality during the periods concerned. Not only are the data tightly structured, conforming very closely to this simple multiplicative model, but the vectors of age and duration effects themselves are shown to exhibit clear and meaningful regularities.     

Reactive, anxious and possessive forms of jealousy and their relation to relationship quality among heterosexuals and homosexuals

The present study examined the relationship between relational quality and three different types of jealousy-reactive, anxious and possessive jealousy. The sample consisted of 76 gay men, 79 lesbians, 70 heterosexual women and 70 heterosexual men. Findings show that different types of jealousy affect relationship quality differently and do so differently for homosexuals and heterosexuals. Among heterosexuals and especially gay men--but not among lesbians--anxious jealousy was negatively related to relationship quality. In contrast, among heterosexuals--but not among gay men or lesbians--reactive jealousy was positively related to relationship quality. The present study shows that distinguishing between different types of jealousy is necessary to entangle the diverse effects of jealousy on the quality of homosexual and heterosexual relationships.     

The Gender Revolution: A Framework for Understanding Changing Family and Demographic Behavior

This article argues that the trends normally linked with the second demographic transition (SDT) may be reversed as the gender revolution enters its second half by including men more centrally in the family. We develop a theoretical argument about the emerging consequences of this stage of the gender revolution and review research results that bear on it. The argument compares the determinants and consequences of recent family trends in industrialized societies provided by two narratives: the SDT and the gender revolution in the public and private spheres. Our argument examines differences in theoretical foundations and positive vs. negative implications for the future. We focus primarily on the growing evidence for turnarounds in the relationships between measures of women's human capital and union formation, fertility, and union dissolution, and consider evidence that men's home involvement increases union formation and fertility and decreases union instability. Although the family trends underlying the SDT and the gender revolution narratives are ongoing and a convincing view of the phenomenon has not yet emerged, the wide range of recent research results documenting changing, even reversing relationships suggests that the gender approach is increasingly the more fruitful one.     

Leaving the parental home in Australia over the generations: Evidence from the Household,Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) Survey

The decision to remain in or leave the parental home represents the first housing career choice of young people. In this paper, we examine the parental home leaving outcomes for Australian birth cohorts in the twentieth century using recall questions contained in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. The findings from survival analysis and hazard function modelling is that a continuous, gradual reduction in the age of first leaving the parental home in Australia is evident up to the 1947–51 birth cohort, followed by stability and then a rise in age of first leaving home for the most recent birth cohorts. Birth cohort effects remain significant even after other measured determinants of parental home leaving are taken into account. The paper confirms the strong roles that education, family background and ethnicity have on parental home leaving outcomes.     

Erzählung und „Bewältigung“

The topic of this paper is the change of perspective from the concept of “coping with illness” in a psychological sense to a concept of coping as “living with (chronic) illness” in a sociological sense. Whereas psychological and even some sociological research presupposes assumptions on causes and essentials of stress as well as on successful coping, we focused on the different ways, in which subjects define strain and their personal aim of coping. These subjective views might differ from the definitions of scientists as well. Furthermore we focus on the social constructions of illness and “normal living” and the social rules of coping with daily hassles, which underlay the subjective views. Assuming that the ways chronically ill resp. disabled persons look at stress and daily hassles is part of their coping, we conclude that stress and coping are mutually constituting each other. This dialectic process is influenced by the persons current situation, by the individual’s history and by cultural rules concerning appropriate coping resp. living with strain in general. Looking at these social rules and how they are modified under the conditions of illness and handicap was the topic of our research project “LIVE—Living and Defending Your Interests—Disabled Women”, financed by the German Fed. Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth and conducted 1996–1998. In this study a questionnaire was sent to 16 to 60 years old disabled women (return: N=987). Additionally a qualitative interview was conducted with N=60 of them. From a biographical approach the reconstruction of the main subjective patterns in their life histories led us to the social rules of appropriate “coping”. We can take this as a starting point for a sociological discussion of everyday living with chronic illness, that focuses on the social constitution of subjective meanings of stress resp. coping with illness, includes the social context and allows to integrate the gender perspective.     

Of apes and men (including females!)

Two hundred seventy‐five undergraduate single women were surveyed to investigate whether a continuum of premarital sexual pressure exists. Participants were asked if they were pressured into 21 different sexual behaviors. For each behavior, they responded to forced‐choice questions about the stage of dating at which the pressure occurred and the type of pressure most often experienced. Over 50% of the participants reported being pressured into kissing, breast and genital manipulation, and oral contact with their partners' genitals. Further, participants were likely to be pressured into kissing and some forms of fondling while casually dating; and masturbation, oral genital contact, and intercourse while seriously dating. Guttman analysis supports the existence of a four‐step continuum of sexual pressure from persistent physical attempts, to positive statements, to threats of force, to the use of force.     

Consensus in the Marital Dyad: Couples' Perceptions of Contraception,Communication, and Family Life

Abstract

The present study was based on data collected (separately for husbands and wives) from 365 couples to determine levels of consensus on a series of variables related to the family forming process. Following Scheff (1967), consensus was operationalized as both agreement and coorientation in the marital dyad. The data generally indicated low levels of consensus on such variables as contraceptive efficacy, desired family size, child spacing, unwanted pregnancies, communication with spouse, and levels of alienation. The results are discussed within the framework of family planning and effective fertility control.     

The social distance perceptions of racial and ethnic groups by college students: A research note

There is growing concern in our society regarding the resurgence of racist movements. There has been increased media coverage of these activities and educators warn that racism is on the rise in our schools and on college campuses. This article examines the similarity of responses of college students of various racial and ethnic groups. The Social Distance Scale was administered to 415 undergraduate students. The research reveals that, overall, most college students would be willing to admit most racial/ethnic groups to their clubs as personal chums or to their streets as neighbors. Iranians were consistently given the greatest distance (to citizenship in my country) by all groups. Implications of this study purport that schools as agents of socialization can expose students to multicultural diversity within an academic setting.     

The optimal design of fallible organizations: invariance of optimal decision criterion and uniqueness of hierarchy and polyarchy structures

We present a general framework to study the project selection problem in an organization of fallible decision-makers. We show that when the organizational size and the majority rule for project acceptance are optimized simultaneously, the optimal quality of decision-making, as determined by the decision criterion, is invariant, and depends only on the expertise of decision-makers. This result clarifies that the circumstances under which the decision-making quality varies with the organizational structure are situations where the organizational size or majority rule is restricted from reaching the optimal level. Moreover, in contrast to earlier findings in the literature that the hierarchy and the polyarchy are generally sub-optimal structures, we show that when the size, structure and decision criterion are simultaneously optimized, the hierarchy and the polyarchy are in fact the only possible optimal organizational structures when decision-making costs are present.

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