Parental religiosity and daughters’ fertility: the case of Catholics in southern Europe

Preferences, including preferences for children, are shaped during the formative years of childhood. It is therefore essential to include exposure to religious practice during childhood in an attempt to establish a link between religiosity and fertility. This path has not been explored in the documented literature that looks at the relationship between current religiosity and fertility. The International Social Survey Programme: Religion II (ISSP) provides the data base. It includes information on maternal/paternal/own mass participation when the respondent was a child (nine levels each), as well as on his current churchgoing (six levels) and prayer habits (eleven levels). These variables are included as explanatory variables in ‘fertility equations’ that explain the number of children of Catholic women in Spain and Italy. The core findings are that exposure to religiosity during the formative years of childhood, has a pronounced effect on women’s ‘taste for children’ that later on translates into the number of her offspring. In Spain, the two parents have major opposite effects on women. Most striking is the negative effect of the mother’s intensity of church attendance on her daughter’s fertility: Women who were raised by an intensively practicing mother have on average one child less that their counterparts who were raised by a less religious mother. On the other hand, an intensively practicing father encourages the daughter to have more children (by about 0.8, on average). The Italian sample confirms the statistically significant negative effect of the mother’s religiosity. The father’s religious conduct has apparently no effect on Italian women’s birth rates. Current religiosity seems to be irrelevant, both in Spain and in Italy. It follows that religiosity and fertility are interrelated but the mechanism is probably different from the simplistic causality that is suggested in the literature.

EFFECTS OF PARENTAL LEAVE AND WORK HOURS ON FATHERS’ INVOLVEMENT WITH THEIR BABIES

Using data from the first wave of the Millennium Cohort Study, covering a large birth cohort of children in the UK at age 8 to 12 months, this paper examines the effects of leave-taking and work hours on fathers’ involvement in four specific types of activities: being the main caregiver; changing diapers; feeding the baby; and getting up during the night. We also investigate the effects of policies on fathers’ leave-taking and work hours. We find that taking leave and working shorter hours are related to fathers being more involved with the baby, and that policies affect both these aspects of fathers’ employment behaviour. Thus, we conclude that policies that provide parental leave or shorter work hours could increase fathers’ involvement with their young children.     

Design,development and usability testing of Essential Coaching for Every Mother: A postnatal text message educational intervention

BackgroundThe transition to motherhood is an exciting yet challenging period that requires physical, emotional, and social adjustment. During the postpartum period, mothers require support and information to ensure a smooth transition and adjustment to motherhood. One innovative strategy to provide mothers with this information is mobile health (mHealth), and specifically, text messaging.ObjectiveTo describe the design, development and usability testing of a postnatal text message intervention called Essential Coaching for Every Mother.MethodsFirst time mothers (n = 11) and postpartum healthcare providers (n = 18) were involved in iterative interviewing in Halifax, Canada. Adaption of content occurred through three rounds of user testing using semi-structured interviews. The Information Assessment Method (IAM) Parents survey was also completed by mothers.ResultsThree cycles of iterative testing were conducted with eight participants (3 mothers, 5 healthcare providers), thirteen participants (8 mothers, 5 healthcare providers) and 8 participants (8 healthcare providers), respectively. Messages evolved from risk-focused to prevention and education focused. Mothers felt the messages addressed their needs and healthcare providers ensured the content was consistent with the messaging currently provided to postpartum mothers.ConclusionEssential Coaching for Every Mother is the first postnatal educational text message intervention developed for mothers in Halifax, Canada. We sought to involve first time mothers (end-users) and postpartum healthcare providers (experts) in the development and usability evaluation to ensure the intervention adequately met needs and was consistent with current practices related to postpartum education.     

Participation in national celebrations and commemorations: The role of socialization and nationalism in the Dutch context

National celebrations and commemorations are believed to increase national cohesion. It is unknown however who participates in these activities. In this contribution, we address to what extent socialization by the parents and school, and integration into religious intermediary groups affect participation in national celebrations and commemorations. With the strong reference to the relevance of the nation in national days, we also hypothesize about the association between nationalist attitudes and national day participation. We chose the Netherlands as test case, with its institutionalized national days to remember war victims, to celebrate freedom and to celebrate the Monarchy. Relying on a national survey (LISS; N = 4559), our findings show that the transmission of parental behaviours is crucial for taking part in national celebrations and commemorative events. Schooling and integration in religious groups only affect specific forms of national celebrations and commemorations. In line with US based research on flagging the Stars and Stripes, we find that national day participation in this European country is affected by patriotic attitudes rather than by chauvinistic attitudes.     

Educational inequalities in parental care time: Cross-national evidence from Belgium,Denmark, Spain,and the United Kingdom

This study uses time-diary data for dual-earner couples from Belgium, Denmark, Spain, and the United Kingdom to analyze educational inequalities in parental care time in different national contexts. For mothers, education is significantly associated with parenting involvement only in Spain and the United Kingdom. In Spain these differences are largely explained by inequalities in mothers' time and monetary resources, but not in the United Kingdom, where less-educated mothers disproportionally work in short part-time jobs. For fathers, education is associated with parenting time in Denmark, and particularly in Spain, while the wife's resources substantially drive these associations. On weekends, the educational gradient in parental care time applies only to Spain and the United Kingdom, two countries with particularly large inequalities in parents' opportunities to engage in parenting. The study shows country variations in educational inequalities in parenting, suggesting that socioeconomic resources, especially from mothers, shape important variations in parenting involvement.     

湖湘学派教育思想的现代启示

在教育目的上 ,湖湘学派强调教育的目的在于使学习者修身成德 ,明体达用 ,学以致用 ,匡济时艰 ;在教育方法上 ,他们主张知行互进 ,坚持存疑 ,提倡讲论。这些原则和方法对现代教育具有重要启示     

Do mother’s and father’s education condition the impact of parental divorce on child well-being?

We use the British Cohort Study to investigate to what extent parental resources moderate the association between parental divorce in childhood and lowered child well-being as indicated by maternal reports of child psychological well-being and by academic test scores (reading and math tests). We argue that children of mothers with more years of education suffer less when their parents split up because better educated mothers may be better able to provide a safe and stable environment for their children after divorce. In addition, we argue that having a better educated father could either aggravate or reduce the effects of parental divorce. This is one of the first studies to simultaneously investigate the role of maternal, and paternal resources, and pre-divorce shared resources. Our analyses indicate that the effect of parental divorce on psychological well-being is reduced for better educated mothers and for families with more pre-divorce economic resources, but increased for better educated fathers. For academic test scores we find a protective effect of having a better educated father and higher pre-divorce social resources.     

由亲子鉴定引发的法律思考

亲子鉴定问题 ,我们国家目前尚无任何法律来认可或规范其程序及效力 ,司法实践中又出现了种种必须以亲子鉴定为依据的各种诉讼 ,因此 ,急需一个亲子关系法来完善相关的法律制度。     

现代背景下汉族祭祖的文化人类学分析——以乐安罗陂乡陈氏族人祭祖为例

祭祖仪式作为中国传统文化的一部分,在乡间村落不断受到现代化的冲击。文章以江西乐安罗陂乡陈氏族人祭祖仪式为个案,分析其所蕴含的安土重迁、慎终追远、地权象征、权威展示的文化内涵以及祭祖强化了人们的宗族观念,对构建我国农村和谐社会产生促进和阻碍的双重影响。