Kinship,courtship, and child maintenance law in Botswana

Official statistics in Botswana suggest very high numbers of extramarital births and female-headed households. One element of family policy in Botswana is a statute allowing women to claim maintenance payments from the biological fathers of their extramarital children. Formal interviews and informal conversations with women and men in a village in Botswana indicate that women do not make use of the maintenance law for a variety of reasons. Among these is that a continuing tie to the biological father of the child would interferen with the traditional mechanisms by which that child is supported and socially positioned and with the woman's own prospects for courtship and eventual marriage to the biological father or another man. Family policies should fit within, rather than being imposed upon, the cultural framework of the people they are trying to help.The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding and support for the research reported on in this article. Funding for fieldwork was provided to Nicholas Townsend by an NICHD postdoctoral fellowship (T32 HD07275-08) and by grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation administered through the Department of Demography at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University. Funding for fieldwork was provided to Anita Garey by the Andrew Mellon Foundation administered by the Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University. Funding for analysis and writing was provided to Nicholas Townsend by a Mellon Foundation research fellowship from Brown University and to Anita Garey by a Population Council postdoctoral fellowship. Both authors thank the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University for the material and moral support they received while in residence.Her research, both in the United States and in Botswana, focuses on the interaction of cultural meanings and social structures in the experience of mothers. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.His research interests include the connections of men to children and the structure of domestic groups in Southern Africa and the United States. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.     

Constructing motherhood on the night shift: “Working mothers” as “stay-at-home moms”

Based on in-depth interviews with hospital nurses, this article examines the way in which employed women with children use the night shift to support a construction of motherhood which closely resembles that of mothers who are not in the labor force. Interview data reveal that a salient function of night shift work is the reconciliation of some of the structural and conceptual incompatibilities of being “working mothers.” Night-shift nurses construct themselves as “stay-at-home moms” by limiting the public visibility of their labor force participation, by involving their children and themselves in symbolically-invested activities, and by positioning themselves in the culturally-appropriate place and time: at home, during the day. All of these strategies work to highlight their visibility as mothers. An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 13–17, 1993, Miami Beach, Florida. Funds for this research were provided in part by the University of California and by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.     

Determinants of Scholarly Productivity among Male and Female Economists

A model of the determinants of articles produced by male and female economists is estimated using data from a survey of members of the American Economics Association. Years of experience, coauthorship rates, gender, research-teaching orientation of the respondent's institution, and teaching loads are shown to be important estimators. Coauthorship appears to increase the overall production of articles and may help explain why collaboration among economists has increased in recent years. Males produce, on average, about seven more articles than females, with approximately 59% of gender-specific differentials left unexplained by the variables included in the model. (JEL JØ )     

TURBULENCE AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN A JOB MATCHING MODEL

According to Ljungqvist and Sargent (1998), high European unemployment since the 1980s can be explained by a rise in economic turbulence, leading to greater numbers of unemployed workers with obsolete skills. These workers refuse new jobs due to high unemployment benefits. In this paper we reassess the turbulence‐unemployment relationship using a matching model with endogenous job destruction. In our model, higher turbulence reduces the incentives of employed workers to leave their jobs. If turbulence has only a tiny effect on the skills of workers experiencing endogenous separation, then the results of Ljungqvist and Sargent (1998, 2004) are reversed, and higher turbulence leads to a reduction in unemployment. Thus, changes in turbulence cannot provide an explanation for European unemployment that reconciles the incentives of both unemployed and employed workers. (JEL: E24, J64)     

Measuring Sexual Motives: A Test of the Psychometric Properties of the Sexual Motivations Scale

Sexual motives refer to functions served by sexual behavior. The Sex Motivations Scale (SMS) has frequently been used to assess sexual motives. At its development, the SMS demonstrated good internal consistency; convergent, divergent, and criterion validity; and configural invariance across sex, age, and Caucasians and African Americans. Yet the metric and scalar invariance of the SMS has not been examined, nor has the measurement invariance of the SMS across Hispanic and Asian Americans, sexual minority status, and relationship status been tested. The criterion validity of the SMS also has yet to be examined for nonintercourse sexual behaviors, such as sexting. The present study aimed to address these gaps in a diverse sample of 2,201 college students (77.60% female; M_age = 22.06; 27.84% Caucasian). Results further affirmed the configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the SMS. The convergent and divergent validity of the SMS was supported in relation to positive and negative affect and attachment patterns; and specific SMS subscales demonstrated associations with sexual intercourse behaviors and sexting, supporting the criterion validity of the SMS. These findings suggest the relevance of the SMS in assessing sexual motives across diverse populations and behaviors.