The Nuns of Lepers: Compassion,Discipline and Surrogate Parenthood in a Former Leper Colony of Vietnam

This paper focuses on a Christian model of leprosy care overseen by Catholic nuns in Quy Hòa, a leprosarium in South Central Vietnam, from 1929—when the leper colony was established—until 1975, when the American-backed Southern regime collapsed and all of Quy Hòa’s foreign nuns were forced to leave. Drawing on recollections of elderly residents of the former leprosy colony, it describes the close and loving attention that the nuns offered to inmates, an attentiveness that was informed by the nuns’ ethic of Christian sacrifice. The nuns at Quy Hòa successfully built a quasi parent–child relationship with leprosy-afflicted inmates. Their striking devotion to the ‘lepers’ resembles substitute motherhood. However, these recollections of that era also shed critical light on an approach to leprosy care that was premised on hierarchy, strictly enforced segregation from the wider community and pronounced paternalism towards all those who came under the nuns’ rule of care.     

农村50岁以上独生子女父母的家庭结构与亲子关系——基于南京市高淳县195户的调查

对南京市高淳县的抽样调查表明,农村50岁以上独生子女父母家庭成为空巢的超过六成,主要原因是子女外出打工或就业。该群体大多数人觉得2个孩子对于养老来说更好,但靠子女养老的观念已大为减弱。这些家庭的代际经济互动开始由父母养育子女为主转向子女对父母反哺为主。近七成独生子女父母赞成与子女分开住,超过一半的人明确表示即使子女今后迁往城镇,他们也不会到子女家住,但同时他们并未显示出对社会养老保障的信任,这种窘境使这些曾为人口控制作出突出贡献的老人面临严峻的养老挑战。     

Between the Social and the Personal: Israeli Male Gay Parents,Surrogacy and Socio-Political Concepts of Parenthood and Gender

This work focuses on the effects of dominant concepts of parenthood and gender on gay men who became parents through surrogacy. Based on the analysis of 39 in-depth, semistructured interviews with gay fathers, we show that gay fathers' parenting experiences are shaped by the heteronormative discourse on parenthood, yet they resist its gendered attributes. Gay parenthood is revealed as confronting the social concepts on parenthood, in particular on motherhood, and their socio-political meanings. The tension between the social concepts and the participants' perceptionsy leads them to confront their social environment and to construct alternative discourse to the social discourse of parenthood and gender, suggesting that gay parenthood subverts under existing concepts of parenthood, gender and their meanings within the state.     

Raising network resources while raising children? Access to social capital by parenthood status,gender, and marital status

Does raising non-adult children facilitate or restrict access to social capital as network resources? Using data from a national sample of adults in the United States, I do not find evidence for the direct effect of parenthood on the three dimensions of social capital (diversity, extensity, and quality), but instead I find evidence for its interaction effects on the quality of social capital. There is marginal evidence that parenthood status is associated with the quality of social capital positively for men but negatively for women. There is evidence that parenthood status is associated with the quality of social capital positively for the married but negatively for the unmarried. Also parenthood status is associated with the quality of social capital negatively for unmarried women but positively for the other three gender-marital groups, in particular unmarried men. These findings suggest the structural interplay of parenthood status with gender and marital status, and indicate the motherhood penalty, the fatherhood premium, the single-parenthood penalty, the married-parenthood premium, and the single-motherhood penalty in reaching higher-quality, rather than more diverse and extensive, social capital.     

Education,Work and Parenthood: Comparing the Experience of Young Men and Women in Sweden

This article analyzes the determinants of young men and women’s entry into parenthood, applying hazard regressions to a combination of longitudinal micro-data from the 1992/1993 Swedish Family Survey and aggregate time-series data. We study the impact of education, labor market attachment and macro-economic change on becoming a parent for both men and women in Sweden since the mid-1960s. Our results show clear gender differences both when it comes to individual characteristics and aggregate-level factors. Even though the effects sometimes differed according to gender, education and labor market attachment were key factors determining the transition to parenthood. Over time the pattern grew increasingly similar for men and women.     

Men's attitudes toward parenthood

In recent family literature, men are often characterized as deadbeat dads, with a focus on their lack of involvement, mainly financial but physical and emotional as well. At the same time, there has been little attention paid to how men feel about being parents. This paper examines men's attitudes toward parenthood using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The results indicate (1) married men are significantly less likely than unmarried men to think that the stress of raising children, the ability to purchase goods, career time, leisure time, and old age security are important considerations in deciding whether or not to have a child; (2) men with higher education are more likely than less educated men to consider time for career and time for leisure and social activities important in making fertility decisions but are less likely to consider having someone to love important; and (3) black and Hispanic men are more likely to place importance on old age security than non-Hispanic white men.     

Tethered lives: A couple-based perspective on the consequences of parenthood for time use,occupation, and wages

Prior research on parenthood effects has typically used single-sex models and estimated average effects. By contrast, we estimate population-level variability in partners' changes in housework hours, paid work hours, occupation traits, and wages after becoming parents, and we explore whether one partner's adjustment offsets or supplements the other's. We find tradeoffs between spouses on paid work adjustments to parenthood, but complementarity in adjustments to housework hours, occupation traits, and wages. The effect of parenthood on wives' behaviors is larger and more variable than on husbands' behaviors in every domain. The modest variation between husbands in work responses to parenthood explains little of the variation in the motherhood penalty, while variation in wives' own behaviors plays a larger role. We refer to this pattern as tethered autonomy: variation across American couples in work responses to parenthood is shaped primarily by variation in wives' adjustments, while husbands' work acts largely as a fixed point.     

和谐家庭建设中的亲子关系

亲子关系在中国的家庭关系中占有十分重要的地位。随着子代年龄的增长和变化,亲子关系有不同的阶段和特点,研究亲子关系的特点和变化规律,协调好亲子关系,对于建构和谐家庭是十分重要的。     

Parents' Perceptions of Their Children in a Context of Shared Political Uncertainty: The Case of Jewish Settlers in the West Bank Before and After the Oslo Peace Agreement

This study describes the effect of a politically uncertain situation on the parents' experience and on the way they appraise their children's experience. The study focuses on Israeli families living in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) during two periods: the Intifada (the indigenous Arab population's civil uprising) and the years following the Oslo peace agreements. The results of this study indicate the importance of the specific political situation and the particular context that is created for those who experience it. The supportive context of the Israeli population created by the right-wing government affected the parents' ability to withhold their feelings during the Intifada, while the lack of support of the left-wing government increased the expression of emergency feelings by parents. The children, according to the parents' appraisal, expressed more emergency feelings than their parents did during the Intifada. The number of feelings and their intensity diminished after the Oslo Agreements. The discussion focuses on the effect of family role and its interaction with the political uncertainty on the psychological well-being of parents and children.     

Parenthood and Commitment to the Legal Profession: Are Mothers Less Committed than Fathers?

This research examined the relationship between parenthood and career commitment. Karasek’s (Administrative Science Quarterly 24:285–308, 1979) Job Demand-Job Control Model was used as a theoretic framework for hypothesizing the relationships between work and family demands, job control and social support and parents’ career commitment. Questionnaire data from a sample of practicing lawyers with children were used to test this model. The results show fathers generally reported more work demands than mothers; whereas, mothers reported more family demands than fathers. Job control and social support did not moderate relationships between work and family demands and parents’ career commitment. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study, contrary to assumptions in the literature and the workplace, was that mothers practicing law are significantly more committed to their careers than fathers. This paper closes by discussing possible explanations for these findings.