Employed Mothers Don't Breastfeed — in Atlanta, Athens, or Amsterdam

The advantages of breastfeeding are now so well established that serious scholars no longer dispute them.  What some American feminists do dispute, however, is the relationship between maternal employment and breastfeeding.  Some American feminists assert that the low level of breastfeeding among employed American mothers is anomalous, a sorry reflection on the singular backwardness of the policies that American lawmakers and corporate executives have put in place.  Two new studies — one from Greece and one from the Netherlands — indicate, however, that maternal employment creates a serious impediment for maternal breastfeeding in lands far from the United States.

The authors of the Greek study — published in Acta Pediatrica — begin by emphasizing that "breast milk is nutritionally and immunologically superior to any known substitute" and by citing the World Health Organization's recommendation of "exclusive breastfeeding for 6 mo[nths] as a global policy in order to achieve optimal maternal and infant health."  But when the Greek scholars look at data for 1,603 healthy women who delivered normal-weight babies in Athens in 2001, they find indications that maternal employment is preventing even initiation of breastfeeding.  More specifically, they find that over half (56%) of the 62 women in the study who did not breastfeed at all in the hospital after giving birth were employed, while less than half of the 306 women who breastfed exclusively in the hospital (43%) were employed.  Of the 1,117 women in the Greek study who departed from the WHO's recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding by giving their newborn babies a combination of breast milk and formula while in the hospital, almost two thirds (61%) were employed.  Commenting on their findings, the Greek scholars remark, "Employment is generally considered as a factor that has a negative impact on breastfeeding initiation." 

But it is the maintenance more than the initiation of breastfeeding that appears to be negatively affected by maternal employment in a Dutch study published in the same issue of Acta Pediatrica as the Greek study.  Analyzing national data for 9,133 Dutch infants under the age of seven months, the Dutch researchers find that although a very high percentage of employed Dutch mothers begin breastfeeding, relatively few continue it for even four months, two months short of the duration recommended by the WHO.  The data for four-month-old infants indicate that "mothers who did not leave the house to work, or who had a less than part-time job (i.e. < 16h/wk) were more likely to mainly breastfeed their infant at 4 mo[nths] compared to women who worked outside the house for more than 16 h/wk" (Odds Ratio of 1.57).  Almost half (44%) of mothers with no job or less than a part-time job were still mainly breastfeeding their infant at four months compared to less than a third (29%) of mothers employed full-time.  "Maternal job status," observe the Dutch scholars, "is an important predictor for longer duration of breastfeeding."

In country after country, it appears clear that maternal employment means infants are denied the benefits of breastfeeding.

(Source: Fani Pechlivani et al., "Prevalence and determinants of exclusive breastfeeding during hospital stay in the area of Athens, Greece," and Caren I. Lanting, Jacobus P. Van Wouwe, and Sijmen A. Reijneveld, "Infant milk feeding practices in the Netherlands and associated factors," Acta Pediatrica 94 [2005]: 928-934; 935-942.) 

No Way to Win a Man  

President Bush has called for the federal funding of marriage-skills education in hopes of improving the marital prospects of low-income Americans. While the proposal has merit, a study by sociologists at Ohio State University suggests out-of-wedlock childbearing may be the greater barrier to living happily ever after among poor women, as their study found that such behavior significantly reduces both the likelihood of marriage and the quality of marital partners.

Looking at data representing 103,000 women, ages 18 to 34, who participated in the June supplements of the Current Population Survey between 1980 and 1995, the researchers explored differences in the marriage and mate-selection patterns between women with unmarried births and those without unmarried births. Controlling for age, education, and survey year, single mothers of all racial groups (white, black, and Hispanic) were more likely to cohabit than to marry (p < .01 for all three groups).

More importantly, unmarried childbearing was also found to increase the likelihood of a woman settling for a less-than-ideal mate. In models that controlled for age, education, and survey year, women with unmarried births were less likely to have formed a union (married or cohabiting) with a man with some college education relative to their peers without unmarried births. In addition, those with unmarried births were more likely to have a mate who is at least six years older and, among whites, to have a mate of a different race.

Probit models that adjusted for selection bias confirmed that the poor marital prospects of unwed mothers were independent of the ability of women, including unwed mothers, to attract well-matched or economically attractive partners. The researchers conclude: "Women who bear children outside of marriage are at a considerable disadvantage in the marriage market." Not only are they less likely to find a well-matched mate, they are also "less likely to experience upward marriage mobility."

While the researchers uncover nothing about mating that has not been known for generations, their findings confirm that elected officials in Washington who want to promote marriage may need to focus less on creating new social programs and more on scaling back existing programs that enable or subsidize illegitimacy in low-income communities.

(Source: Zhenchao Qian, Daniel T. Lichter, and Leanna M. Mellot, "Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing, Marital Prospects, and Mate Selection," Social Forces 84 [September 2005]: 473-491.)

Environmental Risks  

The political left exalts race, class, and gender as Rosetta stones that explain all the alleged inequalities of American society, including even the distribution of environmental hazards. Yet a sociologist at the University of Colorado finds that family structure —especially single parenthood — may be a better predictor than income and race when it comes to identifying neighborhoods that face greater exposure to industrial pollution.

Looking at fourteen U.S. metropolitan areas, Liam Downey regressed U.S. Census Bureau data for 2000 — which provide breakdowns of census tracts according to single-mother families, single-father families, and married-couple families —with the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory data (TRI) for the same year.

Downey found that single-mother families were consistently overrepresented in "environmentally hazardous tracts" in the metro areas he evaluated. In all three measures of hazard proximity, Downey found "significant curvilinear associations": as the percentage of single-mother families in a tract increased, the distance from the tract to nearest toxic facility decreased, while both the number of toxic facilities and the pounds of toxic emissions increased. Likewise, the study found that married-parent families are underrepresented in tracts that are close to and have a high density of TRI facilities.

These statistically significant correlations held in tests that controlled for the four demographic factors that Downey says are most frequently cited in "environmental inequality" research: percent Hispanic, percent black, median family income, and percent poverty. The links also remained when the two other family structure variables were added to the equation. Regressions that included all the variables yielded "percent single-mother family" as the second strongest predictor of average minimum distance to toxic facilities and the third strongest predictor of average emissions (after median income and percent black, variables which predicted less environmental hazards).

Given that his findings confirmed that "neighborhood family composition is an important predictor of neighborhood environmental hazards," Downey warns that those who reside in households without a husband or a father — "particularly children" — face increased risks of living near environmental dangers. His study therefore provides another reason why public policy should discourage single-motherhood, not just protect the environment.

(Source: Liam Downey, "Single Mother Families and Industrial Pollution in Metropolitan America," Sociological Spectrum 25 [2005]: 651-675.

Family and Friends  

The U.S. Bureau of the Census defines a family as "two or more persons related by birth, marriage, or adoption who reside in the same household." Some legal and social theorists, however, would like to see recognition of all sorts of "family-like" relationships — including cohabitation and same-sex partnerships — on the assumption that chosen social ties are becoming more important than given or family connections. Yet a British study of family and friends finds no evidence for such a notion and suggests just the opposite, that one's family is the main source of close relationships or friendships throughout life.

Sociologists Ray Pahl and David Pevalin examined ten years of data from the British Household Panel Survey, which has annually surveyed 5,000 households since 1991, asking respondents in even-number waves to identify their closest friends who do not live in the same household and whether their closest friend is a relative. Then in odd-number waves, the survey asked respondents to identify who they count on the most for emotional support, whether a friend, relative, or spouse/partner.

They found that while younger people, relative to older respondents, were more likely to maintain close friends that were outside the family, the proportion of respondents who named relatives as close friends increased significantly as they grew older. The pattern was pronounced among those who were older than 46, but the shift of choosing friends outside the family to friends within the family (not counting spouses) remained statistically significant with the youngest category in the study, respondents ages 16 to 25 (p < .001).

In the odd-numbered waves of data, the researchers found that the youngest respondents increasingly identified their spouses over a non-kin friend as their closest friend. By middle age, spouses were named their closest friend by the majority of the respondents. Among the older cohorts, this pattern changed, as respondents increasingly named a relative as closest friend, a pattern that the researchers attribute to the death or divorce of one's spouse.

While Pahl and Pevalin do not make the claim, their findings provide evidence that the "family-like" relationships activists favor pale in comparison to the real thing — family relationships.

(Source: Ray Pahl and David J. Pevalin, "Between Family and Friends: A Longitudinal Study of Friendship Choice," The British Journal of Sociology 56 [2005]: 433-450.)

Coeds Motivated to Marry  

The increasing age of first-marriage among women might suggest that women today have become more like men in their interest in settling down, marrying, and starting a family. But a study of college students by psychologists at Indiana-Purdue University in Fort Wayne reveals that young women remain — even after a generation of feminism — significantly more motivated to marry than young men.

Polling nearly 400 students enrolled in introductory psychology classes, the professors found that while they expressed more liberal sex-role attitudes than did men (p<.001), women nonetheless scored significantly higher on a "drive to marry" scale that measured to what extent the students are "enthusiastically looking forward" to getting married (p<.05), even though both men and women valued their future marital role equally on a different scale. Women also outscored men in how they valued their future parental role (p<.05).

Women who expressed the most desire to marry were those who expressed more conservative or traditional sex roles (p<.05) and those who placed a higher value on their future parental role (p<.01). Women with a lower drive to marry scored higher on a scale that measured how they valued their future occupational role (although this correlation did not reach statistical significance), leading the researchers to conclude that spouse and worker role attitudes "exist in relative opposition to one anther in the minds of young women in a way that they do not in young men."

The researchers also found that higher scores on the drive-to-marry scale, lower scores on the Attitudes toward Women scale, and higher scores on the parental role value each translated into a woman's desire, once married, to wear a wedding band, adopt her husband's surname, and use the title "Mrs."

The researchers caution that their findings might be skewed as their sample represented predominately white, first-generation college students from middle- and working-class backgrounds and who are "somewhat politically conservative." Nonetheless, their study confirms that the reach of the sexual revolution has limits and that "family values" still exist, even on university campuses.

(Source: Judith E. Owen Blakemore et al., "I Can't Wait to Get Married: Gender Differences in Drive to Marry," Sex Roles 53 [September 2005]: 327-335.)

Heroin and Homosexuality  

Homosexual activists have largely persuaded the courts and the mainstream media that their sexual practices are quite innocuous and therefore pose no threat to society.  But the authors of a new study recently published in Psychological Reports reach a very different conclusion, uncovering disturbing evidence that homosexuality entails serious malign consequences, at least as serious as prostitution or illegal drug use.

Parsing national survey data collected in 1996 by the National Centers for Disease Control, the authors of the new study adduce strong evidence that in the "disturbances of public health and social order" for which they were responsible, "those who engaged in homosexuality were similar to those who used illegal drugs, participated in prostitution, or regularly smoked."  In other words, the researchers limned "similar patterns" for these groups (homosexuals, prostitutes, illegal drug users, and regular smokers) in "criminality, dangerousness, use of illegal substances, problems with substance abuse, mental health, and health costs." 

More specifically, just as criminality, drunk driving, poor psychological well-being, and reliance upon health care or addiction treatments were more common among prostitutes, drug users, and heavy smokers than among abstinent peers, even so all of these threats to public order and solvency showed up much more among homosexuals than among heterosexuals.  More specifically, homosexuals were significantly more likely than heterosexuals to have been booked for a crime (p<0.01), more likely to have driven under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the previous year (p<0.05), more likely to report a mental health problem (p<0.05), more likely to have visited the emergency room for an illness or accident during the previous year (p<0.10), and more likely to have received treatment or counseling for drugs or alcohol during the previous year (p<0.05).

The researchers noted some difficulty in statistically comparing the disturbances of public health and social order found among homosexuals with those found among prostitutes, drug users, and heavy smokers because homosexuals often showed up in the comparison groups.  Compared with heterosexuals, homosexuals were "more apt to divert themselves with illegal drugs, more apt to have ever smoked daily, and more apt to have been involved in prostitution." 

The authors of the new study acknowledge that "those championing homosexual rights" have asserted that "there are no real differences between those who indulge [in homosexual activity] and those who do not."  But after studying the available data, the researchers conclude that these activists have been "denied empirical support" by the respondents to the national behavioral surveys.  In contrast, in these surveys "traditionalist assertions about the personal and social harms associated with homosexual activity received support."

(Source: Paul Cameron, Thomas Landess, and Kirk Cameron, "Homosexual Sex as Harmful as Drug Abuse, Prostitution, and Smoking," Psychological Reports 96 [2005]: 915-961.)

Marriage Risks Down Under  

While divorce rates have moderated somewhat in recent years, they remain relatively high, leading some to conclude that marriage remains a risky proposition. Yet, confirming studies conducted in the United States, a study in Australia identifies risk factors that correlate with marital separation and divorce, suggesting that young people who commit themselves to certain behaviors can indeed look upon marriage as a marvelous adventure that will deliver what it promises.

Looking at the 2001 wave of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, an annual panel study of more than 9,000 men and women, sociologists at the University of Queensland found that premarital cohabitation, as well as premarital childbearing, significantly increase the odds of marital breakup. While cohabitation increases the odds of divorce by 41 percent for men and 31 percent for women, out-of-wedlock childbearing increases those same odds by 63 percent for men and by 2.3 times for women (p<.01 for all variables). On the other hand, the birth of a first child within marriage had just the reverse effect: reducing the odds of marriage breakdown by 85 percent (p<.01 for both men and women).

Exerting the opposite effects on men and women were levels of education. Compared to their peers who had finished college, men with lower levels of education face significantly greater odds of divorce (from 30 to 65 percent higher odds, depending on education level) while women with less education — especially those with "year 12 or less," a correlation that reached statistical significance (p<.05) — face lower odds of divorce.

The researchers also found that religiosity yielded a negative correlation with divorce. Respondents who expressed that religion is not important, relative to those who expressed that religion is very important, face 33 percent greater odds of separation or divorce (p<.01 for both men and women).

These findings make it difficult, as some sociologists like to claim with other behavioral and health risk factors, that all people stand equally at risk of divorce. Instead, the findings reveal how divorce is all wrapped up with other life choices that men and women each make both before and after they wed.

(Source: Belinda Hewitt, Janeen Baxter, and Mark Western, "Marriage Breakdown in Australia: The Social Correlates of Separation and Divorce," Journal of Sociology 41 [June 2005]: 163-183.)