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Few propositions provoke a more vehement reaction from progressive
intellectuals than the assertion that in recent changes in family life–higher
rates for divorce, maternal employment, illegitimacy, and non-marital
cohabitation; lower rates for marriage and fertility–we are seeing family decay.
Family change, these intellectuals constantly lecture us, does not mean family
decay. We simply must, they explain, learn to view new social arrangements with
a more tolerant and inclusive vision.
What kind of tolerance and inclusiveness countenances suicide and murder?
Such is the question forced upon readers of a study recently published in
Social
Forces by a team of researchers from the University of Colorado and Boston
College. Analyzing data collected for 18 affluent nations (including the United
States) from 1955 to 1994, the researchers detect a clear relationship between
the rate of "family change" (defined in a composite index based on
national rates for marriage, divorce, female labor-force participation, and
fertility) on the one hand and rates for both suicide and homicide among the
young on the other. "An increase," write the researchers, "...in
what we refer to as family change tend[s] to worsen relative youth
violence." Deploying several statistical models for parsing their data, the
researchers find that "the combined family [change] scale consistently
increases youth lethal violence in all models." The effects prove
"largest for male suicide," but stand out as "the strongest
determinant [in the statistical models] for other outcomes," including male
homicide, female suicide, and female homicide. That is, family change predicts
youth violence of all sorts more strongly than does income equality, government
collectivism, and other variables scrutinized in this study.
When the researchers parceled out the components of the family-change index,
they discovered that "the divorce and female labor force participation rate
increase are measures of youth lethal violence." They also found that
"the marriage and total fertility rate...have the expected negative
effects," though this inverse statistical relationship is "not quite
as strong" as the positive correlation for divorce and female labor force
participation. In the overall statistical pattern, the researchers limn
"the harmful consequences of family change for youth lethal violence."
The authors of the new study interpret their findings as evidence that family
change in recent decades reflects "a decline in social capital" which
has made "the transition to autonomous adult roles more complex, turbulent,
and drawn out...[while making] the entrance into adulthood less regulated and
supervised than in the past." This decline in social capital has translated
into an ugly dynamic of violence among the youth. "Although mortality from
most diseases has declined and nearly disappeared at younger ages," the
researchers remark, "suicide and homicide rates have remained high or
increased." Indeed, it worries the researchers that "young people have
a disadvantage [compared to older people] in homicide rates, and that
disadvantage has increased in recent decades." This means "an
increasing concentration of homicide victimization among the young," a
troubling development since "age patterns of homicide and suicide can say
much about the growing disadvantage of youth relative to other age groups."
(Source: Fred C. Pampei and John B. Williamson, "Age Patterns of Suicide
and Homicide Mortality Rates in High-Income Nations," Social Forces
80[2001]: 251-282.)
As stepfamilies multiply in the wake of the divorce revolution, more and more
adolescents are coming to view mom as the primary disciplinarian in the home.
The emergence of mothers as stepfamily disciplinarians comes as no particular
surprise to the authors of a new study in Adolescence on adolescents’
perceptions of discipline.
Psychologists at Shippensburg University, the authors of the new study,
scrutinized data collected from 45 adolescents, ages 15 to 19, in determining
how adolescents’ perceptions of discipline in intact families differs from
adolescents’ perceptions of discipline in stepfamilies. Their results indicate
that while "adolescents from intact families most often identified their
fathers as the primary disciplinarian," things were quite different in
stepfamilies: "the majority of adolescents from stepfamilies identified
their mothers as the primary disciplinarian."
Citing previous research to interpret their findings, the Shippensburg
scholars explain that the family role of stepfathers is typically that of
"‘polite strangers’ who often demonstrate a ‘disengaged parenting
style’ and make little attempt to discipline the adolescents in their
stepfamilies."
In taking over as the stepfamily disciplinarian, however, mothers are
certainly not going easy on their adolescent offspring–far from it. Compared
to peers from intact families, "adolescents from stepfamilies were more
likely to report receiving physical punishment and to perceive having received
excessive physical punishment."
It appears that social science has just identified a new source of pain
coming out of parental divorce.
(Source: Suzanne M. Morin, Carla Milito, and Nikki Costlow,
"Adolescents’ Perceptions of Discipline Within Intact Families and
Stepfamilies," Adolescence 36[2001]: 281-288.)
For young women who have watched their own parents divorce, it is no easy
thing to find romantic satisfaction in their own lives. Indeed, in a study
recently published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, researchers
from the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Texas-Austin
report that compared to peers from intact families, the young adult daughters of
divorced parents find less satisfaction in their romantic relationships and
evince a higher level of mistrust toward their romantic partners.
Examining data from 464 randomly selected coupled partners, the California
and Texas scholars discovered that "compared with women from intact
families, women from divorced families reported more ambivalence about becoming
involved (p<.05) and more conflict and negativity in their relationships
(p<.01)." Compared to women from intact families, women from broken
homes were also "less likely to trust in their partner’s
benevolence" (p<.03). Not surprisingly, then, young women from divorced
families "valued consistency of commitment less than did women from intact
families" (p<.04).
The authors of the new study concede the possibility that women from divorced
families actually have "a more realistic understanding" of their
relationships with romantic partners than do women from intact families.
Nevertheless, the researchers express fears that in the mistrust, conflict, and
ambivalence characteristic of daughters of divorce, we are seeing the reason
that these young women "may not advance to deeper involvements." The
researchers further reason that for the daughters of divorce, the feelings of
ambivalence and mistrust they are experiencing in their current relationships
"may be the segue to later difficulties," thus helping to explain why
"adult children of divorce who eventually wed are more likely to divorce
than are adult children from intact families."
(Source: Susan E. Jacquet and Catherine A. Surra, "Parental Divorce and
Premarital Couples: Commitment and Other Relationship Characteristics," Journal
of Marriage and Family 63[2001]: 627-638.)
Time was when the brainy women who got college degrees were likely to end up
as old maids. This is no longer the case. In an article recently published in
the American Sociological Review, sociologists from Princeton University
highlight an "educational crossover…for both black women and white women
in recent cohorts, [which] suggests that marriage is increasingly becoming a
province of the most educated."
To be sure, in their analysis of national survey data, the Princeton scholars
do detect a trend toward higher age at first marriage among American women (men,
too, for that matter). American women, at least the better-educated ones, are
still marrying. The researchers interpret this as evidence that, "unlike in
Sweden, where cohabitation appears to have become a substitute for marriage
among a substantial portion of the population," here in the United States,
"marriage remains a normative part of adult life."
Why the curious "reversal of the relationship between education and
marriage"? The authors of the new study suggest that marriageable men
realize that "they, too, benefit if their wives are more highly
educated." Furthermore, in looking at the relatively low marriage rate
among poorly educated American women, the researchers conjecture that they
reflect the "greater obstacles to marriage among those who cannot afford
it."
The Princeton scholars’ interpretation of their findings deserves respect
as intelligent and plausible. Yet in looking at how marriage rates have dropped
among women who have not graduated from college (quite sharply in the black
community), one wonders if we are not seeing validation of a perspective
advanced some years ago by Christopher Jencks. Jencks argued that while it has
always been harder for the poor than for the rich to make their marriages and
families work, they have traditionally made extra efforts to do so–so long as
they have received consistent signals from the nation’s cultural leaders that
such extra efforts are worth it. When those signals started to become mixed in
the late 1960’s and 1970’s, many of the poor simply stopped making those
extra efforts. So while America’s college women are apparently ignoring the
anti-marriage rhetoric of their radical professors, that rhetoric is perhaps
having a baleful effect on women who never set foot in a college classroom.
(Source: Joshua R. Goldstein and Catherine T. Kenney, "Marriage Delayed
or Marriage Foregone? New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U.S.
Women," American Sociological Review 66[2001]: 506-519.)
Family life suffers when materialism triumphs. The way in which the pursuit
of wealth hurts family life stands out in a new study recently published in Social
Indicators Research by a team of psychologists at Murdoch University in
Perth, Australia. Analyzing data collected from 162 Australian adults, the
Murdoch scholars limned a "negative relationship" between a commitment
to materialistic goals and the cultivation of satisfactory domestic
relationships.
Statistical tests established a strongly inverse relationship between
"materialism" on the one hand and "family life" on the other
(p<.001). The data yielded a similarly negative relationship between
materialism and "amount of fun and enjoyment," and between
materialism and "life as a whole."
The Australian scholars interpret their findings as evidence that "high
materialists place possession acquisition foremost in their value hierarchy,
ahead of many other values such as family and interpersonal relationships."
Quite possibly, they reason, "for the materialist, possessions serve as
‘surrogates’ for inadequate interpersonal relationships. Hence, their lower
satisfaction with ‘family life’ and ‘amount of fun and enjoyment’ may be
due to the greater emphasis they place on possessions and time spent acquiring
possessions than on cultivating family relationships and having time for fun and
enjoyment."
Apparently, material possessions make poor substitutes for good family
relationships and good experiences: among the materialists surveyed in this
study, the Murdoch researchers see dissatisfaction with poor family life and an
impoverished recreational life resulting in "‘spillovers’ into feelings
about ‘life as a whole.’"
(Source: Lisa Ryan and Suzanne Dziurawiec, "Materialism and Its
Relationship to Life Satisfaction," Social Indicators Research
55[2001]: 185-197.)
Adolescent employment has been associated with both negative and positive
effects, ranging from increased achievement to more frequent substance abuse.
With high school students regularly working as much as 20 hours per week by the
time that they reach their senior year, the authors of this new study seek to
compare the experiences of nonworking teens with peers who worked at least two
hours a week.
Whereas most previous studies have been completed reporting on adolescents
who work in excess of 20 hours per week, the University of Miami researchers
found similar negative effects among students who worked far less: employment
was associated with more depression (.23, p<.05); inferior relationships with
parents and best friends (-.42, p<.001); lower grade point average (-.20,
p<.05); and positively associated with smoking (.27, p<.01).
Working as few as 2 hours a week was further associated with being enrolled
in honors classes less often than those who did not work (32% vs. 68%,
p<.01), less time spent with family (p<.05), and reduced parental
conversations and touch (p<.01 for both measures). Interestingly, working
teens also spent more time doing chores (.40, p<.001).
The high school students reported upon in this study were from a largely
middle and upper middle class socioeconomic status and, as such, had no real
financial need to work. In the face of this study, whatever potential benefits
that may be gleaned from teens working may be offset by serious repercussions:
instead of leading to increased self-esteem and independence, adolescent
employment may actually foster increased depression and dependence on nicotine.
(Source: Shay Largie, Tiffany Field, Maria Hernandez-Reif, Christopher E.
Sanders, and Miguel Diego, "Employment During Adolescence Is Associated
with Depression, Inferior Relationships, Lower Grades, and Smoking," Adolescence,
Vol. 36, No. 142 [Summer 2001]: 395-401.)
"The purpose of this study was to explore the comparative contribution
that multiple sources of education about sexual topics (family, peers, media,
school, and professionals) make on teen sexual knowledge, attitudes, and
behavior." So begins a new Education study examining the role of
sources in sex ed.
Using a measure of 14 different topics, the researchers found that there was
no significant difference in sexual knowledge, regardless of the source of that
information. Not surprisingly, however, when assessing the sexual attitudes
of the high school students, the researchers found that more liberal sexual
attitudes were fostered by peer and professional education about intercourse
(R=.29; p<.05).
What was surprising were the results when actual sexual
behavior was a
examined: "A combination of less education from school and more education
from non-sibling family regarding sexual intercourse was predictive of more
frequent sexual behavior; 8% of the variance was accounted for (R=.28;
p<.05). Similarly, more education about birth control from relatives was
predictive of more frequent sexual behaviors, accounting for 9% of the variance
(R=.30; p<.05)."
While some of these results may seem counter-intuitive for those who want to
keep sex education in the home, perhaps it suggests a path away from sex
education as it has been traditionally practiced, even within the family. More
information is not necessarily a good thing: education is not, and cannot be,
amoral. As Theodore Roosevelt stated: "To educate a man in mind and not in
morals is to educate a menace to society." Without some ethical guidance to
temper knowledge, teenagers will act on their knowledge, with predictable
results.
(Source: Cheryl L. Somers and Jamie H. Gleason, "Does Source of Sex
Education Predict Adolescents’ Sexual Knowledge, Attitudes, and
Behaviors?" Education, Vol. 121, No. 4 [Summer 2001]: 674-681.)
Studying a group of 462 college students, researchers writing in the
American
Journal of Health Education attempt to assess whether or not spiritual
health contributes to overall well-being. For some time, studies have been
conducted showing religious belief and practices, such as prayer, as having
positive effects upon patients’ ability to adjust to treatment and some
progress in recovery. This study was undertaken to determine if
spirituality–broadly conceived–has any effect upon health, as opposed to
benefits to those who are ill or who have experienced injury.
The college students, based on several surveys, were divided into two groups,
Low and High Spiritual Well-Being. The researchers found that "self-esteem,
loneliness, marijuana use per month, alcohol consumed both per day and per
month, and hopelessness best discriminated between high and low spiritual
well-being groups." The authors state: "This suggests that the
subjects scoring higher on the spiritual well-being scale had ‘healthier’
psychosocial health profiles than did their lower-scoring counterparts" (F
(5,152) = 22.51; p<0.0001).
The authors suggest that those students who were found in the more
spiritually well category "may have a more defined ethical framework from
which to live their lives...include[ing] things like valuing human relationships
and cultivating ‘connectedness’ with others." This, in turn, may help
to explain the "strong inverse relationship" between spirituality and
loneliness, and spirituality and substance abuse.
(Source: Jon Hammermeister and Margaret Peterson, "Does Spirituality
Make a Difference: Psychosocial and Health-Related Characteristics of Spiritual
Well-Being," American Journal of Health Education, Vol. 32, No. 5
[September/October 2001]: 293-297.]
"In the last 20 years the presence of women in the labor force has
increased dramatically; 67% of mothers with children are employed." With
this, parents have often resorted to day care and babysitters for the care of
their children. What of the increasing number of parents who have chosen to
arrange their work schedules so that their children are always cared for by a
parent, even with both parents employed full time? These "tag-team
parents," or dual earners with nonoverlapping shift patterns, along with
their children are the subjects of a study published in Families in Society:
The Journal of Contemporary Human Services.
An integral part of nonoverlapping employment is usually nonday shifts, which
have been shown to put additional stress on families, even when only one parent
is working. For tag-team parents, not only was the amount of time that spouses
got to spend together diminished, as with other families with a member working
non-standard work hours, but "[m]others whose spouses worked nonday shifts
indicated that they felt as though their situations were similar to those of
single parents." The author further states, "Families utilizing
nonoverlapping shift work often involve a parent returning from work to engage
in child care and household activities alone while the other spouse either
sleeps or goes off to work."
Along with the perception of "solo parenting" and lack of family
time, sleep deprivation and "slightly lower levels of marital quality [are
often] associated with families engaging in nonoverlapping shift work."
Interestingly, previous studies had limned a primarily economic rationale for
tag-team parenting: that the family could reduce childcare costs. With this
study, however, "the majority of mothers point to their desire to provide
parental care as their main motive for utilizing nonoverlapping shift
work." Furthermore, the data also suggest that rather than viewing
employment and childrearing as oppositional or mutually exclusive, with this
tag-team approach, "[m]others can choose employment without choosing child
care," and thus, still be the "‘good’ mother."
(Source: Angela J. Hattery, "Tag-Team Parenting: Costs and Benefits of
Utilizing Nonoverlapping Shift Work in Families with Young Children," Families
in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, Vol. 82, No. 4
[July-August 2001]: 419-427.) |
