Family Formation (family + formation)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Women's Scientific Employment and Family Formation: A Longitudinal Perspective

GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 6 2008
Louisa Blackwell
We focus here on the retention of highly qualified women scientists in science-based employment in England and Wales. Using linked Census records from the Longitudinal Study 1971,1991 we show that women's education and employment rates in science, engineering and technology increased somewhat, although some fields show persistently low representation. We then compare retention in employing women with health-related degrees with that of women with degrees in science, engineering and technology, showing that the latter group has markedly lower retention rates. Those who stay on in science-based employment have children later than other types of graduate and their rates of non-motherhood are higher. Four-fifths of women in health-related occupations were mothers, compared to only two-fifths in science, engineering and technology. Our findings have implications for policymakers who wish to make best use of the knowledge base: attention should be paid to retention, as well as the more usual focus on qualifications and recruitment. The findings also suggest the potential for institutionally based theories to explain why highly qualified women have such low retention rates in science-based employment. [source]


Family formation among women in the U.S. military: Evidence from the nLSY

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 1 2005
Jennifer Hickes Lundquist
Although female employment is associated with lower levels of completed fertility in the civilian world, we find family formation rates among U.S. military women to be comparatively high. We compare enlisted women with civilian women using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,547), the only data set to measure simultaneously the nuptiality and fertility of both populations. Using propensity score matching, we show that the fertility effect derives primarily from early marriage in the military, a surprisingly "family-friendly" institution. This shows that specific organizational and economic incentives in a working environment may offset the more widespread contemporary social and economic factors that otherwise depress marriage and fertility. [source]


ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF MASS INCARCERATION ON INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMMUNITIES

CRIMINOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 2 2004
JAMES P. LYNCH
Research Summary: This paper reviews and evaluates the existing (and limited) evidence that increases in incarceration have affected the ability of residential neighborhoods to perform their traditional social control functions. It suggests that, although comparatively weak, the evidence points to the increases in the level and clustering in social and geographic space of incarceration as contributing to changes in the social organization of affected communities by weakening family formation, labor force attachments, and patterns of social interaction among residents. At the same time, however, the paper does find support for the contention that incarceration leads to reductions in crime in affected communities. Policy Implications: To the extent that mass incarceration disrupts patterns of social interaction, weakens community social organization, and decreases the stigma of imprisonment, its longer-run effects may be to reduce its effectiveness. [source]


The nurse,family partnership: An evidence-based preventive intervention

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 1 2006
David L. Olds
Pregnancy and the early years of the child's life offer an opportune time to prevent a host of adverse maternal, child, and family outcomes that are important in their own right, but that also reflect biological, behavioral, and social substrates in the child and family that affect family formation and future life trajectories. This article summarizes a 27-year program of research that has attempted to improve early maternal and child health and future life options with prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses. The program is designed for low-income mothers who have had no previous live births. The home-visiting nurses have three major goals: to improve the outcomes of pregnancy by helping women improve their prenatal health, to improve the child's health and development by helping parents provide more sensitive and competent care of the child, and to improve parental life course by helping parents plan future pregnancies, complete their education, and find work. The program has been tested in three separate large-scale, randomized controlled trials with different populations living in different contexts. Results from these trials indicate that the program has been successful in achieving two of its most important goals: (a) the improvement of parental care of the child as reflected in fewer injuries and ingestions that may be associated with child abuse and neglect and better infant emotional and language development; and (b) the improvement of maternal life course, reflected in fewer subsequent pregnancies, greater work-force participation, and reduced dependence on public assistance and food stamps. The impact on pregnancy outcomes is equivocal. In the first trial, the program also produced long-term effects on the number of arrests, convictions, emergent substance use, and promiscuous sexual activity of 15-year-old children whose nurse-visited mothers were low-income and unmarried when they registered in the study during pregnancy. In general, the impact of the program was greater on those segments of the population at greater risk for the particular outcome domain under examination. Since 1996, the program has been offered for public investment outside of research contexts. Careful attention has been given to ensuring that organizational and community contexts are favorable for development of the program, to providing excellent training and guidance to the nurses in their use of the program's visit-by-visit guidelines, to monitoring the functioning of the program with a comprehensive clinical information system, and to improving the performance of the programs over time with continuous improvement strategies. [source]


Family Changes in the Context of Lowest-Low Fertility: The Case of Japan

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF JAPANESE SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Makoto Atoh
Abstract: Japan has currently one of the lowest-low fertility rates in the world. Low fertility in Japan is due to the extreme postponement of marriage and childbearing, and their weak recuperation in women in their 30s, as well as very low levels of cohabitation and extra-marital fertility. Both changing and unchanged aspects of families are related to lowest-low fertility in Japan. Although premarital sexual activities have increased, women's contraceptive initiative is very weak: they may be connected with weak partnership formation. "Parasite singles", "freeters", or "NEETs", probably related to weak family formation, have increased, but they may be connected with strong filial bondage derived from the traditional family system, i.e. Women have been normatively, educationally, and occupationally emancipated, but gender norms are currently divided in half among Japanese people, which may deter the revising of working conditions for women with children, leading to delaying family formation among working women. Lowest-low fertility conversely brings about family changes. Its direct effect is the increase of lifetime celibacy and childless couples, which may jeopardize the universality of families. Its indirect effect is through policy response to low fertility as well as labor shortages and population aging: recently, both family and labor policies have been strengthened to make it easier for working women to continue their jobs after marriage and childbirth, which might in turn promote family formation in Japan. [source]


Young People of Migrant Origin in Sweden

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2003
Charles Westin
This article surveys immigration during the second part of the twentieth century with the aim of determining the origins of the immigrant population and the socioeconomic position of the second generation. It focuses on migration from Turkey from the 1960s onward. Originally, migration from Turkey was within the framework of labor recruitment. These migrants were predominantly ethnic Turks of rural origin. A second wave of migrants from Turkey was composed of Syriani/Assyrians, a Christian minority from eastern Turkey seeking asylum in the 1970s on the grounds of religious persecution. Since the 1980s, the main intake of migrants from Turkey has been Kurds seeking protection on the grounds of political persecution. Immigration of ethnic Turks and Syriani/Assyrians is restricted to family reunification and family formation; the numbers are low. Kurds, on the other hand, are accepted both on the grounds of refugee claims and family reunification/family formation. The article looks at conditions of growing up in Sweden, with a particular focus on education, mother-tongue classes and instruction in Swedish. Second-generation youth distinguish themselves by an overrepresentation among dropouts from school, but also by an overrepresentation among those who do well academically in comparison with native Swedes. This applies to second-generation youth with family roots in Turkey. Though very few under the age of 18 hold regular employment, the article also discusses the prospects of entering the labor market, based on information from the regular labor market surveys. Unemployment rates are consistently higher for second-generation migrants than for native-born Swedish youth. The article closes with a discussion about the developing multicultural society in Sweden and the niches that second-generation youth tend to occupy. [source]


Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Timing of First Marriage and Smoking Cessation

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 3 2007
Margaret Weden
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 4,050), we consider the relationship between the timing of family formation and positive changes in health behavior. Theories that predict both positive and negative associations are tested. The findings suggest that both mechanisms operate and that the direction of the association depends on the respondent's race or ethnicity. Whites who marry early are less likely to quit smoking, whereas Whites who marry on time and Blacks and Hispanics who marry at all ages are more likely to quit. The analysis refines the understanding of how family formation shapes changes in health behaviors differentially across the life course, and it underscores the difference in this process for individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. [source]


Child-free and unmarried: Changes in the life planning of young east German women

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 5 2004
Marina A. Adler
Using evidence from demographic and survey data, this research examines how one decade of postsocialism has changed the life planning of young East German women. Aggregate data reflect marriage and fertility postponement and increased nonmarital birth rates and cohabitation. The analysis shows East German women's "stubbornness" (Dölling, 2003) in adhering to life perspectives in line with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) standard biography (high nonmarital childbearing, high work orientation, rejection of the homemaker status, desire to combine work and family). The most important findings are that (a) motherhood is postponed to increase child-free time, (b) cohabitation is increasingly becoming an alternative to marriage, (c) marriage (but not partnership) is increasingly optional for childbearing, and (d) employment is prioritized over family formation. [source]


Marital Processes and Parental Socialization in Families of Color: A Decade Review of Research

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 4 2000
Vonnie C. McLoyd
Research published during the past decade on African American, Latino, and Asian American families is reviewed. Emphasis is given to selected issues within the broad domains of marriage and parenting. The first section highlights demographic trends in family formation and family structure and factors that contributed to secular changes in family structure among African Americans. In the second section, new conceptualizations of marital relations within Latino families are discussed, along with research documenting the complexities in African American men's conceptions of manhood. Studies examining within-group variation in marital conflict and racial and ethnic differences in division of household labor, marital relations, and children's adjustment to marital and family conflict also are reviewed. The third section gives attention to research on (a) paternal involvement among fathers of color; (b) the relation of parenting behavior to race and ethnicity, grandmother involvement, neighborhood and peer characteristics, and immigration; and (c) racial and ethnic socialization. The article concludes with an overview of recent advances in the study of families of color and important challenges and issues that represent research opportunities for the new decade. [source]


Demographic consequences of unpredictability in fertility outcomes

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
Paul Leslie
Child survival is probabilistic, but the unpredictability in family formation and completed family size has been neglected in the fertility literature. In many societies, ending the family cycle with too few or too many surviving offspring entails serious social, economic, or fitness consequences. A model of risk- (or variance-) sensitive adaptive behavior that addresses long-term fertility outcomes is presented. The model shows that under conditions likely to be common, optimal, risk-sensitive reproductive strategies deviate systematically from the completed family size that would be expected if reproductive outcome is were predictable. This is termed the "variance compensation hypothesis." Variance compensation may be either positive or negative, resulting in augmented or diminished fertility. Which outcome obtained is a function of identifiable social, economic, and environmental factors. Through its effect on fertility behavior, variance compensation has a direct bearing on birth spacing and completed fertility, and thereby on problems in demography and human population biology ranging from demographic transitions to maternal depletion and child health. Risk-sensitive models will be a necessary component of a general theory of fertility. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 14:168,183, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Hidden in Plain Sight: Global Labor Force Exchange in the Chinese American Population, 1880,1940

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 1 2004
Kenneth S. Y. Chew
Despite a once-conspicuous presence in the Western United States, little is known demo-graphically about the Chinese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. The widely accepted model of a declining male "sojourner society," beset by draconian restrictions on immigration and the impossibility of family formation, is seemingly contradicted by the continuous economic vitality of urban Chinatowns in the United States. This article tests the largely unexamined demographic structure of the Chinese population in the United States through the application of cohort-component projection on census data from 1880 through 1940, including data recently made available as part of the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS). The results fail to support the model of passive population decline, suggesting instead that the Chinese actively engaged in a collective strategy of long-distance labor exchange to maximize economic productivity among Chinese workers in the United States. [source]


Gender and chain migration: the case of Aruba

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 2 2010
Haime Croes
Abstract Family reunification and family formation form a substantial part of chain migration, as most countries accept this form of settlement on the basis of humanitarian commitment to protecting families. Yet this does not mean that all migrants are treated equally in allowing them to bring over family members. Whether people are allocated this statutory right depends on their social and economic position. Women might be ,triply disadvantaged' as migrant women are often in more marginal jobs, from a different ethnicity, and have a harder time in acquiring these statutory rights. In this contribution we test this gender hypothesis using data from Aruba. Aruba provides an interesting case because the rapid development of the tourist-driven economy has given rise to enormous labour shortages across the various sectors of the economy, and it is now among the ten countries in the world with the highest net immigration rate. Due to its geographical position the island has recruited labour migrants from both Latin and North America and also from Europe. Dutch nationals receive preferential treatment as Aruba is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This diversity in immigration allows for an analysis of the social, ethnic, economic and legal determinants of family reunification. The results show that women have a disadvantaged position with respect to each of these determinants. On top of that a separate gender effect remains, indicating that it is harder for women migrants to bring over their spouses and children from their home country. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Children and Women's Hours of Work,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 526 2008
Gillian Paull
The prevalence of women in part-time work continues to be a distinguishing feature of female employment in Britain. Using data from the BHPS, this article analyses the evolution of work hours for women and men during family formation and development. A substantial movement towards part-time work for women occurs with the first birth and continues steadily for ten years. The gender gap in hours subsequently diminishes but persists even after children have grown up. Births have little impact on men's hours, although there is some adjustment in the balance of work hours for couples following births and last school entry. [source]


Young People of Migrant Origin in Sweden

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2003
Charles Westin
This article surveys immigration during the second part of the twentieth century with the aim of determining the origins of the immigrant population and the socioeconomic position of the second generation. It focuses on migration from Turkey from the 1960s onward. Originally, migration from Turkey was within the framework of labor recruitment. These migrants were predominantly ethnic Turks of rural origin. A second wave of migrants from Turkey was composed of Syriani/Assyrians, a Christian minority from eastern Turkey seeking asylum in the 1970s on the grounds of religious persecution. Since the 1980s, the main intake of migrants from Turkey has been Kurds seeking protection on the grounds of political persecution. Immigration of ethnic Turks and Syriani/Assyrians is restricted to family reunification and family formation; the numbers are low. Kurds, on the other hand, are accepted both on the grounds of refugee claims and family reunification/family formation. The article looks at conditions of growing up in Sweden, with a particular focus on education, mother-tongue classes and instruction in Swedish. Second-generation youth distinguish themselves by an overrepresentation among dropouts from school, but also by an overrepresentation among those who do well academically in comparison with native Swedes. This applies to second-generation youth with family roots in Turkey. Though very few under the age of 18 hold regular employment, the article also discusses the prospects of entering the labor market, based on information from the regular labor market surveys. Unemployment rates are consistently higher for second-generation migrants than for native-born Swedish youth. The article closes with a discussion about the developing multicultural society in Sweden and the niches that second-generation youth tend to occupy. [source]