As part of a special issue marking the 90th anniversary of Social Forces, articles published in the journal during the past five decades that have been especially significant statements on important ...topics are highlighted. In this article, Suzanne M. Bianchi, Liana C. Sayer, Melissa A. Milkie and John P. Robinson reflect on their article "Is Anyone Doing the Housework? Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor" Social Forces 79:191-228. Adapted from the source document.
Interracial/interethnic marriage in America is a barometer of racial/ethnic relations and intergroup social distance. Using data from the 5-percent Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1990 and 2000 ...censuses, we interpret trends in intermarriage in light of new assimilation theory, recent changes in racial classification, and rapid demographic changes in American society. Our results indicate that changes in marital assimilation have taken on momentum of their own; that is, America's growing biracial population has fueled the growth of interracial marriages with whites. Analyses also shed new light on the effects of rapid immigration, rising cohabitation, and educational upgrading on intermarriage patterns, and yield both continuities and departures from the past. Historic patterns of racial/ethnic differences in intermarriage persist-Hispanics and American Indians are most likely to marry whites, followed closely by Asian Americans. African Americans are least likely to marry whites. Yet, the 1990s brought significant increases in intermarriage between blacks and whites; large increases in cohabitation did not offset the growth of racially-mixed marriages. The past decade also ushered in unprecedented declines in intermarriage with whites and large increases in marriage between native- and foreign-born co-ethnics among Hispanics and Asian Americans. The role of educational attainment in the out-marriage patterns of Hispanics and Asian Americans was also reinforced. Any evidence of differential growth in African American-white marriages among the highly educated African American population was weak. If intermarriage is our guide, any shifting, blurring, or crossing of racial/ethnic boundaries represent uncommonly weak mechanisms for breaking down existing racial barriers to black-white union formation.
Assortative mating fundamentally shapes the characteristics of families and the reproduction of populations. It organizes people into families and determines the characteristics of parents. In this ...article, I review the literature on the causes and consequences of trends and variation in assortative mating. Explanations for why assortative mating varies have been dominated by modernization theory, but perspectives emphasizing economic inequality and gender inequality have gained momentum in recent years. Underexplored is how changes in the structure of search have affected mate selection. The idea that assortative mating affects inequality and population composition is one of the primary motivations for its study but, until recently, has rarely been tested empirically. I review the literature on the consequences of assortative mating for (a) inequality within generations, (b) inequality between generations, (c) long-run population change, and (d) relationship quality and dissolution. I conclude with suggestions for future research.
The Causal Effects of Father Absence McLanahan, Sara; Tach, Laura; Schneider, Daniel
Annual review of sociology,
01/2013, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review ...studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, children's social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.
Gentrification has inspired considerable debate, but direct examination of its uneven evolution across time and space is rare. We address this gap by developing a conceptual framework on the social ...pathways of gentrification and introducing a method of systematic social observation using Google Street View to detect visible cues of neighborhood change. We argue that a durable racial hierarchy governs residential selection and, in turn, gentrifying neighborhoods. Integrating census data, police records, prior street-level observations, community surveys, proximity to amenities, and city budget data on capital investments, we find that the pace of gentrification in Chicago from 2007 to 2009 was negatively associated with the concentration of blacks and Latinos in neighborhoods that either showed signs of gentrification or were adjacent and still disinvested in 1995. Racial composition has a threshold effect, however, attenuating gentrification when the share of blacks in a neighborhood is greater than 40 percent. Consistent with theories of neighborhood stigma, we also find that collective perceptions of disorder, which are higher in poor minority neighborhoods, deter gentrification, while observed disorder does not. These results help explain the reproduction of neighborhood racial inequality amid urban transformation.
Recent research has suggested that financial transfers from parents to their adult children in the family are less likely to take place but more intense—i.e. for larger amounts—in the Southern ...European countries than in the Nordic ones, with the Continental European countries falling in-between the two. What remains to be examined is the variation among regimes in the social mechanisms regulating these transfers. Using data from the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), this article shows that financial transfers have different aims and meanings across the regimes. In Southern Europe, parents support their children mainly through co-residence, and little economic support passes the walls of the house. In the Nordic countries, in contrast, parent–child co-residence is non-normative. Children leave their parents' home early and then receive direct and explicit help from them. The Continental countries fall in-between.
The authors review the literature on sibling relationships in childhood and adolescence, starting by tracing themes from foundational research and theory and then focusing on empirical research ...during the past 2 decades. This literature documents siblings' centrality in family life, sources of variation in sibling relationship qualities, and the significance of siblings for child and adolescent development and adjustment. Sibling influences emerge not only in the context of siblings 'frequent and often emotionally intense interactions but also by virtue of siblings' role in larger family system dynamics. Although siblings are building blocks of family structure and key players in family dynamics, their role has been relatively neglected by family scholars and by those who study close relationships. Incorporating study of siblings into family research provides novel insights into the operation of families as social and socializing systems.
In this article I argue that the telling of family secrets is tied into the workings of family memories and that the stories that people tell cannot be regarded as simple factual accounts. Rather ...they are amongst the kinds of stories that are part of the constitution of 'the family'. Secrets, it might be assumed, are buried and forgotten but it is equally likely in families that secrets can be kept alive by innuendo, palpable silences, and rumour. I argue that it is important to understand the sociological significance of family secrets, not because they reveal a simple 'truth' about family life, but because these secrets are a route into understanding the complex relationship between power, the personal, the cultural and the social. This entanglement of secrets, memories and family practices is explored through written accounts of family secrets found in the Mass Observation Project. The study of family secrets throws additional light on the everyday workings of families and the ways in which family stories are managed.
Exploiting a randomized natural experiment in India, we show that female leadership influences adolescent girls' career aspirations and educational attainment. A1993 law reserved leadership positions ...for women in randomly selected village councils. Using 8453 surveys of adolescents aged 11 to 15 and their parents in 495 villages, we found that, relative to villages in which such positions were never reserved, the gender gap in aspirations closed by 20% in parents and 32% in adolescents in villages assigned a female leader for two election cycles. The gender gap in adolescent educational attainment was erased, and girls spent less time on household chores. We found no evidence of changes in young women's labor market opportunities, which suggests that the impact of women leaders primarily reflects a role model effect.
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