"The average man who became divorced or separated was actually better off one year later, although the improvements in his situation were less marked than those experienced by the average intact couple."
"The inclusion of those who have remarried in the calculation of the economic consequences of divorce improves substantially the average income/needs of women. By the fifth year following the divorce or separation the average divorced woman is better off than in the year before divorce. The average, of course, includes both those who did remarry (the majority of whom are better off) and those who did not remarry (the majority of whom are in a worse position)."
"A close look at the income flows in the years following a divorce or separation reveals marked differences in the distribution of effects. The economic consequences of divorce are especially adverse for women. In most cases, children remain with the mother, who usually has considerably lower potential labor market earnings than her former husband, partly because her responsibilities for the children are likely to reduce her labor supply and may have limited her past human capital investments. Alimony and child support are the principal mechanisms for transfers from the ex-husband to the ex-wife, but payments are rarely frequent or sizeable enough to make up for an appreciable amount of the labor income lost through the departure of the ex-husband. Human capital investments on the part of the mother have a modest effect on her economic situation in the years following the divorce. Most men who divorce or separate are immediately better off because they retain most of their labor incomes, typically do not pay large amounts of alimony and child support to their ex-wives, and no longer have to provide for the level of needs associated with their former families. Much more important than growth in the ex-wife's own labor income is the role of a new husband's labor income upon her remarriage. More than half of the white women remarry within five years following a divorce or separation; the comparable fraction for black women is less than half."
Duncan, Greg J., and Saul D. Hoffman. "A reconsideration of the economic consequences of marital dissolution." Demography 22.4 (1985): 485-497.
"Second, and more enduringly, there will be added ongoing costs associated with running a second household. Most of the literature suggests that this hardship falls disproportionately on mothers (Bartfeld, 2000; Bianchi, 1992; Bianchi, Subaiya, & Kahn, 1999; Burkhauser, Duncan, Hauser, & Bernsten, 1990, 1991; Corcoran, 1979; David & Flory, 1989; Duncan & Hoffman, 1985; Espenshade, 1979; Garfinkel, McLanahan, & Hanson, 1998; Hoffman & Duncan, 1985; Holden & Smock, 1991; Peterson, 1996; Sayer, 2006; Smock, Manning, & Gupta, 1999; Sorenson, 1992; Teachman & Paasch, 1994; Weiss, 1984)."
"In contrast, Braver et al. (2005 ; see also Braver, 1999; Braver & O’Connell, 1998) have contended that, if proper accounting is made, the post-divorce circumstances of fathers and mothers are largely equal in the short term , while in the long run, the majority of divorced mothers fare better than their ex-husbands. To understand the debate requires understanding the operational definition of “standard of living.” Most researchers focus on the income-to-needs ratio , in which the household’s annual income is divided by the Federal Poverty Threshold (FPT) for comparable households. Because child support is very frequently paid by one divorced parent and received by the other (and less frequently, alimony is also paid), both are virtually always subtracted from the payer’s annual income and added to the recipient’s before division by the FPT. But Braver and his colleagues (2005) argued that at least two crucial, yet obvious factors have been typically omitted when such calculations are made.
First, all such calculations are based on gross income, yet, only after tax income can be used to support families. It turns out that custodial parents are taxed far more advantageously than noncustodial parents. Through such tax devices as the Head of Household filing status, the Earned Income Credit, and the Child Tax Credit, the IRS in effect subsidizes the standard of living in the custodial but not noncustodial households. Second, most of the above researchers have assumed that, other than child support, 100% of the children’s expenses are borne by custodial parents, while noncustodial parents were assumed to pay nothing : no child meals, no child transportation costs, $0 to entertain the children, nothing to provide room for the children in their homes, and no share of medical insurance or medical expenses, etc. In other words, most analyses do not take into account any kind of visitation expenses, nor any direct payments by noncustodial parents for the children, although these are often appreciable (Fabricius & Braver, 2003). Braver and Stockburger (2004) and Rogers and Bieniewicz (2004) specify a set of reasonable and robust assumptions, concerning the cost of children relative to adults, and the proportion of child’s expenses that travel with the child, and economies of scale, that can be used to correct estimates for those expenses borne by noncustodial parents instead of the custodial parents. Using such assumptions, Braver and O’Connell (1998) and Braver (1999) found that the average standards of living shortly after divorce for mothers and fathers were equivalent.
And what of the longer term? Few researchers have studied anything beyond about 18 months after the divorce, but two very common events become significant as time progresses. First, the salaries of many custodial mothers increase: Duncan and Hoffman (1985) found that, by 5 years after divorce, women who remained single increased their standard of living by 34%. Men’s salaries do not increase similarly because most already earn close to their maximum capacity at the time of divorce. Second, most divorced parents remarry as time progresses. According to Bumpass, Sweet, and Castro-Martin (1990), about two-thirds of divorced mothers and about three-quarters of divorced fathers remarry. When they do, the economics change again. When mothers remarry, they gain more income than expenses, whereas fathers do the reverse (Fabricius, Braver, & Deneau, 2003). Thus, remarriage tends to make mothers’ standards of living higher than fathers’. If the parents’ standards of living were about equal shortly after the divorce, these two factors combine to make the long-term financial effects of divorce, on average, more favorable to mothers than to fathers."
Braver, Sanford L., and Michael E. Lamb. "Marital Dissolution." Handbook of Marriage and the Family (2013): 487-516.
"The underlying theory behind child support guidelines implies that child support orders should change when the incomes of noncustodial parents change. This paper documents changes in noncustodial fathers' earnings over a five-year period and examines the relationship between the changes in earnings and modifications in child support orders. Using detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin, the authors examine the history of orders and earnings for fathers in couples who had their first child support ordered in 2000. A substantial proportion of fathers experience large changes in earnings, but relatively few of the associated child support orders are modified. Using discrete-time multinomial event history models that consider time-varying variables and control for censored observations, we find some evidence of changes in earnings being associated with changes in orders, all else equal, but the relationship is relatively weak and order changes are not proportional to earnings changes. The findings highlight the challenges and importance of developing policies that result in child support orders being more responsive to changes in fathers' incomes."
Ha, Yoonsook, Maria Cancian, and Daniel R. Meyer. "Unchanging child support orders in the face of unstable earnings." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29.4 (2010): 799-820.
"The present work is concerned with the economic consequences of marital disruption for both members of the separating couples. Most of the literature on this topic assesses whether there is a large gender bias, with women being exposed to high poverty risks in the aftermath of separation whereas men seem not to experience any dramatic drop in their income and are sometimes even better off after divorce or separation. Some researchers (McManus and DiPrete, 2001) have challenged this evidence, suggesting that the gender bias is less strong than is generally acknowledged, and that men also suffer economically after marital disruption. Here we suggest two issues that are essential to this debate: firstly the conventional measures of well-being (i.e. income and poverty status) are not entirely satisfying. Poverty status creates a distinction between ‘poor’ and ‘non-poor’, but it is not clear which poverty line should be considered appropriate and why. Moreover, income and poverty status do not encapsulate all the dimensions underlying poverty and social exclusion—only the monetary one. We may expect that men are not suffering in monetary terms in the aftermath of separation but they experience an increased deprivation in life style standards all the same because of a rise in expenses due to alimony payments, new dwelling costs, etc. The second issue concerns selection. This is driven by the fact that men and women who are at high risk of entering poverty may be more likely to avoid separation. By using a propensity score matching procedure combined with a difference-in-differences estimator we control for such a selection bias.
We expect that, by using different measures of well-being, we can observe that both men and women experience an economic deprivation after separation, women being more deprived in monetary terms and men in non-monetary terms. The results conform largely to our expectations: it is confirmed that the definition of the poverty threshold is an important issue. Results differ considerably depending on whether we use a 50%, 60% or 70% poverty line. Moreover when we use monetary measures (i.e. poverty status and relative income) it is unquestionable that women suffer a disproportionately larger negative effect than men. Also important is that, by using monetary measures, we find that most of the results are consistent with welfare regime theory. However, the non-monetary measures (i.e. indices of deprivation) provide a different picture. Women are still found to suffer significantly more than men, but it is also clear that men's level of deprivation also increases, and in some cases there is no significant difference between the ATET that is estimated for men and women (this is so in liberal countries when using the overall index of deprivation and the secondary life style deprivation index).
Children play an important role in explaining the gender differences. If there are children in the conjugal dwelling, then mothers are much more likely to be granted custody following a divorce. Thus the divorce event will for many women imply reduced income (poorer access to the husband's income) and a higher relative expenditure. Men, in contrast, are likely to live alone or with parents and are much less likely to experience poverty and financial strain. Considering couples with children only in the analysis of entering poverty, we notice that in liberal and Mediterranean countries the gender gap is even larger, in social democratic countries it is smaller and in the conservative countries it remains virtually unaltered.
However, in terms of deprivation, men do suffer significantly. Many of the items that are used to compute the index of deprivation refer to characteristics of the dwelling. If it is the case that men normally must leave the dwelling following a divorce, they will, in the short run at least, lose out on many of the goods and services that the household would provide. So, although men are not worse off financially, they are worse off in terms of consumer durables and certain expenditure goods. It also seems likely that the new dwelling is often of poorer quality than the original dwelling, which is consistent with our estimates.
The gender difference is clearly smaller when children are not present in the dwelling. With no children, the effect on life style deprivation among men becomes higher, whereas it is slightly smaller for women. One important factor here is that it is less clear which of the spouses will remain in the conjugal dwelling if the couple have no children."
Aassve, Arnstein, et al. "Marital disruption and economic well‐being: a comparative analysis." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) 170.3 (2007): 781-799.
"Women seem to be less satisfied with the quality of their pre-divorce relationship which is reflected in the fact that most divorces are filed by women. Generally, the one who initiates divorce has a temporal advantage because he or she has planned the event earlier and has already thought about the consequences. Additionally, the initiator has already confronted himself or herself with the emotions that go along with the decision. This creates a feeling of being more in control of the situation. As a consequence, it is often women who improve their post-divorce situation in the long run in terms of relationship qualities and personal development in the private and the public spheres."
Gaffal, Margit. "Factors Influencing Ex-spouses’ Adjustment to Divorce." Psychosocial and Legal Perspectives of Marital Breakdown. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2010. 47-81.
"We use fifteen years of data to address the economic consequences of divorce. The stark conclusion is that men’s household income increases by about 23% on divorce once we control for household size, whereas women’s household income falls by about 31%. There is partial recovery for women, but this recovery is driven by repartnering: the average effect of repartnering is to restore income to pre-divorce levels after nine years. Those who do not repartner tend to be older and have children. For these individuals, and for those in poor health at the time of divorce, the long-term economic consequences of divorce are serious. For some, these long-term consequences are offset by increased labour supply, but the effects are small, and this ignores any extra costs such as childcare which may arise from working. For others, government provided benefits provide some cushion to the cost of divorce. On the positive side, we present evidence that these costs of divorce for women have been mitigated over time and more recent divorces have not led to the same falls in household income as earlier divorces."
Fisher, Hayley, and Hamish Low. "Who wins, who loses and who recovers from divorce?." Sharing Lives, Dividing Assets. Oxford: Hart Publishing (2009).
"One of the side effects of the sharp rise in divorce rates in most Western developed countries over the last few decades is the increase in the number of single-parent families, most of them headed by women. Because single-mother families are overrepresented among poor families and families who receive welfare support, most of the previous research focused on the profound economic implications of divorce for women and children, and on the discrepancies between the economic outcomes experienced by women and those experienced by men."
Raz-Yurovich, Liat. "Divorce penalty or divorce premium? A longitudinal analysis of the consequences of divorce for men's and women's economic activity." European sociological review 29.2 (2013): 373-385.
Another interesting study:
Braver, Sanford, Ira Ellman, and Robert MacCoun. "Public Intuitions About Fair Child Support Allocations: Converging Evidence for an 'Ability to Contribute' Rule." Available at SSRN 2110376 (2012).
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Studies On Childless Women
“The sex-role patterns of voluntarily childless women are reported from the results of an in-depth interview study that compared 30 childless, 29 delay (subjects who are currently childless, but plan to have children in the future), and 24 parent (subjects with their first child under the age of 2) wives and husbands, chosen on a purposive basis. Sex role is conceptualized as a complex variable composed of behavior, attitudes, and self-image, and as the interface between psychological and situational phenomena. The hypothesis tested is that the childless women are less traditional in sex-role orientation than either the delays or parents, indicating that psychological factors are more important than situational factors in distinguishing the groups. The data confirm the hypothesis.”
Bram, Susan. “Voluntarily childless women: Traditional or nontraditional?.” Sex roles 10.3-4 (1984): 195-206.
“There has been little in-depth theoretical study in sociology of the motives of women and men who are childless by choice. This article begins to remedy this deficiency by analyzing the motives articulated by twenty-three childless women and men using Weber’s typology of social action and distinction between primary and end motives. In-depth interview and focus group data reveal that, compared to men, women more often were affected by the parenting models of significant others, saw parenting as conflicting with career and leisured identities, and claimed the lack of a “maternal instinct” or disinterest in children as dominant influences. Men more explicitly than women rejected parenthood because of its perceived sacrifices, including financial expense. Both women and men were motivated by personality traits that they deemed incongruent with good parenting. Declared motives especially demonstrated instrumentally rational action in Weber’s schema, although affectual and value-rational actions also were present. Respondent motives are compared to those that they, and empirical studies, have attributed to parents.”
Park, Kristin. “Choosing Childlessness: Weber’s Typology of Action and Motives of the Voluntarily Childless*.” Sociological Inquiry 75.3 (2005): 372-402.
“This study examined the potential implications of religious affiliation on perceptions of voluntarily childless couples. Undergraduate students were given a vignette about an adult couple that either had children or that was childless, and were subsequently asked to complete questionnaires that rated the couple on a variety of personality dimensions. It was predicted that individuals who identify with pronatalist religious sects have more negative perceptions of those who are childless. There was a significant contrast in the views that Christian individuals held toward couples that were voluntarily childless versus those that had two children, suggesting that this religious affiliation is associated with perceptions of those who stray from the standards of the pronatalist society.”
Hook, Alyssa N. “Perceptions of the Voluntarily Childless: The Negative Stigma of an Unconventional Ideal.” (2012).
“We examine double standards in norms on voluntary childlessness. Whether choosing childlessness is more accepted for men or for women is not a priori clear; we formulate arguments in both directions. Multilevel analyses are conducted, including individual and societal-level variables. Our sample consists of 44,055 individuals nested in 25 European countries, obtained from Wave 3 of the European Social Survey (2006). Subjective norms were measured with a split ballot design, with half of the respondents randomly assigned questions regarding women choosing not to have children, and half assigned items regarding men. Findings indicate that men are more disapproved of when choosing not to have children than are women. Overall, this double standard is endorsed by women, not by men. Clear cross-national variation in the double standard exists, which is partly explained by the level of gender equality (GEM). Surprisingly, the higher the gender equality, the stronger the double standard.”
Rijken, Arieke J., and E-M. Merz. “Double standards: a cross-European study on differences in norms on voluntary childlessness for men and women. Paper presentation.” 2011 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), Washington, March 31-April 2, 2011. 2011.
“Widowed childless older women had lower psychological well-being than did widowed mothers. However, among married women childlessness had no significant effects on well-being. Results also show that physical capacity, religiosity, quality of social interaction, and strength of social support are all positively associated with well-being among older women. Jewish women reported lower well-being than did catholic women who, in turn, evidenced lower well-being than did protestant women.”
Beckman, Linda J., and Betsy Bosak Houser. “The consequences of childlessness on the social-psychological well-being of older women.” Journal of Gerontology 37.2 (1982): 243-250.
“Negative attitudes toward childlessness still remain, and most people hold strong beliefs about parenthood as a vital mode of fulfillment. Research findings, however, tend to show that people are better off not having children, particularly women, singles, lower socioeconomic strata, and people residing in less pronatalist societies—especially when these characteristics act in combination. The reasons empirical findings do not map onto beliefs may be because parents are exposed to different stressors that cancel out or exceed the emotional rewards; because childlessness has a number of advantages that promote wellbeing; and because of effective adaptation and compensation by involuntary childless persons. The reason why the beliefs do not map onto the findings may be attributable to cognitive biases and that people mistake the rewards of parenting for happiness, when they have more to do with meaning. The current review reveals an interesting paradox: It appears that a familistic culture and strong pronatalist values and attitudes go together with low fertility rates and marked negative emotional effects of having children, whereas fertility rates are higher and parents derive greater happiness in more individualistic cultures where people hold less pronatalist beliefs (see also Bernhardt and Fratczak 2005). The rosy views or myths about parenthood thus are the strongest in countries where they are the most likely to be false, and vice versa.
This paper clarifies and debunks some of the myths about parental status and wellbeing, an illumination is important as commentators and policymakers are trying the curb and understand the consequences of the rapid growth in childlessness across Western nations. Indeed, final childlessness among women born after 1970 is likely to range between 15 and 25% in industrialized countries (Sobotka 2004).”
Hansen, Thomas. “Parenthood and happiness: A review of folk theories versus empirical evidence.” Social Indicators Research 108.1 (2012): 29-64.
“Marciano (1978) also investigated male pressure in the decision to remain childfree, collecting data from a total of 100 married couples from the National Organization for Non-Parents and finding that if it was the husband’s decision to remain childfree and not the wife’s at first, she was likely to come into agreement with him. On the other hand, if it was the wife’s decision to remain childfree, only very rarely would the husband consent. The more likely result, if she remained adamant, was divorce.”
“Today we know that childless couples have a variety of reasons for their decision. Such families may belong to the voluntarily childless (also called childfree), involuntarily childless (as in case of fecundity impaired) or temporarily childfree (people who have no children but expect to have them later).”
“Nonetheless, the difficulty of distinguishing the childfree from the childless in demographic data is also worth noting, with the consequent risk of overestimating the phenomenon. Again, we should be aware of the need to disentangle the permanently childfree from the temporarily childfree. This is a very important issue and one that is essential to achieving a clearer understanding of the phenomenon. Questionnaires and other psychological investigations may help quantify the percentage of childfree couples and document their intentions for the future; however, it is not at all easy to determine what percentage of people who consider themselves childfree forever will subsequently change their minds. People may be absolutely sure of their desire to be childfree at the moment in which they answer questionnaires, but may later change their minds. Heaton et al. (1999) for example, observed the data from a sample of 13,017 respondents of the US population aged 19 years and older. Six years later, nearly half of the sample had not yet carried out their intentions to have a child, and a fifth of the respondents had changed their minds. This would suggest the instability of childbearing intentions and the difficulty of determining a clear border between those who are permanently and temporarily childfree.”
Agrillo, Christian, and Cristian Nelini. “Childfree by choice: A review.” Journal of Cultural Geography 25.3 (2008): 347-363.
“Although the majority of women in Europe and the United States continue to become mothers at some point in their lives, both reproductive choice and greater autonomy have created the possibility for women to choose to remain childfree, in ways not possible for previous generations of women. Other studies have highlighted social change, affluence, higher levels of education, and the support of partners as key factors in enabling women who desire to do so to remain childfree (Burgwyn 1983; Campbell 1985; Joshi 1989; McAllister and Clarke 1998; Morell 1994; Safer 1996; Veevers 1983; Walby 1997). Although I found childfree women located within a wide range of social groups, I did find a relationship between being childfree and higher social class.
While I found the existence of a pull toward the perceived freedoms and opportunities associated with the lifestyle of childfree women, as have other authors, what my findings establish that is new is the existence of a more radical rejection or push away from motherhood as a normative female gender marker. These women reflect a radical departure from hegemonic understandings that to be a woman is inextricably bound to motherhood. Indeed, an increasing number of women reject and resist pronatalist cultural imperatives of femininity that conflate woman with mother, highlighting the emergence of a positive feminine identity separate from motherhood.
It may be that there have always been women who preferred to remain childfree. The choices of women in the past have remained hidden. Being childfree has always been socially sanctioned for some groups, such as spinsters, widows, nuns, and nannies (Weigle 1982). Although these roles may have provided legitimacy for those who eschewed motherhood, they were defined by loss, self-sacrifice, and/or the nurturing of others’ children. They failed to challenge, and even served to bolster, pronatalist cultural discourses that fused hegemonic femininity with motherhood. As Di Lapi (1987) has observed, poor, single, and lesbian women have generally been framed by others as unfit mothers and expected to remain childless. Campbell (1999, 72) has argued there have always been individual women who sought to prevent conception, aborted unwanted fetuses, and abandoned or killed a newborn child. What is new is both the increasing numbers of women who eschew motherhood and that increasingly they are able to articulate their rejection in ways not generally available to previous generations of women.
Giddens (1991) argued that late modernity has given rise to fundamental transformations, which have had a profound effect on the nature of the self. Modernity has created new possibilities for being a woman that exclude motherhood. In describing the pull of remaining childfree and a more radical push away from motherhood, and by articulating a rejection of motherhood as central to their sense of femininity and identity, childfree women highlight the transformative effects of agency. Unapologetic, childfree women underscore how meanings of femininity and identity are highly complex and individual and cannot adequately be explained through essentialist notions of the convergence of woman with mother. Their rejection of motherhood exemplifies how modernity has given rise to wider possibilities for women to shape a fulfilling gender identity that is separate and uncoupled from the hegemonic ideal of motherhood.
I suggest that a trend to remain childfree and an articulation of the lack of desire for motherhood create new possibilities to forge a childfree femininity. Indeed, future research could explore the ways cultural discourses associated with motherhood may never have adequately explained women’s subjective experiences. For example, Benn (1998) and Adams (1998) have shown that the public face of motherhood fails to account for the private experiences of women who are mothers. It is possible that my respondents rejected motherhood because they did not experience the maternal desire that hegemonic femininity suggests exists. Instead, they seem to have experienced a sense of female gender identity unshackled from motherhood, a childfree femininity. Although the findings of this study cannot be used to generalize, they can usefully inform debate and highlight the need for further research into the subjective experiences of identity both in women who are mothers and those who are childfree, among white women and women of color. Further research might also inform a fuller understanding of masculinity by contrasting.”
Gillespie, Rosemary. “Childfree And Feminine Understanding the Gender Identity of Voluntarily Childless Women.” Gender & Society 17.1 (2003): 122-136.
And another:
Kelly, Maura. “Women’s Voluntary Childlessness: A Radical Rejection of Motherhood?.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37.2 (2009): 157-172.
Bram, Susan. “Voluntarily childless women: Traditional or nontraditional?.” Sex roles 10.3-4 (1984): 195-206.
“There has been little in-depth theoretical study in sociology of the motives of women and men who are childless by choice. This article begins to remedy this deficiency by analyzing the motives articulated by twenty-three childless women and men using Weber’s typology of social action and distinction between primary and end motives. In-depth interview and focus group data reveal that, compared to men, women more often were affected by the parenting models of significant others, saw parenting as conflicting with career and leisured identities, and claimed the lack of a “maternal instinct” or disinterest in children as dominant influences. Men more explicitly than women rejected parenthood because of its perceived sacrifices, including financial expense. Both women and men were motivated by personality traits that they deemed incongruent with good parenting. Declared motives especially demonstrated instrumentally rational action in Weber’s schema, although affectual and value-rational actions also were present. Respondent motives are compared to those that they, and empirical studies, have attributed to parents.”
Park, Kristin. “Choosing Childlessness: Weber’s Typology of Action and Motives of the Voluntarily Childless*.” Sociological Inquiry 75.3 (2005): 372-402.
“This study examined the potential implications of religious affiliation on perceptions of voluntarily childless couples. Undergraduate students were given a vignette about an adult couple that either had children or that was childless, and were subsequently asked to complete questionnaires that rated the couple on a variety of personality dimensions. It was predicted that individuals who identify with pronatalist religious sects have more negative perceptions of those who are childless. There was a significant contrast in the views that Christian individuals held toward couples that were voluntarily childless versus those that had two children, suggesting that this religious affiliation is associated with perceptions of those who stray from the standards of the pronatalist society.”
Hook, Alyssa N. “Perceptions of the Voluntarily Childless: The Negative Stigma of an Unconventional Ideal.” (2012).
“We examine double standards in norms on voluntary childlessness. Whether choosing childlessness is more accepted for men or for women is not a priori clear; we formulate arguments in both directions. Multilevel analyses are conducted, including individual and societal-level variables. Our sample consists of 44,055 individuals nested in 25 European countries, obtained from Wave 3 of the European Social Survey (2006). Subjective norms were measured with a split ballot design, with half of the respondents randomly assigned questions regarding women choosing not to have children, and half assigned items regarding men. Findings indicate that men are more disapproved of when choosing not to have children than are women. Overall, this double standard is endorsed by women, not by men. Clear cross-national variation in the double standard exists, which is partly explained by the level of gender equality (GEM). Surprisingly, the higher the gender equality, the stronger the double standard.”
Rijken, Arieke J., and E-M. Merz. “Double standards: a cross-European study on differences in norms on voluntary childlessness for men and women. Paper presentation.” 2011 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), Washington, March 31-April 2, 2011. 2011.
“Widowed childless older women had lower psychological well-being than did widowed mothers. However, among married women childlessness had no significant effects on well-being. Results also show that physical capacity, religiosity, quality of social interaction, and strength of social support are all positively associated with well-being among older women. Jewish women reported lower well-being than did catholic women who, in turn, evidenced lower well-being than did protestant women.”
Beckman, Linda J., and Betsy Bosak Houser. “The consequences of childlessness on the social-psychological well-being of older women.” Journal of Gerontology 37.2 (1982): 243-250.
“Negative attitudes toward childlessness still remain, and most people hold strong beliefs about parenthood as a vital mode of fulfillment. Research findings, however, tend to show that people are better off not having children, particularly women, singles, lower socioeconomic strata, and people residing in less pronatalist societies—especially when these characteristics act in combination. The reasons empirical findings do not map onto beliefs may be because parents are exposed to different stressors that cancel out or exceed the emotional rewards; because childlessness has a number of advantages that promote wellbeing; and because of effective adaptation and compensation by involuntary childless persons. The reason why the beliefs do not map onto the findings may be attributable to cognitive biases and that people mistake the rewards of parenting for happiness, when they have more to do with meaning. The current review reveals an interesting paradox: It appears that a familistic culture and strong pronatalist values and attitudes go together with low fertility rates and marked negative emotional effects of having children, whereas fertility rates are higher and parents derive greater happiness in more individualistic cultures where people hold less pronatalist beliefs (see also Bernhardt and Fratczak 2005). The rosy views or myths about parenthood thus are the strongest in countries where they are the most likely to be false, and vice versa.
This paper clarifies and debunks some of the myths about parental status and wellbeing, an illumination is important as commentators and policymakers are trying the curb and understand the consequences of the rapid growth in childlessness across Western nations. Indeed, final childlessness among women born after 1970 is likely to range between 15 and 25% in industrialized countries (Sobotka 2004).”
Hansen, Thomas. “Parenthood and happiness: A review of folk theories versus empirical evidence.” Social Indicators Research 108.1 (2012): 29-64.
“Marciano (1978) also investigated male pressure in the decision to remain childfree, collecting data from a total of 100 married couples from the National Organization for Non-Parents and finding that if it was the husband’s decision to remain childfree and not the wife’s at first, she was likely to come into agreement with him. On the other hand, if it was the wife’s decision to remain childfree, only very rarely would the husband consent. The more likely result, if she remained adamant, was divorce.”
“Today we know that childless couples have a variety of reasons for their decision. Such families may belong to the voluntarily childless (also called childfree), involuntarily childless (as in case of fecundity impaired) or temporarily childfree (people who have no children but expect to have them later).”
“Nonetheless, the difficulty of distinguishing the childfree from the childless in demographic data is also worth noting, with the consequent risk of overestimating the phenomenon. Again, we should be aware of the need to disentangle the permanently childfree from the temporarily childfree. This is a very important issue and one that is essential to achieving a clearer understanding of the phenomenon. Questionnaires and other psychological investigations may help quantify the percentage of childfree couples and document their intentions for the future; however, it is not at all easy to determine what percentage of people who consider themselves childfree forever will subsequently change their minds. People may be absolutely sure of their desire to be childfree at the moment in which they answer questionnaires, but may later change their minds. Heaton et al. (1999) for example, observed the data from a sample of 13,017 respondents of the US population aged 19 years and older. Six years later, nearly half of the sample had not yet carried out their intentions to have a child, and a fifth of the respondents had changed their minds. This would suggest the instability of childbearing intentions and the difficulty of determining a clear border between those who are permanently and temporarily childfree.”
Agrillo, Christian, and Cristian Nelini. “Childfree by choice: A review.” Journal of Cultural Geography 25.3 (2008): 347-363.
“Although the majority of women in Europe and the United States continue to become mothers at some point in their lives, both reproductive choice and greater autonomy have created the possibility for women to choose to remain childfree, in ways not possible for previous generations of women. Other studies have highlighted social change, affluence, higher levels of education, and the support of partners as key factors in enabling women who desire to do so to remain childfree (Burgwyn 1983; Campbell 1985; Joshi 1989; McAllister and Clarke 1998; Morell 1994; Safer 1996; Veevers 1983; Walby 1997). Although I found childfree women located within a wide range of social groups, I did find a relationship between being childfree and higher social class.
While I found the existence of a pull toward the perceived freedoms and opportunities associated with the lifestyle of childfree women, as have other authors, what my findings establish that is new is the existence of a more radical rejection or push away from motherhood as a normative female gender marker. These women reflect a radical departure from hegemonic understandings that to be a woman is inextricably bound to motherhood. Indeed, an increasing number of women reject and resist pronatalist cultural imperatives of femininity that conflate woman with mother, highlighting the emergence of a positive feminine identity separate from motherhood.
It may be that there have always been women who preferred to remain childfree. The choices of women in the past have remained hidden. Being childfree has always been socially sanctioned for some groups, such as spinsters, widows, nuns, and nannies (Weigle 1982). Although these roles may have provided legitimacy for those who eschewed motherhood, they were defined by loss, self-sacrifice, and/or the nurturing of others’ children. They failed to challenge, and even served to bolster, pronatalist cultural discourses that fused hegemonic femininity with motherhood. As Di Lapi (1987) has observed, poor, single, and lesbian women have generally been framed by others as unfit mothers and expected to remain childless. Campbell (1999, 72) has argued there have always been individual women who sought to prevent conception, aborted unwanted fetuses, and abandoned or killed a newborn child. What is new is both the increasing numbers of women who eschew motherhood and that increasingly they are able to articulate their rejection in ways not generally available to previous generations of women.
Giddens (1991) argued that late modernity has given rise to fundamental transformations, which have had a profound effect on the nature of the self. Modernity has created new possibilities for being a woman that exclude motherhood. In describing the pull of remaining childfree and a more radical push away from motherhood, and by articulating a rejection of motherhood as central to their sense of femininity and identity, childfree women highlight the transformative effects of agency. Unapologetic, childfree women underscore how meanings of femininity and identity are highly complex and individual and cannot adequately be explained through essentialist notions of the convergence of woman with mother. Their rejection of motherhood exemplifies how modernity has given rise to wider possibilities for women to shape a fulfilling gender identity that is separate and uncoupled from the hegemonic ideal of motherhood.
I suggest that a trend to remain childfree and an articulation of the lack of desire for motherhood create new possibilities to forge a childfree femininity. Indeed, future research could explore the ways cultural discourses associated with motherhood may never have adequately explained women’s subjective experiences. For example, Benn (1998) and Adams (1998) have shown that the public face of motherhood fails to account for the private experiences of women who are mothers. It is possible that my respondents rejected motherhood because they did not experience the maternal desire that hegemonic femininity suggests exists. Instead, they seem to have experienced a sense of female gender identity unshackled from motherhood, a childfree femininity. Although the findings of this study cannot be used to generalize, they can usefully inform debate and highlight the need for further research into the subjective experiences of identity both in women who are mothers and those who are childfree, among white women and women of color. Further research might also inform a fuller understanding of masculinity by contrasting.”
Gillespie, Rosemary. “Childfree And Feminine Understanding the Gender Identity of Voluntarily Childless Women.” Gender & Society 17.1 (2003): 122-136.
And another:
Kelly, Maura. “Women’s Voluntary Childlessness: A Radical Rejection of Motherhood?.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 37.2 (2009): 157-172.
Tattoos And Body Modifications - Links With Risk Behaviours
“Data gathered from a convenience sample of 450 college students indicated that tattooed respondents were substantively and significantly more likely to be sexually active than nontattooed college students.”
Koch, Jerome R., et al. “College Students, Tattoos, And Sexual Activity 1.” Psychological Reports 97.3 (2005): 887-890.
“Participants with tattoos and/or body piercings were more likely to have engaged in risk-taking behaviors and at greater degrees of involvement than those without either. These included disordered eating behavior, gateway drug use, hard drug use, sexual activity, and suicide. Violence was associated with males having tattoos and with females having body piercings. Gateway drug use was associated with younger age of both tattooing and body piercing. Hard drug use was associated with number of body piercings. Suicide was associated with females having tattoos and younger age of both tattooing and body piercing. Tattoos and body piercings were found to be more common in females than males.”
Carroll, Sean T., et al. “Tattoos and body piercings as indicators of adolescent risk-taking behaviors.” Pediatrics 109.6 (2002): 1021-1027.
“Women with tattoos were more likely to be younger, to drink more alcohol, to have more psychiatric symptoms and to show borderline personality features than were the non tattooed women. They were also more likely to report child sexual abuse (CSA).”
Romans, S. E., et al. “Tattoos, childhood sexual abuse and adult psychiatric disorder in women.” Archives of Women’s Mental Health 1.3 (1998): 137-141.
“Clearly, the strongest association between tattoo and diagnosis is found in the personality disorders, particularly antisocial personality disorder. (1,2,6,7,11-13) In DSM-III-R, antisocial personality is grouped in cluster B of the personality disorders. Patients with disorders in cluster B are described as dramatic, emotional and erratic, as demonstrated by histories of civil arrest, divorce and chaotic lifestyle. (16) The patient in case 1 has a classic history for antisocial personality disorder, and the subject’s tattoos are typical of that diagnosis. Characteristics of persons with this disorder that may predispose them to tattooing are failure to plan ahead, impulsiveness and recklessness about their own safety. Antisocial personality, like tattooing, is often seen in several generations of a family. Self-abuse and low self-esteem are common in this disorder.
Borderline personality disorder also belongs in cluster B of the personality disorders, and the patient in case 2 is representative of this diagnosis. Persons with borderline personality., like those with antisocial personality, tend to be impulsive, to show lack of control and to engage, often repeatedly, in self-mutilating behaviors. (16) These are common behaviors in tattooed individuals. Tattooing may serve to bolster the defective ego and the unstable self-image that are major components of borderline personality disorder.
After antisocial personality, alcohol abuse and psychoactive substance abuse show the strongest association with tattoos, as reported in the literature. (8,11,13,17) Individuals with these disorders may be trying to fulfill needs engendered by their damaged egos. When intoxicated, they display impulsivity and lack of control. Drug addicts may actually use their tattoos to facilitate contact with drug suppliers while avoiding police detection. (11) Addicts commonly use tattoos to specify their drug of preference, displaying the letter H for heroin or M for marijuana, or the numeral 13 for morphine. (18) (M is the 13th letter of the alphabet.)”
Raspa, Robert F., and John Cusack. “Psychiatric implications of tattoos.” Am Fam Physician 41.5 (1990): 1481-6.
“Adults with BMs have had their first intercourse statistically earlier and were more sexually active compared with controls. There were no statically significant differences in sexual orientation, sexual preferences, engaging in risky sexual behaviors, frequency of masturbation, and history of sexual abuse between the groups. In contrast, the frequency of sexual intercourses was statistically higher and oral sex was more likely to be a dominant sexual activity in adults with BM compared with controls. The multivariate logistic model revealed that adults with BM were four times less likely to participate in religious practices and twice more likely to have early sexual initiation.”
Nowosielski, Krzysztof, et al. “Tattoos, piercing, and sexual behaviors in young adults.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 9.9 (2012): 2307-2314.
“Women who were pierced, compared with those without piercings, were more likely to have personality traits of low constraint or high negative emotionality. Women with piercings were also more likely to report having had, during the previous year, five or more heterosexual partners (odds ratio, 5.8, 95% CI: 2.3-14.6) or any same-sex partner involving genital contact (odds ratio, 10.3, CI: 2.9-37.2). The associations with sexual behavior in men were weaker and not statistically significant. In this population, body piercing in women was associated with sexual behavior. Having multiple heterosexual partners or any same-sex partner was very rare among women without piercings.”
Skegg, Keren, et al. “Body piercing, personality, and sexual behavior.” Archives of sexual behavior 36.1 (2007): 47-54.
Koch, Jerome R., et al. “College Students, Tattoos, And Sexual Activity 1.” Psychological Reports 97.3 (2005): 887-890.
“Participants with tattoos and/or body piercings were more likely to have engaged in risk-taking behaviors and at greater degrees of involvement than those without either. These included disordered eating behavior, gateway drug use, hard drug use, sexual activity, and suicide. Violence was associated with males having tattoos and with females having body piercings. Gateway drug use was associated with younger age of both tattooing and body piercing. Hard drug use was associated with number of body piercings. Suicide was associated with females having tattoos and younger age of both tattooing and body piercing. Tattoos and body piercings were found to be more common in females than males.”
Carroll, Sean T., et al. “Tattoos and body piercings as indicators of adolescent risk-taking behaviors.” Pediatrics 109.6 (2002): 1021-1027.
“Women with tattoos were more likely to be younger, to drink more alcohol, to have more psychiatric symptoms and to show borderline personality features than were the non tattooed women. They were also more likely to report child sexual abuse (CSA).”
Romans, S. E., et al. “Tattoos, childhood sexual abuse and adult psychiatric disorder in women.” Archives of Women’s Mental Health 1.3 (1998): 137-141.
“Clearly, the strongest association between tattoo and diagnosis is found in the personality disorders, particularly antisocial personality disorder. (1,2,6,7,11-13) In DSM-III-R, antisocial personality is grouped in cluster B of the personality disorders. Patients with disorders in cluster B are described as dramatic, emotional and erratic, as demonstrated by histories of civil arrest, divorce and chaotic lifestyle. (16) The patient in case 1 has a classic history for antisocial personality disorder, and the subject’s tattoos are typical of that diagnosis. Characteristics of persons with this disorder that may predispose them to tattooing are failure to plan ahead, impulsiveness and recklessness about their own safety. Antisocial personality, like tattooing, is often seen in several generations of a family. Self-abuse and low self-esteem are common in this disorder.
Borderline personality disorder also belongs in cluster B of the personality disorders, and the patient in case 2 is representative of this diagnosis. Persons with borderline personality., like those with antisocial personality, tend to be impulsive, to show lack of control and to engage, often repeatedly, in self-mutilating behaviors. (16) These are common behaviors in tattooed individuals. Tattooing may serve to bolster the defective ego and the unstable self-image that are major components of borderline personality disorder.
After antisocial personality, alcohol abuse and psychoactive substance abuse show the strongest association with tattoos, as reported in the literature. (8,11,13,17) Individuals with these disorders may be trying to fulfill needs engendered by their damaged egos. When intoxicated, they display impulsivity and lack of control. Drug addicts may actually use their tattoos to facilitate contact with drug suppliers while avoiding police detection. (11) Addicts commonly use tattoos to specify their drug of preference, displaying the letter H for heroin or M for marijuana, or the numeral 13 for morphine. (18) (M is the 13th letter of the alphabet.)”
Raspa, Robert F., and John Cusack. “Psychiatric implications of tattoos.” Am Fam Physician 41.5 (1990): 1481-6.
“Adults with BMs have had their first intercourse statistically earlier and were more sexually active compared with controls. There were no statically significant differences in sexual orientation, sexual preferences, engaging in risky sexual behaviors, frequency of masturbation, and history of sexual abuse between the groups. In contrast, the frequency of sexual intercourses was statistically higher and oral sex was more likely to be a dominant sexual activity in adults with BM compared with controls. The multivariate logistic model revealed that adults with BM were four times less likely to participate in religious practices and twice more likely to have early sexual initiation.”
Nowosielski, Krzysztof, et al. “Tattoos, piercing, and sexual behaviors in young adults.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 9.9 (2012): 2307-2314.
“Women who were pierced, compared with those without piercings, were more likely to have personality traits of low constraint or high negative emotionality. Women with piercings were also more likely to report having had, during the previous year, five or more heterosexual partners (odds ratio, 5.8, 95% CI: 2.3-14.6) or any same-sex partner involving genital contact (odds ratio, 10.3, CI: 2.9-37.2). The associations with sexual behavior in men were weaker and not statistically significant. In this population, body piercing in women was associated with sexual behavior. Having multiple heterosexual partners or any same-sex partner was very rare among women without piercings.”
Skegg, Keren, et al. “Body piercing, personality, and sexual behavior.” Archives of sexual behavior 36.1 (2007): 47-54.
Divorce And Social Context - Sources
Re: http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/fentons-hypothesis
@They Call Me Tom
"I would venture to guess though, if the statistics could be found, because women in groups tend to behave as herds socially (NAWALT, etc. I know), I would imagine that somewhere above half of all divorces are by women who have one or more divorced friends."
Well, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:"
"The first author (working with Jenessa Shapiro) hit upon a promising device to elucidate these issues. Reasoning that popular magazines both reflected and galvanized distinctive cultural views, Braver and Shapiro speculated that subscription rates to certain of these magazines across times and locales could provide an empirical window onto these trends. They thus obtained state-by-state, year-by-year subscription data for the following four magazines: Lady’s Home Journal (read almost entirely by women with fairly traditional values and interests); Playboy (glorifying male hedonism); Cosmopolitan (representing lifestyle advice for “fun, fearless females” seeking empowerment, self improvement, and sexual fulfillment); and Ms. (representing the feminist ideology closely associated with the Women’s Movement). Arraying these subscription rates in a multi-level model against the year-by-year, state-by-state (crude) divorce rates, Braver and Shapiro found (in results not previously published) that changes in divorce rates at the state level were well matched by the state’s trends in subscriptions to Ms. Magazine , and were opposite (though not significantly) to its trends in subscriptions to Lady’s Home Journal. Importantly, they found virtually no association between the state’s divorce rate and its subscriptions to Playboy or Cosmopolitan . Taken together, these data provocatively suggest that some, but not all, value changes are associated with changes in divorce rates. Changing levels of interest in the aspects of self fulfillment and self-empowerment captured in feminist ideology and its antithesis seemed important, whereas changes in the emphasis on either male specialized or female-specific self-fulfillment and hedonism were unrelated to divorce trends. Strengthening this interpretation, since around 1970, about 2 in 3 divorces have been sought by wives (Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987 ; Braver, Whitley, & Ng, 1993 ; Pettit & Bloom, 1984 ) , whereas previously, “most divorces were the man’s idea” (DeWitt, 1992 , p. 54). In addition, findings show that the more that an individual woman agrees with the precepts of the Woman’s Movement, the more likely she is to divorce (Finlay, Starnes, & Alvarez, 1985)."
Braver, Sanford L., and Michael E. Lamb. "Marital Dissolution." Handbook of Marriage and the Family (2013): 487-516.
"With respect to normative integration, the finding appears to be uncomplicated. When one's reference group includes siblings or friends who have divorced, the individual is more likely to divorce. Whether having divorced peers simply releases inhibition and reduces pressure to remain in an unhappy marriage or actually encourages individuals to seek out more attractive partners cannot be discerned from our data."
"The percent obtaining a divorce who also had a divorced friend or sibling (or both) was calculated using the procedure described in Table 5. Only 9% of those having no one divorced in their reference group obtained a divorce in the eight-year period. Those having a friend or a sibling divorce had a 12% chance of divorce. Whether it was one's friend or sibling who divorced did not make a substantial difference in the probability of divorcing. When both a friend and a sibling obtained a divorce, the dissolution rate increased to 16%. When the norms for one's reference group permit divorce, marital dissolution is more likely to occur than when they do not."
Booth, Alan, John N. Edwards, and David R. Johnson. "Social integration and divorce." Social Forces 70.1 (1991): 207-224.
"Following a Durkheimian definition (Durkheim, 1897/1951; Stark, 2006), social integration involves high consensus on rules of behavior (norms) and effective means to ensure that most people conform to the norms most of the time. Hence, the more they are socially integrated in any group, the more likely they are to comply with the norms of this group (Booth, Edwards, & Johnson, 1991). We assume that, in the perspective of the couple, important norms with respect to divorce might be derived from the patterns of behavior prevalent in the couple’s network. Thus, if divorce is a frequent occurrence in the couple’s network, the couple is expected to divorce more easily, because common rules tolerate it, even if one is initially less open for divorce (Stalder, 2011). On the other hand, if divorce is not very frequent in the couple’s network, the couple is expected to stay together because divorce is, possibly, less accepted. For these couples, the social costs of divorcing will impede them to do so (e.g., Fenelon, 1971; Shelton, 1987)."
"Previous research has shown that the occurrence of a parental divorce (e.g., Amato, 1996; Amato & DeBoer, 2001; Wolfinger, 1999), the divorce of siblings (Dronkers & Hox, 2006), the divorce of a close friend (Booth et al., 1991), and divorce in the network (McDermott, Fowler, & Christakis, 2009) indeed increase the likelihood of divorce. Our first hypothesis, therefore, reads: the higher the prevalence of divorce in the couple’s network, the greater the likelihood that the couple will dissolve their long-term romantic relationship. Different from the previous empirical work cited above, this study will, for the first time, simultaneously examine the influence of parental divorce, the divorce of siblings, the divorce of a close friend, as well as the divorce rate in the municipality in which the couple lives, allowing an examination of their relative influence on the likelihood to dissolve long-term romantic relationships."
"As expected, the experience of a parental divorce, having divorced siblings, and living in a municipality with a high divorce rate, predicted the likelihood with which couples dissolve their relationship. However, having a close friend who was divorced was not significantly related to the likelihood of dissolving a long-term romantic relationship. Respondents who had no siblings or reported to have no close friend did not significantly differ from those with siblings or a close friend with respect to the likelihood to dissolve their relationship. Additional analyses in which the respondents with either no siblings or no close friend were omitted from the analyses did not alter the results presented here. Adding interaction terms with relationship type to explore possible differences between married and unmarried cohabiting couples regarding the association between the occurrence of divorce in the network and relationship dissolution revealed no differences (non significant results are not printed in Model 2). We conclude that the first hypothesis regarding the association between the prevalence of divorce in the couple’s network and the likelihood of dissolving the relationship was supported by the findings, with the exception of divorce of a close friend, which was not related to relationship dissolution."
Hogerbrugge, Martijn JA, Aafke E. Komter, and Peer Scheepers. "Dissolving long-term romantic relationships Assessing the role of the social context." Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 30.3 (2013): 320-342.
"To study the possibility of person-to-person effects, we examined the direct ties and individual-level determinants of ego divorce status. In the models we present in Table 8, we control for several factors as noted earlier, and report the association between “Ego Currently Divorced” and “Alter Previously Divorced” in the first row. People who have a friend who has previously gotten divorced are 270% (95% C.I. 60% to 650%) more likely to get divorced themselves by the time they come to their next exam. Among friends, we can distinguish additional possibilities."
McDermott, Rose, James Fowler, and Nicholas Christakis. "Breaking up is hard to do, unless everyone else is doing it too: social network effects on divorce in a longitudinal sample followed for 32 years." Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 (2009).
"For marital status, as Table 5 shows, married respondents were very likely to have married close friends. Separated or divorced respondents most likely had married friends, but they also had a high percentage of separated or divorced friends. This trend was significant."
[Table 5: 35.3% vs 13.4% - that is, % of friends who are sep./div.]
Goward, Eleanor L. "The closest friendships of adult women: a family life cycle approach." (1991).
"Following the divorce, most women report increased independence. In addition, almost all report an increase in assertive behaviours as divorced females. Half have divorced friends who may have encouraged the development of autonomy and self-esteem."
Langelier, Régis, and Pamela Deckert. "Divorce counseling guidelines for the late divorced female." Journal of Divorce 3.4 (1980): 403-411.
"Research on the risk of divorce has attracted a great deal of interest over the past several decades, mostly due to a very rapid increase in divorce rates in most western societies. In the USA, for example, although there are considerable variations in divorce rates by race, education, and age at marriage, on average about half of all marriages end in divorce (see Raley and Bumpass 2003). We have a fairly detailed picture of the many characteristics of individuals and couples that influence the risk of divorce, such as number of children, education, income, age at marriage, and ethnicity (see White 1990). We know much less about how the characteristics of those with whom the individuals interact influence the stability of their marriages.
A large body of sociological and social-psychological research shows that individuals' actions are often influenced by the people with whom they interact (see e.g. Cialdini and Trost 1998), and this is also a recurrent theme throughout this book. The actions of significant others have been shown to be important for explaining a vast array of phenomena, including involvement in social movements (see e.g. McAdam and Paulsen 1993), virginity pledges (see e.g. Bearman and Bruckner 2001), lynching (see e.g. Tolnay, Deane, and Beck 1996), sexual behavior (see e.g. Billy, Brewster, and Grady 1994), contraceptive use (see e.g. Brewster 1994; Rosero Bixby and Casterline 1994), and suicide (see e.g. Phillips 1974; Bearn1an and Moody 2004; Hedstrom, Liu, and Nordvik 2008).
Demographers have also paid some attention to social interactions and the contagious processes they may give rise to. An early study focusing on social interaction effects on divorce was that of Dean and Bresnahan ( 1969). They mapped the spatial patterning of divorce in a mid-sized city in the state of Ohio, and found that it resembled a 'measles pattern'; that is, that divorce was spatially clustered. The pattern they found was suggestive and indicated that divorce may be contagious, but they did not have access to the type of data needed to test whether this was indeed the case. A more recent study, partially in the same tradition, is that of South and Lloyd (1995). They found that the risk of divorce for young people was substantially influenced by contextual factors. Most importantly, they found the sex ratio among singles residing in the same geographic area as the respondent to be important. This finding suggests that the supply of spousal alternatives in the local marriage market significantly influences the risk of marital dissolution.
Social interactions have also been the focus of some of the research on the 'inheritance' of divorce. As McLanahan and Bumpass (1988), Wolfinger (1999), and others have shown, children of divorce are more likely to divorce than comparable others. As noted by Diekmann and Engelhardt ( 1999), this is a potentially important factor contributing to the upward trend in marriage dissolution rates during the post-World War II period. Other recent examples include Kohler's analysis of fertility (2001) and Nazio and Blossfeld's analysis of cohabitation (2003). On the whole, these are noteworthy and interesting exceptions, however. Most demographic researchers pay little or no attention to the role of social interactions and the endogenous processes they can give rise to.
The analyses presented in this chapter suggest that interactions with others are crucial when it comes to explaining divorce; the marital status of those with whom individuals interact at work strongly influences their divorce risks. These results are based on data from a unique Swedish longitudinal database including all employees at approximately 1,500 randomly selected workplaces. The database allows for detailed analyses of how the sex, age, and marital status of a person's coworkers influence his or her risk of divorce, when one controls for other known risk factors. The core finding is that divorce is contagious, but that the patterns of influence differ significantly between men and women."
--
"For an action to take place, the individual must have an opportunity to perform the act; that is, the conditions must be such that the action is pan of the individual's opportunity set. Strictly speaking, all married persons in most western countries have the opportunity to divorce, although there may be legally imposed delays. In this section I will therefore not focus on the opportunities to divorce as such, but on how variations in other aspects of an individual's opportunity structure may influence how desirable a divorce is likely to appear. One such opportunity is the opportunity to meet a new partner.
The probability of becoming involved with a new partner before a divorce and the prospect of finding a new partner in the future are probably greater the larger the proportion of persons in the individual's local context who are of the opposite sex and of relevant age. (For bisexual and homosexual persons the spousal alternatives may obviously be of the same sex.) Some previous research indeed strongly suggests that the availability of spousal alternatives increases the risk of marital disruption. Udry (1981), for example, found that wives' perceptions of how easily their husbands could be replaced with a man of comparable qua lily increased the risk of divorce independently of marital happiness. As mentioned above, South and Lloyd (1995) showed that the risk of divorce for young people is higher when there is an unbalanced sex ratio among singles residing in their residential area."
--
"The decision to divorce is a decision taken under conditions of imperfect information. As much experimental social-psychological research has shown, it is in uncertain decision situations that a decision maker's beliefs are likely to be particularly influenced by other people (e.g. Cialdini and Trost 1998). A married person cannot know exactly what his or her life will be like after a marital disruption. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to gather information from divorced friends and acquaintances. If they seem to manage well after their divorces, they are likely to influence the individual's beliefs in such a way that the likelihood that the individual will initiate a divorce will increase. On the other hand, if they seem to be unhappy in their new status, they are likely to influence the individual's beliefs in the opposite direction and thereby serve as deterrents. Much research has found that the majority of divorcees view their divorces favorably, especially a few years after the divorce (Pettit and Bloom 1984; Wadsby and Svedin 1992). It is therefore likely that divorcees more often serve as positive reinforcers than as negative deterrents. A married person with many divorced friends is therefore likely to be more optimistic about life as a divorcee than is a person with few divorced friends, even if the actual quality of life after divorce will be the same. Thus, all else being equal, the more divorcees a person encounters, the more like!)• it is that he or she will divorce."
Åberg, Yvonne. "The contagiousness of divorce." The Oxford handbook of analytical sociology (2009).
They Call Me Tom: "I venture to guess though, that abuse leading to divorce is probably even less prevalent than loss of income leading to divorce."
Well, this is important to think about as a starting point:
"Income
This is a very complex area where much research has been undertaken. Clark, Frijters, and Shields (2007) provide a comprehensive review of the relationship between income and SWB, and so we provide only a brief overview here. The results generally suggest positive but diminishing returns to income. Some of this positive association is likely to be due to reverse causation, as indicated by studies which show higher well-being leading to higher future incomes (Diener et al., 2002, Graham et al., 2004, Marks and Flemming, 1999 and Schyns, 2001), and some is likely to be due to unobserved individual characteristics, such as personality factors, as indicated by studies which find a reduced income effect after controlling for individual effects (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters, 2004 and Luttmer, 2005).
Studies that have included relative income (defined in a range of different ways with a range of different reference groups) suggest well-being is strongly affected by relativities (Dorn et al., 2007, Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2005, Luttmer, 2005 and Weinzierl, 2005). This suggests that additional income may not increase well-being if those in the relevant comparison group also gain a similar increase in income. However, increases in income that result in increases in tax yield, which could be used to fund public services that may themselves enhance well-being. For a given income level, having high aspirations and expectations have a negative effect on SWB (Macdonald and Douthitt, 1992 and Stutzer, 2004). Aspirations themselves appear to be driven in part by past incomes, implying adaptation to higher levels of income (Stutzer, 2004; Di Tella, Haisken-De New, & MacCulloch, 2005). The importance of aspirations reinforces findings that the perceptions of financial status have stronger predictive power than actual income (Haller and Hadler, 2006, Johnson and Krueger, 2006 and Wildman and Jones, 2002). These findings imply that additional income for those who are not at low levels of income is unlikely to increase SWB in the long run if the additional income serves to increase expectations of necessary income.
As noted by Easterlin (1995), if the relative income effect dominates the absolute income effect, this would explain why cross section data show that wealthier individuals within a society are happier, but that average SWB levels remain constant as all members become wealthier. However, positive correlations between average SWB and national income found in international cross section data, particularly in lower income country samples (Di Tella et al., 2003, Fahey and Smyth, 2004, Helliwell, 2003 and Rehdanz and Maddison, 2005), requires either that comparisons of relative position are made across nations, or that an absolute income effect operates in many countries. Evidence on international relative income effects is limited. Fahey and Smyth (2004) argue that the significance of GDP quartile when holding income constant suggests that relatives between countries matters. Graham and Felton (2006) analyse Latin American responses in which people are asked to place themselves on a ladder where one stands for the poorest level of society and ten the richest and found that average country wealth increases responses suggesting individuals compare themselves to a society external to their own country and “people in part judge themselves by their place in the international sphere”."
Dolan, Paul, Tessa Peasgood, and Mathew White. "Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being." Journal of Economic Psychology 29.1 (2008): 94-122.
[I know SWB is linked with divorce - I don't have any references for that at the moment, though.]
------------
Another study:
Network dynamics in the long-term period after divorce, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships December 2004 21: 719-738
@They Call Me Tom
"I would venture to guess though, if the statistics could be found, because women in groups tend to behave as herds socially (NAWALT, etc. I know), I would imagine that somewhere above half of all divorces are by women who have one or more divorced friends."
Well, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:"
"The first author (working with Jenessa Shapiro) hit upon a promising device to elucidate these issues. Reasoning that popular magazines both reflected and galvanized distinctive cultural views, Braver and Shapiro speculated that subscription rates to certain of these magazines across times and locales could provide an empirical window onto these trends. They thus obtained state-by-state, year-by-year subscription data for the following four magazines: Lady’s Home Journal (read almost entirely by women with fairly traditional values and interests); Playboy (glorifying male hedonism); Cosmopolitan (representing lifestyle advice for “fun, fearless females” seeking empowerment, self improvement, and sexual fulfillment); and Ms. (representing the feminist ideology closely associated with the Women’s Movement). Arraying these subscription rates in a multi-level model against the year-by-year, state-by-state (crude) divorce rates, Braver and Shapiro found (in results not previously published) that changes in divorce rates at the state level were well matched by the state’s trends in subscriptions to Ms. Magazine , and were opposite (though not significantly) to its trends in subscriptions to Lady’s Home Journal. Importantly, they found virtually no association between the state’s divorce rate and its subscriptions to Playboy or Cosmopolitan . Taken together, these data provocatively suggest that some, but not all, value changes are associated with changes in divorce rates. Changing levels of interest in the aspects of self fulfillment and self-empowerment captured in feminist ideology and its antithesis seemed important, whereas changes in the emphasis on either male specialized or female-specific self-fulfillment and hedonism were unrelated to divorce trends. Strengthening this interpretation, since around 1970, about 2 in 3 divorces have been sought by wives (Ahrons & Rodgers, 1987 ; Braver, Whitley, & Ng, 1993 ; Pettit & Bloom, 1984 ) , whereas previously, “most divorces were the man’s idea” (DeWitt, 1992 , p. 54). In addition, findings show that the more that an individual woman agrees with the precepts of the Woman’s Movement, the more likely she is to divorce (Finlay, Starnes, & Alvarez, 1985)."
Braver, Sanford L., and Michael E. Lamb. "Marital Dissolution." Handbook of Marriage and the Family (2013): 487-516.
"With respect to normative integration, the finding appears to be uncomplicated. When one's reference group includes siblings or friends who have divorced, the individual is more likely to divorce. Whether having divorced peers simply releases inhibition and reduces pressure to remain in an unhappy marriage or actually encourages individuals to seek out more attractive partners cannot be discerned from our data."
"The percent obtaining a divorce who also had a divorced friend or sibling (or both) was calculated using the procedure described in Table 5. Only 9% of those having no one divorced in their reference group obtained a divorce in the eight-year period. Those having a friend or a sibling divorce had a 12% chance of divorce. Whether it was one's friend or sibling who divorced did not make a substantial difference in the probability of divorcing. When both a friend and a sibling obtained a divorce, the dissolution rate increased to 16%. When the norms for one's reference group permit divorce, marital dissolution is more likely to occur than when they do not."
Booth, Alan, John N. Edwards, and David R. Johnson. "Social integration and divorce." Social Forces 70.1 (1991): 207-224.
"Following a Durkheimian definition (Durkheim, 1897/1951; Stark, 2006), social integration involves high consensus on rules of behavior (norms) and effective means to ensure that most people conform to the norms most of the time. Hence, the more they are socially integrated in any group, the more likely they are to comply with the norms of this group (Booth, Edwards, & Johnson, 1991). We assume that, in the perspective of the couple, important norms with respect to divorce might be derived from the patterns of behavior prevalent in the couple’s network. Thus, if divorce is a frequent occurrence in the couple’s network, the couple is expected to divorce more easily, because common rules tolerate it, even if one is initially less open for divorce (Stalder, 2011). On the other hand, if divorce is not very frequent in the couple’s network, the couple is expected to stay together because divorce is, possibly, less accepted. For these couples, the social costs of divorcing will impede them to do so (e.g., Fenelon, 1971; Shelton, 1987)."
"Previous research has shown that the occurrence of a parental divorce (e.g., Amato, 1996; Amato & DeBoer, 2001; Wolfinger, 1999), the divorce of siblings (Dronkers & Hox, 2006), the divorce of a close friend (Booth et al., 1991), and divorce in the network (McDermott, Fowler, & Christakis, 2009) indeed increase the likelihood of divorce. Our first hypothesis, therefore, reads: the higher the prevalence of divorce in the couple’s network, the greater the likelihood that the couple will dissolve their long-term romantic relationship. Different from the previous empirical work cited above, this study will, for the first time, simultaneously examine the influence of parental divorce, the divorce of siblings, the divorce of a close friend, as well as the divorce rate in the municipality in which the couple lives, allowing an examination of their relative influence on the likelihood to dissolve long-term romantic relationships."
"As expected, the experience of a parental divorce, having divorced siblings, and living in a municipality with a high divorce rate, predicted the likelihood with which couples dissolve their relationship. However, having a close friend who was divorced was not significantly related to the likelihood of dissolving a long-term romantic relationship. Respondents who had no siblings or reported to have no close friend did not significantly differ from those with siblings or a close friend with respect to the likelihood to dissolve their relationship. Additional analyses in which the respondents with either no siblings or no close friend were omitted from the analyses did not alter the results presented here. Adding interaction terms with relationship type to explore possible differences between married and unmarried cohabiting couples regarding the association between the occurrence of divorce in the network and relationship dissolution revealed no differences (non significant results are not printed in Model 2). We conclude that the first hypothesis regarding the association between the prevalence of divorce in the couple’s network and the likelihood of dissolving the relationship was supported by the findings, with the exception of divorce of a close friend, which was not related to relationship dissolution."
Hogerbrugge, Martijn JA, Aafke E. Komter, and Peer Scheepers. "Dissolving long-term romantic relationships Assessing the role of the social context." Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 30.3 (2013): 320-342.
"To study the possibility of person-to-person effects, we examined the direct ties and individual-level determinants of ego divorce status. In the models we present in Table 8, we control for several factors as noted earlier, and report the association between “Ego Currently Divorced” and “Alter Previously Divorced” in the first row. People who have a friend who has previously gotten divorced are 270% (95% C.I. 60% to 650%) more likely to get divorced themselves by the time they come to their next exam. Among friends, we can distinguish additional possibilities."
McDermott, Rose, James Fowler, and Nicholas Christakis. "Breaking up is hard to do, unless everyone else is doing it too: social network effects on divorce in a longitudinal sample followed for 32 years." Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 (2009).
"For marital status, as Table 5 shows, married respondents were very likely to have married close friends. Separated or divorced respondents most likely had married friends, but they also had a high percentage of separated or divorced friends. This trend was significant."
[Table 5: 35.3% vs 13.4% - that is, % of friends who are sep./div.]
Goward, Eleanor L. "The closest friendships of adult women: a family life cycle approach." (1991).
"Following the divorce, most women report increased independence. In addition, almost all report an increase in assertive behaviours as divorced females. Half have divorced friends who may have encouraged the development of autonomy and self-esteem."
Langelier, Régis, and Pamela Deckert. "Divorce counseling guidelines for the late divorced female." Journal of Divorce 3.4 (1980): 403-411.
"Research on the risk of divorce has attracted a great deal of interest over the past several decades, mostly due to a very rapid increase in divorce rates in most western societies. In the USA, for example, although there are considerable variations in divorce rates by race, education, and age at marriage, on average about half of all marriages end in divorce (see Raley and Bumpass 2003). We have a fairly detailed picture of the many characteristics of individuals and couples that influence the risk of divorce, such as number of children, education, income, age at marriage, and ethnicity (see White 1990). We know much less about how the characteristics of those with whom the individuals interact influence the stability of their marriages.
A large body of sociological and social-psychological research shows that individuals' actions are often influenced by the people with whom they interact (see e.g. Cialdini and Trost 1998), and this is also a recurrent theme throughout this book. The actions of significant others have been shown to be important for explaining a vast array of phenomena, including involvement in social movements (see e.g. McAdam and Paulsen 1993), virginity pledges (see e.g. Bearman and Bruckner 2001), lynching (see e.g. Tolnay, Deane, and Beck 1996), sexual behavior (see e.g. Billy, Brewster, and Grady 1994), contraceptive use (see e.g. Brewster 1994; Rosero Bixby and Casterline 1994), and suicide (see e.g. Phillips 1974; Bearn1an and Moody 2004; Hedstrom, Liu, and Nordvik 2008).
Demographers have also paid some attention to social interactions and the contagious processes they may give rise to. An early study focusing on social interaction effects on divorce was that of Dean and Bresnahan ( 1969). They mapped the spatial patterning of divorce in a mid-sized city in the state of Ohio, and found that it resembled a 'measles pattern'; that is, that divorce was spatially clustered. The pattern they found was suggestive and indicated that divorce may be contagious, but they did not have access to the type of data needed to test whether this was indeed the case. A more recent study, partially in the same tradition, is that of South and Lloyd (1995). They found that the risk of divorce for young people was substantially influenced by contextual factors. Most importantly, they found the sex ratio among singles residing in the same geographic area as the respondent to be important. This finding suggests that the supply of spousal alternatives in the local marriage market significantly influences the risk of marital dissolution.
Social interactions have also been the focus of some of the research on the 'inheritance' of divorce. As McLanahan and Bumpass (1988), Wolfinger (1999), and others have shown, children of divorce are more likely to divorce than comparable others. As noted by Diekmann and Engelhardt ( 1999), this is a potentially important factor contributing to the upward trend in marriage dissolution rates during the post-World War II period. Other recent examples include Kohler's analysis of fertility (2001) and Nazio and Blossfeld's analysis of cohabitation (2003). On the whole, these are noteworthy and interesting exceptions, however. Most demographic researchers pay little or no attention to the role of social interactions and the endogenous processes they can give rise to.
The analyses presented in this chapter suggest that interactions with others are crucial when it comes to explaining divorce; the marital status of those with whom individuals interact at work strongly influences their divorce risks. These results are based on data from a unique Swedish longitudinal database including all employees at approximately 1,500 randomly selected workplaces. The database allows for detailed analyses of how the sex, age, and marital status of a person's coworkers influence his or her risk of divorce, when one controls for other known risk factors. The core finding is that divorce is contagious, but that the patterns of influence differ significantly between men and women."
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"For an action to take place, the individual must have an opportunity to perform the act; that is, the conditions must be such that the action is pan of the individual's opportunity set. Strictly speaking, all married persons in most western countries have the opportunity to divorce, although there may be legally imposed delays. In this section I will therefore not focus on the opportunities to divorce as such, but on how variations in other aspects of an individual's opportunity structure may influence how desirable a divorce is likely to appear. One such opportunity is the opportunity to meet a new partner.
The probability of becoming involved with a new partner before a divorce and the prospect of finding a new partner in the future are probably greater the larger the proportion of persons in the individual's local context who are of the opposite sex and of relevant age. (For bisexual and homosexual persons the spousal alternatives may obviously be of the same sex.) Some previous research indeed strongly suggests that the availability of spousal alternatives increases the risk of marital disruption. Udry (1981), for example, found that wives' perceptions of how easily their husbands could be replaced with a man of comparable qua lily increased the risk of divorce independently of marital happiness. As mentioned above, South and Lloyd (1995) showed that the risk of divorce for young people is higher when there is an unbalanced sex ratio among singles residing in their residential area."
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"The decision to divorce is a decision taken under conditions of imperfect information. As much experimental social-psychological research has shown, it is in uncertain decision situations that a decision maker's beliefs are likely to be particularly influenced by other people (e.g. Cialdini and Trost 1998). A married person cannot know exactly what his or her life will be like after a marital disruption. One way to reduce this uncertainty is to gather information from divorced friends and acquaintances. If they seem to manage well after their divorces, they are likely to influence the individual's beliefs in such a way that the likelihood that the individual will initiate a divorce will increase. On the other hand, if they seem to be unhappy in their new status, they are likely to influence the individual's beliefs in the opposite direction and thereby serve as deterrents. Much research has found that the majority of divorcees view their divorces favorably, especially a few years after the divorce (Pettit and Bloom 1984; Wadsby and Svedin 1992). It is therefore likely that divorcees more often serve as positive reinforcers than as negative deterrents. A married person with many divorced friends is therefore likely to be more optimistic about life as a divorcee than is a person with few divorced friends, even if the actual quality of life after divorce will be the same. Thus, all else being equal, the more divorcees a person encounters, the more like!)• it is that he or she will divorce."
Åberg, Yvonne. "The contagiousness of divorce." The Oxford handbook of analytical sociology (2009).
They Call Me Tom: "I venture to guess though, that abuse leading to divorce is probably even less prevalent than loss of income leading to divorce."
Well, this is important to think about as a starting point:
"Income
This is a very complex area where much research has been undertaken. Clark, Frijters, and Shields (2007) provide a comprehensive review of the relationship between income and SWB, and so we provide only a brief overview here. The results generally suggest positive but diminishing returns to income. Some of this positive association is likely to be due to reverse causation, as indicated by studies which show higher well-being leading to higher future incomes (Diener et al., 2002, Graham et al., 2004, Marks and Flemming, 1999 and Schyns, 2001), and some is likely to be due to unobserved individual characteristics, such as personality factors, as indicated by studies which find a reduced income effect after controlling for individual effects (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters, 2004 and Luttmer, 2005).
Studies that have included relative income (defined in a range of different ways with a range of different reference groups) suggest well-being is strongly affected by relativities (Dorn et al., 2007, Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2005, Luttmer, 2005 and Weinzierl, 2005). This suggests that additional income may not increase well-being if those in the relevant comparison group also gain a similar increase in income. However, increases in income that result in increases in tax yield, which could be used to fund public services that may themselves enhance well-being. For a given income level, having high aspirations and expectations have a negative effect on SWB (Macdonald and Douthitt, 1992 and Stutzer, 2004). Aspirations themselves appear to be driven in part by past incomes, implying adaptation to higher levels of income (Stutzer, 2004; Di Tella, Haisken-De New, & MacCulloch, 2005). The importance of aspirations reinforces findings that the perceptions of financial status have stronger predictive power than actual income (Haller and Hadler, 2006, Johnson and Krueger, 2006 and Wildman and Jones, 2002). These findings imply that additional income for those who are not at low levels of income is unlikely to increase SWB in the long run if the additional income serves to increase expectations of necessary income.
As noted by Easterlin (1995), if the relative income effect dominates the absolute income effect, this would explain why cross section data show that wealthier individuals within a society are happier, but that average SWB levels remain constant as all members become wealthier. However, positive correlations between average SWB and national income found in international cross section data, particularly in lower income country samples (Di Tella et al., 2003, Fahey and Smyth, 2004, Helliwell, 2003 and Rehdanz and Maddison, 2005), requires either that comparisons of relative position are made across nations, or that an absolute income effect operates in many countries. Evidence on international relative income effects is limited. Fahey and Smyth (2004) argue that the significance of GDP quartile when holding income constant suggests that relatives between countries matters. Graham and Felton (2006) analyse Latin American responses in which people are asked to place themselves on a ladder where one stands for the poorest level of society and ten the richest and found that average country wealth increases responses suggesting individuals compare themselves to a society external to their own country and “people in part judge themselves by their place in the international sphere”."
Dolan, Paul, Tessa Peasgood, and Mathew White. "Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being." Journal of Economic Psychology 29.1 (2008): 94-122.
[I know SWB is linked with divorce - I don't have any references for that at the moment, though.]
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Another study:
Network dynamics in the long-term period after divorce, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships December 2004 21: 719-738
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