Catholic Answers Forum - A Collection Of Links

As is usual for CAF nowadays, the level of crypto-feminism and crypto-Marxism has become increasingly more obvious (and soon the crypto- modifier will have to be dropped). Here is a collection of links from CAF illustrating the decline.


Had a pretty terrible 5 year anniversary...need advice on forgiveness and what to do.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=911407

Wife is afraid of going to Mass
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=911286

Are You Catholic and Divorced? Share Your Experience with the New York Times
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910965

Handling a Break-up
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=911078

Marriage help
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=911054

Those who have overcome trials in MARRIAGE, how do you fix emotional betrayal?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910592

Anti-Women Quotes from Early Christian Figures
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910659

Importance of Shared Hobbies in Marriage
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910745

Those who have overcome trials in courtship, how do you fix emotional betrayal?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909814

out-of-wedlock birth
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=784630

Wife Admits Affair with a Woman - What Do I Do???
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909655

From Russia the anti-family poison spread, and now from Russia comes the antidote
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909604

Blaming The Victim
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=820293

Meeting Catholic girls on campus
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910538

Birth Control views?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909988

Is husband condemned? 1 Timothy 5:8
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910062

Where do you find Good Catholic woman/man now a days?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910177

Failing marriage
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=910225

I am the wife and the provider...
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=903711

Jealous of husband
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=908874

Never had romance stage of Marriage
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909762

Please pray for a very devastated man.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=906927

spouse vs. parents
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909424

Abusive Father Update
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909451

Women’s college redefines ‘women’
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=908140

twice Divorced Marriage in Church
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909311

When the difficult person in  your life is your spouse...
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909276

annulment question
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=909281

my husband loves another woman and can't choose
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=908287

NEED Advice - My Parents or My Lover?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=888937

Should I tell Wife of Affair
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=908242

Religious, Ethnic, And Linguistic Fractionalization And Intentional Homicide Rate

I read a comment somewhere (probably on Twitter) that suggested that various types of fractionalization increased violence in a country (or were at least correlated with it). I have decided to test that theory - this post is the first on this particular idea.

For the homicide data I went to Wikipedia [1], which had the intentional homicide rate for most countries of the world. The data were from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

For the fractionalization data I went to Wikipedia [2], which had the ethnic, linguistic and/or religious fractionalization scores of 215 countries based on research done by Alberto Alesina (et al) [3]. That being said, I have learnt not to trust Wikipedia, and in this particular case my distrust was warranted. There are a number of missing values in Alesina's dataset, which were incorrectly entered into Wikipedia as a score of 0.00 (that is, no fractionalisation at all). The linguistic fractionalization score of Rwanda (according to Wikipedia) is definitely not 0.00, for example. In fact, only one country had a single score of 0.00 (in the original dataset), and that was the ethnic fractionalization score for the Comoros.


Alesina et al introduce the subject this way:

Ethnic conflict is an important determinant of the political economy of many nations and localities. Many believe that it leads to political instability, poor quality of institutions, badly designed of economic policy and disappointing economic performance.

In a cross-country setting, Easterly and Levine (1997) have shown that per capita GDP growth is inversely related to ethnolinguistic fractionalization in a large sample of countries. In particular, they argued that much of Africa’s growth failure is due to ethnic conflict, partly as a result of absurd borders left by former colonizers. As a result of that paper, a measure of ethnic fractionalization has become a “standard” control in regressions explaining cross-national differences in economic success. A related literature, early examples being Canning and Fay (1993) and Mauro (1995), has discussed the impact of ethnic fragmentation on government activities and quality of institutions. La Porta et al. (1999), in a broad empirical study of the determinants of the quality of government, suggest that ethnic fractionalization matters, even though variables related to legal origins may be more important.

A large literature on US localities show that in more ethnically fragmented communities, public goods provision is less efficient, participation in social activities and trust is lower, and economic success, measured by growth of city sizes, is inferior. Evidence that trust does not travel well across racial lines is also supported by experimental evidence.

While existing measure of racial (or ethnic) fragmentation for the US are reasonably well accepted, since they are based upon detailed and reliable census data, cross-country measures have been widely debated. Easterly and Levine (1997) use indices based on ethnolinguistic classification provided by sources from the former Soviet Union, the Atlas Narodov Mira of 1964. These data rely largely on linguistic distinctions, which may obscure other aspect of ethnicity like racial origin, skin color, etc. Interestingly, studies within the United States do not look at language in the racial classification. If they did, blacks and whites would be classified in the same language group. As we discuss below, this example shows that although useful, language is not the only way to look at ethnicity.

They continue on with more discussion, specific cases, and methods. The paper is 66 pages long (with tables) - it is quite an interesting read.

Anyhow, once I prepared the data, I used the Spearman rank correlation to see if there was a relation between homicide rate and one of the fractionalization scores. My results are the following:


"Ethnic Fractionalization" vs "Homicide Rate"

p value: < 0.001

Spearman's R statistic: 0.09

Degrees of Freedom (df): 182

"Linguistic Fractionalization" vs "Homicide Rate"

p value: 0.114

Spearman's R statistic: -0.058

Degrees of Freedom (df): 187

"Religious Fractionalization" vs "Homicide Rate"

p value: 0.062

Spearman's R statistic: 0.091

Degrees of Freedom (df): 198

Some of the paper's results:

On economic growth, we broadly confirm the results by Easterly and Levine (1997). In fact the negative effect of ethnic fragmentation on growth is reinforced with the new data, and we are able to highlight the differences between ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization.

[...]

While ethnic and linguistic fractionalization are associated with negative outcomes in terms of quality of government, religious fractionalization is not; in fact, if anything, this measure displays a positive correlation with measures of good governance; this is because measured religious fractionalization tends to be higher in more tolerant and free societies, like the United States, which in fact displays on the of the highest level of religious fractionalization. This result has no bearing, however, on the question of whether certain religious denominations are correlated with better politico-economic outcomes, an issue recently explored by Barro and McLeary (2002).

My analysis is fairly unsophisticated, so I'll have to find better data and/or better methods, particularly lower level data. Besides that, the fractionalization scores are based on data that are sometimes quite old (sometimes 20 years older than the homicide data, which is mainly from 2011-2012).

Regarding lower level data: while it appears the religious fractionalization scores took into account Shia and Sunni membership, some scores were off by quite a bit compared to the ones I calculated using data available prior 2003 (e.g. for Iran, I used figures from a book by Brenda Shaffer [5]). I will have to look into this further.

----

[1] List of countries by intentional homicide rate. (2014, August 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:32, August 21, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate&oldid=620830328

[2] List of countries ranked by ethnic and cultural diversity level. (2014, June 1). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:46, August 21, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level&oldid=611048847

[3] Alesina, Alberto, et al. "Fractionalization." Journal of Economic growth 8.2 (2003): 155-194.

[4] Shia–Sunni relations. (2014, August 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:34, August 22, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations&oldid=621944812

[5] Shaffer, Brenda. Borders and brethren: Iran and the challenge of Azerbaijani identity. MIT Press, 2002.

[GSS] Frequency Of Sex By Age And Marital Status

Using the GSS, I created two charts illustrating the frequency of sexual activity by respondent's age and marital status (for all respondents from 1972 to 2012). I recoded the variable for age for readability. I also created a chart for sexual frequency for all married respondents over time (by GSS year) - it's fairly stable. Finally, I created two charts for relationship status by frequency of sexual activity (flipping row and column for the second one - data are the same for the two charts).


Sex frequency by respondent's age - married:

Sex frequency by respondent's age - single:

Sex frequency by survey year - married:

Relationship status by sex frequency - single (i.e. unmarried):

Sex frequency by relationship status - single:

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Questions:

Frequency of sex: About how often did you have sex during the last 12 months?

Relation to last sex partner: The last time you had sex, was it with someone you were in an on-going relationship with, or was it with someone else? Remember that by "sex" we mean only vaginal, oral, or anal sex.

[NSFG] - Reasons For Abstinence By Religion For Female Respondents

From the NSFG, several tables detailing the major reasons for sexual abstinence (i.e. for those who have abstained until the point of taking the survey) by religious identification. Specifically, the results are taken from the Cycle 6 (2002) Female Respondent File of the NSFG, which was based on the responses of 7,643 females between the ages of 15 and 44 years of age. The tables are described in a row by column way, along with the method of percentaging (row or column). The data here should clear up a few misconceptions about the interaction between religion and sexual abstinence. This post will provide some of the necessary foundation and evidence for a later post on a similar subject.


Religion by Reason For Abstinence (Row Percentaging):

Religion by Reason For Abstinence (Column Percentaging):

Reason For Abstinence by Religion (Row Percentaging):

Reason For Abstinence by Religion (Column Percentaging):

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NB: The tables are repetitive, but I've added the superfluous ones for those who may want them.

Feminism In The News

A variety of mentions of feminism and feminists have been made in the news over the past while. Here are some excerpts of a few select items.

Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies

What critical framework is sufficiently inclusive to describe these uses of milk across nations, genders, races, species, and environments? Because milk is produced by female mammals, a feminist perspective seems to offer a logical foundation for such inquiry. From the start, feminism has been a movement for justice: at its heart is the centrality of praxis, the necessary linkage of intellectual, political, and activist work. Feminist methodology puts the lives of the oppressed at the center of the research question and undertakes studies, gathers data, and interrogates material contexts with the primary aim of improving the lives and the material conditions of the oppressed. Using standard feminist methodology, twentieth-century vegan feminists and animal ecofeminists challenged animal suffering in its many manifestations (in scientific research, and specifically in the feminized beauty and cleaning products industries; in dairy, egg, and animal food production; in “pet” keeping and breeding, zoos, rodeos, hunting, fur, and clothing) by developing a feminist theoretical perspective on the intersections of species, gender, race, class, sexuality, and nature. Motivated by an intellectual and experiential understanding of the mutually reinforcing interconnections among diverse forms of oppression, vegan feminists and ecofeminists positioned their own liberation and well-being as variously raced, classed, gendered, and sexual humans to be fundamentally interconnected to the well-being of other nondominant human and animal species, augmenting Patricia Hill Collins’s definition of intersectionality to include species as well.

[...]

In vernacular English, to “milk” something is to take it for everything you can get—but that is an adult’s slang. For newborn mammals, mother’s milk is a priceless gift: it offers nutrition, hydration, and affection, ecologically packaged at the right temperature. Breast milk helps protect infants against common childhood diseases, including diarrhea, pneumonia, respiratory tract infections, gastrointestinal infections, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, diabetes, childhood leukemia and lymphoma, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Adults who were breastfed as children have lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol, lower rates of type 2 diabetes and obesity, and exhibit higher intelligence and stronger filial bonds of friendship and empathy. Benefits for breastfeeding mothers include a quicker return to prepregnancy weight, temporary protection against conception, reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and lower rates of obesity.

[...]

Most Westerners will recall Nestle’s powdered milk campaign in Africa and India that persuaded thousands of young mothers to use powdered milk and infant formulas instead of their own breast milk, and thereby made corporate profits at the expense of widespread infant suffering, causing diarrhea, malnutrition, and death. As documented by the British NGO War on Want, Nestle’s baby food sales representatives dressed like nurses to give an appearance of scientific credibility to their sales in the poorer countries of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, including India. Because of poverty, lack of education, and lack of adequate facilities, many mothers in these countries could not read the instructions on the formula package and did not have access to baby bottle sterilizing equipment or clean water. Instead, they put faith in the ideology of progress and the superiority of technologically advanced nations: in a colonial world, indigenous people are pressured to share the viewpoint of the colonizer, to believe themselves inferior, and to adopt the ways of the colonizer in order to “improve.” In India, multinational corporations like Nestle and Glaxo were criticized by the World Health Organization for selling infant formulas and powdered milk, and an International Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes was issued in 1981. Under cover of this international rebuke, an Indian national dairy corporation was quietly picking up Nestle’s lost share of infant milk food sales. The story of Amul corporation and its engineering of India’s Operation Flood is a story of Third World elites joining First World corporations in colonial practices, with devastating effects on mothers and children, cows and calves, rural poor and small dairy farmers—a story that both parallels and exponentially magnifies the harms done to dairy farmers in the United States.

[...]

Material Perspectives on Milk and Bovine Agency


Gaard, Greta. "Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies." American Quarterly 65.3 (2013): 595-618.


The full paper can be read here: https://www.academia.edu/4357706/Toward_a_Feminist_Postcolonial_Milk_Studies


Some parts of the Gaard paper are (strangely enough?) true in ways their author probably didn't intend, would likely deny, and almost certainly wouldn't recognize (particularly parts of the third paragraph). Overall, the paper was an interesting look at the forefront of feminism.

The second paragraph above was a bit problematic though, in that the studies cited in support of some benefits of breastfeeding made such conclusions without taking genetics fully into account (e.g. the oft-mentioned parental IQ confound). It also seems likely that women who breastfeed their children are predisposed to "stronger filial bonds," and thus their children will be, too. In that particular case, breastfeeding is not the independent variable.


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Yoga pants are not a civil right

This is what feminism has come to: fighting for the right to wear yoga pants and leggings to middle school. This pressing civil rights issue made headlines when girls in Evanston, Ill., protested rules that they said banned the bum-hugging clothing for creating classroom distractions.

A feminist flash mob attacked Haven Middle School for shaming girls and promoting rape culture. Eliana Dockterman wrote in Time that the school's argument "is not that distant from the arguments made by those who accuse rape victims of asking to be assaulted by dressing a certain way."

[...]

Rape is a physical attack and a crime. Pubescent boys noticing girls' bottoms is neither. Still, two parents wrote to the school asserting, "We really hope that you will consider the impact of these policies and how they contribute to rape culture." A feminist writer tweeted, "#RapeCultureIsWhen we tell 13-year-old girls they can't wear leggings because it's 'distracting' to the boys."

Haven's administrators say they never claimed that the form-fitting pants were distracting to boys, though they surely are. An Evanston parent reported that the principal told her the school was merely "trying to figure out a way to tamp down the sexualization of middle-school girls." Isn't that a goal feminists support?

Instead, they react as if the school mandated burqas for all girls. It turns out that there was no "ban." It was actually a policy that leggings must be covered with a shirt that is "fingertip length." Oh, the inhumanity.

[...]

Feminist website Jezebel asked why "the solution is to make girls cover up instead of ... teaching boys to not be gross sexist pigs?"

[...]

Let's remember, we are talking about 13-year-old boys. Adult women have transformed children into monsters merely for finding the contours of a girl's body attractive. The only people being shamed here are the boys. Their crime is being human.


Powers, Kirsten. "Kirsten Powers: Yoga pants are not a civil right." USA Today. 2 April 2014. Web. 24 April 2014.


The full story can be read here: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/04/01/yoga-pants-evanston-kirsten-powers-rape-culture-column/7177111/


Regarding the line "trying to figure out a way to tamp down the sexualization of middle-school girls": http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/19th-century-purity-campaigns.html (something that was once old, and is now new - particularly the move for a higher age of consent on the part of a number of feminists). Some feminists appear to be fighting/arguing for women to wear less-revealing clothes, as well (though the language used belies the desired result).

Also worth noting is the apparent fight against [male] human nature. Come to think of it, it actually resembles a repression of male sexuality... Again, the general gynocentric disposition of mainstream feminism as well as the "Women Are Wonderful" Effect are worth noting here.


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Welcome to ‘Otherhood’

She’s successful, independent, and knows exactly what she wants. And yet: This single, 35+ woman would rather be having pizza with a husband and children of her own on a Friday night than go on a date with another man who probably doesn’t want to settle down. This woman is a member of “The Otherhood” — a “tribe” of women who have built a life for themselves, but want to share it with a husband and child that has so far escaped their grasp, writes Melanie Notkin, the Montreal-born, New York City-based author of Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness. They’re at once invisible and under the microscope — chastised as too picky or selfish by a society obsessed with motherhood, she writes. It’s time they got some respect. “The rise of childless women may be one of the most overlooked and underappreciated social issues of our time,” Ms. Notkin, 45, writes in the book’s introduction. “Never before have so many women lived longer before having their first child, or remained childless toward the end of their fertility.” She spoke with the National Post‘s Sarah Boesveld this week:

Q: Our society reveres motherhood. But what is ‘Otherhood’?

A: Otherhood is a cohort of women, mostly Generation X — the women who were born expecting that they’d have the social, economic and political equality our mothers weren’t born with, but that we’d have the husband and kids that they got. So many of us are among the most well-educated, the most financially independent — some of us are the most fabulous women — and remain single and childless as our fertile years wane. They’re looked at as so other than mother, as if they have career aspirations that overtake their desire for love or whether they’ve somehow delayed this idea, that collectively we all held up our college degrees and said ‘Let’s co-conspire not to have children until the very last minute of our fertile years.’ And of course, that’s not true. Just because love didn’t fit into that window that society expected of us, doesn’t mean that a) it won’t come, or that b) we’re making the wrong choice in waiting for it.

[...]

Q: Early in the book, one of your friends throws up her hands and says “F— feminism!” She’s talking about dating, the expectation that women are in control and men should not be chivalrous because that’s sexist.

A: I think we all have to admit there is confusion, and that we were born into this confusion where little girls were in circles putting their hands on their waists saying “Everything boys can do, girls can do better.” Boys didn’t want to offend us so they would lean back and say “OK you do what you need to do, you open the door yourself, you pick the place.” And the women say, “OK I got it, I’m supposed to be independent. In order to be equal, I need to do the things men did.” But that’s not what feminism is. Yes, baby girls are born equal to baby boys. But we’re different. Women lean in and that’s where the dynamic changes. I get why leaning in is important at work, but there’s power in our femininity and somehow we forgot that. The truth is, men enjoy courting women and women enjoy being courted. I say we’re modern, independent women who enjoy a little old fashioned romance.

[...]

Q: How is ‘Otherhood’ a new phenomena? We’re indeed seeing people marry, or partner long-term, and have children later in life and have been for awhile. Are these women different from the “spinsters” of decades ago?

A: Today, the good news is that the women who remain single longer and have children later are among the most capable women. They take charge of life. It may not be the life that they expected, but it is certainly a life that has extraordinary meaning and significance. I think this is a new phenomenon. I hadn’t seen in recent history anything like this generation of women.


Q: Another difference today is that existential search for personal meaning, for happiness and value and fulfillment in life — the “who am I” search extends into your 30s.

A: Right, and we’re missing someone — we’re missing the man. There aren’t very many men out there in their 20s who are dying to get married and have kids. Even if we are, even if we’re ready, it takes them another decade. Their timing is off.


Q: How did that happen? Fallout from feminism?

A: A lot of movies show the man as a boy that never grows up. So the boys stay boys and women — 28, 29, 30 — are starting to get anxious and want to get married, and men are like 38, 40, 42, all of a sudden now they want to do it. It’s a decade later. But we’re considered ‘desperate’ in our 30s.

[...]

Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex talked about women second to men. Now the childless woman is second to mom. We have this mom-opia, this mom-opic view of the world, even though there are fewer moms now. So if a woman is to measure her life based on what society expects of her, what she expects of herself and she isn’t living her true authentic self, if she doesn’t have that self-actualization she’ll never be happy. So the book turns this on its head and really asks her to take another look at who she is and move forward toward that self-actualization.


Boesveld, Sarah. "Welcome to ‘Otherhood’: Why a growing ‘tribe’ of successful, childless women are redefining happiness." National Post. 25 April 2014. Web. 25 April 2014.


The full article can be read here: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/25/welcome-to-otherhood-why-a-growing-tribe-of-successful-childless-women-are-redefining-happiness/


The whole article is worth reading. It's almost stunning, though, to witness the haste with which the equality that feminism is supposed to be fighting for quickly dispensed in favor of a range of benefits (referred to as "benevolent sexism" in academia) for women (again, the "Women Are Wonderful" effect). Such feminists appear to take ideology as far as it can go, then abandon it when it no longer suits them (which is to say, it's not what they envisioned), and then expect others (e.g. men) to [again] alter their behavior to suit women. What's entertaining is to see the logical contortions made in order to paint non-feminist views as being feminist.

Regarding the mention of "mom-opia" and "mom-opic": the term is "pro-natalistic," and frankly it's necessary for the survival of humanity. Anti-natalistic societies aren't going to last long (cf. Shakers, Cathars).


Other posts relevant to the final article:

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/studies-on-childless-women.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/08/career-or-marriage-or-both.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/09/aging-and-sexuality-in-women.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/09/the-uneven-effects-of-sexual-revolution.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/visualizing-history-of-love.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/double-standards-and-changing-standards.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/parental-leave-differences-in.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/surprise-finding-men-with-more.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/gss-number-of-children-by-income.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/gss-equality-related-questions.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/gss-female-happiness-by-marital-status.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/03/age-at-first-marriage-for-women-united.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/03/trends-in-global-fertility-rates.html

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/04/gss-marital-status-over-time-and-age-at.html

And last, but not least:

http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/04/gss-fertility-by-years-of-education.html

(There's a pattern...)


Worth linking is the "Economics of Sex" video from the Austin Institute:


(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1ifNaNABY)

Excerpts From "Americans View Their Mental Health" (1960)

Excerpts from the book "Americans view their mental health: A nationwide interview survey" [1]. The book deals with a survey conducted in 1957 by Gurin (et al) on 2460 Americans 21 years of age and older. The excerpts here deal with happiness differences (or lack thereof) between men and women, plus a few related points. The material here will be referenced in a future post tracking the subjective levels of happiness between men and women over time (from the 1940s to the late 1960s). The excerpts are from pages 41-42, 208-210, and 219, respectively.

Because the two sexes represent different social roles and cultural subgroups, are subject to different demands and expectations, and encouraged toward different avenues of self-expression and gratification, we should expect men and women to stress different things as the sources of their gratifications or of their tensions and discontent. The findings, in general, support this expectation. In talking of happiness, worries, and unhappiness, for instance, men more often stress the economic and material and the job, and women more often find both gratification and sources of concern in children and the family. These differences between men and women are not always very striking, but they are consistent and in the expected direction.

Turning to how much rather than what kinds of happiness, dissatisfaction, and tension the two sexes experience, we found, in general, that there was more expression of problems among women than among men (Table 2.8). Women expressed more worrying, more often felt they had experienced a nervous breakdown, and more often felt they had had a personal problem that could have benefited from professional help. To what extent these differences suggest that women in our society are subject to greater strains than are men and to what extent they reflect a greater willingness on the part of women to face these strains and to admit to difficulty in handling them cannot be deduced from the data. But whatever their ultimate meaning, the data do suggest that there is a greater conscious experience of tension among women, that women dwell on their problems more, and more often view these problems in mental health terms. We will see these results duplicated in many other areas to be examined in the succeeding chapters, indicating a fairly general tendency for women to express more problems, tensions, and dissatisfactions.

It is of interest to note, in Table 2.8, that this difference between men and women did not appear in the question on the evaluation of one's over-all happiness. It was expected that women would express greater unhappiness, but no significant difference appeared. Apparently, the women's greater expression of tensions, problems, and dissatisfactions in specific areas is not reflected in the over-all evaluation of happiness. (It might also be noted that men and women did not differ in the anticipation of future happiness.) Possibly the 

[...]

SEX 

Numerous differences between men and women have been reported in earlier chapters, and in reviewing these findings, several persistent themes appear. The most consistent sex difference in our data is the greater experience of distress reported by women as compared to men in all areas of adjustment with which we have dealt. It occurs in some evaluations of general adjustment, in the attitudes towards the self, in the evaluations of functioning in the marital and parental roles, and in the specific symptom patterns reported by men and women; women are more worried, more unhappy in their marriages, more aware of problems in their marriages, more likely to have felt that they had experienced a nervous breakdown. They also feel more inadequate in the parental role and are less accepting of themselves in the self-image they present. These experiences of distress are clearly manifest in the more frequent reports of all types of psychosomatic and anxiety symptoms.

What is the meaning of this? The simplest explanation would appear to be that women in our society are subject to greater stress than men. Margaret Mead (1949) has been particularly concerned with this problem and has pointed out that with the increasing flexibility in the feminine role in modern society there occurs a concomitant increase in uncertainty and stress in a woman's life. Although we have no way to assess the "actual" stresses and strains faced by our respondents, and thus cannot directly test this interpretation, we can with our data make some evaluation of its importance. If this interpretation does operate, it would be expected that the greatest difference in the experience of distress occurs among the younger respondents, where these cultural changes have had the greatest impact. There is some evidence for this in the fact that differences in the reports of difficulties in the marital and parental roles and in the incidence of negative self-evaluations are more apparent in the comparisons between younger men and women than in the comparisons between older men and women. We find no indication of greater differences in symptom patterns for younger than older men and women, however, so that the evidence bearing on the relevance of this interpretation of our data remains uncertain. What alternative interpretations can we offer?

We have already pointed to the possibility that these findings may reflect a greater readiness to admit distress rather than an actual difference in the stresses and strains encountered by men and women. The existence of such a difference between men and women in our society would not be surprising. The male role is closely linked to an active, coping interaction with the world, and a man's masculine identity is closely linked to his success in coping with his environment, to his strength in the face of difficulties.
It would not be surprising, then, if a man defended against feelings that attested to his failure in this respect, and not only experienced such feelings less often than women but also was less likely to report them if they were experienced. Women, on the other hand, commonly viewed as the "weaker" sex, would be less subject to identity problems linked to the experience and admission of difficulties and suffering.

Another frequently noted aspect of the feminine role in our society appears to be intimately related to the experience of distress: woman's role is viewed as more closely related to the maintenance of the solidarity of the family and larger social groupings of which she is a part.Fulfillment of this role would require sensitivity to the socio-emotional climate. Such sensitivity, involving a responsiveness to personal qualities in other people as well as in the self, could readily be manifest in our subjective measures of adjustment. A greater awareness of the "feeling" aspect of behavior, that is, a greater introspectiveness on the part of women, could account for many of our findings, not only those related to feelings of distress. We saw in Chapter III, for example, that women are more likely to report interpersonal or personality sources of shortcomings. In many realms of adjustment, women can be expected to be more attuned than men to the psychological facets of experience.

[...]

There is a clear relationship between high family income and feelings of happiness in marriage (Table B.6). Our two indices of marital distress, however, bear very little relationship to income level and, if anything, go in the other direction: feelings of inadequacy and the experience of problems in marriage are likely to be reported more frequently at higher income levels. The apparent paradox of greater happiness in marriage reported by the same group that most often reports problems and feelings of inadequacy has been discussed earlier. It has been interpreted as indicating a greater involvement in marriage, leading both to greater satisfaction in marriage and to a self-questioning that springs from greater expectations. A couple faced with economic privations is likely to direct its energy toward overcoming them or at least toward learning to "make do"; but these efforts may deplete their investment in the marital relationship itself, an investment which would have led both to efforts to achieve greater marital satisfaction and attempts to acknowledge and cope with personal problems or inadequacies.

Further evidence of this difference in involvement among income groups may be found in relationships between sources of inadequacy feelings and income. There is a high concentration of concern with economic provision among people with low incomes, but a focus on inadequacies manifest in the marital relationship (particularly those we coded "protective traits" -inconsiderateness, impatience, etc.) among those at the higher income levels (Table B.7). A similar distribution of emphasis is found in relationships between income level and sources of both current dissatisfactions and past problems in marriage. 

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[1] Gurin, Gerald, Joseph Veroff, and Sheila Feld. "Americans view their mental health: A nationwide interview survey." New York: Basic, 1960. Print.

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NB: The text was OCRed from the physical book. I've made every effort to ensure that it was done properly, but there may still be an occasional error.

[GSS] - Fertility By Years Of Education

Using the GSS, I created six charts illustrating the number of children by total years of education (from 1972 to 2006). 12 years of education indicates completion of high school; 13 or more indicates completion of some post-secondary education. There are charts for respondent sex, and restricting for ages 18-40.


Number of children by years of education, for all respondents:

Number of children by years of education, for females:

Number of children by years of education, for males:

Number of children by years of education, for all respondents, 18-40:

Number of children by years of education, for females, 18-40:

Number of children by years of education, for males, 18-40:

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Related posts:

Number Of Children By Income
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/02/gss-number-of-children-by-income.html

Trends In Global Fertility Rates Presented In Animated GIF Form
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2014/03/trends-in-global-fertility-rates.html